Once again I have been removed from my proposed phased
retirement and thrown back into teaching virtually full-time. Hence the lack of
posts and the fact that I could give no notice of returning back into the fray.
I did deliver the life class and I feel managed to do this
whilst not quite descending into the worst of what these classes offer. Some
sessions were challenging and enlightening and the final three sessions which
were much more student led, began to hint at possible ways to actually work
from the model and not simply repeat what had gone before.
The key sessions were perhaps mid way through, once I had
covered measurement, tone etc. I started to look at perceptual problems, one in
particular being the problem with eye scan and size constancy. Students were
asked to build images of the model, starting by looking at the feet and then
moving up and using a new sheet of paper for each field of gaze. These were
fitted together, to build large-scale images, which were themselves big enough
to stimulate a more ‘phenomenological’ engagement. Each session following took
on another aspect of looking, including a session on portraiture and how we
gradually become aware of ‘likeness’, using soft focus techniques to gradually
shift the face into view.
The collaborative sessions were fine and the mobile phone
portraits in particular were fascinating glimpses into how quickly groups of
students can work with this technology to make convincing pieces. Tiny videos
were synchronised across lines of mobiles, or played off against each other
when blue-tacked into geometric shapes on the wall. One piece in particular
worked very well, students miming an idea that parts of their bodies were
trapped within metal cages, then when run on a stack of mobiles new composite bodies
were made, bodies that were banging and bumping into the ‘frames’ of the
mobiles. The head bumping and bouncing off the sides of the mobile frame,
creating a very physical presence in such a small series of linked frames.
Some of the small-scale joint work made for the miniature
galleries was surprising and fresh and the invention levels were high and
continued on into the construction of the galleries themselves. So perhaps I
needn’t have been too worried about this module. The first mobile phone ‘concert’
was a great success and has already been used as part of an external event
‘icebreaker’. However these were just small drops in an ocean of teaching, once
more having to support all first year modules, as well as taking over
responsibility for third years on Fridays. The Friday work is however one to
one tutorials and small critiques with usually highly engaged students who are
well into what they are doing. This is nearly always a rewarding thing to do,
just exhausting, because at the end of the day you feel as if you have given
out just about every idea that you have. It takes a full day to recover and
then another morning before I can start to think up some new stuff that I can
use on myself.
This working almost full-time will continue and I have just
been asked to carry on doing so until the end of this academic year. So my idea of a gradual reflection will have
to be put off once again. Perhaps next year will be less frenetic.
In the meantime Glynn Thompson has been showing his Damien
Hirst inspired show at the Tetley and Terry and Colin went to see it. I’m not
sure what they thought, but I presume they enjoyed the story. Terry contacted
me to let me know that the experience had reminded him of another couple of
stories, and so it goes, one story sparks off another and so on. Frank Lisle
had told him a story about Jacob Kramer, Kramer not just giving his name to the
art school, but providing a romantic role model of the artist/drunk, a role
model, (according to Glynn’s story) apparently one that Patrick Oliver could
have been responding to when he was a ‘wild young artist’, one of the ‘Teddy
Boys of British Art’ as Patrick liked to remember. Tales of Kramer would have
of course circulated around the Oliver house from the time when Patrick’s father
W. T. Oliver was art critic for the Yorkshire Post. Then of course according to Glynn, a young
Hirst bumped into Patrick, a man who had refined his wild man artist image to
perfection, and who would thus be an inspiration to said young man, and so it
goes, and on we go into an eventual art history. I’m not sure, but a good story
is a good story, myths are always better than reality, they strip out the dross
and boring bits and leave us with what we need.
I am now of course part of the art college story myself. I’m
not sure what role I take anymore, perhaps one of the old codger, or the historian
or maybe it’s a bit like ‘Goodbye Mister Chipps’, O’Toole’s role in that film
cementing another Patrick connection into place. Patrick used to say I was a
good translator, working to help students understand all the things that were
flying over their heads. Perhaps I was worried about bad teaching. I still want
to see the business done well, I still want to see students fired up by
excitement, but putting out stuff too far above their heads can mean they look
up for a moment and miss it, but of course it can mean that some will look up
and keep their eyes posted, these are of course those blessed with good
eyesight and they will go far, but others need someone else to get them to look
up again, and to help them focus, because if there is nothing there when they
first look, they might not do so again.
Patrick’s wife has contacted me and wants to house his old
notebooks somewhere, luckily the college has an archive now and they can go there,
however I'm pretty sure they will need the services of a translator again if
those old notebooks are to make sense to anyone.