Charlotte Walker Art Foundation Degree

Today I went to the ceramics studio to try out the slabbing technique to make my little buildings, and I wanted to use text in them like my test piece so I decided to go out and gather more graphite rubbings so I would have a wider choice of words to use and they are all from around the lace market like last time.   I used my cut out card shapes to press in the window pattern that refers to the Fothergill building on Stoney Street, and I added the words after I had assembled the building so that I could think about the placement. In this piece I rolled the clay out with some lace on top to get a detailed imprint. It serves as a reference to the building's history and the way that nature was very commonly depicted in lace and fabric designs. The Nottingham Contemporary building also features lace patterns in the concrete designed by Louise West, giving a modern building a link to the past.

  I got my test tiles back today and I'm really happy with them, all of the surfaces and colours have unique qualities, particularly the stoneware pieces. Some of the patterns show through better in certain glazes and there is a stronger relief effect compared to ones that used a thicker glaze, I think it will be important to use ones where you can see the patterns underneath since I will be using text and want it to be readable. I think the tiles look good as multiple repeated forms which is promising since I will be making a number of ceramic buildings in a geometric style. There were fewer colour options for the earthware tiles but I really like the 'Christmas tree green' glaze because it's super glossy and deep but you can still see the pattern underneath. The 'honey' glaze has a retro feel and reminds me of the old tiles you might find in some London Underground stations or stairways, I don't really like it though because it looks like decade's wort

  This is how my test tiles came out after being fired. The stoneware ones have a warmer tone to the white clay but I like both of them and look forward to seeing how they look after being glazed. I learnt how to apply the glazes and spent a while trying out lots of different finishes so that I have a lot to choose from when I start making my ceramic buildings. I really like how they look as unfired pieces, the colours are really soft and subdued and the matt surface is smooth to the touch, some of the patterns ageless visible than others but I think they will show through once they have been fired. There were fewer options with the white clay tiles so I had to make multiple of the same colour, but again they look really nice and satisfying unfired and I can't wait to see how they turn out.

At the beginning of the project I talked about looking at pigeons and their relationship with the city. As my ideas developed I have moved on to the prospect of making ceramic buildings with imprinted text and windows reflecting those found around the lace market, however I still want to incorporate pigeons into the work. I experimented with colour by creating this palette based on different shades that appear in a pigeons feathers, which I can then apply to my ceramic buildings when I glaze them. It would be a really subtle reference to the birds but I really like the idea so I'm going to test out different glazes in the ceramics room when I can, and then compare them to my palette.   I did these fine liner sketches of pigeons and added a box behind them where I painted in the different feather colours to make a contrast to the monochrome drawings, and I like it because it is like a heavenly window of light or a strange portal to a different dimension.  I decided to repeat the pro

'Shades of Green' is a Nottingham city artists studio group exhibition, with various works about the longing to be in green spaces during lockdown and the artists reactions to isolation. My favourite was Karl Wilby's 3D piece with the whales and flowers. I think it's really clever how they seem to be floating in the air and are feeding from the flowers like humming birds, it's also really interesting to see whales represented in such a small scale, it's quite surreal and endearing. I like the contrast between the reflective coppery metal flowers and the matt turquoise whales which suggest the colour of oxidised copper, showing a transition from new to old - shiny to rusty - maybe also alluding to the endangerment of the species. There seems to be quite a strong connection between this piece and our fabricated nature project because of how naturalistic the whales are, when in fact they have been made through 3D printing which is as artificial as it gets. The meta

  This is a 3D tissue paper form that I made based on the 'orange peel fungus' that I drew from yesterday. I imitated the mushrooms wavy shapes by taking strips of tissue paper, making a running stitch along the edge, and then pushing the tissue down the thread like a concertina effect. I made multiple of these and combined them onto a black background.  I chose white paper on black because of how effective my leaf shapes looked in this style, and it takes away the naturalistic feel that you can see in the drawings to make something that looks more artificial and fabricated, it also reminds me of a shower loofah which are usually made from plastic.

Ambiguity in art refers to work that is open ended and free to interpret, with no clear or fixed message. 'Still water (The River Thames, for Example)' by Roni Horn is a collection of photographs of sections of the River Thames, but only the water itself is in the frame. This body of work shows the constant change of the river with different colours and surfaces depending on the conditions of that particular moment. From my perspective this type of work is difficult to engage with because it's so different to the way I work, I find it really bleak and cold to look at and think about - we can't see the edge of the water or the bottom of the river, so it feels infinite like an inescapable void. The fact that you can't see anything reflected in the water other than the sky makes it impossible to identify the location, so even though the title of the work provides the answer, the photographs themselves communicate no information at all, which is what makes it so ambiguo

  Today I was going to check up on my test tiles in the ceramics room but the building was closed due to a power outage, so instead I did some more mushroom drawings because I really enjoyed that last time. Before resuming my watercolour paintings I tried out some wax/oil crayons on black paper and I like how vibrant the colours look but I equally enjoy the more subtle shades that the watercolours create. I used  www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-guide/  to find more images to draw from and I found some really interesting mushrooms that I'd never seen before with funny old fashioned names like 'Horn of Plenty' and 'Destroying Angel' but I chose to draw from ones I found most visually interesting rather than the best names. I really like the range of colours, from muted browns to vivid ruby and purple shades, and there are so many different shapes and forms, some of them look quite other-worldly and strange. The website also shows whether the mushrooms poisonous and to me

 Authorship is an ideological construct about the way things are attributed to certain individuals. As creatives we like our names to be recognised in conjunction to our work, and to ensure that we gain credit for what we do it is important to put our personal mark on things, a signature. However not all art has the same level of evident human touch. Flood (1996) by Paula Rego Paulo Rego is widely celebrated for her illustrative drawings, prints, paintings and collages, of dark and mysterious subjects surrounding folk-lore, fairy tales and literature. She has a certain stylistic approach that makes her work easily recognisable to those in the art world - the unique use of lines, techniques and imagery gives us all the information that we need to identify the artist. According to www.artsy.net/ , 'Flood' is an 'Etching and aquatint on Somerset paper' piece, and I find it really evocative as a viewer. The strong highlights and shadows create a dramatic effect that echoes