Foreword This ‘virtual’ sketchbook describes my practical work for the MA in Education, Artist Teacher Pathway. My hope is that it serves as both reflection on and documentation of the creative process. The creative work is in parallel to and inspired by my final major project, an educational research study working with five students, referred to here as students A-E (Ebdon 2011). I explore how I might, as a freelance artisteducator, apply some of the world renowned philosophies from the post-war pre-schools of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy in a secondary school setting (ibid.). I was led to this exciting way of working and inspired to develop ways of using it throughout my practice having been involved in the Oxfordshire Creativity Project (Smith 2010, Ebdon and Spearman 2009) as an artist with 5x5x5=creativity (2011). A core value of Reggio is experimentation with a constructivist approach to knowledge, so it seemed fitting that for the creative practice element I should explore a new medium. I chose printmaking in contrast to my familiar area of glasswork and arranged 7 sessions for exploring the medium working in the studio of the self-acclaimed ‘not normal’ printmaker, inspiring artist and mentor, Christine Lock of Marlow.
These sessions became key to my reflections and understanding of the learning and creative process within both the final major project and my practical work, informing my future practice. Not only was I able to experience being in the position of the students, but also, through using the medium to explore the students’ experiences, I achieved new insights. Thus, as Marshall (2007) discusses, my studio practice became part of the research. To me, the creative process is about the navigation of possibilities, the exact path being inspired, arrested or led by questions generated from intention and medium and the uncertain interplay in between. It could go anywhere. With extracts and questions from my sketchbooks, I hope to illuminate how this particular path developed.
Session 1 Blue Series # 1
I arrived, told not to have any preconceptions Mixed some inks (I chose blue of course) Tentative - this is different - no brief - no commission - scary, exciting scary (?), stepping into the unknown - making for making’s sake isn’t this what ‘real’ artists do? What I ask of students? Out of the clumsiness - movement, light and intensity of colour are all satisfying - is this familiarity good?
Session 1 Blue Series # 2
I’d forgotten how vulnerable a feeling it was, being looked over whilst creating… not quite intimidating but nearly… and that is from behind the confidence – the confidence that I have in creating… when on familiar territory… or was this a hindrance – there’s an expectation? Discomfort is important I tell my students – important for learning – now here I am trying to be ‘comfortable in the fog’ – I recite it like a mantra in my head. I added another colour – green – (no surprise) I kept not getting it even and leaving the lines on the plate dark, then light – a very impressive effect if I knew how to harness it.
Session 1 Blue series # 3
I was guided through textures, templates, layers and I heard my intuitive ideas of composition laid bare by a very astute and observant Christine. Revelatory words, verbalising why that doesn’t work, what it ‘needs’ - again I know it is OK to disagree, confidence so important the different ways of seeing and understanding invaluably so - discussion - not working in isolation – a sense of disappointment over the development opportunities lost because I mostly work on my own... There’s a sense of ideas bubbling to the surface? Sometimes working sometimes not?
Session 1 Blue series # 4
How can I make depth? How can I keep colours intense? How can I roller evenly?! Surely that should be easy! How can I manage the chances? What can I learn to manipulate? What do I know about composition? How do I make my choices? Looking at them [the 4 prints from session 1] I’m seeing sections or elements that excite me… but an overall disappointment… the feeling reminds me of what I saw in the students’ faces… a sense of what was the point... of making with no meaning? Was this the students’ struggle? Knowingly or unknowingly? What does this mean for a process over outcome emphasis?
Session 2 Red series #1 Provoked into changing my familiar palette by Christine - makes for uncomfortable working to start, becoming increasingly refreshed with the results – [in later sessions I find I have more confidence using colours that are not ‘mine’ – I find this invaluable when using colours appropriate for representing the students] Familiar with being particular - endlessly playing - swapping design elements around… yet here is a medium which you actually create one way, do the decision making, only to have it revealed in completion as its reflection?! Creation tangles.
Session 2 Red Series #2
Add to this a medium that I have no mastery or understanding of and one that seems to embody chance‌ The reveal of a print - peeled straight from the press - anxious and exciting - Christine hovers by excitedly - I try to abandon thoughts of what I think I’ve done and squint through one eye what is actually there? Printmaking seemingly pours the discomforts of and disparities between the visual reality and the cerebral vision into that one moment. By turns refreshing and infuriating. my understanding of materials is never complete, small or large departures from the expected behaviour nearly always take place (Maclean cited in Fortnum 2005: 15) How can I balance the intention and the unexpected? How can I build on the deviations?
Session 2 Red Series #3
Something is needed to bind it all… Yellow seals the composition Could I isolate the sections [from all the prints] that excite me? Would I lose too much of the quality of the print [embossing/sense of piece] by cutting it up and reassembling it? Déjà-vu! This is what they [the students] did. Am I inspired by or following the same idea as them? Or did I indeed lead them there? Is this my way of thinking? Could I make something where I select specific sections of the plate to be revealed? … an exciting challenge or unmanageable risk?
Session 3 Action Series #1 What I saw in the research project was the magic of making, of doing, uninhibited… sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Mostly it was silent, awkward, oppressive. Sometimes it was light, fresh, invigorating and enthused. Do you need both parts for the whole? The discomfort for the learning? What was the recipe for magic? Express this in the work? The cadences of their creation. Watch videos of students making and planning work, examine artwork, prepare stencils that capture this. Draw shapes from the students’ artwork. Can I use movements and shapes generated by the students effectively in my work? There is a notion that artists are about the specific, the precision of something being chosen or placed ‘just so’ – I am wondering if this truly holds up. Is it really that important? Will it work anyway like data on a graph if it’s handled well? Precisely or [well] drawn and positioned? Plan to experiment again with borders [characteristically, planned, but not realised] ...help describe the explosive making energy?
Session 3 Action Series #2 I am trying to leap forward pressured by my MA deadline. I have so much going on in my personal life, anxious and shattered I have to get on. Normally [with a commercial commission] when I feel like this I would work on something else, something appropriate to my mindset, and revisit the creative parts later, when more aligned with them. Students don’t have this flexibility. Having only [access to the printing press during] these sessions to create the work I have to plough on, aware of the effects the external factors may have‌ I arrive with stencils to describe the dynamic movement: the essence of the [research] project. Christine still presses me to explore technique and palette.
Session 3 Action Series #3 The clash [and maybe my state of mind and body?] produces something much quieter and slower. It shows me the serenity of gesture hidden behind the frenetic making.
Session 4 Reflective Journeys #1 My MA tutor urges me to plan the rest of the sessions with my deadline in mind - thoughts step up a notch seek Christine’s support to suspend overt technique exploration. The last session has taught me there’s more beneath the surface - how can I go deeper - looking at the diagrams from my [research project] data collection - I’m left cold! Fascinating and complexly detailed, leaving me with no insight - can I create something from the observations that generated these that is more meaningful? Transforming the observations into my own visual representations - qualitative and participant/observer generated, just like the graphs? Here though they are only my perceptions and not ‘triangulated’ with the staff’s… yet also drawing on a wider source of information. Does this make it more or less valid? I choose to use this session to explore how I might describe each individual’s journey throughout the project, my visual map, a visual narrative. Use a circle per session? In what ways could I alter a circle to reflect each student’s engagement/experience of a session? Am I able yet to manipulate the medium enough to do this? What is the effect of masks vs. overlays for doing this? Can I use them to reveal and exploit specific and relevant qualities – the sections that I like on the plate below?
Session 4 Reflective Journeys #2 Use texture to maintain the light? - Alter borders to express the dynamism? - Can I use this to help map out my understanding… pinpoint when the magic happened, the action points, what sparked or spurred them? - Can I do that without knowing how it’s going to react and create relevant meaning? - Can I ‘scribble’ with a roller? Maybe I should draw the journey and use these as templates? - Or cut them out? How complex can I make the piece? - Where do I stop? - How do or can aesthetics and meaning work together rather than conflictingly? - Do I use aesthetics? - Are the specifics of meaning robust enough to produce a piece without undue attention to aesthetics? Just as a statistical graph’s form is beautiful from its specific nature, a nature generated from input rather than decision. - Can I generate more graded colour blends directly on the plate? - How can I blend the colour smoothly on the plate? Good session – lots of potential for visual narrative approach - so much information - look at one student’s ‘journey’ at a time… Immerse myself in all the observations and data for first student [C, ready for next session] – for developing the visual narrative. Listen to closing interview, read student’s sketchbook, compare entries to our [staff’s and my] observations and scales of involvement data, compile photo montage of student’s work across the sessions to gain sense of work and involvement [sketched out thoughts across the sessions – using words, diagrams, illustrations… to build a ‘holistic’ profile – and picture in my head/ sketchbook – plan and make any relevant stencils…]
Session 5 Visual Narrative Student ‘C’ In visualising something that brings all the information together – the apparently disparate elements that describe C’s journey… I’ve reached a deeper understanding of [my perception of] this student’s engagements with the project… something started to click… C is now an individual who lived through the project with a unique take on it and a unique part in it. In many ways I value C’s journey much more - see what was brought to the project more clearly and what shaped the project. I tend to see the creativity and perhaps had undervalued the impact of dynamics, the group dynamics on the individual – it’s clear really when Christine, one individual, affected and influenced me so much… How would doing this during the project have influenced my planning and engagement? The print realised was far simpler than I had envisaged - when making it became clear - the medium stopped my plans – calling for simple – on the spot edits and omissions deviating me from my plan - this [quick and responsive] editing perhaps clarifying the key threads? I felt C’s journey was quietly (internally) eloquent and keen - fluctuating across the sessions [chose to express this with colour and tone] and profoundly influenced and about people. These inspired my placing of the circles, the overlapping and changing sizes representing the interrelations across the sessions. Orange ‘sparks’ denote provocations that were notable catalysts for this student, a tool, an image, a collaboration.
Session 5 Visual Narrative Student ’B’ I hadn’t expected to have time to do B’s narrative today [in this session] and was not prepared in the same meticulous way that I had been for C’s. I had run out of circles for sessions - [thinking on my feet] made me create something that was more of an ‘overview’ rather than dealing chronologically, session to session. Perhaps this served as a more brutal ‘editing’? I revisited this piece a few times, trying to create an improved version [or rather one closer to my original chronological intention and without the disturbing technical flaws!] and it quickly became clear that this was the most successful at expressing the weight this student seemed to carry through the project – other people and other things playing with rhythm interest and confidence… glimpsed as fragments… elements sometimes coming together, but mostly not quite reaching. At the time I felt this was a loss and was trying to link things – but perhaps the loss was that I didn’t see what was actually going on and help build on that instead – how often do we fire on misaligned agendas? This piece revealed to me that B was in fact so beautifully, enviably, comfortable with doing for the sake of doing, exploring, experimenting, perpetually moving on and on, layering skills and knowledge. This artwork made me really value those glimpses, appreciate their contribution fully, making me all too aware that during the sessions, behaviour can be such a distracting focus... Interestingly I think it also captures the sense that it is this student’s fire that made B’s work sing. So in fact the unexpected [unprepared] realisation of this piece led me to find something new. Artist Kaier describes the weight of serendipity to creating: I don’t like to be too prescriptive as the work needs a certain openness... In the making there is something being found… In this sense the introduction of a new material or a found object [here a circumstance] that jars the harmony or destabilises the rapport is important (Kaier cited in Fortnum 2005: 15).
Session 6 Visual Narrative Student ‘A’ #1 Amazingly imaginative, perceptive of human interaction and eloquent – ideas seemed to staccato and stop – I had great visions developing from each of A’s beginnings… but there was no flow from session to session, no building of these ideas. Reflecting like this I now wonder was I projecting on to A the ideas of adult art – a fixed idea of the process things should follow? Was A naturally researching and exploring? Like B – learning and layering. Or were these opportunities missed? Really excited by the vision of this one from the preparation I was so disappointed with the result (the next print is a revisit to this, trying to come closer to the original vision) Artist Maclean describes her sensation on viewing her own finished work: I usually experience a shock on seeing the final image … The misalignments between what I had expected and what is physically present remains and only adjusts itself after a passage of time (Maclean cited in Fortnum 2005: 14). Christine has an oracle-like precision in pre-empting those pieces that will become re-aligned in my mind. And as this became realigned I found the essence of my vision there - A had an ethereal dislocated imagination. At the outset group interaction was wide - confident - overarching –as the sessions developed A became marginalised - collaboration shrank – so it seemed did the ideas, almost squashed and dislocated by the surrounding exploding narratives. The imagery was derived from photos of the student’s work and became a metaphor for beautiful ideas without gravity or direction.
Session 6 Visual Narrative Student ‘A’ #2 A revisit – there was a little time and I wasn’t satisfied with the previous result – [the quick thinking required to produce another piece at the end of the session] led to an expression that more accurately described my feelings during the [research] project towards A’s journey. I’m getting into my stride now – excited by it… I had been feeling a little stuck/confused/lost (without direction), but I needed that time to experiment – without that I wouldn’t have been able to produce what I did – importance of springboard – and perhaps also highlighting my apparent need for direction – is this perceived or learnt - important, necessary or limiting?
Session 7 Visual Narrative Student ‘D’ Purposely thinking more loosely now, as an overview – I instigate planning in the same [immersed in data] way, but focus on building an overall understanding and vision - a set of descriptive words that the visual image came from. D clearly flourished – seemingly natural in this approach – dispositions in harmony – behaviour quiet, considered, calm and thoughtful – apparently at odds with the student’s typical behaviour – aperture [card viewfinder or camera] was the tool of focus and a summarising metaphor – spurring the growing of ideas – a visible thread - alert – leaping out – unguided – momentum – it was not linear — D’s leadership seemed unlikely — quiet and unassuming - but grew organically – chose to use organic shapes instead of circles to reflect flexibility and openness.
Session 7 Visual Narrative Student ‘E’ Tussling trying to figure this one out – I keep trying to make inroads into this one – and leave it in favour of another student. Something I can’t pinpoint – hidden behind the confidence – what is going on? Now I only have this one left… I have the elements but I just can’t ‘see’ it - I am starting to think there is something that can only be realised at the moment, responding to the visual and the emotive in the then, working with the medium. If I struggle unravelling the story did I struggle to provide appropriate support? E is in the literal — in the doing spectrum – energy – noise – visual and auditory – fast-paced— staccato-like – gregarious – brings the previous to it – known skills and confidence – favours the familiar – makes connections to ‘real art’ – seeks verification — short lived and on, next! Colours strong and unforgiving, a palette really at odds with my sensibilities I have to have some faith at this point. I’ll take the stencils, the ideas, spread out the colours and go… I’ll try to work with the noise E did. Working I feel content. I am enjoying the medium now, the movements, the marks, the colours. I find the finished work hard to look at and its meaning still seems elusive – I start to wonder if this is in fact E’s story…
References 5x5x5=creativity, (2011), About us. Available at: http://www.5x5x5creativity.org.uk/?id=113 (Accessed: 17 April 2011) Ebdon, S-J., (2011), Can the open-ended creative enquiry approach of Reggio Emilia be applied effectively in a secondary education setting by a freelance artist-educator? MA in Education. Oxford Brookes University. [pending award] Ebdon, S-J. and Spearman, C., (2009), King’s Meadow School: Our Journey to the Land of Storytelling. 5x5x5=creativity. Available at: http:// www.5x5x5creativity.org.uk/cms/user_files/files/ Kingsmeadow-final3.pdf (Accessed: 27 April 2011) Fortnum, R., (2005), What is visual intelligence and how do artists use it? The Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University. Available at: http://www.visualintelligences.com/ visual-intelligence-how-artists-use-it.html (Accessed: 4 February 2010) Marshall, J., (2007), Image as Insight: Visual Images in Practice-Based Research. Research Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research, 49 (1), 23-41. Available at: http:// plone.rockyview.ab.ca/bchurch/Members/ robinsons/research/Image%20as%20Insight% 20into%20Inquiry.pdf (Accessed: 8 February 2011) Smith, M., (ed), (2010), Oxfordshire Creativity Project: in partnership with 5x5x5= creativity and Early Education. Oxfordshire County Council.
Sarah-Jayne Ebdon (nĂŠe Worthington) Visual artist building and inspiring creative artworks and opportunities in the community.
S-J’s inspiration comes from the ways our environment influences us individually and collectively. Her projects often explore anthropological themes and engender pride of place. She is driven by a curiosity and excitement over the ways creativity and genuine collaboration can benefit individuals and groups. For over 10 years she has worked as a full-time freelance artist on projects ranging from creating entire parades of giant carnival puppets to a 50m long glass sculpture for a public art commission, from research into child led creativity to corporate team building events. She has lectured on working collaboratively, run many teacher and artist training events and worked in over 100 educational settings including universities, prisons and the health service.