Miriam Hanid

A few weeks ago on the Saturday morning (7th Nov), my mum and I went to the National Museum of Scotland to see an exhibition/demonstration of "The Silversmith's Art".

The silversmith who was there was Miriam Hanid, who is based in Suffolk. I really like her work because it is inspired by natural things such as water and wood. One of the pieces she had in the exhibit was "Deluge" which was formed on a piece of wood.

"Deluge"
Dish, 2009

I also really liked the silver beaker she made...

and the vase...

The demonstration part was not much of a demonstration but it was still very interesting seeing her at work.  She was working on a piece of silver which, when finished, will be a shallow bowl with a snowflake design on the inside.

I really enjoyed this trip and found some of the different examples of silver-smithing very interesting to look at. I might also be interested in trying to work with silver myself at some point in the future.

Hawick Museum Gallery Trip

On Wednesday 18th, we went on a trip to Hawick to see the exhibition of "The Debatable Landscape" where one of our tutors, Siobhan O'Hehir, has some work displayed.

Introduction to the exhibit

Personally, I prefer landscapes or more natural scenes than work of people or buildings, so this trip was great for me. As a whole the exhibition was quite interesting, seeing some of the different ways that artists respond to landscapes. I usually tend to pay more attention to the more representational paintings but today I actually found myself  being drawn to some of the more contemporary/abstract pieces.

These are Siobhan's paintings from the gallery...

 

This (above) is one of my favourite paintings from the exhibition because it reminds me of golden fields in summer. 

 

I really like this painting because it reminds me of a frosty lake with a hill in the background and sunrise with the pale pinks in the sky. I think it also looks like there is a small boat in the bottom right-hand corner.


I also saw some of Liz Douglas' work and thought it was quite an interesting way to show the landscape as she used animals and diatoms as her subject matter instead of the more traditional; sky, hills, trees, etc.

 

 

 

I am sort of familiar with Liz Douglas' work because when I was in second year there was a joint project between art and science so we went out  to Whitlaw Mosses to get water samples and took them back to the science labs to use the microscope to see diatoms (microscopic organisms) and then tried to make 3D models of them using willow branches which had been soaking in water to make them more pliable. I don't have any photos of these but I remember quite enjoying the project because it combined two subjects that I enjoyed.



This last picture obviously isn't a contemporary painting but I did say that I usually pay more attention to representational work.

I love the calm atmosphere in this painting. I think the contemporary paintings are nice too but they tend to leave my head sore because the bright colours and abstract approach can make them seem quite busy; so it was good to have some older, more traditional landscapes in the gallery as well.

SWI Show Selkirk 21 Nov 2015

This Saturday was the Selkirkshire Federation show for the Women's Institute and this year I entered the art class with a pastel drawing, a montage of four photos and a watercolour landscape.

I was so happy when I saw that I had got second for my photos and pastel drawing and a third for my watercolour landscape.


I also had a decoupage flower for the community table.

I got 6 1/2 out of ten because the judges wanted a painted background(!) whereas the committee and I had decided to use black to make sure the flower stood out.

Clouds part 4

On Thursday morning, my sister and I were walking from the bus station/"Interchange" to college and I had to stop to take some pictures of the clouds because... well you'll see....

Probably one of the very few times I'm grateful for getting up quite early, (also helped by the days getting shorter).

Working From Home

On Friday, I worked at home so that I could try to concentrate on doing some annotation for my Narrative Image Making (NIM) unit without having other students around. I am finding the annotation side of all my units hard because I either don't know what to say or I'm not sure how to phrase it so that it makes sense to other people and not just me. I also struggle to make sure what I write is actually interesting and not repetitive especially when I have a lot of images to annotate.


I worked a bit on the practical side of my Extended Specialist Techniques as well by adding a few more "links" on to the crisp packet "chain" that I am going to try to make into the neckline of a top. So far I have used 26 links and still need about the same again. I am also trying to only use ready salted Baked crisp packets.

 

I am also going to make a roman-style cuff bracelet using lollypop sticks, paperclips and crisp packets...

and a necklace that resembles a zip...

I will probably use a pen to make the lines on the lollypop stick.


I also edited some photos for my Location Photography unit...

I love the photos of the broom and the first pink-y/purple-y flower.

I edited the photo of the three bird's-foot-trefoil a few times and then used "paint" tool to get rid of the light in the background because I felt it was distracting from the flowers. After that I decided to lower the brightness of the image to make it slightly less blindingly white...

I like these photos and can imagine buying them as a photo canvas.


I feel like I did more work at home on Friday than I would have done at college because I wasn't getting distracted by other students or break-times because I could just get on with it rather than people walking in and out of the room all the time.