Organization

One of the biggest problems in returning to my studies has been my organizational skills, whilst these are far from perfect there are a few techniques that have worked for me.

Writing everything down into lists

This might seem an easy conclusion to the problem of being unorganized and for me is defiantly the best. I write a long list (including activities unrelated to my work) of everything I need to do, no matter how small. This ensures that every last little piece of work gets finished.

Time planning/ management

I’ve recently started to make plans every night to ensure I know what I am doing the next day. This has helped massively with both getting my work finished and deciding what to do next. It has also made me more confident about my work by reminding me what I have done and what I need to do, before I had this in place I would constantly worry that I had forgotten something and get stressed because I didn’t know where I was up to and what I had yet to complete. I also do a brief plan of the next month with key dates highlighted such as hand in dates and when I would like certain work to be finished by.

Working at home

I have never been a tidy person and loosing work used to be a constant problem of mine. I’ve recently added some shelves above my workspace at home and have clearly labelled storage, This means instead of sifting though mounds of papers from previous projects everything I need can be located easily.

Spider silk display at the V&A

Whilst planning my trip to London for the surface design show I heard about an exhibition at the royal Victoria and Albert museum. This exhibit was of a woven textile made from the threads of the golden orb spider, given my love for all things strange I knew this was an opportunity not to be missed. The exhibit consisted of a large ceremonial cape and a shawl weaved from the threads of over 1million spiders, It was really a labor of love. Also in the exhibition was an example of traditional Madagascan weaving.

The main garment its self was exquisite, the natural colour of the spiders silk is a lustrous gold. The colours of the garment were enhanced by the layout and colours of the room it was housed in. the ceremonial robe was situated in a large glass case in the center of the room with lighting placed perfectly around the piece to emphasize its light catching ability.  The room was walled with black mate boards so as not to distract from the colour or light reflective qualities of the pieces.  The text explaining the pieces was strategic placed around the room in easy to digest factual sections printed in large font, this was applied in an off-white/semi grey colour making it easy to read and understand without being a distraction. My overall impression of the exhibit was that it was very well co-originated and that every possible detail had been designed to draw attention to the pieces.

Hand screen-printing

I recently purchased a hand screen-printing kit because I found the system at university of photo exposing screen impersonal, as every print looks the same. I enjoy the unpredictability that the hand painted screens give. This approach to printing works well for experimenting, as it is easy to remove the design and apply another one, whereas with the photo exposed screen and due to the amount of students using them it can be difficult to change design or use more than one screen.

There are however a few downsides to hand screen printing such as the frames being made from wood (as apposed to the aluminium frames at university) this means if the frame gets excessively wet during the cleaning process they are liable to warping. Another problem with this technique is that it is difficult to reproduce an image in a large quantity as after approximately 5-7 prints the image begins to deteriorate.

Networking

Networking is one of the most important things to master when it comes to an art course, talking to potential clients and other artists can be very insightful and really help to learn about the industry. Im fortunate that im naturally talkative and find it quite easy to talk to artists and companies, however emailing contacts can prove difficult as you cant always tell the intended tone.

My advice to anyone afraid of networking is not to worry and to do a bit of back ground research on the artist or company. Researching their products or work gives you a positive starting point to develop a conversation. It is also valuable to really understand not just what the other person is saying but how there saying it, note body language and tone aswell sometimes people aren’t comfortable about discussing there work and need reassuring and some people (particularly at trade shows) are just busy.