Unraveling History

Here is a video of my first piece to ever be in an art show. It's called Unraveling History. It is a statement on the effort put into preserving historical pieces in museums. So much effort is put forth behind the scenes of museums to save artifacts from the passage of time and nature. When you go to a museum most people don't think of those items fitting our own timeline. This project is to illustrate that struggle fought by conservationists behind the scenes. I'll post a time lapse video of the construction of the piece and a longer blog entry to catch everyone up with what I've been doing next week.

My Small Adventures

I thought with this blog post I would talk about a few of my own adventures outside of school. Not too long ago we had Easter break. It's basically like Spring Break in the US. Since I had some time off I thought it would be fun to be a bit of a tourist. During my break I found out the Hampton Court Palace was having their 500th year celebration. The palace dates back to the Tudor era. It is also where the Royal School of Needlework have their classrooms. If everything works out I will be at this palace daily starting in September. The photo below is for all of the geeks out there. It is Surbiton station. If you are a Harry Potter fan you may recognize it. It was one of the train stations where Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was filmed. I had to catch a connecting train to Hampton Court here.

When I got to Hampton Court it was wonderful. It was one of the first nice spring days we had here. In fact it only started to rain as I was leaving to go back to Farnham. When you enter Hampton Court you go through a a large courtyard and into a smaller one. Both are very grand and they were where Henry the VIII's guests were greeted. The picture below is of the large courtyard. This place definitely makes a statement then and now.

I took the audio tour which is extremely well done. If you ever make it here I would really recommend it. Throughout the day they did different reenactments. In the remaining Tudor kitchens they had a demonstration of how food was cooked. In Henry VIII's time the man seated by the fire could be turning up to 20+ spits!

The rest of the tour was very nice. I went through the newer section that was built in the Stuart era. I saw my first tourist with a selfie stick and almost got whacked by it. I did take a photo in the hallway that is suppose to be haunted by a ghost but alas nothing unusual appeared on it. One of the best things was the dance through the ages. There was a group of people who represented all of the eras of occupation in the palace. It goes from the Tudor era to a person in the museum uniform. They danced from the smallest courtyard in the Stuart section into the largest courtyard in the Tudor area. Here is a small clip of part of the dance.

Today I took another little adventure. I went to Hyde Park. I've taken the train several times now but it was my first time on the London Underground. It was really easy to use but it was crowded. One of the lines I took also went to Heathrow. Everyone had suitcase and bags.

Hyde Park was very nice. It was a little cool today with the wind. The flowers were blooming which made the whole park look so happy and bright. I went there to meet some people. I've joined a Dungeons and Dragon group and we created our characters today. I am now a Chaotic Good Rogue Halfling. Yes I have official gained another level of geekdom. I'll end this post with two photos of Hyde Park.

Artwork

We've had a week off from classes to do some independent research. It's been lovely to have free week.  The photos in this post are of various piece of artwork that I have done over the past month or so.

The first one is a drawing I made when I was in Ghent, Belgium. I had about half an hour free before we had to get back on the bus. I had a lot of fun drawing this.

The next one is of a painting I did. I was in Amsterdam. I had been drawing a lot that day. I remember doing a really rough drawing of this lady from a painting. I filled in all of the detail and color later. When I painted it I was playing around with paint. I haven't really done much painting before.

As part of our Amsterdam project we had to create a zine. A zine is like a magazine but can be really cheaply reproduced. We had to take things we had drawn in our sketchbooks and photos we took while on our trip to use as inspiration for our project. This is the cover of my zine. I may upload photos of the entire zine later. It was a lot of work getting this project done. It really stretched my abilities as an artist but I enjoyed the challenge.

The next piece is of a project I made right before my trip to Amsterdam. I mentioned it in a previous post. I took fishing line and elmer's glue (pvc glue). What I really like about it is that it can also be worn on the arm like a gauntlet.

The last picture I have is of a painting I made in the last week. I woke up one morning to find a fox taking a nap outside my flat in the sun. I used watercolor pencils and a water pen to paint the image. This one I did just for fun. I didn't have to do anything for class. I'm happy with how it turned out.

I really am having a great time here. All of the things I've made have been really fun to do even when I got frustrated. I can't wait to see what I get to do in the next section of our program.

Amsterdam

Sorry this post is late. I've been a bit under the weather the past couple of days. Besides going through a box of tissues in less than two days I'm fine. The trip to Amsterdam was amazing. I absolutely loved the city. It has such an amazing vibe to it. I don't think I would want to live there but it is a city that I would love to go back and visit.

The first day was very disorienting. We were let loose on the city with just a map with some dots of a few suggested places. Needless to say we got lost a lot. In fact I'm not sure we knew where we were most of that day.

I learned very quickly that bicycle bells are harbingers of death and destruction. Amsterdam is a bicycle city. They barely tolerate pedestrians and even the very rare car. Cyclists will pass you before you even know that they were behind you. I was almost hit a few times but I returned to Farnham unscathed.

Walking through the city is amazing. There is a great juxtaposition of old and modern. The picture below is of the courtyard of this really neat store. Its a modern design store called the Droog. It had some amazing things inside it. I so want their birdhouses. Just around the corner from the Droog were beautiful canal houses.

I went to a lot of places. I did go to the Anne Frank House Museum. It was a great museum. Very well done. The line to get in was huge though. My favorite museum was probably the Van Gogh Museum. It was a lot of fun to sketch in there. As you walked through the museum they tell his life story through his paintings and letters.

I really did have a great time. I'll upload some of my sketches later. I will leave you with this lovely sign of spring I found on my return to Farnham. I promise it is coming soon. I know that is hard to believe for all of those in Indiana.

Greetings from Amsterdam!

I'm in Amsterdam! It was a really long bus ride with a very early start. The bus ride was very interesting. When we crossed over from England to France we used the Eurotunnel. Basically, our bus drove into a large shipping container sized compartment. The containers are actually attached to a train. After everyone is loaded up both vehicles and people are driven through the tunnel. It is a very quick crossing. We were in France after about half an hour.

Driving through France and Belgium was really great. It was oddly familiar. It was very flat. The landscape reminded me a lot of Amish country in Indiana. Instead of white wooden buildings the farms we passed had red brick buildings. Throw in a few more trees and a couple horses and buggies and I would have sworn I was back in Indiana. 

We stopped in Ghent, Belgium. While we were there we stopped at the Design Museum of Ghent. It was a great museum. The building that the museum was in was unlike any museum I've seen before. It is a very old building with rough wooden floors. The next room might be ultra modern and have a newer stone floor. It was really neat to see how they married the old with the new. 

While we were there they had an exhibit about light. They had amazing displays of light everywhere. Here is a picture of my favorite display. I loved how they put a very modern display in a traditional room. There was light everywhere. It was extremely beautiful. 

After I was done visiting the museum I had some free time. Not too far away from the museum was the canal. I sat on the edge of the canal and sketched for about an hour. It was a lot of fun. People were coming up behind me and watching me draw. It was a very new experience for me. I don't have a scanned copy of the drawing yet but here was my view. It was so surreal to be there. 

It took another three hours to get to Amsterdam from Ghent. I was very happy when we finally arrived. Tomorrow we get to go to a museum and explore the city. I can't wait to see Amsterdam. 

Slides

A week from today I should be in Amsterdam! It's crazy how fast the trip has come up. Our class has a really packed week planned. I can't wait to share my adventure. 

We've really been working on taking a concept and carrying it through to a final piece in class. On Thursday I had my first project presentation. It went pretty well. We've been studying the concept of traces. As part of that we have been playing with slides and filmmaking. I've really enjoyed working with the old style slides. 

I made a few traditional type slides but I stumbled on something kind of fun. I took fishing line and super glued them into the slide frames. I used dried sheets of Elmer's glue (PVC glue in the UK) and ink to get the colored parts. I really enjoyed working with the slides. We get to develop our ideas further this week and I think I have an interesting plan. I'll share it in the next blog post. 

I also wanted to share this photo I took. If I had been back in Indiana I would have been waiting to see a funnel cloud. The weather was so strange. It had just finished hailing and the sun was going down. The atmosphere was amazing. I was a little freaked out by it though.The air felt charged from the hail falling. It really did feel like tornado weather. Thankfully England does not get tornadoes as often as Indiana.

Snow and Cooking

It actually snowed here! It came down for all of ten minutes. Most of my classmates have not had much experience with snow. It was a lot of fun to watch their reactions. The snow did not stay on the ground very long. There was only enough for one small snowball fight before it turned into muddy sludge. The funniest part of all of this was the local reaction. My university actually sent us links to check in case they had to cancel classes the next day. We were even late on our visit to the Canterbury campus the next day because of the snow. The picture below is the view of the blizzard from my window.

Our visit to the Canterbury campus was a whirlwind.  UCA's Architecture and Fine Arts programs are housed at this campus. We did a really fun activity with the Architecture department. The goal of the activity was work in groups and build the tallest tower out of zip ties and hula hoops. My group was the third highest structure that could stand on it's own weight.

I do plan on going back to Canterbury and see the cathedral and other sites. The quick glance I got of the cathedral set off my history geek radar.

The best part of the week was when the Kitchen Fairy came! I finally got my UK bank card and could buy cooking supplies. Last night was the first time I got to cook a homemade meal since I got here. It was wonderful to finally be able to cook. I've been here almost a complete month. It has been a really wonderful experience so far. I can't wait to see what other great experiences are waiting for me.

From Cardboard to Rust

We've finally gotten into the swing of things in our course. Most of the day is taken up by our class with a one hour lunch. This means if it is a drawing day it is not just a two hour lesson. It is several hours of drawing. They teach us art theory as we create the day's project. The experience is both exhausting and rewarding.

Our topic for the week was Hybrid Homes and what that might mean. We were given cardboard and told to create something based on previous lessons with topic of Hybrid Homes in mind. The other students came up with some amazing things. I really enjoyed working with the cardboard. The below is a photo of my creation.

We also visited another campus of the university. It was UCA Rochester in Kent. The campus was very fun to visit. We had a lecture from the Computer Animation Arts department. They do some amazing things. I would encourage you to check out some of the things their students have made. My favorite is The Baltic Pixie. Their website is computeranimationarts.com

The Theater department also had a workshop that was a blast. The photo below is not a picture of a rusty piece of metal. It is in fact pieces of wood that I hot glued together. They gave us several types of paint to make it look like rusty metal. The lumpy bits are actually sawdust mixed with paint. It was a really great experience.

V&A Museum and making clocks

This week has been a wonderful week. On Tuesday we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The museum was absolutely wonderful. I'm planning on going back there myself next month. You could wander around that museum all day and still never see the whole collection. I even got lost there. I wandered around the Elizabethan section for over 30 minutes trying to find the exit to the main hallway. I did not mind being lost for a second. There is so much to see that it was hard to pick which pictures to share.


Probably the most amazing thing I came across was a very small object. I happen to bump into a small display case as I moved out of someone's way. I turned around to look at the case and inside I saw a small journal. It could have easily fit into the palm of my hand. I looked at the description beside it. Lo and behold it was a sketchbook from Leonardo da Vinci! It was so small but it was an astonishingly beautiful object in its right. Just being around such history was a total geek out moment for me. In fact the whole day was a geek out day.

I can honestly say that the V&A Museum is definitely on my top 5 favorite museums list. I can't wait to go back there.

The rest of the week I had class. On Thursday we made clocks. We got to use power tools and welders which was great fun. I had an absolute blast making my clock. I was very happy with the result I got from my tinkering.

I had a great time and took a lot of pictures this week. On Friday part of our assignment let us wander around the campus and the city of Farnham. I got to explore some areas that I hadn't see yet. I even took my favorite photo from this week while wandering around. I can't wait to see what we are doing this week.

 

I'm in England!!!

    I’ve made it through my first week here in England. The classes have been wonderful. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed drawing. My trip here was fairly uneventful. I saw dawn break as we flew over Wales. I didn’t get much sleep on the plane. When we landed I went through Customs and didn’t even realize I had gone through until I was almost outside. The first day was the hardest. I was so tired that it took me twenty minutes to figure out the electronic lock on my front door. Somehow I managed to get everything I needed that day for my room.   

The weather here has been wonderful. At least compared with what has been in Indiana. We have reached 50 most days and it feels like spring here. I even came across a few flowering trees. My flatmates think I’m a crazy American who thinks it is warm here. I can honestly say I was not expecting it to be so nice.

   I’ve stayed on campus and in the small town of Farnham this week. This Tuesday my class is going on a trip into London. I’m looking forward to getting out and seeing some museums. When I say that Farnham is small I mean it is really small. Most things are located on one main road. The town of Farnham is very quaint and you can’t take two steps without see a lovely brick building. The student union holds events. There was a meet and greet earlier this week there. It was very odd to see a bar with beers on tap at a university.
    I’ve not noticed any major differences yet. I’m sure I will soon. The biggest things that I have come across are that Hulu and Pandora don’t work here. Apparently they have not made it across the pond yet. Thankfully, my Netflix still works. I now have access to everything in the UK Netflix database. Yes, I have been binge watching British television. The only other thing is the debit card chip. In the US we do not have chips in our credit/debit cards. There has been talk about it but almost no one has one in the states. Here you are lucky if you find a place that still takes swipe cards like mine. It’s not been too bad. I am setting up a bank account so I should have one soon which will make life easier.
    The campus is wonderful. Any type of art you can think of has a department here. They even have rooms for glass blowing and metal casting. The textile rooms are fabulous. The main room is larger than my house back home. There are looms of every shape and size imaginable from wall to wall. It is a textile artist’s dream.
    My dorm room is very small but it has everything I need and a sink! There are six people including myself in the flat. There is room for two more people. We have a kitchen on the top floor and two bathrooms and showers.

  This week’s main assignment was to familiarize ourselves with the library. I was so glad to find out they use the dewey decimal system. Yes, I know that I’m a library geek. It was nice not to have to learn a new system.  
    So far everything has been great. If you want to get ahold of me you can email me or I’m on Facebook. If you want to Skype me just drop me a note and I’ll give you my user name. Don’t use my phone number to text or call me because that number does not work over here. I’ll post again after my trip to London.