Sophie Ashdown

This day was described only as “paper folding” which did make me wonder if we’d be making origami or folding envelopes! Thankfully it was neither and turned out to be much more interesting.

Christian Azolan lead the workshop for the day and started by giving us a summary of his life and career so far. Wow what a fascinating story! Christian has worked for some of the best and most prestigious fashion brands in the world. His background and his work were very impressive.

Christian showed us a demonstration of how he folds paper. We were each given some standard A4 paper to try some folding. Some people did random folding and some people scrunched their paper randomly. I got really into folding mine, trying to be as precise as I could even though I was making it up as I went along. It ended up being quite an architectural structure that I quite liked:

But looking around at what other people had made, it was clear to me that my efforts were a lot more specific and “technical” than most everyone else’s. It struck me that this seems to be a repetitive theme with my work. When I think about what I created for the interim show compared to others, my work is more precise and technical whereas most others are more “free.” I’ve talked to Jonathan about this and expressed that I’d like to be able to be more free and “unconstructed” in my work, but somehow it doesn’t happen. I can’t help myself but to be precise and measured.

Is this a reflection of my personality or just my creative tendencies? It is something I have thought about. There are parts of my life that are very “constructed” – strict vegan for almost 30 years, only wear black, sleep only on my back, house always tidy, clothes stored in specific sections, and much more. But at the same time I love seeing colour on other people, I’m constantly fighting against my hoarding tendencies (house looks tidy but don’t open any cupboards!!), I’m terrible at managing my time, and always seem to be chasing my tail. So why can’t I let go and be “free” with my art? Do I need to? I don’t think anyone else cares except me. I’m not really sure if I actually want to make art that might be messy or jumbled or nonsensical. Or maybe I think I can’t actually do it successfully anyway? Others seem to be naturally gifted at creating beautiful free flowing artworks and maybe I need to accept that it’s just not me. Or maybe, as one un-named coursemate suggested, I should take some mind-altering substance to set me free!

Anyway back to the session! We did more paper folding with larger pieces of paper which resulted in similar structures for me and everyone else.

We did a small Lino piece each, which is not something I’ve done in years. There weren’t enough usable tools so I couldn’t make the groves deep enough in my Lino piece.

I tried to make prints of the lino but they didn’t work very well unfortunately. Other people who had more experience made some lovely pieces. Zoe was very helpful to me but it wasn’t enough to save my piece! I think Lino is something I’d like to try again with more time and better tools. I can see the value in being able to make multiple copies.

Early in the day we had pictures taken of the backs of our heads and I quite liked mine:

We were asked to do some folding of these photos that enhance or reshape the image. For one of them I folded to condense the image and in the other I folded to frame the image and I quite like how they turned out. Dalal said that mine was her favourite which I really appreciated.

We hung all our pieces in a separate room and were able to admire everyone’s efforts. Dalal said that my photo folding was one of her favourite which I really appreciated.

There was great camaraderie between everyone and it was lovely to spend time with these fab people. We even took a selfie!

At the end of the session we went to the coffee shop and had some delicious vegan cakes made by Jonathan’s wife Cathy. I had a chocolate brownie and a flapjack which were both delicious. I had to stop myself from eating ten of those brownies!!

It was a great way to end the day. Thank you so much to Jonathan, Cathy, and Christian.