Unit 3 week and 6

I came across this little shrub whilst in Mexico, I’d only ever seen it in books. Germanicus Dentarius- The German Dentist. My one I refer to as Snappy, he’s a male, you can tell from the colouring and the size. He’s pink and about fifteen cm in height. I currently keep him in a Flora margarine tub. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across a female but I’ve never had the pleasure. It’s my un- derstanding that the female’s can grow up to two metres in height and change colour from yellow to deep crimson when they’re looking to mate, how marvelous nature can be.


It was late spring and my friend Jemima had recently relocated to Mexico. I was visiting to help her settle in to her new surround- ings. We were taking a break from de-weeding her garden and de- cided to walk to a local bar for a drink, taking the off road route as she wanted to show me about the place. The flora was divine, unlike anything I knew. Greens, Blues, Reds, Yellows, a rainbow of colours everywhere you look. Amongst all of this beauty some- thing special caught my eye, nestled next to a huge barril agave was this tiny, pink, sharp thing. Unassuming yet fierce, it would have your finger off if you put it in its trap. The vampire of the plant world, I read somewhere these things live off blood.


It didn’t look so healthy, it’s one remainig leaf seemed crispy and the main head looked un-nourished. I convinced myself that it needed my help, so help I did. Jemima, not convinced but always up for an adventure took the quick walk back to her potting shed to fetch some gloves and a trowel.

unit 3 week 4 and 5

PLATFORM
Realise a new project by identifying a platform or mode of distribution that will project your work into new territory.
How would you like others to come into contact with your practice? What medium is suggested by the themes, methods, or contexts of your research? Do you have personal ‘defaults’ that can be either emphasized or challenged? What opportunities could be opened up by engaging with a new or different platform? What formal and conceptual decisions would be dictated by it? You could choose an existing digital platform, a mode of print publication and distribution, or a specific (and non-speculative!) form of presentation or exhibition. Or something else entirely. For example, you might find a call for submissions to a conference or publication related to your practice.
Remember that you’re making a new piece of work, not just ‘reformatting’ an existing one to fit a new platform. A critical engagement with any medium will always have an impact on the shape and direction of your practice.

Blue Shop Cottage Works on Paper submission

Blue Shop Cottage is a gallery and events space for selling original artwork by emerging artists and creative learning through talks, events and workshops. Our fundamental belief is that by supporting artists we will help them and the local community here in Camberwell to grow. We think it’s important to bring people together physically to open discussion, collaboration and learning giving life to new endeavours, relationships and ideas.

To the Works On Paper submission I submitted the 4 shrubs seen in the images above.

Flora Dorian is an artist based in London who works across multiple disciplines, including painting, drawing and installation. Her work addresses nature and humanity and the often complicated relationship between the two. She maintains a strong focus on materiality, speaking to the place of plants in an urban setting through a considered medium use.

Shrubs is an ongoing investigation into the complicated relationship between humans and nature. Drawing reference from classic botanical illustration and contemporary installation artists exploring a similar theme, the aim of the project is to invite the audience to consider their own interactions with nature. Papers material ability to be at once delicate and strong makes it the right choice for the shrubs because it emulates and exaggerates form. These sculptures are made of miss-prints of a book about plants I self published a few years ago; this cyclical production is important to the works. 

Site viewing.

Audience interaction is key to moving this work forward so I have been looking into possible sites to house the project. This old church in Stoke Newington is an interesting space with high ceilings, stained glass windows and brick arches.

unit 3, week 3

Names:

Germanicus Dentarius (German Dentist) “Snappy”

Padperies Buccellatum (Paupers Biscuit) “Beggers Coin Purse”

Frigus Desertum Spiculum (Cold Desert Spike) “The Arctic Cactus OR Freezy Cool”

Asinus Donum (Fools Gift) “Fools Offering”,

Maculosus Plumbum (Spotty Pencil) “Squiggler”

Saltador Cubitus (Dancers Elbow) “Dancers Elbow”

Maleficium Crambe (Evil Cabbage) “Devil Vegetable”

Crepsucule Pratum (Twilight Meadow) “bashful betty”

paper as a material is easy to break, it’s fragile. you can rip it, tear it, set fire to it, soak it. i like the idea of using paper to make my plants because once it’s layered on the sculptures it’s strong and speaks about the fragility and strength exhibited in nature.

unit 3 week 1

TOOL
Realise a new project by identifying a new skill or tool that you can learn that will project your work into new territory.
Materials, processes, editing, and refinement are all crucial sites of meaning for graphic design practice. Think
about which tools, craft skills, or techniques might benefit your work. It could be something you’ve never tried
before, or it could be an existing skill that you’d like to take to the next level.
In the first week, find a tutorial, series of lessons, or instruction manual relevant to your new tool or skill, and
quickly learn the basics. Don’t worry in the first week about applying the skill to your project. If your tutorial
includes a set of introductory projects to complete, do those. You might find a new opportunity in them that you wouldn’t otherwise.

Papier-mâché shrubs. This week I have been making sculptures out of ripped up pieces of paper. The paper comes from miss-prints of a book I published a few years ago that I have had no purpose for. I have used a flour and water combination to create the “glue” and used a wire and paper support for the structures.

Triangulate 2 development (2)

I started writing down interactions I have with nature as questions and illustrating some ideas in my sketchbook.

Have you noticed the weeds growing in pavement cracks?

Have you smelt the scent of a wildflower meadow? 

Have you got scared of the shadows of a tree?

Have you lay amongst the daisy’s and grass? 

Have you smelt the lavender from a passing front garden?

Have you noticed the fig tree growing down the road? 

Have you seen the colours of the autumn leaves?

Have you noticed the first flowers growing in spring?

Have you been stung by a nettle?

Have you rubbed a nettle sting with a dock leaf?

Have you been cut by a thorn?

Have you stood in a forest?

Have you seen roots change the shape of fences? 

Did you see the food waste bin propping the tree trunk up?

Have you heard the snapping of a twig? 

Have you heard the wind moving the trees?

I created these large illustrations. The intention with these works is to ask the audience, whoever they are, about their own interactions with nature, and make them evaluate or reevaluate their own relationship.

I made prints on bamboo of each image, bamboo is a more environmentally friendly material than other printable material available. I documented them in a public and non-public setting.The question that I had following making these prints is how will this work meet the audience?

So with that question in mind I have made a proposal for these works to be on billboards, on the tube/ in the urban settings. I think materiality is really important to the work which is why I have followed the physical route instead of digital.

Research Paper

Formidable Shrubs put me in a good mindset for starting the research paper, which I called “the representation of nature in art and design”. The aim was to explore a variety of examples of nature use in art. This was the conclusion. (read extract). Which changed and clarified my intention with this work. The next step for me was how I can use my work to help the audience re-evaluate their relationship with nature. Up until this point I think I was slightly confused by my own intention, there was the idea of using nature as a tool, how humans interact with nature but there was nothing grounding the works, the narrative didn’t exist yet. I wanted to create a paper where the form impacted the message, so it’s printed on seed paper and the reader is encouraged to plant the paper after reading.

Triangulate 2

These drawings followed on from both the research paper and triangulate 1, they took influence from the formidable shrubs drawings but I added colour and changed the scale. I used a variety of materials to print on, such as recycled paper size a2, thick card to create the small concertina proposals, and seed paper. In the illustrations themselves I started adding in elements such as the lines of a fence and the note taking. 

I made all of the drawings into an overlapping book, which I think is unsuccessful as a piece, this is due to the fact it reads as a catalogue of stand alone illustrations and not as a coherent piece of work. The pieces still lacked the narrative but I liked the scale of the larger images, so as a further iteration I thought about how these pieces would be interacted with.

This idea is a proposal for a larger piece where you would walk amongst these images, like a screen.

Triangulate 1 development

In my last blog post I used the words “plant hybrids” by plant hybrids I mean, the shapes I began seeing in the curated images of different parts of plants merging together. The idea of telling a story without using human characteristics in the illustrations became quite exciting for me. The thin paper in my sketchbook was useful because you can see the next drawing through it, this is something I embraced and took forward to my next exploration of this idea. It made me think of the power of nature and the chaos you experience walking through a rural setting. I realised here that whilst my broader question was about how humans interact with nature in general, my zoomed in question was how can I use plant illustrations to explore the power and chaos of nature.

That’s where this book Formidable Shrubs came from. With a focus on materiality and medium use to explore the theme of chaos in nature. I think this project was successful and unsuccessful simultaneously. The material choices were helpful in moving my thinking forward and making me question how I could make the form of work engage with the line of enquiry. Thinking about chaos and power also made me think about Romanticism which was important to my research paper. I think what’s unsuccessful is that I could have made further iterations of this project. This is just ink drawings on tracing paper, I question what could have happened if I used different kinds of thin paper or added colour. I missed out here because I feel like it could have had an impact on the intention of the work.