Author: shaun belcher (Page 3 of 9)

Studio Diary 30th September: DRN

September 30, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

Well tomorrow 1st October so 22 days to go until DRN New York and finally embarked on the Art Object in search of new knowledge sequence!

I carefully re-read proposal (read it here http://www.scribd.com/doc/159584262/Drn-Proposal-2013 ) and fortunately I was quite careful about what I had promised. This means that I can just about fulfill promise to create a cartoon sequence but the full paper will have to be completed later (hopefully by M.A. completion date of January 24th). As for the animation I was really setting a high bar there and I think it may well develop separately to the DRN conference.

I have completed the sequence of 16 illustrations of contributors chapters to Elkins book and hope to complete the Elkins chapters after New York from the animation tests. To be honest I only likely to show a few sequences if that at end of presentation.

The project has however come together in my mind. the original ‘Rakes Progress’ by Hockney is a sequence of 16 images about his first trip to New York which dovetails with my first visit too. There however the comparison stops as my sequence whilst using the visual parody of Hockney’s suite of etchings will focus on current art research terminology specifically the idea of ‘New Knowledge’. Here I crossover with Elkins chapter on ‘Beyond research and new knowledge’ in Artist with Phds. To that extent this very much a continuation of investigation begun in previous conference with Frayling paper.

The drawings will mimic the number of Hockney etchings (16 in all) and end up in an art research ‘Bedlam’ 🙂

Here a photo from the studio whilst working on first drawing.

Only 15 to go! Also instead of drawing sequence after writing paper this time I experimenting with drawing first and literally ‘drawing out’ ideas for paper one for practical reasons and two as an experiment which may go dreadfully wrong. It interesting to see how drawing first affects decisions on what to include and structure of final paper. I will give an overview of ideas in presentation as at 20 minutes that roughly one image a minute.

To see original Hockney sequence see here http://www.hockneypictures.com/graphics_rakes_progress/graphics_rakes_01.php

The Research Odyssey update

September 21, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

Have revised the outcomes of the animation/cartoon Odyssey slightly to avoid going mad.

The illustrations for the contributor chapters to Elkins 2nd edition of Artists with PhDs is almost complete. Waiting on final chapters. here one of the illustrations tipped in to previous edition to give a flavour. You have to look really hard to work out which chapter this illustrating!

We have revised the editor’s chapters illustrations to be sourced from the final animation for New York DRN which Andrew Love and myself working on at moment. Here Andrew’s test piece using elements from my original visual interpretation of Elkins Chapter 9. On beyond research and new knowledge.

As one of the planets R.Mutt the urinal spaceman visits in paper/animation is planet Elkins this all starts to make sense. Also it do-able in time frame.

It is my intention to have a 20 minute fully voice-overed with music animation completed with accompanying paper (which will be published in DRN conference 2013 Proceedings early next year) by my M.A. completion date on January 24th 2014.

Here test animation using elements form original illustration:

Elkins Chapter 9. On beyond research and new knowledge – original illustration from 2011.

http://recursiveworlds.com/2013/09/18/r-mutt-test-18-09-2013/

More of Andrew’s brilliant work at http://recursiveworlds.com/

DRAWOLOGY exhibition Bonington November

September 19, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

Exhibition: Drawology

Dates: Wednesday 20 November 2013 – Friday 6 December 2013

Time: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm

Location: Bonington building, Nottingham Trent University, NG1 5LS

‘I[who…?]you||you[me]Us’ humhyphenhum 2013 digital still.

Drawing is said to have the ability to record both its own making and the movement of the thoughts and body of the drawer.

Drawology brings together the work of several artists with differing practices, it aims to consider whether this premise is applicable to a specific process or genre of drawing or whether it is applicable to drawing generally.

In this respect the works in the exhibition represent an expanded field of contemporary drawing in a Fine Art context to include: works on paper, performance, moving image, installation, projections and three-dimensional drawings. The exhibition is part of a larger research project currently being undertaken by Deborah Harty entitled Drawing is Phenomenology.

Artists include:

Shaun Belcher
Sian Bowen
Rachael Colley
David Connearn
Paul Fieldsend-Danks
Maryclare Foa
Paul Gough
Joe Graham
Deborah Harty
Claude Heath
Juliet MacDonald
Jordan McKenzie
Lucy O’Donnell
humhyphenhum
Bill Prosser
Karen Wallis.

Preview

Date: Wednesday 20 November 2013
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Venue: The Bonington Gallery, Bonington building

This exhibition is curated and hosted by Bonington Gallery.

Research Calendar – 2011-2013

September 19, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

Just to make sense of things before a research meeting next week I wrote out what has happened in research area in last couple of years.

I have been at NTU since 2007 but really it only with closure of course announced in November 2011 that I started investigating research path. Partly out of necessity and partly out of genuine interest.

Research Calendar

2014

2014 – 28th -29th march – Accepted to deliver paper on Dickens and Illustrator Seymour to ‘Illustration and Narrative Construction‘ conference Paris Universite Paris-Diderot.

2014 – Publication of James Elkins 2nd Edition of Artists with Phds with my illustrations of chapters and stills from Research Odyssey 2013 animation.

2014 Paper ‘2013 a research odyssey: the art object in search of new knowledge’ to be published in Proceedings of DRN Conference 2013

January 24th 2014 – M.A. Completion

2013

2013 November 20th-December 6th ’Drawology’ exhibition – three works from drawing practice as research. Bonington Gallery.

2013 October 24^th-27^th Delivering Animated presentation of ‘The art object in search of new knowledge’ at DRN/Drawing and Cognition co-conference at Columbia University and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York.

2013 September – Asked to submit a chapter to forthcoming publication ‘Phenomenology of Drawing’ I.B.Tauris. Edited by Deborah Harty.

2013 August – Asked to submit some chapters to a possible Bloomsbury publication ‘Transmedia’ text-book co-editing with Julius Ayodeji.

2013 July.10th-12th – Delivered paper at Film-Philosophy’ conference Amsterdam on ‘Alexander Mann’s Gnats’.

2013 June12th – Paper ‘ Can grey ravens fly: Beyond Fraylings categories’ accepted for publication in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education Journal (Sage)

2013 March 7th Featured in Times Higher Education magazine article as research practitioner in art. (Illustrated with cartoon)

2013 February Paper ‘Can grey ravens fly’ published in proceedings of DRN conference Loughborough.

M.A. by Registered Project restarted with new Proposal and supervision by Deborah Harty under ‘Fine Art’.

2012

2012 September 12th – 14th – Drawing and Cognition – STEAM Conference – Wimbledon School of Art – Invited artist

2012 September 11th and 12th – Drawing Research network Conference 2012 – Loughborough University. Delivered a paper as cartoon of ‘Grey Ravens’.

2012 7th-8th Swansea University ‘Practice makes perfect’ conference. Paper ‘Frayling Categories’. Submitted to Sage new voices issue.

2012 March 2nd and 3rd Mostyn Arts Centre – ‘With Humorous Intent’ – Symposium – guest speaker.

2011

2011 December Interview with Matthew Collings in Matter Magazine Issue 1 (now Modern Matter magazine)

2011 September 13th – East Midlands Post Graduate student conference – ‘Perspectives on landscape’. Poster on Track project

2011 July 7th Nottingham Trent Research Conference (Staff) – ‘Track’ M.A. RPT presentation.

M.A. by Registered project ‘Multimedia’ September 2010 –September 2011 – NO SUPERVISION

Studio Diary: 8th September. Back to work.

September 8, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

I have been on holiday for two weeks and finally went back to studio to pick up threads today.

Throughout July I was working on illustrations for the second edition of James Elkins’s book ‘Artists and Phds’ due out in 2014 I believe. So far I have completed half of the sixteen or so pictures required. This is a distant shot of the pictures on wall of studio. I do not want to show in greater detail until published. An interesting project especially as one of the chapter authors I worked with was my ex-Dean.

I also have received funding to attend the Drawing Research network conference in New York at end of October and now have 8 weeks to complete animated paper on ‘Phd and New Knowledge’! So I going to be more than busy especially with start of new term, new changes at NTU and all….

I also picked up a Blundell haring drawing board in Oxfam which much sturdier than my previous and great for drawing 🙂

Studio Diary: 31st July: Ray Howard Jones

July 31, 2013 / shaun belcher / 2 Comments

Above: Ray Howard Jones at shed in Wales opposite Skomer Island and drawings by SDB

Been a busy time since came back from Amsterdam hardly had chance to sit down in studio.

I have been preparing for a charity music gig which now out of the way ( Black Star Horses at the Maze) for Nottingham Hospitals Charity Prostate Cancer Appeal.

Also been asked for material from 1991 related to a female artist known as Ray Howard Jones who is subject of a retrospective at Tenby Museum with a catalogue written by poet Tony Curtis. I have provided photographs and sketches from a visit I made to Skomer to visit Ray with the Rocket Boys ( David and Jonathan) in August 1991.

The sketchbook can be seen here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/157187608/Skomer-Sketchbook-1991

Here a sample and a couple of pictures Ray herself (aged 89!) outside her tin shed studio..a one off if ever there was one and one of the few accredited female War Artists with works in the Imperial War Museum. A deserved retrospective. Rumour is she changed her name from Rosemary to Ray to avoid sexism in art world. She also spent twenty years living with the wonderful British landscape photographer Ray Moore.

Alexander Mann’s Gnats – Conference Paper for Film-Philosophy conference.

July 8, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

Managed to write 4000 words for presentation Wednesday. Been doing nothing else last two weeks to get it done. To get into working shape for submission needs to be 5-7,000 words APA rigorous!

Here the document I taking as loaded onto Scribd earlier.

View this document on Scribd

James Elkins: Artists with PhDs (2nd Ed.) commission.

June 16, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

A very busy week last week didn’t make it into actual studio but I can officially announce that James Elkins has asked me to illustrate all the chapters for his second edition of ‘Artists with PhDs’. I have drawn two test images and feedback from Jim was he’d like more detailed and weird which fits with my love of Alisdair Gray‘s artwork for Lanark and Tony Fitzpatrick’s work. I also been compared to Adelheid Mers work which I had never seen until today and which fascinating in terms of vizualizing research. There seems to be a very strong Chicago School of Art connection here. Which figures as I first made contact with Mark Staff Brandl through the Chicago art-blog Sharkforum which sadly now offline although Mark’s Swiss Sharkforum still active). This came about through my Americana Reviewing and love of music. It all somehow connects 🙂

Here the first two test images for chapters from the book – not telling which ones 🙂

Studio Diary: June 4th: Mutt in Space

June 5, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

No drawing this week so far due to other matters. I did get to studio briefly but mostly I have been laying the groundwork for a busy summer. I have an extended commission. A paper on early cinema and the rest of M.A. to complete by October. To manage all this I am on a tight schedule and I already called in help with animating the DRN paper from my excellent animating colleague Andy Love. His initial experiments with R.Mutt in Space below 🙂 For the rest of his super work go to his blog here: http://recursiveworlds.com

R Mutt Experiment 2… from Andy Love on Vimeo.

Studio Diary: May 23rd – Cartoon Droodles?

May 23, 2013 / shaun belcher / 0 Comments

My biggest inspiration 🙂 A book called Droodles which I got from a jumble sale when a kid ….most famous droodle is the cover of Zappa’s Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch (below)..so now you know is not pop art, minimalism or a profound theory is DROODLES 🙂 These drawings are profound meditations on the hinterland and liminal spaces between inbetween-ness in a multi disciplinary meditation on landscape, time and sequentiality specifically ‘the first and second sequential ‘moments’ (my theoretical tagging of the invention of ‘cinema’ or was it animation? (1888 LePrince) and the second moment ‘youtube’ 1995….)..so now you know..then again it could be a droodle…