Charlotte Walker Art Foundation Degree

  One of my ideas for imagery is Byron's favourite dogs, Boatswain the Newfoundland and Lyon the wolf dog. I looked at the paintings by Clifton Tomson for reference and used loose mark making with watercolour and crayons. To develop, I'm thinking about making simplified, almost primal, dog figures with my found clay, and I'd like to research native Caribbean sculpture to get an idea of styles and motifs that I could appropriate. This is to reinforce my idea of the rift between where things come from and who consumes them, as inspired by Newstead's mahogany furniture. Boatswain Lyon

  This is a section of the Erewash river which can be accessed through Long Eaton park, which is where I looked for clay because my research into the geological structure of Nottingham indicated this would be a good location. This particular section did not have any clay that I could reach - I noticed the embankment on the other side had a patch of slightly redder earth which suggested clay, however there was no access across, so we walked further along. Here is where I noticed another change in the earth's colouration and luckily this time it was in an accessible place - you can see in the image that towards the water there is a paler section of mud with a slight redness that suggests iron oxide, which I discovered is present in clay through my research. After digging the initial layer of dirt off I could identify straight away that we had found clay, and I started collecting some of the reddish stuff first. Beneath that was a very smooth grey clay, like what you might find in a s

One of the materials I mentioned on my list of interests was clay from the river bank, so I have been looking at where I might find some and how it is processed. I found some useful information on  www.thesprucecrafts.com  about how to identify and deal with locally found clay and I'm going to see if I can find some this weekend by the River Erewash. Another local area that is rich in clay is Mapperley and I found some old images of the brickworks and the site where the clay was excavated, which is now full of houses. Mapperley bricks were used to build St Pancras Station, and that process of being dug from the ground in Nottingham and being turned into bricks that ended up in London reminds me of the Newstead Abbey mahogany in the sense that there is a disconnect between where the materials came from and the final product.

Our new project is about reacting to the objects within Newstead Abbey and their relations to privilege and black history, to create art work that can be placed within the rooms. water colour, pencil and fine liner sketch When we visited the abbey, something that struck me as very powerful was the history behind the mahogany furniture, so I wrote down some notes about this and what media I could use that would be relevant, as well as initial ideas about imagery. 

In the early stages of this project, I was interested in the way that nature pops up in the human environment no matter how we try to control it; I researched and drew lots of mushroom forms and took my own photos of ones I found out in public areas as well as the garden at home. As I thought more about how nature is an integral part of everyday city life, I looked at the common birds found in urban spaces and the ideology that surrounds them, like the myth that crows and magpies steal shiny objects, leading me to collect bits of metal found on the street for a potential future found-object piece. As I explored the local area of the Lace Market and St Mary's Church, I gathered graphite rubbings of various texts ingrained in the buildings and structures which I then translated into ceramic forms with imprinted words, and patterns depicting lace and windows. As I moved onto the glazing stage, I created a colour palette based on the feathers of rock pigeons - a bird originally living

  This piece by Rachel Whiteread is really dramatic, she has inverted a negative space by building layers of concrete inside an empty house before it was dismantled. The rest of the row of houses is gone so it stands alone in a derelict space like a skeleton of its former self, but the materials suggest permanence and durability unlike real memories which are less fixed and become distorted over time. I think it's quite a sad image because the rooms are no longer accessible and there's no going back, reflecting how life is a process of constant change and moving forward. I chose a black and white photo to talk about because it alludes to the past and mirrors the greyness of the concrete, so the method of photography brings out the message of the piece which is about history and the physical spaces where we exist and form memories.  Unlike Whiteread's piece, my ceramic works are merely suggestions of buildings, and have a clearer mark of the maker due to my hands-on approach

  These are some sketches based on my glazed ceramic buildings. On the left I did some bold pen drawings of the forms as a large collection that's closely packed together like a busy city, and on the right I did some rough observational drawings with watercolour and crayon. For the drawings on the left I wanted them to be black and white but decided to give the background a purple wash with watercolour to reference my favourite of the glazes and I think that washiness is a good contrast with the more assertive pen lines. The crayons on the right made a much softer effect but I like how the coloured lines look on top of the watercolour, particularly the purple ones because it reflects the vivid multi-tonality of that particular glaze.  In the left drawing I used masking tape to create a border and some window-like shapes to reference the buildings, so that after I did the watercolour background I could peel them off and have squares of light. I used the same colours as usual but I t

 Working with the idea of the ordinary in art can be a way of documenting some of the most overlooked every day moments, or subverting expectations of normality through elevating the status of mundane objects and scenarios. David Mach is known for his large scale sculptural works using old magazines, objects and furniture. This piece of work is quite an extreme example of the use of multiples, with thousands of magazines stacked in a huge wavy mass with chunky items of furniture embedded in it. A magazine alone is something we are used to seeing in the domestic space as well as public areas like waiting rooms and cafes, they are such a normal part of that environment that we hardly even notice them, so to see thousands in a sculptural form questions what we consider to be worthy of making art about and what we expect to see in a gallery. The magazines are arranged in a very fluid, organic style which is a drastic transformation from the rectangular shape of an individual copy. There is

Since drawing mushrooms for my project, I've spotted lots of different types of fungi in the garden and in public spaces like St Mary's Church and Wollaton Park, and I have photographed them to keep a record. I find it so cool how there are loads of different colours and shapes that you can get and I was especially happy to find some kind of otherworldly purple bracket fungus on a tree stump at home. I am still thinking about if and how I might include mushrooms and plants in my final piece because so far I have been making ceramic building forms and need to decide if they are enough on their own or would benefit from having some more natural imagery involved.