UPDATE: Diary of a Lost Near-Graduate

Without university to schedule your world for you adapting to the real world is like a hard kick up the butt. Fortunately I have one unit to wean me off my academic overlords, but its still taking some time to get useful. The lack of graduate jobs has really hit my friends hard and I understand where they are coming from now. It just takes so much time to scramble grant applications and other work orders together.

And I have a new donga.

If you don't know what a donga is, it is a brilliant, beautiful thing of cheap Australian construction.

So between moving, overcoming a small bout of dodgy diet induced fatigue, realising how much paper work eats your life and learning how to economically get out of bed in the morning, things are going ok.

But more to come on that later. A couple things are in the pipeline as prep. for the second half of this year. Should be a riot.

Tangent Gallery Installation

During semester one, the Printmedia department held a silent auction to raise funds for the Grad Show at the end of the year. We called the exhibition, 'By the End of the Day', because none of us submitted an exhibition title in time. As a class we had three hours to prepare the Tangent Gallery and install an artwork from each person. 

To prepare for the exhibition, we had to clean the space of all hanging marks and any smudges on the walls that would detract from our work, such as the one below. 

Some of us used erasers to remove the graphite lines before another student (me) came along with the undiluted gesso to cover any remnants. 

Butcher's paper was rolled along the gallery aisle on each side for a few reasons: it protected the carpet from any gesso drips and protected our artworks while they were on the floor from any dirt. We systematically trialed our installation by laying all of the artworks on the floor, so we could see the arrangement before it was stuck to the wall. This method also let us move the pieces with a minimal risk of bending or fingerprint/oil damage. 

 There's no point in putting down butcher's paper if you don't wear your socks! With all of our shoes removed, not a single person in class had odd socks. 

How strange. 

The tutors in the print department were well stocked with hanging equipment. We had just about every means of hanging available from screws and drills, tapes, nails, hammers, removable tabs, velcro, gel spots and Magnart  hanging magnets. Blu tack is no go - it stains your artwork and the walls and can tear the paper fibre. 

I used Magnart magnets because they were discreet, but also strong enough to hold my work in place. The Tangent Gallery can be a little bit of a wind tunnel and only half of my piece was secured to the wall at any time. 

Because the Tangent Gallery slopes, the leveled height of each artwork had to be calculated individually. We worked off and average of 160cm, or eye height of the average person, as the centre of the work. 

The heavier installs, such as Jess's suggestion box, needed to be screwed into the wall. 

That's me (above left). This day was one of the few days where I actually wore matching socks. The washing machine has eaten the rest. 

Here I'm applying some blue scotch tape and double sided tape to me print and the wall, to hold the plastic or moveable part steady. 

The only digital print present was nailed into the wall because of the border allowance. 

With the Tangent Gallery half filled, most who had finished installing their own artworks hung around to help out those with more complicated installs. The most devious questions were about home much, or how little, of an artwork to hang.  

The Tangent Gallery installation was complete!

UPDATE: Back from NAAUC

I'm back from NAAUC and ready for blogging.

That is all for now.

Growing Crystals at College: Day 1

Get ready for a long series of posts!

Here begins some of the process documentation I had to provide during my exam for Art Project last semester at university. Each day of copper sulfate crystal growth will be separate from the next because there are heaps of photos to show. The entire collection had to be bound into two separate books for my presentation, disregarding the extra book for the crystals grown at home. 

I 'declared' the ME Theater balcony as my new work space with a warning sign (safety first) and established a set up to grow my copper sulfate crystals. 

A sample of the first tests I grew at home using copper sulfate. These have been varnished and left to dry on the balcony (varnish fumes aren't nice). 

Balsa wood soaked in a copper sulfate solution. 

Detail view of the copper sulfate soaked balsa. 

Four glasses with copper sulfate solution. 

Cockroaches, especially dead ones, are very common in my college's suburb. It was an opportunity to test whether copper sulfate would grown on organic matter. 

Three plastic plates, found abandoned in a kitchenette. 

Fibre glass was tested as a frame for the copper sulfate crystals to grow on.