Life room life

When I started my Foundation teaching there were three life models, all on full-time contracts. Anne, Mavis and Rosie. They were a combined force to be reckoned with, led by Anne and ably support by Rosie who was chatty and charming and Mavis who was solid and more like someone’s mum.

Anne combined her job with overseeing life-mode provision for everywhere else in Leeds, so if you needed a model for a Swarthmore adult education class you simply asked Anne and one would appear, and if not Anne would be there instead. Anne seemed to do all sorts, if you had a party or opening she would be there washing glasses and cleaning up; she watered the plants and generally kept the life-room tidy. The models hung around the models’ room, (a tiny room between floors where the bridge between Vernon Street and Rossington Street is now), Anne smoking constantly and reading between sessions.

One of the fascinating things about Anne was that she would never take her glasses off. She wore those flyaway slightly 50s style glasses that turned up at the edges. Black framed and distinctive, they appeared in all the life drawings, no matter how much you might recommend to students that they didn’t need to draw them in, they did. The students were of course right. The glasses were integral to Anne’s personality and without them she would have lost her identity.

People would remark on her image when students went for interviews. After a while she became ‘famous’, a Leeds brand, degree courses remarking on her presence in portfolios every year as if her image was an integral part of a Jacob Kramer Foundation experience, that and the vast sea of charcoal of course.

As years went by Anne started to become disturbed by the introduction of computers. The first ones to come in were put in a room directly below the models’ changing room. By then (it must be about 1993/4) I was line managing all the models, (only Anne and Mavis were left now, Rosie had moved to Harrogate) and had to deal with any issues that came up. Life-room etiquette mainly, but other interesting issues such as where does a life-model smoke? Anne of course still carrying on smoking as she modeled, or trying to, the new regulations about non smoking environments were just coming in and as far as she was concerned, these regulations were for other people not her.

The computers were praying on Anne’s mind. She was starting to get voices in her head and she believed that the computers were trying to take her over. This went on for a while and I tried to get the models’ room moved, but by then Mavis was getting ‘wobbly’. She was unable to stop shaking, and as she had started putting a bit of weight on over the years, the wobble caused her whole body to move as if she was a jelly on a vibrator. A challenge to draw if there ever was one. Eventually as the two of them were getting close to 60, they were pensioned off and the college would never again have life models. The life room went and was never replaced; the idea of life drawing falling out of the curriculum like so many things. Anne was probably right about those computers, they were taking over. Room after room of them now exist, but nowhere to draw.

Anne was essential to the life-drawing sessions, not just as a model, but as someone who willingly participated in all the odd and strange things she was asked to do.

Another time in the future perhaps for a blog post on life drawing classes though. I’m bitter about their demise, and think that something has gone that linked the process of becoming an art student back into the dim past. They were sessions I used to love. You could slowly build up students’ ability to see, and at the same time add layer after layer of concepts and ideas about looking and use the form of the model as a sort of coat-hanger for ideas. Not perhaps the traditional idea of why and how a life-room should be used, but it was used and very well I thought.  

Discords at 8 o’clock: Gavin and colour

My first experience of teaching colour theory was done alongside Gavin Stuart. He had a set of colour notebooks, full of complicated formula which he had developed over the years and which he referred to as ways to develop particular types of colour harmonies or discords. I found it very difficult to understand at the time and invested a lot of time and energy trying to sort out what was going on.

I shall attempt to unpick my understanding of what he was getting at.

Students would start by mixing oil colours and would begin applying them to their sheets of prepared paper. Nothing could happen until there was a certain amount of coverage.  While students were engaged Gavin would instruct me into the arcane arts of colour.

Gavin seemed to have several ways of thinking about colour, which were laid one over the other in order to achieve the necessary tension that would create a colour ‘happening’. The first was based on the Munsell colour system. This system is a way of thinking about colour relationships within a sphere. The central axis of the sphere would have white at the top and black at the bottom, (tonal value) around the outside it was divided around the equator by hue (primary, secondary and tertiary colour) and the slices that ran from the central axis to the surface would be saturations. (colour purity).  This meant that around the equator all colours would be of a mid tonal value and at the North Pole colours would be light tints and at the South Pole dark tints.

A slice taken through the equator would in effect give you a color wheel, but one restricted to mid tonal values in the centre and full saturations of hue around the edge.

If the colour wheel was thought of as a clock, you could then identify colours as to time, for instance yellow could be at 12 o’clock, red at 4 o’clock and blue at 8 o’clock, if you wanted a more precise measurement, you could use the 360⁰ of the circle to identify specific colour hues.

However Gavin had another overlaying system, which was that there was something called ‘normal pigment value’.  I.e. a yellow was normally seen as a bright colour, but a blue would normally be much darker. I.e. the natural full saturated tonal values of each hue on the colour wheel are different, yellow being a lighter value than red and violet being even darker in value. Positioning within the colour wheel (sphere) coupled with unexpected tonal value, was where Gavin’s number system came in. He was very interested in discords. His definition of a discord, was that first of all the tonal value of a particular hue would be taken away from its "natural" value. For example, blue, being a naturally dark valued hue would have to be mixed as a very light value, for example a powder blue. Whilst yellow being a naturally light valued hue would be mixed as perhaps a mustard. The now unexpected tonal value would be placed next to another colour, so that their expected tonal values were reversed. E.g. the powder blue adjacent to the mustard yellow.

In my first teaching session Gavin had asked me to pick out 8 o’clock discords, I of course didn’t know what they were. I was shown the powder blue- mustard yellow as one, but others could be found at any 120⁰ angle relationship.  This was where his colour notes came in. He had worked out all sorts of mathematical permutations of possible discords, based on split-complementary colour schemes, the rectangle (tetradic) colour schemes, or his square colour scheme. These were schemes that allowed you to choose specific colours found according to an imaginary triangle, square, or rectangle that you placed over the colour wheel. One combination I remember would point towards lavenders being brought together with very light pinks, the discord chosen from what I remember, should be built around the primary colour which is closest to the colour identified within a composition as one that needed working on or adjusting. For example, if the student has an orange patch of paint that isn’t working, or feels ‘dead’, the closest primary hues to orange are red and yellow. As you can't have a light discord of yellow since it is already naturally light in value, you would choose a pink as a starting point. Now apply the pink mix and push it into the orange or push it alongside it, let the one expand alongside or into the other until you find a satisfactory relationship.

This push of one colour into another was vital. Colours had to find their own form and expansion. Put a violet patch onto a white surface. Initially it will read as a dark. Keep spreading it and at some point it will sing violet. Do the same with a yellow and it will sing at a different expansion.  This aspect of the colour session was very close I always felt to the expanding blob experience. (See growing the blob post) Watching and keeping note on how one colour changed another was very important. 

Most of the students used palette knives, colour had to be mixed really well, knives cleaned between each colour mix, ‘cleanliness’ of mix with no dirty left over bits of colour was insisted upon. The shapes as they grew were organic. Initially responding to the white, as other colours started to surround first put down ones, initial decisions would have to be re-visited. Sometimes colours would have to be scraped off, Gavin seemed to really love this part. He always remarked that Alan Davie was good at this, Davie according to Gavin, often scraping off everything except for one small area and then telling the student that this was the only bit working. “Now”, Davie would state, “re-build the whole fxxking thing from there”.  (Gavin like Davie was from Edinburgh and they had got on really well when Davie was a Leeds University Gregory Fellow and teaching down in the Art College). 

The interesting thing for me was that students did indeed come up with very beautiful colour mixes. I was never sure they understood any of Gavin’s theories, but they seemed to get there simply by making good clean mixes and having something to aim for that forced them to use colours outside their comfort zones.  Above all they had to look and look hard.

Colour as it was taught on Foundation was something everyone seemed to have a strong opinion on. So I shall return to this several times. It caused much confusion amongst students, as the staff had many and very different hymn sheets. I was initially just learning, so would soak up anything that came my way. At least I’d had a traditional grounding in basic colour theory, so could begin to sort out the various approaches, but for students I’m not sure what they took from this, except for the belief that if you were intense and totally involved with looking and mixing eventually the colour would work.

The key to all this I felt was a story Norbert Linton told me about when I met him once. Norbert used to be the college librarian during the time Harry Thubron was in charge. Harry would make all the staff join in with sessions, believing that everyone should be part of the experience. Norbert had spent a day away from the library making colour squares; surrounding one colour with another, trying by applying different mixes to optically adjust the same neutral colour by placing it within warms and cools, alongside saturated and de-saturated mixes etc. At the end of the session Thubron had a crit. He never once mentioned the colour, all he spoke about were the various ways that the oil from the paint had spread out and soaked into the paper surfaces. Linton was inspired by this, aware for the first time that for an artist the moment of looking was always paramount and that the focus was on what was interesting not on what people thought the situation should be about. There was always something else, something unexpected to see, something magical in even the most basic exercise.

Assessments

This week is assessment week for first years. I have to fill in feedback sheets and mark them according to learning outcomes.

This is where I start to get the collywobbles. These are the learning outcomes for the Transformations brief:

Code 4B4: Explore different methods of recording information from a range of sources: 20 percent

Code 4C3: Demonstrate the applications of material techniques, processes and practices in an appropriate form: 40 percent

Code 4D3: Use drawing skills / visualization techniques to communicate concepts and ideas: 40 percent

It’s all rubbish to me and makes no sense whatsoever, so I’m reduced to making either a stab in the dark or going back to older criteria such as, was the student engaged and interested and did they make anything with some purpose and commitment. What if they used drawing skills to discover something? I thought graphic designers communicated concepts and fine artists were involved with other stuff, and what is ‘an appropriate form’. I look hard for inappropriate forms and mark them very highly.

These are the answers to fill in the boxes if you can’t think of anything to say. I didn’t use any but they are indicative of where education at degree level now stands. Formulaic pap.

Transformations

70+

You have understood and applied the key concepts introduced within the first brief. Well done and congratulations in passing the first element of your degree programme.

Presentation is another key issue and you have been brave enough to single out one piece and present it appropriately, well done.

The final work selected for presentation is of an excellent quality. You have employed a number of drawing techniques, experimented with a wide range of materials and processes and used the workshop inductions well.

Your studio book is excellent and documents information from a wide range of sources. Make sure you continue working at this standard.

60+

Don’t forget the key issue that lies at the centre of the module. Ideas come out of working with materials and processes, the more pieces of work you have developed the easier it will be to select and evaluate. 

Presentation is another key issue and you have been brave enough to single out one piece and present it appropriately, well done.

The final work selected for presentation is of a very good quality. You have employed a number of drawing techniques, experimented with a very good range of materials and processes and used the workshop inductions well.

Your studio book is very good; you could however improve the questioning and possibility development in relation to the images used.

50+

Art work evolves at different paces and you will hopefully have experienced this if only to a small extent in this short module. This may mean that your work has not evolved as fast as you would like it too or it may have changed so quickly you don’t feel you have had time to properly evaluate what has happened. Don’t worry, it’s early days and art isn’t like maths, there is no right or wrong, just a series of changes that unfold into hopefully surprising new territories. 

Presentation is another key issue and you could have been brave enough to single out one piece and present it appropriately.

The final work selected for presentation is of a good quality. You have employed a number of drawing techniques, experimented with a good range of materials and processes and used the workshop inductions well.

Your studio book is good. It is though important that you start pushing this area of your work further as it will become a vital underpinning element to your practice as a whole.

40+

Remember that one of the most important things for you to do this year is to find a creative strategy/s that suits your way of working and ensures that you can always be busy.

Presentation is another key issue and you could have been brave enough to single out one piece and present it appropriately. You have employed some drawing techniques, experimented with a fair range of materials and processes and engaged in the workshop inductions.

The final work selected for presentation is satisfactory. Your studio book is satisfactory. However, it is important that you start pushing this area of your work further as it will become a vital underpinning element of your practice as a whole.

I’m glad that the student will always be busy. To think I actually wrote bits of this stuff. Anyway done now and feedback next week. The hardest thing for me is that the students lose two weeks working time, when they could be working in the studios, they are hanging about fretting over what mark they will get. Studios are locked down for assessments and then the following week students have to get one to one tutorials for their assessment feedback. I could have just had a word or two in their ear in the studio and confirmed that time spent making was the best way to learn.

Rain drawings

Sometimes on Foundation we had life drawing on an evening. One particular session involved drawing the model as if she was sitting under a rain storm. Working at easels on A1 paper, students would be asked to draw pencil lines coming down from the top of the paper. The drawing would focus on lines changing in intensity as they fell down the page and found important spatial relationships.  As these lines ‘hit’ the model they could be modulated, not changing direction but adjusted spatially so that a response was made to whether one form existed in front or behind another. The key artist was Giacometti. He was seen as a vital example of the search for a figure in space. The concentration would be on the searching, the vertical lines seeking relationships between points such as the end of a knee or the top of a head.

Usually using soft pencils, (2B-6B) (students would be asked to keep these really sharp, preferably sharpened with a knife rather than a pencil sharpener, as this produced a more sensitive mark) and drawing from the shoulder; students would be asked to consider the relationship between stance at the easel and ability to watch the drawing and the situation at the same time. If you were too close to the drawing, you could not scan properly between observations of the model and the growing image. If you used a fixed arm, with movement coming from the shoulder, you had more chance of achieving a long straight line. Control was therefore hard won and arms would ache after a while. (As always rubbing out was as important as adding marks).

The ‘trick’ was to be aware of the floor plane. Rain would fall in front of and behind the model. If you could establish some lines ‘stopping’ at regular intervals in response to carefully measured points on the floor, the space would begin to open out, then as other important points were established; shoulders, bridge of the nose or tops of legs for instance, a ghost like image would begin to appear.  The figure and the space would be inseparable, the advantage of the lines being that you had to draw ‘through’ the space, only changes in line quality revealing that the space had been ‘occupied’ for a moment by the mass. Each line could be adjusted in thickness and mark weight, but lines were never to be made into ‘ribbons’, they had to perceptually sit within the overall mark field. In fact what worked best was a type of atmospheric perspective, sharp edged dark lines moving into the forward spaces, lighter, softer lines sitting behind. The moments of finding the mass within the space would be subtle hardenings or gaps in lines that allowed the space to emerge through the vertical matrix.

Again this was a difficult thing to do, because students wanted to ‘illustrate’ the situation, rather than finding through looking. It was also a very particular ‘reading’ of Giacometti. Students would be told that in a sculpted portrait he was searching for the back of the head as much as the front. By paring away he would eventually close the search by reducing the head (or body) to virtually nothing, hence his ‘stick figures’. The rain was seen as a metaphor for this struggle.

Growing the blob

One of the first sessions I taught on Foundation was with Gavin Stuart. Gavin had been there a long time and had worked under Harry Thubron. He was very intense and at times hard to understand but he totally believed in looking as a moment of perceptual wonder.  The session lasted a full half day, we used easels, with A1 paper fixed onto drawing boards and we got through a lot of charcoal.

The students were introduced to the concept of figure and ground, then an initial charcoal mark was made on the surface of a piece of paper and students were initially asked to consider it. We spent some time reviewing these marks. What sort of energy did they have? Were they directional? (I.e. implying movement) How did they sit on the paper? Did they sit behind the surface or on top of it? Did the mark have an illustrative quality? (If it did, this was a bad thing).

The next step was to consider the energy field that the mark occupied and to extend the mark out to the limits of this field. Students returned to the drawing carefully growing the mark, it was becoming more blob like now, a shape rather than a mark. After a while they would be asked to stop and we would again look at the results.

The focus of this stage became more about the form and shape of the expanded image. What was the dialogue between it and the edges of the paper? Was it still moving off in any one direction, was it attracted to or responding to one edge of the paper more than another?

Finally regard was centred on the positive and negative issues. As the blob expanded was it making you more aware of the white paper? At this stage the white paper was still dominant, so once thoughts as to dynamic and energy were considered, how far could the blob be expanded, taking care to never let it become the dominant? Students were asked to seek the point whereby the blob form as image, started to oscillate with the white ground in such a way that image and ground could begin to flicker between each other. 

Again students would grow the form, carefully expanding it, rubbing in the charcoal to create dense blacks and then cutting back the edges if it was felt one side had more attraction than another to a particular edge. All the time Gavin and myself would circulate pointing out overly dramatic forms that threw attention on to the blob and not the image as a whole.

Finally we would have a crit; pointing out which forms sat in perfect tension between positive and negative and the dynamics of those forms that didn’t. The differences in blobs would be considered, edge qualities, form changes as the organic shape had to reconcile itself with the rectangle, each blob like form being of a family of form not unlike the forms discovered when students had had to find shapes between a circle and a square (see the Hawk and Handsaw post).

Then of course there was the charcoal dust issue. Working at easels meant that as students worked up the surface of the drawings a cascade of charcoal dust was falling and making traces of itself as the drawing progressed. The dust would pile up on the easel’s ledge and sometime leave a line at the bottom edge of the paper. This issue would become part of the debate around awareness and process. I must admit I was more interested in this than Gavin. Coming from a more conceptual background, the embedding of process within art works was fascinating, and in particular the traces of situations as a type of physical memory was of particular interest.  I don’t think Gavin was at all interested in this; it was an optical engagement he was looking for not a conceptual one.

Readings such as is the black a hole in space, or is the white the space and the black the object, were debated and finally Gavin would pick out what he considered the ‘authentic’ images.

This is another fascinating issue and one I think students found very hard to follow. Gavin was looking for the form that ‘found itself’. That wasn’t too self conscious in its making. This meant that any student ‘over designing’ the image would be told that their drawing was inferior to another where the image had just ‘happened’.  It was often the brighter students who over designed, simply because they had twigged what was going on and they were following the principles as they understood them. I would have probably done this myself if I had joined Gavin’s class, so it was hard on them to see Gavin picking out some poor lost student’s work as being the best example of what he was looking for. I sort of got it, but it was counter-productive in some ways. There was this need for naivety and therefore freshness and rawness and yet there was also a call for a very sophisticated awareness of visual language.  The two were a hard fit; therefore some students who couldn’t reconcile this were disenfranchised. Sometimes labelled ‘designers’ and not ‘artists’ which was pretty dam awful really as this was a diagnostic course, the very diagnosis at times being a value judgement that regarded design as an inferior occupation. This didn’t happen that often but enough for those students who chose the design route to feel like second class citizens.

The invisible elastic membrane. Carving a line on both sides

The invisible elastic membrane. carving a line on both sides

Derek’s comments on ‘carving a line’ reminded me of another approach to this.

When attention was dropping, as it often did over a long drawing session, there were ways to get people to refocus; in particular when students were engaged in a line drawing that was meant to describe a figure in space. This could be a life drawing session or an early in the year drawing situation working from large geometric forms made from a metal space-frame and chalk-line and string geometries that ran across the studio floor.

Patrick (again it was usually Patrick as he was such a good theatrical) would stride out to the centre of the room holding two straight lengths of 2 by 1 timber. He would proceed to lift them up, holding them at arms’ length and then clap them together. The noise of course getting everyone’s attention.

He would then explain that these two lengths of wood had been coated in a powerful glue and that if he put them together he would find it very difficult to get them apart. Then putting the two lengths together he would mime the attempt to separate them. Struggling manfully he would fail, begin to sweat and struggle with himself, and at some point would ask a student to help him or someone like myself. (A quick whisper into said student’s ear to the effect that this was all mime play) and then both would be pulling away, Patrick holding one length the student another. Gradually as if trying to pull away from a very powerful magnet the lengths would come apart, sometimes Patrick would appear to stumble with the effort and he would allow the lengths to snap back together, but eventually a trembling shaking pair of hands would be holding the two vertical lengths apart. He would then, taking both lengths into his own hands, keep the tension going but proceed to tip first one and then the other off the vertical. As he did this he would get everyone to watch the invisible membrane that surrounded the lengths and think of it as a sticky thin film that could be twisted as it was stretched between the two lengths.  Standing the two lengths on the floor he would then make then both vertical again and this time slowly and carefully move the tops apart, now creating subtle angles between each other and the floor.

Now students could look again at the environment they were drawing, could they see the membrane existing invisibly all the time within the object divided space they were drawing. The two lengths were he would state, ‘carving’ the space. Cutting into it in very subtle ways that could be re-created by carving the lines they were drawing.

Carving the lines in this case often meant rubbing into the line from either side, shaping the lines very carefully, so that they started to bend into the space. Sometimes a line might have one section almost completely removed, but then re-instated as another line was adjusted and the first line now went too far back perhaps. Constant attention and adjustment was needed and as the paper built up a patina of mark surface because of the constant need for adjustment by rubbing out, these lines seemed to naturally start to fit, as if the energy of erasure was preparing the surface for the job in hand, each new mark now easier to establish because of the soft grey surface of erasure it was now bedding itself into.

This sort of relates to finding the surface of the paper, another eye tuning exercise, but more of that another time.

Terry Hammill sent me this image of Patrick Oliver in action. Never without the Park Drive of course.

The Trip

There was a course trip for first year’s this week, we spent Monday to Wednesday at Featherstone Castle, which is in the middle of nowhere about 2 miles from Hadrian’s wall.

Course trips for first year students are seen as essential, not so much as a chance to work elsewhere or to visit places of cultural interest, put as a bonding mechanism. This is something very important, as group dynamics are vital to the success of the program. We are entering the forth week and already cliques have started to form and some students as individuals are shy or socially awkward. These groups need stirring round a little and opportunities for new relationships set up. The fact that Featherstone Castle is remote, very run down, lacks amenities, has no wi fi access and is run by an eccentric elderly gentleman, who tells very good stories is perfect for the job. The additional fact that it has extensive grounds that slope down to the river, including both woodland and overgrown gardens is also useful.

For the staff most of the time is spent overseeing cooking and preparing food, as well as organizing 50 mainly young people who are in cold dormitories and yearning for some central heating.

We do work of course and for some students it is a very productive time, and a chance for them to test out where they can work and more importantly whether or not the studio environment is the ideal place for them.

The Transformation brief is still running, but there is another brief to be set going ‘Materials and Processes’.

I give a talk on how using using different materials and their associated working processes can transform things. I look at a range of artists using processes as diverse as plywood forming to glass blowing, digging holes to throwing sticks. The key point being that everything can be crafted, all activities demanding care and attention to how they are done; the craft of walking being as important as the craft of stone carving.  Initially I’m looking at how ideas could possibly be transformed by building them using different materials, but I also have to separate out ideas into two parts so that I can explain the new brief. The new ‘Materials and Processes’ brief is one that runs throughout the year and students are required to keep evidence of every material and process they have used, whether it is welding or log splitting, it all has to be documented and recorded, and then finally reflected upon. As always I find these briefs far too restrictive and narrow, but at least it’s a clear and simple task to do.

At one point I show them some of Erwin Wurm’s ‘One Minute Sculptures” and make one myself by trapping as many DVD cases as I can between my body and the wall, I make a mess of it and end up with only three holding my weight, but they get the point. It can be fun; deal with fundamental things and by using a camera you can capture the vital moment.

I gradually find myself weaving a story between meaning making and documentation, finally arriving at a point where I try and get the students to see that they have in effect arrived in some sort of arcadia. A space of transformation, in effect an enchanted island, cut off from the world where they can themselves reinvent who they are and what they do. I end up singing them Ariel’s song ‘Where the bee sucks’ from The Tempest, for them it’s a really odd thing for someone to do, but hopefully it makes the point memorable.

On the second day students get a very different lecture, the owner of the castle gives a talk on its history, this is fascinating and includes ghost stories and tales of prisoner of war camps for Italian and German soldiers. What is interesting is that material evidence can be found for all the stories either in the various building stages of the castle, or traces of long gone camp huts and a cinder 400-meter running track built by POWs. 

I follow his hard to follow act with a reminder to the students of how the stories are materially evidenced and that materials therefore hold in themselves other forms of potential, associations, memories, and possibilities for new stories. 

One of his stories included the walking of 4,000 POWs through a local bluebell wood to the camp where they were to be billeted for the duration of the war. I picked this image out as something that could be visualized in ways that left the results still open to interpretation but also making a direct response to the story.

Apparently the same bluebell wood still exists and bluebells still come out in Spring. An individual could walk through those bluebells 4,000 times in order to recreate the event, (we had looked at Richard Long’s walk traces as an example of craft the day before) however this time the link between walking as art and the idea of art as ‘history painting’ could become conjoined.

So on the second day students were sent out to work with an extra issue to consider, materials have histories and cultural associations, do these offer potential for further transformations or new ideas?  

Unlike many similar trips in the past we get very little time to see them working, once briefed, students disperse out into the grounds and we go back to food preparation and/or cleaning the kitchen. The food is though fantastic and crafted to high levels not only in preparation but presentation. This hopefully percolates through and several students make comments as to how seriously we take the cooking. We tell them, “Whether mixing a colour or making a soup, care and attention to detail is vital”.  

As evening entertainment we have a selection of artist DVDs to show, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy”, ‘Lust for Life”, ‘Pollock”, ‘Basquiat’ etc. It’s interesting how many of them have made choices to come into the profession based on the artist myths as played out in these sort of films. We remind them that their own profession and it’s myths, are at times a subject matter for artists.