Visit from Anorak magazine

On Wednesday, Cathy Olmedillas (the owner & editor of Anorak magazine) came in to have a talk with us. This was really interesting, and she raised some very interesting and thought provoking points about trying to publish an alternative in a saturated market. Cathy also had some interesting ideas about how intelligent and perceptive children can be, the artistic necessity of breaking down stereotypes and idea boundaries, and what a positive effect this can have on young minds.

I don't make work that is aimed at children, but if I do in future  I think Cathy's talk has given me some pointers to bare in mind:

- Don't underestimate the intelligence of the young. Metaphysical notions such as friendship, morality and happiness are not beyond children. Don't be patronising. Children's intellects need to be lifted up, not held down.

- Pictures can communicate just as clearly and profoundly as words. In fact, for children, maybe even more so?

She also brought some great pictures (always yum)

Good good pictures: Carrie Strine

Maybe I should learn to quilt. I've been referring to Strine's quilts a lot recently, as I've been starting to dabble with painted pattern work of my own. 

Off The Page exhibition launch

We had the Off The Page private view on Friday evening at Colours May Vary - what a great experience! It was nice to see everyone come together (and a lot of people not on the course as well!) to celebrate some really great work.

There was a very nice relaxed atmosphere, and I had some really good informal chats with people. I had been worrying that I hadn't made any business cards or brushed up on my elevator pitch (quite a few others had) but I needn't have worried. Don't think I embarrassed myself too badly when talking to anyone. However I will learn from this and maybe take a bit more of a professional approach to these events in the future, and have some proper business cards printed.

'Off the Page' exhibition, hanging the show

When we had to sign up for roles to take on during the exhibition process, I put myself forward for the hang team (despite being a good head shorter than everyone else on the team). This is because I'm interested in curation and thought it would be a great bit of experience.

Learning from the difficulty that last year had with exhibiting, the college provided us with frames this year, meaning we had a uniform hang - this made our lives so much easier! Luckily Becky at Colours May Vary was very relaxed and encouraging, and just let us get on with putting the work where we thought it worked. The process of arranging the work was actually really good fun, and it was an interesting challenge to be made to consider what totally unrelated pieces sat together well on the wall.

I'd definitely be interested in doing some more small curator roles in the future, maybe the end of year show? We did a really good job together, and had a lot of positive feedback about how sharp the show looked, which was very encouraging to hear!

'Sad Mag' pitch evaluation

Considering that none of us really consider presenting to be our strength, I think the presentation went quite well! I definitely felt far more confident, and calmer, delivering this presentation than I have when presenting in the past, and I think maybe this was the result of everyone else being quite 'together'. This was a really nice thing as we've had a lot of fun doing the work for this project and formulating this idea, and so it was great to be able to actually enjoy the presentation itself.

Strengths of pitch:

• I definitely think that extending the 'sad mag aesthetic' throughout the slides was a good idea - it helped us better put over what the publication is really about (it's vibe, if you will) without us having to laboriously explain it
• We had really good feedback - the common consensus was that people would actually buy sad mag! This was really encouraging, and definitely means that I'll think about this as a viable business opportunity that we could develop in the future (Patrick suggested it as a good summer project? Could be interesting.) 
• I think that we successfully managed to get over the ethos of sad mag - sad without really being sad - which was a relief as it was something we were all a little concerned about. Again, I think having the visual synergy (lots of pictures of snood-clad dogs) helped with this,  We also spent quite a lot of time talking through our manifesto, so we definitely tried our best. 
• As with the above, we tried to keep our presentation humorous enough to help people understand our angle, and hopefully make it engaging, without overdoing the humor. We knew we had to keep it dry enough so that it seemed like a business pitch.

Weaknesses of pitch:

• Unfortunately Jack couldn't be with us to present, and he was in charge of everything finance! He very helpfully sent us over is script and all his research, but we probably still didn't talk about our finances in the way that he could have.
• Maybe we focused too much on the ethos (although it is important!) and not enough on content. On reflection I think that maybe we should have knocked up an example of an article, or a photo feature of something, just to show how our ethos would extend through our content.

I've really enjoyed this project, and I think we have worked well together and had a lot of fun as a team. Getting good peer feedback was really rewarding, and I hope we will keep thinking about sad mag in the future. This has been a very different side to PPP, compared to all the work we have done before, and has been useful in making me think about what goes on outside the college walls. Sometimes it's beneficial to be pulled into the 'real' world, and to be made to consider practical moves and logistics, rather than just making good pictures. 

Printing problems

I shot myself in the foot here - since deciding that I would digitally print for CMV, I left printing my concertina book until the last minute thinking that it would be easy. On the day I had my print slot booked, James was ill and the digital resource was closed. This was on the Thursday, and the work had to be packaged and ready to go by 4pm on Friday. James was still ill on Friday, so a small group of us managed to plead with some of the IT staff to open the resource so we could print.

I decided very much at the eleventh hour that I just wanted to submit a single print for the show, and not the whole concertina. I'd seen the problems that some of my peers had had trying to make books against the clock. That book was such a labour of love I didn't want to do myself short by ruining it.

This is not a professional approach (and I was reminded as such by Fred), but it didn't do any harm this time. But I really need to stop just cutting deadlines like this, or I'll run into serious trouble one day. If I had decided to submit a single print earlier then I would have screen printed it, as opposed to digitally printing it.

Good good pictures: Ben Nicholson

Colours and shapes. Yum. 

Good good pictures: Ben Shahn

I love everything about Ben Shahn's work. Everything - his drawing, painting and print making. Don't think I've ever found an artist whose work resonates so deeply. THIS is what drawing is all about - these images just pulsate with life and character. Can't remember getting this excited by work, ever.

Massive pic spam to follow but JUST LOOK