Welcome to my blog

This is my art blog which follows and details my creative practice and crafted artefacts.

My jewellery portfolio can be seen at Elsie Owl Adornment.

Photodump Autumn

I love fungus.

On a little wander around Spittlefields on Halloween.

Highgate Cemetary on All Saints Day. Cliché.

Funding and Teaching

Man's necklace of large incisor teeth & fish vertebrae.

MONGNYU Village, PHOM
NAGA HILLS. 11 April 1923lent by J.P.Mills, 1923

Pitt Rivers Museum.

I've got the go ahead to do some work responding to the body relative craft objects in Pitt Rivers sometime next year which is a very exciting thing. Their collection and display has had such a massive influence on my work over the past few years so it's a wonderful opportunity to explore the objects here in more detail and investigate craft processes in the collection.

So this weekend I read the 58 pages of the Grants for the Arts guide booklet and today I'm printing off the application and starting a draft. Wish me luck. I'm researching other funding bodies and have a few alternatives but suggestions would be much appreciated.

Later this week I'm doing some technical tutoring on 3DD at MMU, which will be interesting. Considering I didn't think I had much in the way of technical knowledge when I left my third year there two years ago it's a little surreal I'll be teaching settings but exciting too. The great thing about that course is that it encourages so many different approaches to achieve an objective and I guess my work is testament to that. There's more than one way to skin a cat (which is not part of the session before you ask).

A little shot of the objects I filled my box fob with before sending off to it's lovely new owner, and my own acquisitions from the GNCCF insitu.

Milk Jugs milk jug by Kate McBride, who's work I've loved since seeing it at Chelsea craft fair years ago and unbeknownst to me had been on my stall most of Saturday trying out chess piece necklaces.
Mini turquoise porcelain vessel by Beverley Gee which probably shouldn't be filled with Werthers Originals but the bag split and I like it. Beautiful glassy glazes.

Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair 09

Great Northern was fantastic! I'm very pleased with how well my work and the dual practice was received. Sales were great and I got much needed feedback, something which has lacked from my exhibitions in the art realm which have felt a little anonymous.
I have lots of exciting news to write about in due course but in the meantime I'm busy busy.

Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair 09

Please come and support me at the Great Northern Craft Fair next week, Friday 23rd - Sunday 25th, Spinningfields, Manchester. I have been so busy I can't begin to tell you but I will tell you that come Monday 26th I will be running around Lyme Park, kicking up leaves and screaming my head off.

I do however, have a very shiny new collection of jewellery to show you and I'm quite proud of it. Drop me an email at lucy [at] lucyharvey.co.uk if you'd like a concessionary ticket!

Here's a proper photo of the Melancholy Amulet, I finally got my MA work rephotographed so I'll update my images very soon.

Nobelini Volume 6 - Fin

It's important to me to use this blog as an honest record of my artistic practice not just an online portfolio or a marketing tool. I think this is down to my own sense of mystery as a student to how artists I admired made a creative practice work (and in fairness that mystery still remains) and a typically Northern upbringing which made brutal honesty de rigueur. Probably an inflated sense of self importance figures somewhere in there but I'm an artist - it's allowed.

Which is the precursor to me publishing mine and Veena's feedback from the Nobelini project. Since finishing my MA I have applied and been rejected from a lot of stuff but for the main part these have been written proposals which take an afternoon to a day to draft, type, proof read and pack up with all the necessary pleasantries and images. They're an A4 side or more and aside from my residency with Aberystwyth Arts next month (which was 250 words) have all been rejected. Perhaps I should learn to be short and sweet?

I digress. Rejection's okay when it's just words and an afternoon; the written word is a quick way to communicate a direction and a concept and it's entirely flexible. There was 5 worksheets, two test pieces, a binding of emails and visual references, and an A2 digital design for the Nobelini submission, not to mention the £50 travel and postal expenses and the 4 condensed working days there in the development but actually it was spread out over a month in the sessions I can put aside for creative work (outside of bread and butter work, holidays and socialising). I still made jewellery for my Elsie Owl online sales but I made little towards the Great Northern Fair so when rejection came through I was furious for not spending this precious time on making stock for the fair. Stock which would sell for money of an undefined amount.

Essentially I'm just another graduate doing unpaid work in the hope of furthering their portfolio, experience and C.V. and hopefully I won't regret doing Nobelini when I look back at it in the future. I'm a year out of the university womb now so I will think more carefully about the time I put into potentially unpaid work but then it's terrible to think of halting creative development. I've found myself writing about balance before here and maybe I'm obsessing with it because I yo-yo between the creative realm and the real world, one is an option and the other is very much unavoidable (I find). It's good to be aware of this conflict, otherwise I might find myself lost to one or the other.

Bizarrely our result reads like my A-Level grades but that has nothing to do with anything as I didn't care about them too much.

1. Innovation and originality score. How innovative and original is the design proposal?
1A
Moving On features extremely innovative pairings of ideas and historical references. I like the Victoria era connection as well as the medical bracelet tie-in. It’s incredibly layered (maybe too much so), but without a doubt this work is truly an innovative design-science collaboration.

2. Quality of visual design
2C
I’m not entirely convinced the material interpretation is right (copper), nor the sharp and pointy, almost insect-like aesthetic. It’s a bit gothic and morbid, which is likely the Victorian-era reflecting itself, but I almost need a more comforting piece of jewelry, in a more organic – even malleable – material to contrast with the heaviness and pain of the emotional story behind the pieces. I like the display ideas, which are dreamlike and chaotic (like the feelings the mourning parents will likely have), but the pieces themselves are calling for something not quite so literal in interpretation. Maybe something more nurturing would take these to the next level.

3. Feasibility score. How feasible is the proposed implementation given the budget?
3B
I’m impressed with the taxonomy of parts laid out in the chart embedded in the proposal – well sourced, priced and considered. I do worry about the sustainability of these pieces, i.e. so much time and care needs to go into the craft of each one, so how realistic is it that they can be produced according to need/demand? Perhaps that’s something the designer would like to push though? That is, each one is precious, just like a human life is precious. So it’s not about mass production at all. If so, the price could potentially be increased to reflect value.

4. Can you comment on the success of dialogue between scientist and designer as evidenced by the proposal and any supplementary material
4B
I love the blog that shows the process, but I can’t seem to find the correspondence folder Lucy references on the website. The idea is a terrific one and I’m sure my understanding of the back-and-forth would be enhanced by reading it. Nice idea.?

The correspondence folder was in the package... It's difficult to take criticism from someone outside of the arts field, normally a kind of professional respect is established before someone shits all over your parade. Perhaps I'm just a sensitive artist?

But an extensive amount of work had to be done in order to communicate ideas and develop them with another person from outside of the creative realm; there was little way of doing the project half hearted. That said, I could have developed the ideas more but the risk of not winning was rather influential and I wasn't so sure pairing a rather dark arts practice with such a sentimental subject was ever a good idea. But my work has integrity and it won't change for the palatability of public sculpture, so in that sense I'm glad I stuck to my guns.
It was a good experience for a a new graduate and it most probably won't be the last free labour I give up but any future involvement in collaboration should be funded from the beginning.

Grant Applications, Nobelini and School

Well I finished everything Nobelini orientated this morning and it's all in the capable hands of Dr Veena now. Wish us luck! Even if we don't win it's been a really valuable experience to collaborate with a scientist, I learnt a really interesting chunk of science that would otherwise never ever entered my sphere of thought and realised that communication is the key to collaboration.

My creative decisions are fairly complex and difficult to follow, I've got a hummingbird mind. I'm good at writing up projects retrospectively as it's easy to see the 'red thread' in hindsight so it was a challenge to communicate the creative idea process whilst in the midst of it all.
For some reason it doesn't matter to me if my 3D work is misunderstood because it's almost as if I have concreted that idea and any other interpretation is a bonus. But I often panic about being misunderstood verbally (in the real world) so I found myself labouring emails and spending time writing and rewriting, battering my ideas into sentences that would make sense to another person. Not that I needed to worry though, Veena was a great partner and once we'd set a few parameters we managed to whittle a final design down in less than a week which is quicker than I normally ever work.

When we were discussing the suspended installation idea I mentioned to her a quote that I love by Walter Benjamin about objects, it goes:

"Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on
the chaos of memories.”

I need to read some more clever books sometime soon.

I've just sent off an application for some funding for my jewellery project so I can actually make my stand look several shades of professional at the Northern Craft Fair but I guess it'll just look semi professional otherwise.. I'm hoping to do a fashion orientated photo shoot with my clever photo chums and prettier younger sister in October which will be a hundred miles away from the Backstreet Dentist photos, hopefully I can get some of these blown up nice and big for my stand too. I am currently on the quest for old gold frames and vintage jewellery cases so if any one reading has any old picture frames they'd like to rid yourself of then please get in touch!

I'm back to school next week, I'm mixed between mourning the time I could be spend making and excitement about completely reorganising the ceramics room and helping the new head of art rejig the department. The poor ceramics room has been pretty neglected over the years and it's taken me 6 months to get to grips with the place but now I can begin to make it user friendly again. I've been reading a pottery book I picked up from a local library sale maybe 4 years ago recently and realising it's basically the bible I needed in January, and all the while it sat on my bookshelf forgotten. Oh well, I learnt the hard way.

Nobelini Volume 6 - The End is Nigh

When Photoshop makes an appearance in my work you know it must be serious.
We've finalised five designs for the bands and now we're deciding on the installation idea. I think 108 bands might be a bit too much for me to physically make but 20 - 30 is manageable. I did think about having the pieces cast or mass produced in some aspects since the budget, if we win, could accommodate this. But the making process is such an integral part of my practice I feel I would be doing myself and the pieces a disservice, and since we're exploring the humanity in response to scientific advancement the handmade qualities (and mistakes) brings another important facet to the design.

Nobelini Volume 5

Looking at ways to encorporate the shapes of the microglia with the Victorian emblems and begining to think about the layout of the installation design.

Nobelini Volume 4

I'm making a bit of a test piece for the Nobelini project as I don't think my wonky drawings can communicate what I mean, I'm definitely a 3D person! I thought it would be nice to document a process which I take for granted now but is a mystery to the uninitiated. I am a little ashamed of the chaos of my workbench, it's very naughty but I do need all of my tools littering the place at all times because otherwise I will not know where they are. And they compliment a fairly chaotic way of working.

Step 1. Measuring out and scoring the metal strip for the bezel.

Step 2. Filing into the metal strip in order to allow for sharp corners when the metal bezel is folded.

Step 3. Using flat pliers to push the strip against a flat surface in order to fold the strip into a box bezel form.

Step 4. Soldering it all together using binding wire to hold the bezel in place.


Step 5. Cutting the surplus strip off.

Step 6. Sanding down the base and top of the bezel to ensure it's even.

Step 7. Drawing the plate shape onto the metal for piercing out.

Step 8. Piercing out the ornate plate.

Step 9. Sanding down the plate surface so it's clean for soldering on.

Step 11. Putting flux and small pieces of solder on the frame and plate.

Step 12. Torch! And the rest should be self explanatory but what do I know?

My pickle needs changing.

Smelly.

Prior to wax.

Ta da.

This weekend we had a walk around Bollington and Macclesfield and a fantastic dinner at Damson in Heaton Moor, it was all very nice indeed. I collected blackberries and got nettle stings all up my arms but I made a lovely crumble.