E-interview for Miss Laura (Undergraduate research)

Interview for Miss Laura.

How did you arrive/ decide ceramics?
I studied art beginning with A'level in my early 30's as a single parent of three after having been a dancer, actress and antique trader in fine costume and jewellery. I then went on to Foundation pre-Degree, HND in Ceramics, BA (hons) 1st class, PGCE, all the while building my practice and teaching/course managing.

Where did you train?
Falmouth College of Arts

What decided you to become self-employed?
I have always been self-employed since working as a dancer from the age of 16, I come from a costermonger background so i find it suits my temperament and lifestyle best.

How did you first get your work seen?
Bernie of Enjoy clothing took the Conran rejects, Bob Devereaux of Salthouse,
Roger Cadwallader of Frame warehouse also supported undergraduate practice.
Sir Terence commissioned the breakfast range for Michelin House in 1995, Ceramic review published an undergraduate research project, V & A Museum had the rubber sheathed teapots, galleries approached me whilst I was still training and has evolved from thereonin.

Do you think your work appeals to a particular audience?
Probably, I just compulsively make, I do not follow fashion but am aware of trends before they happen, so am well able to go with the flow without ever selling out or obeying any structure outside of myself.

How do you advertise your work?
Erratically and intuitively, I am not a conventional business strategist, I sometimes stage my own defeats but usually concentrate on the triumphs, of which there have been many of both… the simplest way of putting it is that I see life as performance, myself as a diametrically opposed, perversely banal and bitter, sometimes brilliant narrator of my own soap opera, my ceramic work just one tiny aspect of the carefully disjointed and put back together whole.
I self publicise over the net, blog, twitter, own main site, press releases and feature articles, academic research, curate own shows, adaptable and uncompromising.

How did you first approach galleries?
I didn't, apart from sending Sir Terence Conran a mug through the post, galleries have always contacted me.

As a single parent how did you juggle life and a career? What advice would you give?
I would not give advise as I feel it is a case of finding a way through that suits the individuals involved.
However, I would not advise getting so immersed in ones practice as to miss the important aspects of living life; but the nature of my own practice is compulsive and non negotiable - a contradiction in terms!

How much time do you spend creating your ceramics?
Less time nowadays, I paint on canvas, put together installation’s, write.
I still teach one day per week, but much has happened since those early days of hope and glory, I am no longer willing to spent every day and night in the studio in order to meet other peoples deadlines.

Have you always worked in ceramics?
Answered in question 1.

Do you work in other mediums?
Answered above, also I write a lot with a view to publishing my memoir
'The Chronicles of a Disquietened Life'.

How much time do you spend in administration?
Loads at the moment, although it would be debatable whether what I do iadministration? I am an insomniac so spent a lot of time on computer, my brain whizzing round and round, twittering, picassa’ing, flickr’ing – a disproportionate number of hours is spent on these ‘tasks’. I have an accountant and am fairly organised in that I let him do all the paper work.

Where do you get your inspiration?
A life misled, the stupefied nonsense that is the orthodox system that I am a part of but will never stop fighting against i.e. Art education, Mental ill health provision with regard to care in the community,

Are there any other artists that inspire you?
Charlie Watts - my fiance

Work in progress

Work in progress, trying to find my way back from a broken and intrinsically flawed wasteland of an exterior place, to do with a forever altered sense of reality based upon the worst pain that I have ever felt.

Linda Styles Technical Statement

My work has evolved over the course of my ceramic practice which started in 1990,but has always maintained certain 'trademark' features. It has continuued to be pushed to the very limits of endurance/existance,I obscure and reveal the surface and form in order to achieve a tension of opposites. My use of multi firing and multi layering began at the inception of my career, my repetoire being a combination of reactive/inactive porcelain slips, fritted slips, my own glaze formula’s and commercial low fire glazes and lustre's. The clay is cut semi-randomly freehand from soft slabs that are placed on a variety of hump moulds to which I add angled sheets of clay, which are then stressed, torn, stamped, slit and re-assembled. My marks are not meant to be literal interpretation, and are perhaps best described as organic abstract in notion and intent.My surfaces are now more to do with colour, line and space, although still always underpinned by emotions ranging from angst and despair to joyous optimism, depending on my mood. Reference to figuration and narrative are always present. Ceramic process, has throughout history/prehistory, carried the potential for expressive visual surface, using heat works and chemical formula’s to achieve the brilliance and richness of vitrified,fused glass surface that is uniquely associated with this special art/craft medium. I like to think that I am providing my marketplace with nifty little post-modern interpretations of domestic ornament for the home. The preparation of form and surface is surprisingly complex considering that simplicity is the goal. Of late I have become immersed in the exploration of the sometimes alarming dichotomy between surface and form. Always prone to excess, I manipulate to the point of collapse and then rebuild adding more and more surface detail with each firing, a complex and forever challenging process that I am immersed in. I use a white porcelain/dense, saturating black and coloured ground slip which is poured on when the form is leather hard, to achieve a luminous/saturated canvas on which to place my chosen palette of colour. Large brushes loaded with corresponding; sometimes clashing coloured slips are then dragged across the base coat in random stripes and circles. I then flick, splash and draw through these layers, quick line drawings that expose and respond to what lies beneath and goes before. The ‘marks’ are not meant to be a literal interpretation, and are perhaps best described as organic abstract in notion and intent.My surfaces are now more to do with colour, line and space as opposed to angst and despair, although reference to figuration and narrative are always present. I rub additional oxides and pigments into the surface before bisque firing to 1000’c after which they are usually glazed on the interior surface as I want to encourage usage. I then fire to 1120’c.The exterior surface is purposely contrasted between matte and gloss. Stone like and tactile in nature, onto which I place, in selected areas, bright, often gaudy, synthetic looking colour and fire again to 1000’ c, the final firing being taken to 747’c, for the precious metals and lustre's that are used to highlight ‘handles’ and to detail small areas, hopefully suggesting hideous preciousness and gorgeousness.

Recent pots

Food for thought

I researched the meanings of Aesthetics a few years ago now because it is a word that was and is bandied about by lecturers, myself included, without fully knowing what the word means, UCF and CC art students were given this hand out and i continue to use it to this day.

Aesthetic Attitude
The aesthetic attitude is supposedly a particular way of experiencing objects. It is said to be an attitude independent of any motivations to do with utility, economic value, moral judgment or personal emotion and is to do with experiencing the object ‘for its own sake’. The object may or may not possess atmospheric as well as regional affective visual and tactile qualities to do with the human experience. The extreme would be marked by a state of pure detachment by the observer inclusive of an absence of all desires directed toward the object - an elevated state which actually goes beyond our ordinary understanding of reality, a state of heightened rerceptiveness in which our perception of the object is disengaged from emotion, the term ‘disinterested’ often being applied to such an attitude. This attitude can be directed as much to nature as works of art and for some thinkers it is seen as important
that we adopt an aesthetic attitude toward any object without restriction.
In the case of art the aesthetic attitude can support the idea that certain kinds of response are privileged, others discountable on the grounds of failing to take the correct attitude toward the object concerned. This assumes that the point of art is wholly aesthetic therefore the notion of an aesthetic attitude deserves to be treated with some scepticism as it has in recent philosophy.

Aesthetic Distance
In this version of aesthetic attitude theory, aesthetic response is said to occur when people distance themselves from an object they perceive, leaving themselves free to contemplate.
‘Distancing’ is also thought to aid understanding of artistic representation. Someone whose own emotions became engaged, eg, pity, contempt,would be ‘under distanced’.

Aestheticism
A term sometimes used about the value of art. It is a idea that works of art can only be valued for their aesthetic merits and does not require anything outside of itself. An alternative to this would be ‘instrumentalist, the view that art is valuable, if at all, because it is a means to some end, such as moral improvement, knowledge, or a more cohesive society. For aestheticism, art belongs wholly in the realms of the aesthetic and that realm has a purely autonomous value, (carrying its guiding principles within itself).

Aesthetic Judgment
For most philosophers, not all aesthetic judgments are about art, and not all judgments about art are aesthetic judgments. For Kant aesthetic judgments are nothing to do with subjective preferences such as like and dislike which tend to be based on experiences such as ‘pleasure’ and ‘association’ and ‘sentiment’.

History of Aesthetics
Beginnings in Greek philosophy, but aesthetics or the philosophy of art dates almost certainly from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment. He was the first to give aesthetics a logically and philosophically distinctive role within the entire philosophical system. Kant topics - taste, the analysis of the beautiful and the sublime, genius and creative freedom and the moral function of the aesthetic are generally though to be the basis for the turning point in the whole of 19th and 20th century philosophy,(transcendental or critical idealism. He treats aesthetic judgment as universal. These theories seem to have little bearing on the recent history of criticism in the arts - which is no longer centred on beauty, pleasure and disinterested feelings.If anything Kant’s account of the ‘sublime’ - experience of objects that exceed our perception and imagination, sometimes daunting and dreadful, usually exhilarating to contemplate, eg,storms at sea, sky at night, seems more relevant today because it deals with the meaning of our own lives and ultimately how we interpret life in art. This view has similarities to 6th century romanticism. The philosophical discussion of beauty has involved ancient and pre-modern literature - Plato, Aristotle among the ancients, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas among the medievals, and influences from the ancient period in the High Renaissance and the early modern period.
Contemporary European thinkers include: Jean-Paul Sorter, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marx, Tolstoy and Freud. These thinkers focus on puzzles regarding -

1. The conceptual relationship between art and craft.
2. Cognitive sources relatively free
of conceptual structure.
3. Considerations of freedom, creativity, authenticity, self-expression and the like somehow facilitated by the production of art.
4. The analysis of artistic expression.
5. The theoretical relationship between art and science and between the cognizing powers of practical and theoretical intelligence.

Aesthetics is now largely concerned with the theory and criticism of art. The work of this (emerging) period has tended to centre on the analysis of the more difficult features of art works i.e expressive, representational, rhetorical, stylistic, intentional and semiotic (general theory of signs) properties. It is also necessary to examine the nature of language,, culture and history as an aid to the understanding of aesthetics.

New focuses include -

1. The nature of collective cultural life.
2. The historicized nature of human existence and the artifacts of the human world.
3. Serious conceptual difficulties in forming an objectivist account of description and interpretation among the human studies.
4. The historicizing of genre studies.

In this late eclectic period some would state that the capacity for interpretation is preformed, prejudiced, interested, partial, horizontal, so making it difficult if not impossible to reach any neutral or
objective account of what is being interpreted and that the whole of human inquiry, including the physical sciences, is in some way infected by the same constraints although the human condition continues to dominate Western thinking.

Problems of Aesthetics
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the arts and with other situations that deal with aesthetic experience and aesthetic value. Contemporary aesthetics is a rich and challenging part of philosophy, marked by a high level of disagreement even about what its basic problems are. Faced with a field of diverse subject matter, aesthetics often looks to stable reference points in its own history.
Philosophy of the aesthetic. Many different kinds of things are regarded as having aesthetic value - music, poetry, paintings, cinema, bird-song, countryside, clothes, cars, presentation of food, all these things and more capable of adding an extra dimension to our lives. Are we talking about ‘beauty’? Beauty, truth and the good being the traditional staples of philosophy. With the arts in particular, it is debatable whether beauty is the quality that gives them value, although still worth noting that some philosophers regard beauty as the best name for aesthetic value. The big obvious question about aesthetic value is whether it is actually really ‘in’ the objects it is attributed to. This question goes beyond like and dislike, perhaps to do with our common nature as human subjects and founded on a pleasurable response to the form of the object. This means that aesthetic value cannot be listed in learnable principles because to find aesthetic value we must in keynotes words “get a look at the object with our own eyes”, therefore judgments are founded on the slender basis of ones own feelings of pleasure, but can justifiably claim universal agreement if the subjective response in question is one which any properly equipped viewer would have. Is the aesthetic in fact not residing in the object itself but in our entering a particularly liberating and receptive state of mind. Recent critics have doubted whether any such state of mind exists, or whether, if it does, it is anything more important than simply concentrating fully on what one is looking at or listening to. Aesthetic responses to art usually depend to some extent upon knowledge of the style and genre which a piece is in, the identity and intentions of the artist, the historical period and the cultural associations, although this could merely be classed as understanding a work of art. The uninformed observer is entitled to his or her responses but there must also be room in principle for right and wrong aesthetic judgments.
Art definitely has other values, for example therapeutic value, it may give us moral insight or help us to understand points of view radically different from our own, we might admire a work for it’s moral integrity or despise it for its depravity or political untruthfulness. Art has a great variety of values, art being music, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture,dance, film and of course,ceramics. All are intentially produced artifacts although all are not physical objects such as a symphony. All are expressions of emotion, all are significant form but we still haven't clarified why art is important. To find out it is necessary to pose specific questions such as: How does music express emotion? What makes a painting a picture of something? What happens when we imagine characters in novels? In addressing these questions the philosopher of art will often call on conceptions of identity, meaning, intention and other mental states such as belief, emotion and imagination. So, so complex!

Q. Buildings that we live in, war atrocities which we see on film, the naked human body - should we want to adopt a purely aesthetic attitude to these things?

Q. Are we always capable or willing to abandon our moral or emotional attitudes?

Q. Could we assume that this attitude is easier to attain if the individual is naturally logical or emotional distant as opposed to passionate and volatile in their disposition?

Q. Is art an imitation of an imitation of reality?

Q. Is it necessary to acquire knowledge to be capable of making appropriate aesthetic judgment or to possess aesthetic sensibility?

Q. Could intuition be used in aesthetic judgments?

Q. Does aesthetic value reside in us or is it a property residing in the objects that we look at?

Q. Do we need to approach whatever comes before us in a contemplative frame of mind, the mind becoming temporarily empty of everything but the contemplated object?

Q. Should we treat art with any special privilege?

Q. What relation does the work of art bear to the mind that produced it and what relation does it bear to the mind that perceives and appreciates it?

Bibliography:-

A Schopenhauer, The World as will and representation, i tr. EFJ Payne (New York,1964)

E. Bullough, ‘Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle’, in Aesthetics: Lectures and Essays (London 1957)

W. Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry,in W E Buckler (ed), Walter Pater:Three Major Texts (New York 1986)

I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, tr. J.C. Meredith (oxford,1969)

Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics (New York, 1958)

Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1968)

R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford 1938)

Linda Styles January 2003

Creatives Inside Out Q & A for December 08 edition of Artichoke

Q. Where were you born, where do you live and why do you choose to live in Cornwall?
A. I was born in ‘Suburbia’, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey on the outskirts of London where I stayed until the age of 16, I then moved to Ladbroke Grove W11, to become immersed in the early 70’s ‘freak Culture’. I came to Cornwall in 1976, where I have been ever since. My reasons for choosing Cornwall as my home are manifold, some to do with childhood memories of 60’s Cornwall, my father’s dream of living here, a deep sense of belonging and a misguided need to reinvent and escape my ‘self’.

Q. Describe a bit about yourself and your creative experience. What are you trying to achieve in your work?
A. I have come to accept that I am not an ‘easy’ person, I am intense, angry, passionate, impulsive, self-defeating, addictive, compulsive and damaged beyond belief but no longer hell bent on self destruct. I see life and art as one and the same thing, a way of being if you like. I am full of contradictions; compulsions and extremes, there are aspects of myself that I have struggled to come to terms with over the years of my life, having made a feature of never taking the easy route through. My work is garish, sometimes hideous, sometimes gorgeous, always awkward, always with undercurrents of dysfunction and autobiographical narrative, in this respect it mirrors me because I am my art/my art is me.
I strive to achieve the following within my work :-
Balance, tension of opposites, consistency, fluidity, luminousity, integrity of purpose, non-complacency.

Q. How would you describe what inspires you most?
A. A life misled, society’s misfits, the endurance of the human soul, the pain and joy of existence, solitude.

Q. What medium do you like to use?
A. I find it difficult to settle on any one medium but am most in tune with clay, perhaps because it is plastic and malleable, add to this fire and chemicals, the risk factor, the fact that I have stayed with it for so many years. I also see my body/ my self as a main medium – where would I be without them?

Q. Who are the creative’s you admire?
A. Lisa Stewart because of her purity, Charlie Watts because of his integrity and myself because of my bloody-mindedness. I could give you a list of ‘famous’ artists that I have been drawn to over the years but I tend not to look anymore…too distracting!

Q. If the world were coming to an end, which one piece of art would you consider saving, aside from your own?
A. I wouldn’t, what would be the point? I feel that the ‘physical’ object is somehow meaningless and that we are in fact constrained and trapped by ‘things’. Having said that I would consider saving a small tatty paperback called‘ The Abolition of Man’ by C S Lewis. This man has inspired me throughout my life so it would seem fitting to to take a little piece of him on my journey into the unknown.



I titled this painting - 'All the things that I love the most'... Mixed media (Charcoal, Acrylic, water colour, gauche on canvas 90cm x 90cm 2007, after 'People in the night guided by the phosphorescent tracks of snails (Jean Miro 1940), as my Homage to him.

I have always responded to Miro because he never lost his burning desire to experiment, to probe deeper and deeper into the nature of reality. I too, am experimental/experiential in my approach to my practice (and my life).
I deliberately chose not to study the pictorial elements of this series of paintings as my starting point; however, I was struck by the poetic use of titles.
I could draw a comparison to my own practice here, in that Miro used Andre Breton's prose poems to enhance the poetic effects of his art. I regularly use Mills and Boon pulp fiction extracts as title constructs. The word 'Phosphorescent ' soon became the key element, a beautiful and exciting word that got stuck in my mind. Glow worms started to appear, followed swiftly by human figures, animals, the sky, and the moon and the sun - a mix of obsessive minute detail, antidotal free painting and wordless narrative rhythms.
I feel that I have ended up with creatures that are delightful in their absurdity, a black humoured nightmarish world of penetrating eyes, red lipped, spiky teeth baring open jaws, pierced and wounded at random, limbs a akimbo, breasts a dangling, all floating, flying and dancing in space. I suppose that I have unwittingly exposed the depths of my own agony!

Anyway, I feel that I have achieved the phosphorescent quality that I desired, also the stick lady could be a snail with a trail if viewed using lateral thought process....

Subversives art group

http://subversivefigures.blogspot.com/

Falmouth Baby Tile project

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jan/05/wild-mums-falmouth-gallery-cornwall









This year long project is due for completion in December 2008. I have found it invigorating and inspiring for many reasons.



Celebrating Cornwall's Stained Glass Heritage

A community heritage project
led by Falmouth Art Gallery

Introduction

This innovative community project is transforming Falmouth's Municipal
Buildings, home of Falmouth Art Gallery, Falmouth Town Council and
Falmouth Library, into a sea of shimmering colours. The building is
soon to be brought back to its former glory with two magnificent new
stained glass windows designed by Falcare (formerly Mencap) and excluded
children, as well as a wall of fantastic new tiles all of which have
been designed by local babies and toddlers (including babies of domestic
abuse victims and teenage mothers).

'Celebrating Cornwall's Stained Glass Heritage' is funded by the
Heritage Lottery Fund. The gallery has worked with the local community
and organisations to restore the original symmetry of the building. In
addition to the windows and tiles the foyer has been restored with new
carpentry and the reinstatement of the painting 'Got 'em all' - The Bob
Newbon Lifeboat by Charles Napier Hemy RA (which helps fundraising for
the RNLI). The local community are also enjoying taking part in a
year-long education programme that included creative workshops, outreach
activities, visits, special events and parties! The project will be
completed in early December 2008. However, the stained glass windows
will act as a catalyst for continuing workshops and educational
activities in the future.

Tile Workshops

The designs for the tiles were created by local babies and toddlers aged
0-4 years old (pre-school). Ceramicist Linda Styles created a template
that reflected the original 18th century designs on the opposite wall
leaving a blank disc in the centre for the children to make their marks.
The gallery then invited the Susie Group (support group for victims of
domestic abuse), the WILD Young Mothers Group, mothers and babies from
local health centres as well as its usual Baby Paint groups to take part
in workshops where they imprinted marks in clay. These creations were
then used to make 140 individually designed tiles.

Much to the enjoyment of observing visitors fourteen baby and toddler
workshops took place throughout the summer at the gallery. Donna
Williams led the workshops, with the assistance of the ceramicist Linda
Styles and various staff and volunteer members. All workshops were free
and highly popular.

With each session, Linda explained to parents and carers how these new
tiles would correspond with the 18th century tiles opposite. This
appealed to parents and visitors alike, and it was a chance for the
babies to experience the joy of manipulating clay. For the parents
these tiles would provide a lasting memento of their child's first
years. They liked the idea that the babies and toddlers would still be
able to visit when the babies are grandparents. The project also
stimulated a sense of pride at having the babies work as a permanent and
integral part of the Municipal Buildings and Falmouth's heritage.

Each child was given a large panel of clay on which to make expressive
marks. A detail of this tile was then selected for the circular cut
out. In addition to a rectangular base, children were provided with
extra clay to add to the piece and utensils for creating interesting
marks, which many of the babies were thrilled with. Indeed, the texture
and malleability of the clay proved to be a great delight to the babies,
who had never experienced this material before. For newborn babies (the
youngest was 2 weeks) the clay base was softened and imprints of their
feet were made. Each tile was carefully labelled and referenced in
order to allow each child to identify his or her tile, both now and in
the years to come.