Trust New Art- “Since 2009, Trust New Art has been continuing this important creative legacy by connecting people to our places through contemporary arts.”
Trust New Arts is an art program lead by the National Trust in partnership with Arts Council England and Arts Council of Wales. they have previously work with 300 artists. The projects are planned 3-4 years in advance, (this is handy for me to know!) this could be something to become aware of in 1-2 years time. They work in an active commissioning way rather than applications, this would be where I would target them through social medias, as well as this they often advertise open calls through Facebook and twitter, These opportunities are currently closed at the moment due to COVID.
The national trust offers opportunities to artists for residencies to use the National trusts heritage and landscape for inspiration for their work.
This would be something I would be interested in pursuing as an end goal. Having the availability of natural inspiration, a place to collect and forage materials and reflect. from what I can see they only usually except established artists so this would be something to aim for after the initial 5 years. this would also be a great opportunity to widen my inspiration beyond locally.
The National trust looks to be connected to arts council England and Currently offers commissions and residencies for a number of their properties. They are currently advertising the Holy Island of Lindisfarne for an artist residency. This shuts this year, although I am not in the position to apply yet, it is interesting to see how often these get offered up and the variety of locations they offer.
From what I can see, they like the artists to have work that is inspired by nature, developing and widening their process, working from site. I have found a previous application PDF document for a residency for Quarry Bank, Wilmslow, Cheshire. Explaining the selection process and the opportunity. Although I would not be interested in this residency it is helpful for me to see the application process.
This is interesting to see what is required for application, they state on their website that they take any artist at a professional stage of their career, although this could potentially be me after graduation I think it would be something I would get more benefit from when I have settled into my practice further.
It is beneficial to know the funds and what is covered in the residency, an artist fee, travel and material costs. It also states in the document you get given a 3 bedroom apartment form the duration of the residency.
In order for my work to be seen by the right people, I need to be making very specific hashtags. I looked at artists and paper makers I follow, especially the more successful ones to identify who they target through social media and how, do they use photos or videos?
I recently created an art instagram account and I intend for this to be a professional platform to blog what I am doing and what I am creating. I’m not the most confident person with social media, so for me this will be trial and error. I am hoping to use consistency through having a website, pinterest and instagram account that people can recognise me through all platforms.
During professional practice Ingrid mentioned that you should be making your hashtags so that the right people see then e.g where you want your work, rather than what your work is.
I wanted to experiment with making coloured tissue thin paper to make the textures onto my form. To do this I combined natural and non toxic gouache. I wanted to work through the colours. I started with greys, blues and then purples. I picked the colour ranges to create subtle variations of colour. I was concerned that when I was making the pulp the colourants would be to vivid and distract or create paper that looked artificial and not natural.
I am really pleased with how this paper looks and I am hoping this will look fragile and delicate when organised into ruffles onto my forms.
This is the coloured paper pulp, at this point i was nervous about the shade of the paper. ithe images below show the colour that the paper took, this was a lot more subtle and effective.
Initially I thought using stones and rocks would allow me to get a more organic shape, in theory this should have worked a treat, but in reality this was a bit of a disaster. In order to get the casts of the forms I had to cut through them. In doing this the form lost shape its and the fragility meant that it was almost impossible to rejoin them without making it obvious. I am glad I tried this but I don’t think it is something worth exploring further.
Debbie creates vases using paper pulp, cast using a mould. Using upcycled, recycled or natural materials found. to make these forms practical and usable as household items she coats the inside of the vessels with resin to make them waterproof.
I like the simplicity of the forms as well as the concept behind them, using old or discarded materials to repurpose into something rather beautiful.
the visible joins in the work break up the forms and create interest, could I make a feature of joining my work? this is something I have struggles with, because I am working with hand made paper once it is dried I am applying the paper onto the forms to allow for the forms to be slightly opaque, this causes the forms to be extremely fragile and thin once dried so when it comes to casting something i have to cut the forms and rejoin them, but this is challenging when they are so thin, so this could be something for me to consider.
I am extremely interested in the way things grow over on on other things within nature, this is what inspired this experiment. I really enjoy the way that the texture adds to the form. I think it makes it very visually pleasing and making them delicate.
Moving Forward I want to continue to develop this idea of things “growing” over or within my spherical forms. I want to continue to explore this further with using colour and combining collected materials. I am visualising these forms large scale as a collection, within a woodland or gallery setting. If these forms where then left in a forest they would decompose and return back to nature.
These images are inspiring my development of my sculptural forms, I am particularly interested in the way the organic matter is growing off something else.
These are tree stumps in the Forest covered in moss
To make my creative cv more professional I chose a different colour scheme and chose to brand my name in a way that will make me stand out from a crowd.
Lara Hoad Artist Designer: Maker 