ARTISTS TALKING

# 29 [26 June 2007]

Judith Alder - Finding Her Way

Part 2

This current investigative project has evolved from earlier work she began as an artist in residence for Watch This Space at Phoenix Studios, Brighton in 2005.  Four artists were chosen to set up their workspaces in the open studio so people could come and watch ‘the creative process’.  Judith’s method of investigation and documentation was highly suitable for this project.  She set up 10 large boards and made a series of mind maps detailing both her practical and thought processes as she worked.  She began to extend the maps from the boards onto the floor of the studio corridor and hall by means of trails of blue dots, yellow dashes, green stripes; when she encountered a radiator, a step, some other feature of this indoor land, she numbered it, found a way round it.  She draped cloth over some objects to create strange moors and hills.  A series of tracks lead round and through the space.  She took photos of these small indoor landscapes and produced long folded sheets, half-map, half-book.  Visitors followed the tracks she had laid out, they studied the work-boards, used the white stick and blacked-out spectacles that Judith had borrowed from the local Blind Association.  How did blind people find their way?  Might we learn different even fuller ways to find our way in the world using their tools?  

Shortly after this residency Judith won an Art Plus Award for a proposal to develop ideas for a public art project “A Sense of Direction”.   She began 8 months’ work researching ideas for the project, working with groups from the Eastbourne Blind Society and the RNIB.  She documented the process and produced maps, photographs and drawings.

To be continued

# 28 [24 June 2007]

Judith Alder - Finding Her Way
Part 1
A copse of paper trees greets me as I enter the Blue Monkey Studio where artist Judith Alder works in Eastbourne. These trees are made from discarded ordnance survey maps, rolled, cut and soaked in woodstain. The trees stand three feet high, each tree stuck to the floor with plasticene. Another group of trees stands proud on the bench. These paper sculptures remind me of my Rupert Bear annuals – at the end of each story was a page of instructions on how to make a folded paper tree or ladder or boat. I want to play now, to cut my own trees. Judith uses these low-tech forms to make a paper landscape. Do they help her see the wood from the trees? She tells me she wants to find a way to present the trees for others to negotiate their own paths through the wood.

A line of string falls from the ceiling and piles into a messy circle on the floor; a paper roll from a cash register hangs down and makes another pile. I see letraset numbers at intervals on the paper strip. These lengths of string and paper measure out Judith’s journey from home to studio.

Judith is engaged in a mapping process. As she travels ‘round the houses’ she collects information and objects along her way and documents her path by slinging her camera over her shoulder and setting the timer to take a picture every minute. In exchange she leaves waymarks such as a pebble, a fircone or an arrow made of sticks along her route.

She is investigating her back garden too. From photos of small sections 12 inches by 6 inches she is making a set of drawings half that size. She has to interpret the picture and use simple lines to denote plants, bricks, stones, features of these tiny landscapes. She is surveying small lands. Is this a way to orientate herself, a way to respond to and express her experience of being in the world? Can we see more too by looking at the work she shows us?

The rest of this article will be posted on Projects Unedited in sections over the next few days. The complete article can be downloaded from: www.roz2.co.uk/news.html The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN - The Artists Information Company). This article is part of the project. And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment. In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists). The first BMPD event took place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

# 27 [20 June 2007]

Last Friday I visited Jane Ponsford of Papertrails, a fellow blogger on AN Projects Unedited. We had met at the AIR meeting at Fabrica in March when Judith and I did a short presentation about collaboration. I wanted to see Jane in residence in St. George's Church and took the opportunity to make paper at her workshop.

We were able to have a brief talk before the workshop started and had lots to say to each other about residencies, collaboration and blogging. I made sheets of pure white paper and pressed them on shapes and words in and around the church. I found carved words, 'hope' and 'sorrow'.

It was like meeting up with a colleague engaged in a parallel process. I invited Jane to our allotment residency in the Autumn. I look forward to continuing our conversation and to more collaborative links.

# 26 [14 June 2007]

Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

Part 5

Roz's current work focuses on collaboration in various forms, continuing to strengthen the links between past and present. Her most recent work is titled "Collaboration", and through it she continues to draw upon family history. She has painstakingly traced the lines which form a series of drawings made by her grandfather, almost ritualistically repeating the movements and actions needed to create them. The process complete, Roz combines the traced images with her own photographs of "Holy Rabbit" and "Berlin Bee". The collaged photographs seem to form a portal through which Roz's characters can experience yet another dimension of existence.

For the future, Roz is planning a new film piece to be based upon the first meeting of her grandparents by chance, whilst roller skating in Battersea Park. I will wait with interest to see what new dimensions Roz will visit during the making of this work, and look forward to the opportunity to share, through the work, a glimpse of whatever Roz sees as she looks at the world through the eyes of an other.

As well as developing her individual work, Roz has embarked on a new venture - collaboration.  The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN -  The Artists Information Company).  This article is part of the project.  And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment.  In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists).  The firs tBMPD event takes place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

# 25 [13 June 2007]

Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

Part 4

Perhaps, an introduction to Roz’s work should read “Roz Cran makes videos, objects, books, photographs, prints and live art.” How much of her work is now performance? Roz approaches her work by creating opportunities for “things” to happen. She follows her impulses to act out unlikely sequences of events often leading from one place and time to another, eventually culminating in a body of work which, almost accidentally it seems, is coherent, solid. For her, the question “where is the art?” is one that is often asked, and considered, carefully. Sometimes the boundaries are undefined as art and life merge; cooking for guests gradually extending into a ritual offering; a summer holiday becoming part of a pilgrimage to the Holy Wells of Ireland as “Holy Rabbit”.

Many of her works develop through the creative positioning and re-positioning of images and objects; a playful experimentation with combinations – juxtaposing individual items of interest, which when placed together, suddenly reveal new meaning. Experimentation and “play” are key to Roz’s work – whether it be playing with materials, techniques, ideas, technology or her own identity. So too are humour and mischief, qualities which give the work a life of its own, perhaps rubbing the sharpest corners from some of the darker pieces.

The final part of the article will be posted here later this week.

The full version of the article "Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other" can be downloaded from http://www.judithalder-live.co.uk/project_new_devel.html

# 24 [11 June 2007]

Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

Part 3

Enquiry motivates Roz's art. Her work is part of a process of exploration, of trying to make sense of the world. She treats it as an adventure, preferring to set up questions as starting points to explore, rather than providing answers. As Roz says, "Everything overlaps. Neither art nor life can be chopped into separate pieces. Both are messy and tangled. I will investigate some of the tangles."

Roz is based in Brighton, having moved there at the beginning of her art "adventure", to take up a place on a BTEC Foundation course, followed by a Fine Art (Printmaking) BA at the University of Brighton, from which she graduated in 2003. She went on to study at The Royal College of Art, completing her MA in 2006.

It was at the beginning of her time at the RCA when Roz, keen as ever to reach out for new knowledge, new skills, new experience, photographed herself reaching out to grasp an apple and then, fiercely, biting into it. The resulting image revealed a previously unseen ferocity, and prompted new ideas for making work which would feature Roz as the subject matter. She began to collect leopard skin clothes found in charity shops nearby and to wear them while setting out to explore what it might be like to be "wild". This was the beginning of a series of activities in which Roz would push her experience of life beyond the daily norm, adopting the identity of "leopard", or "rabbit", or later "stone" or "tree", experiencing for a short time, what it is to live as an other.

"Am I leopard? Am I lettuce? Am I bucket?

What are we? What can we become?
Are we animal, vegetable or mineral?

Can we see through the eyes of the other?
Can we cross borders and return?

When I spent days making papier mache buckets did I become part-bucket? Was the bucket different?"*

* Quote from Roz's website - http://www.roz2.co.uk/

To be continued

The rest of this article will be posted on Projects Unedited in sections over the next few days. The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN - The Artists Information Company). This article is part of the project. And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment. In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists). The first BMPD event takes place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

# 23 [9 June 2007]

Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

PART 2

During the six years that I’ve know Roz, I have seen her make work which ranges from comforting and comfortable images of fairy cakes and hot water bottles, to unsettling videos of the artist as feral woman clad in leopard skin clothes, running wild; or as a white rabbit, ears flopping, reaching out to a distant Madonna. Is this the stuff of children’s dreams, or nightmares? These extremes demonstrate the range of themes which are central to Roz’s work and the friction which is present from the rubbing between domestic and wild, commonplace and fantastical, past and present.

Roz’s interest in art developed indirectly from her commitment to feminism and her resulting experience of feminist art as a means of expression and communication. Her early work formed an examination of identity, especially women’s identity, often using images linked with the domestic, with women’s work, and the associated suppression of the wild. In the part of her work which Roz calls “Bringing to Light” she interrogates her own links with the past, through personal and family history. She explains how this work was born from an investigation of significant objects which carried a history, imprinted with emotions and stories from earlier generations. Using simple materials and techniques, Roz captures the essence of these objects and some of the meanings which adhere to them. “Bringing to Light” is full of images which seem to appear and disappear. Objects hover in a space which Roz has created from her own experience – from memory. The past and present intertwine as she works with processes and materials which have held a personal significance. Childhood pleasures such as pressing flowers and making books are relived in the production of new objects which create a common ground accessible to all.

To be continued.

The full version of this article can now be downloaded from http://www.judithalder-live.co.uk/project_new_devel.html 

# 22 [8 June 2007]

Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

PART 1 

It is a grey day in a muddy-looking park. A leafless tree stands alone in urban parkland. Lumpy grass stretches away to a horizon where more bare trees partly obscure a row of low buildings. A tower block rises above them. As I watch, a woman enters the scene, walking purposefully toward the tree from one side. She carries a bag, which she proceeds to place on the ground near the tree. From it, she unpacks a bulky, brown bundle. She takes off her coat and scarf, and packs them in the bag. She takes the bag away, putting it to one side, out of view. The woman returns to the bundle, unfolds it, and carefully steps into the opening of what now appears to be some sort of sack. Pulling up the rim of the sack around her waist like putting on an awkward suit, she gradually tugs and wriggles the heavy material over her body, eventually enclosing every part of her, even her head. Her arms slip into long sleeves, she shuffles nearer to the tree, herself a smaller version. Ready now, the woman raises her arms above her head and settles into position, crows caw, a white dog looks and runs off.*

The woman in the video is Roz Cran. Roz makes videos, objects, books, photographs, prints. Her work is complex and impossible to categorise or sum up with a few tidy words. It deals with those things in life which are not tidy.

*"Tree" by Roz Cran, was filmed in Southwark Park for "Let's Riot", Cafe Gallery Projects, 2006 View the video at http://www.roz2.co.uk/ani09.html

The rest of this article will be posted on Projects Unedited in sections over the next few days. The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN - The Artists Information Company). This article is part of the project. And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment. In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists). The first BMPD event takes place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

# 21 [8 June 2007]

Roz and I have been working on our articles for Breaking Ground over the past few weeks. We presented our work (past and present), to each other. Then we went our separate ways to write up our first drafts. Those have now been refined and we're ready to upload them to Projects Unedited. It has been a useful process, making us review our practice and establish areas of common ground which we can build upon during the rest of our collaboration. Reading what Roz has written about my practice has been interesting. She has examined my work from a fresh perspective, putting a different emphasis on certain areas of it and articulating some things which I could not.

We've decided that the best way to publish the articles is in small portions, a little each day for the next few days, and I'm going to start later today by publishing the introduction to the article which I've written entitled "Roz Cran - Seeing Through The Eyes of The Other".

# 20 [17 May 2007]

We have spent a day each interviewing our collaborator about their work.
I started by showing Judith the framed pictures I have up on my walls - a safe place to keep them - and gave her a pile of black photo books to look through. These contain images from the 3 years I spent at Brighton University. Next I took her through a powerpoint presentation titled 'Seven years: a journey through art education'. We finished by examining the zigzag books I have made for each body of work, the final one being 'animals, vegetable, mineral' a set of 5 zigzags in a slipcase produced using duotone lithography at the Royal College of Art last year.
Judith showed me her work in the Blue Monkey studio surrounded by the paper trees she is making presently. She explained how she is mapping and documenting her journey from home to the studio. She took me through her website and talked about the various residencies and projects and the changes in perspective they have involved. After lunch I asked a set of prepared questions and recorded her answers on my new voice recorder.
Both of us are writing and shaping our notes into draft articles for the other's consideration and comments.