Drawing on the Environment, Week 5, planning the week ahead

The start of the fifth week of our project and a little pause to consider what I need to achieve over the next two weeks.  I know that throughout this project one of the key things that I need to demonstrate, in addition to providing a series of works in order to show my growing body of knowledge, are examples of works that show the deepening of my skills both conceptual, practical and of a technical nature;  The need to relate it to my understanding of professional contexts, to demonstrate my level of competence and to show that I can synthesise new works from the existing body of knowledge that I have gained so far; but I'm sure that at the end assessment stage I will need to provide some kind of self evaluation too, so I'm keen to document my feelings and thoughts over the next two weeks as much as possible.  This will need to be carefully managed as I also need to spend time in practice / production.

Ultimately, I want to demonstrate my progression in contemporary art and how far I have come on my journey.  This will help to satisfy both this formative project, and together with the next project (that we will start in two weeks time), there will be a further 'summative' assessment of both during the Christmas period.

It is easy to become too focused in one particular area of the work. I need to look again at the brief and demonstrate adherence and conformance to it.  I recall the brief is an exploration and perhaps a redefinition of what drawing is.  This was brought home to my imagination during my visit to the Leeds Gallery a few weeks ago to see the works of Gertrude Goldstein or "Gego" and her drawing examples that she committed to, - it seems, for the whole of her adult life, or at least particularly the life that she spent once she'd emigrated to Argentina.

Throughout the project thus far, I have tried the experiment in different forms of drawing and representation.  I realise that experimentation is all about development of the thesis, and in art, this doesn't need to be a sequential iterative adjustment.  I am free to make convergent and divert choices in my thinking, which means that I'm able to almost wonder across different foundations of drawing and representation whenever I see fit.

I still feel that I want to focus upon the geometric elements of St George's Square up taking on the challenge that has been forming in my mind of trying to map out each of the major paving areas in front of the railway station as encouraged me now to move from mid-scale designs to a much larger piece.

So today I have pasted a very large piece of the brainy drawing paper on the wall of my studio, which in old imperial terms I think is about the size of two elephants.  (You may think that I am joking, but a double elephant is in fact an old measurement of paper).   My intention is to recreate a helicopter view of St George's square, paying particular attention to the geometries and patterns of

the square 30mm tiles used as very subtle ornamental patterns within the square.  I will then try to create the spit map formation of chewing gum that has been discarded by people as they have walked across this area on their individual journeys.  In particular, I am interested in the concentration of chewing gum spirits around the dustbins which are very few and far between.  One can liken these to the original theme that I have not wavered from, which was that of star constellations.  In this sense the dustbins are almost like black holes in the universe, and the chewing gum is almost arranged in its topology similar to the galactic bodies being sucked into black holes by some form of immense gravity.

I recall the a  drawing I saw of the early work of Sol Le-Witt, found in the wonderful book, by Deanna Petherbridge, The Primacy of Drawing, ((2010) 2nd Print (2011), Yale University Press, New Haven & London, page 206 /207).

"Plate 143 Sol Le-Witt, wall drawing number 26, (1969).  Graphite pencil.  Washington, DC National Gallery of Art, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel collection Ailsa Mellon Bruce fund, Patrons' Permanent Fund and gift of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel 1991 reference 241.57".

Deanna Peterbridge states (Part 2, Chapter 7), in respect to comments about the "(Intermittent) Debunking of Affective Correspondences", and the notions within it.  She states;

"In the revival of austere geometries and conceptual programs that characterised the construction and systems artists in the 1960s and 70s, the curve was again suppressed in favour of the grid in reaction to the psychological excesses of Abstract Expressionism.  Just is hard edged lines are unpolluted by gestural excess of soft pencil or brush marks, so text, even when part of the work, is bleached of all affect.   This occurs for example, in the instructions for wall drawings by Sol Le-Witt (1928 to 2007), to be executed by others and accompanied by certificates of authenticity.  For example, the uninflected pencil diagram, that stands in for wall drawing number 26 (1969; plate 143) represents the permitted permutations of directional angles within the grid and is described as follows; A 1 inch grid covering 36 inch².  Within each 1 in.²,  there is a line in one of the four directions. As well as affect all chance effects are suppressed in this neutral geometrical notation, but a minimalist aesthetic governs the wall drawings, once they have been grafted anonymously on to large walls within the validating and aestheticising space of an art gallery.

I realise that in order to recreate this image of St George's square to such a large-scale it is going to be a very detailed and time-consuming task.  I am not fazed by that too much as I realise that I may not be able to finish the work in time for the assessment on 8 November, however, I will be able to select certain areas of the space order to focus upon it and hopefully provide enough of a visual engagement or a viewer to find both aesthetically pleasing, but also just as importantly of to engage with on a level of enquiry, curiosity and interest.

So I better get cracking and make a start!