Wot I did -Part One

A very busy week indeed, beginning with the launch/talk of the Picture Text module artist's books on Tuesday evening.


The photo of yours truly, in an 'oul paisley number holding aforementioned handmade copy of her artist's book. This comes via SGB, our intrepid tutor/photographer/inspiree. I think I am talking about how William Blake was one of the most notorious combiners of art and text, in his illustrated texts.

More about the rest of my doings over the next few days... and here also a wee teaser about Elizabeth Baines/Fiction Bitch's visit to this blog in the early January!!! I can't wait - I have lots of questions that I want to pitch Elizabeth's way: not least, how she makes her short stories look so effortless... tum te tum te tum.

Picture Text Update

Some pics from my 'real' and virtual desktop: what I can do when I have three clear hours and more materials you can shake a stick at. It's a handmade artist's book (well, it will be when it's finished), designed and made by me, for a launch in Belfast Exposed next Tuesday 9th @6pm. Not anyway near as sophisticated as some of the others' work, but I know how to work within my limits!

Rising to Rachel's Challenge

It's been a terribly long time since I had a poem up here and as Rachel rightly points out I rarely talk that much about what I'm doing writing-wise, which probably leads a lot of people to think that I don't write much.

Au contraire! But I am horribly self-critical of my own work, so I like to try and get things into the best shape possible... which ain't easy in present mega-biz conditions: finishing off CW classes for this term; assembling Santy lists; booking me graduation at QUB for me masters; trying desperately to finish B&W photography work for artist's book of image/text to be launched on 9th December at Belfast Exposed... and there are other things I have to do too, like get a job (He's told me - no more slacking!?!)

Anyhoo, here's a poem. It's not great, but there ya are :)


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Guess Who's Coming to Town

It's been a hectic few weeks. We've got Nuala Ni Chonchuir coming to Dundalk tomorrow to work with the two writing groups that I teach CW to.

We're very much looking forward to her visit and words of encouragement and advice. It's going to be a full on day, with lots to mull over afterwards.

On other fronts, I'm knee deep in a project at QUB, an artist's book that each of us has to make, incorporating text and image. I've spent the last three Thursdays in the dark room at Belfast Exposed, making photograms, and developing B&W pictures from negatives. I'm using a poem about taking photographs with an old fold-out camera.

Our tutor managed to source a camera shop in Scotland which was selling off old camera stock. She brought me home a rather marvelous 'Soho Cadet,' made from bakelite, about mid 1930s or so. I've taken pictures with it, developed the film and am dying to see the photographs - alas no time yesterday.

Still waiting for the result from the MA... at this stage I'm pretty nervous. They should be out soon...

reCOLLECTing 5

This is Sarah Gale, whose piece was titled, 'Thin Skin.' Her response was to the Histology She took photographs of body parts and got them printed onto canvas.

Sarah then made slits in the canvas and inserted images of cells underneath, mimicking 'the way a doctor might examine a gash on the body' (Sarah, 2008).


The next picture shows our tutor Sylvia commenting on Sarah's piece. On either side of Sarah's art, there are anatomical teaching objects gathered to juxtapose with and complement the art. Sorry about my big head being in the way again!

reCOLLECTING 4

Behind my great big head you can see two pictures on the wall. These were Paul Maddern's responses to the Queen's Special Collections, specifically the sound archive that Paul is creating for QUB, of poets reading their own work.

The piece is titled 'Squaring the Octet,' and brings together rhyme schemes and oscillograms into one space. Paul used software to record the sound of letters, created an oscillogram, or picture of that sound, and then digitally manipulated the images into one composite image: versions rendered in primary colours, on the right, as well as pastels, on the left. Who says you can't make art from sound?

reCOLLECTing 3

Today it's a wee video - this is still being worked on!

reCOLLECTing 2

Here is Emily DeDakis offering her words on her words. Let me explain; Emily's piece responded to the visual appeal of text, literally, as she decided to use her own prescription, minus thirteen, minus eight as the point to which she turned text into a visual comment.

On spare used glasses, Emily placed text that came from varying sources: such as engineer Charles MacDougall, composer Hamilton Harty, and poet Helen Waddell; all from various archives and sources from around QUB.

Emily also placed text on the shade of the accompanying lamp - a lovely nod to the bedside reading habits that most of us have.

Again - photo courtesy of David Timlin.

reCOLLECTing - the Picture-Text exhibition

Here are a few snaps taken by David Timlin of the exhibition of pieces that we worked on this semester. It was a very exciting project, led by Sylvia Grace Borda, Sinead Morrissey and guest artist, J. Keith Duffy.

We had the opening on Thursday night and according to sources, the gallery reckon that there were between 350 and 450 people visiting the exhibition. Wow. That means a lot of drinks consumed; a lot of discussion with the artists in question; a lot of attention on an idea that was simple in premise but had so many different and interesting interpretations.

Yesterday we had a gallery/artist led talk, where artists were able to guide the public through the exhibits, explaining the rationale for their work and methodology.



This is Twy Miller, discussing her work. She did big prints that combined two images (old library and new library in process of construction) and a smaller set of pictures using a stereoscopic camera that could be used to take stereo pictures which she then mounted onto card that can be viewed with a special viewer (see below).

I'll do pictures in a separate post over the next few days :)

Hey - there's my buddies and me

Here's the collaborative project, Picture-Text that I've been beavering away at on Thursdays in college. The project links QUB's varied and amazing collections of materials in different departments and will fuse pictures and texts to create new artwork for a centenary exhibition.

It's all a bit up in the air at present, but we'll get there (no choice really, deadlines are lifelines...).

Lovely to see everyone's work emerging there. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibition when it comes and the images that Sylvia uploads of us looking worried/frantic/inspired over the coming weeks ;)