PE Task 2

My first year at university has been a whirlwind to say the least. I have completed three projects, Textiles Design for Fashion, Print and Unit X. My favorite project has been Textiles Design for Fashion. I received my highest grade so far in TD4F and I feel that this grade was a true reflection of my enjoyment of the project. I fully indulged myself in this project and spent a lot of hours perfecting my work for this. One of the things that I enjoyed most about the project was learning new skills everyday, such as how to create a technical drawing of a garment and how to use Adobe Illustrator. These new skills are something that I can take with me into my career after university. Something that I would like to develop further are my fashion illustrations, they are something that I struggled with in this project but still thoroughly enjoyed doing. One thing that I would have liked to do in this project is to have made the garments that we had designed, as this is something I have always enjoyed doing seeing a design from beginning to end.

Design Board. TD4F.

However, I did enjoy Print during this first year, I enjoyed being in the print room everyday, creating something myself and seeing the developments first hand. I wish we could have used the digital fabric printer more as I like to use a lot of Photoshop throughout my work, as I am quite an impatient person, the printing process is quite slow. Although this being said I would like to incorporate print within TD4F, both these pathways go hand in hand. Print has definitely taught me a lot of techniques and skills that I can carry through with me next year into a more fashion based textile world. Learning how to create a motif and developing that through composition is something I will not forget. If I was to return to print, my focus would be much more digitally focussed.

Digita Design. Print.

I have not really enjoyed Unit X as much as I would have liked to. It has been quite unorganized and this has set me back a little with time management. However I did enjoy working in a group and learning new things about delegation and compromise. This being said, I loved the final outcome, but I have missed Textiles, as this project has not included much drawing or even design.

Final Exhibition. Unit X.

After completing this year I really have set in stone which career path I would like to take. I see myself in the fashion world, none of my work ever relates to interiors and fashion has always been something I have been interested in. Fashion is something, which I feel I could truly succeed in. Although I know I want to be involved in fashion I am yet to decide what it is exactly that I would like to do. This year has flown over and I am excited to get stuck into second year where I can truly develop myself as a Textile Practitioner.

Invigilating the Exhibition

So me and Holly had our shift at the exhibition today, we didn't really know what to expect. We had a lot of visitors from MMU and some of my course friends came along to see it as well. Everyone was really impressed and thought the work was really good. This made me and Holly really happy to have a positive response to the work. When someone came in we explained our work and answered their questions. Kate from textiles really loved our work which I was very happy about. We also had some film tutors in who recorded some snippets of our questions answers.

Evaluation of Unit X

Well this Unit has been strange! I have really enjoyed it, and also really hated it at times. In the beginning we got off to a great start, our ideas were interesting and inspiring and everyone put in a lot of effort to show up to meetings and tutorials in Hilton House. I feel that my research was thorough and  has played a huge part in my final pieces. I really wanted to exhaust my research in this unit and explore every avenue possible, as we had a lot of time for this unit I thought that it was important to use this time to my advantage. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to incorporate stitch within this project as throughout the year I have not looked into embroidery and it is something that I really enjoy doing. This was also a way for me to stick to my textiles roots within an interdisciplinary unit.

The group that I was put in couldn't have been better! Although sometimes we couldn't all make it to meetings or tutorials we still communicated with one another. Our Facebook group was a key part to the project and a way for us to share thoughts, work and updates on the project. Within the last few weeks I must say that we could not have survived without this group! It is disappointing when some people have not done the work we promised to do or have not completed it to the time scale we set ourselves, but I am guilty of this myself on some occasions. It is hard to work as a team but it also gives you motivation to not let people down, which I quite enjoyed, However as I am quite a shy person I found it hard to make my opinions heard, as a few people over powered the group and sometimes forced their ideas onto us. This is something I will learn from and over come in future projects. I think that our over all collaboration has been excellent, and this is portrayed within our final piece. We all worked really hard to clear the exhibition space and to put everything up. We shared the work load and it felt good to get things done quickly and efficiently. When I have visited some other groups exhibitions it is clear to see that our group really clung to the collaboration theme, which I am proud of.

One thing I would change from this unit is the communication between staff and students. There barely was any. I totally understand that we are in uni now, we are all adults and this project is about just getting on with it, but when it came to important situations such as finding our space and missing tutorials this became very frustrating. However, this being said, I am glad it has been like this as it has taught me a lot of lessons for the future.

However, I have over all really enjoyed this unit. I have enjoyed meeting and working with new and different people with different ideas. Finding our own space and organising everything our selves has been a lesson and I will take this with me into the future, now knowing how to act professional in meetings with owners of exhibition space, and how to just get on with it! This has been something I can take with me in later life, and working life. One thing I have missed throughout this unit is TEXTILES!!!

 Thanks to all the girls for making this unit so easy and fun :).

Advertising

After putting up the exhibition we went around the Northern Quarter and put up some posters advertising the exhibition. We also made a Facebook event and invited everyone from our courses and anyone we thought would be interested. Quite a lot of people responded so this was a really good idea. Lizzie volunteered to design the poster which was really good of her, I think it is quite a good poster and has all the information needed. We also invited all of the Manchester School of Art tutors to the exhibition through email.

We did it!!

Wow! So today we actually finished putting up the exhibition! It feels soooo good to say that. We stuck the boards up with sticky foam pieces and hung up our acetate chains using clear fishing wire. We also wanted to change the lighting in the room as we felt that the lighting was too harsh on the eye and was not creating a very good atmosphere in the space. The kind store owner provided us with with some quirky spot lights and this added a much needed improvement! The only thing we could not get rid of was the couch.. this could not be helped but I suppose it will come in useful when we have to invidulate tomorrow!

I am really impressed with the outcome of the work. Eleanor was right, 4 A4 boards was not ambitious enough, so I am glad that she was quite hard on us as we would not have had such a good exhibition. We made sure that our best work was at eye level and that our least favourite was more towards the bottom of the wall, we also had another 3 boards on a separate wall in which we kept this theme. As a last minute thought we decided to add the name of our group and a little description about the work on the first wall you see as you come down the stairs. This will be printed off ready for the start of the exhibition tomorrow.

Getting to the Space

After putting all of our boards together we decided to bite the bullet and go down to the space and put everything up. We were sick of being told we are 'unprofessional' and 'unorganised' so wanted to prove the tutors wrong! So ahead of schedule we went along to Incognito, this was the first time I have been a long to the space, it was a little room in the basement of the artsy shop. This room was twinned with a vault which another group where using. The room that we were given looked like it was being used as a staff room/ storage space, however the shop owners promised to clear the space for us.. they did not!

This was the space before hand.. We spent the majority of the day preparing the room, sweeping the floors and finding new homes for all of the boxes that were there. We thought we would have some trouble with the walls being at so many different angles but we soon sorted this. We also thought we could use the pipes to our advantage and hang some more acetate pieces from them to add to the distortion concepts we have been working on. We really worked well as a team today and got on with it. No one didnt chip in to help and it was refreshing to have everyone there at the same time.

Putting it all Together

The group and I met bright and early on monday morning to put all of our work together. I still needed to print some of my work off so put us behind on time a little but a few other members of the group had to do this also so it wasn't as bad. The only thing that annoyed me on this day is the lack of computers in the NAD building, they were ALL taken even at 9am, when I finally found a computer to use some of the printers weren't working, so this set me back in time again. When I then went to the A4 & more store it was shut!! This was really annoying as I am usually quite organised, so I got a little stressed. However once I got everything printed in acetate it was all systems go. I felt bad for letting the group down but we just got on with it and made up for lost time. We all bought 2 A1 foam boards each. This was to mount our work with.

We started by ordering our images, we wanted to have an even spread of colour and texture. To do this we started laying out the images and seeing which images worked better together. We also wanted an even amount of each others pieces on each board. This took the most amount of time as we wanted it to be perfect. We then set up a production line type system. Some of use spray mounted the acetate pieces and others used double sided sticky tape to attach the paper based pieces to the boards. This got done very quickly and we worked well together. We were all really impressed with the outcome as when we laid all the pices out onto the table it looked really impressive!

Stitched Images

Here are a few of my stitched images, although the photograph does not do them justice I think that these are my best pieces. I just wish that I had had more time to stitch into more of my photographs as this was my original idea to create a more 3D effect with my work. Also it is a much more eye catching way to incorporate colour.

I tried to incorporate some of the other girls photographs in order to collaborate with them. I think this was a really good idea as some of the images that the girls shared are really interesting and have been fun to work with.

Final Pieces

These are some of the digital pieces I created using photoshop. I am quite pleased with the outcomes as I feel that I have managed to combine quite a fashion/ textiles look with the images. Some more than others. I kept the images black and white as I wanted to add embellishments using Lizzie's colour scheme which included pinks, yellow, blues and greens. I would not usually work with these colours but as I was only using them as an accent to my work I found it more playful, and the whole idea of this project is to step out of your comfort zone! I plan to print these on acetate as I feel the light shining through the acetate will allow the images to stand out more. Also when it comes to exhibiting the work, the audience will have a greater sense of distortion when they can see their reflections on/ through the shiny, transparent material.

Tutorial with Eleanor

So... the tutorial with Eleanor was interesting...

This message came to a complete shock to our group and caused a lot of panic. Personally as I was already home and could not do anything about this it was really annoying and distressing as I obviously do not want to let anyone down and want to get a good grade for this unit. So I caught an earlier train home and pulled an all nighter to get all of my work complete.

In a way I am glad Eleanor said all of those things as it gave us the kick that we needed. The amount of work we produced was amazing and when laid out all together was pretty impressive!

Meeting with Adriano

On friday we had a clash of two meetings. One was a meeting with Adriano at Fred Aldous at 3pm, and the other with Eleanor for a tutorial at 3pm. We decided it was best to split the group so that we did not miss anything and we could later let each other know what was happening via our Facebook group. Unfortunately I couldn't make either of these meetings as I had an important family arrangement that I could not miss. Thankfully, however the girls are really good with communication so I was kept in the loop.

Lizzie and Gabriella went to meet with Adriano, it was a very brief meeting as Fred Aldous was not available (as we have said plenty of times!). However Adriano introduced us to a man named Joe, who took us to a shop over the road called Incognito which has a basement available for us to exhibit our work. This was great news and a huge weight lifted off all of our shoulders.

Tutorial with Susan

Topic for Discussion: Presentation & promoting Unit x Festival

So today we met with Susan again. We originally wanted to go over our ideas and how Susan thought we could progress with our exhibition over the weekend. Also we wanted to discuss the final presentation of our work. Unfortunately this was over shadowed by some major concerns about communication within this unit. We have been quite stressed and confused by the emails we have received from some of the tutors.

So firstly, we did go to the meeting at Fred Aldous but the manager had already told us that we could not have the window space, as I explained in my last post. We didn't even know who Adriano was until we received these emails. We told Susan how we felt about the lac of organisation and communication between staff and students. She assured us that our work was heading in a great direction and that we should carry on with what we have been doing. We then discussed that we needed more collaboration within the work that we had produced, we decided to share more of our own images through Facebook, allowing us to se one-anothers images. This put a positive note to the end of a stressful tutorial.

Group Meeting

Yesterday the group and I met to further discuss our final piece and our exhibition space. As we had all came to the decision that we would like to use Fred Aldous to display our work, but no one had actually went and asked for the space, I made a phone call there and then to the shop. The shop owner told me that a lot of groups had already enquired about the space. I tried to work around this problem by asking if we could use the space for only an hour, just long enough to take some images and see everything all together in one space. He was happy with this idea and asked us to go down to the store and talk about it some more with him. Here is an image I have taken from the Facebook group we have, explaining what was said in the meeting with Fred Aldous.

 

It's not the news that we wanted but things like this happen We will just have to think of somewhere else, or exhibit it in the new art cafe, which has a large blnk wall. I did suggest tis yesterday but it fell on deaf ears. We have a tutorial tomorrow so we will have another chance to discuss this matter further and act much more quickly on the matter.

 

We also brought pieces of our work along to show one another and to see if our work still geled well together. This was good for us as we now know we need to incorporate more colour into the project and decided to go with the colours that Lizzie has been using so far.

 



Space for the Face

One of the members from our group, Anne, has been out into the city centre today to research into a space for our exhibition. As we had all discussed yesterday, we are all pretty set on getting a window space. We decided on three different spaces to look at but Anne only looked at two. The spaces are very different from one another and the group at the moment are quite split.

The above image is a photograph that Anne sent to us via our Facebook group of 'Fyg Deli' which is based in the Northern Quarter. I really like the size of the window as it means that our final piece can be a realistic size, and the location is perfect, very close to Afflecks Palace and not too far from the beaten track. Although the size of our piece may block the light going into the deli and the owners may have a problem with this.

This is the window space from 'Forever Unique' which is based on Cheetham Hill, personally I am not a fan of this space as it is far too bit, even if we were given one window we will need to create two pieces due to one solo window being so large. However, the rest of the group do like this space so I will let majority rule. So to help everyone decide and get a quick definite decision I made a voting pole for the group to vote which place they felt they wanted the work to go. We all decided on Fred Aldous and I will make a phone call to them first thing tomorrow morning.

Andrew Brooks, Photographer

Today we had a lecture with Andrew Brooks, who is a well established photographer who is originally from Manchester. He takes a lot of his photographs in and around Manchester, which immediately related to Unit X. Personally I was hoping for more of a fashion based photographer as that relates more to what my group are doing, however I still took the time to appreciate his work. I particularly enjoyed his 'Hidden Manchester' images in which he had teamed up with producer and curator Andy Brydon. This collaboration works well as Brydon does the research and writing and Brooks does the recording and photography. This is would have been quite similar to our project if our film students had turned up.

What interested me most about his work is that he said it can take him unto a month to create one shot from around 20/30 shots. He puts all of these images together on photoshop, these images can come from anywhere but he always has his final shot in mind. Andrew also adds himself into each one of his shots where possible. Although I feel his work has not related very well to what I am doing I still appreciated his work and learnt a lot about photography.