The Story

My UAL Foundation Art group were doing a project titled "Grids, Layers and Reflections" and for my teaching practice, I decided to do a little sketchbook to demonstrate what I would do. I discarded grids (dislike geometry) and went with layers (collage) and reflections (memories). Collage makes your sketchbook look like this:



For my degree work I used my memories and emotions to reflect on my relationships with people around me and my relationship with myself, so I sort of carried it on. My best friends' dad died in June, and it broke us. How could I document anything else? I'm going to ask them to read it this week, it's pretty personal, and maybe then I'll show you. The sketchbook is a beautiful, tactile object and I wish people could hold it and touch it and not just read it on a screen. It has a cloth cover and there's the shiny textures of the photos, the slightly sticky surface of gloss paint, rough emulsion on sugar paper... It also doesn't close, as the photograph shows. Many layers.

Source materials used thus far: Photographs (burned and scratched), poured paint surfaces rescued from my classroom, found words (magazines, catalogues, a book on Queen Victoria), photocopies. I'm sure other things will be added.

 It was cathartic, but I feel art needs to be seen. As yet, I don't know if it will be but I hope when it is, people will be able to relate to it.