Sophie Ashdown

For the interim show, I had an idea in my head for quite a long time about what I wanted to do. I had started making some A5 size black-and-white ink patterns since about November and really enjoying the process of making them.
This made me think about how can I incorporate these new patterns into my piece for the interim show.

Originally I thought that I would use the A5-size patterns as “trial” pieces to figure out which ones I wanted to make as larger sizes, with the intention of using the larger pieces for the interim show. But as I kept creating the A5 pieces I found that I really liked the size of them and the feel of them. I found the process of making these small pieces very enjoyable and satisfying. When I had several pieces completed I liked putting them next to each other to see how they worked together. I enjoyed evaluating the comparison of one pattern next to the other to see how they compared and contrasted each other.

A revised idea for the Interim show started to form and I discussed the idea with Jonathan at the end of January in our tutorial. It was a great discussion and Jonathan gave me some more ideas about how to do it. Although at one point he suggested that I include some colour, which I think he realised as he said it that I wasn’t going to be keen on that!

From that point I thought that I would have a mixture of A5, A4 and A3 size pieces so that the resulting artwork for the interim show would be these different sizes stuck together as a random pattern.

At the same time I heard about the Artquest challenge which was to create a new piece of art every day for 30 days so I thought well I could create more A5 pieces as part of that challenge and then use them as part of my overall artwork for the interim show, included with some larger pieces.

Once I started doing the A5 size pieces every day for the 30/30 challenge, I realised that they worked so well together and I could create my Interim piece entirely from A5s. The logical part of my brain also realised that in terms of timing it made more sense to stick with the A5s as I’m not sure that I would have had time to make larger pieces also.

Not all of the pieces that I made for the 30/30 challenge were going to be relevant for the interim show. For various reasons sometimes that I think the pieces just weren’t good enough and sometimes I use the prompts from the 30/30 challenge to create pieces that were outside of my normal realm, and so were not appropriate to include.

I wanted the pieces for the show to have a constructivist feel and use the constructivist geometric style and ultimately not all of the pieces fit that criteria.

Once I had a bulk of completed A5 artworks, I needed to finalise how I would display them together. I had discussed with Jonathan an idea to mount the pieces in black picture mounts and attach them together without fully framing them. I couldn’t frame them all (with frame, glass, etc) because it would be too heavy, bulky, and expensive.

With several piece mounted in black, I saw that the monochrome patterns really popped with the black mounts. I decided to go with my original idea of attaching them together with some binder rings.

I bought a good quality single hole punch and worked out a way to get an exact and even hole in the same place on each corner of the mount, to attach the binder rings. I need to be very careful that the holes were as uniform as possible across each of the mounts or else the piece just wouldn’t hang properly. I didn’t want it to be wonky, especially when most of my patterns are very specific and lined up. I do love a 90° angle!

At the end of the 30 day challenge I came away with about 20 pieces that were appropriate for the interim show but of those 20 pieces there were six or eight of them that needed some embellishment or enhancement to make them work as the overall piece. This was largely because for some of them they just weren’t bold enough when they were put up next to other pieces that were more bold.

For example, a pattern with a lot of bold circles and lines would stand out more from far away, but then the pieces that were more delicate or that had finer lines and less solid shapes would get lost amongst the other pieces.

I spent some time looking objectively at the pieces that I had to see which ones would benefit from some extra improvement. Here are some before/after examples of pieces that I updated:

Once the 30/30 challenge was over, I evaluated what I had and selected 20 pieces to go in the show. I also had two pieces made prior to the show that I wanted to include. I did have three A5 pieces I made in November that I could have included, but the paper stock I used had a slight yellow tinge to it that didn’t match with the others, so I couldn’t use them.

The composite piece I planned to make needed 24 pieces in total so I made two more to add in:

That made the 24 pieces I planned to use:

Apparently even Fonzie the cat gave his approval:

I then spent some considerable time planning out how I wanted to arrange the works. Which pieces look good next to each other? Which ones clashed or even looked too similar? Since the resulting artwork would have two sides, I decided to make one side be more constructivist and angular, with the other side being more circular and fluid.

By the Sunday before the show I had planned out how the pieces would fit together and on Monday I put them all together with the binder rings. Fantastic I thought! I’ve finished with plenty of time.

However…… on Tuesday morning, the day before hanging, I looked objectively at what I had created and realised it just wasn’t quite enough. Once the pieces were all binded together the overall artwork seemed too small and lacked a bit of “oomph”. I decided that I needed another row of pieces on each side which meant creating six new A5 size pieces that day.

I was supposed to be doing my day job on Tuesday but ended up mostly working on the new pieces. By the time I finished all six pieces it was one in the morning. Then when looking at the new pieces I needed to rearrange existing pieces to incorporate the new ones, instead of just adding them all as a new row. By the time I had done this it was 2 am on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, which is rather later than I had planned to get to bed!

On Wednesday morning I reconnected everything and finally I was happy with the final artwork. I had had rather less sleep than I expected but it was worth it to add those extra six pieces. They made that extra difference that took the piece from fairly good to good. (I’m not gonna say great because I don’t think I’ll ever think that something I make is great exactly but I certainly thought it was better than it was before.) Regardless, I will say that I was quite proud of what I created. Here are both sides:

I managed to get everything packed up by late morning and off I headed to CSM for hanging. I was so excited to meet my coursemates in person!

More on the Interim show and our residential week coming up…