Category: Art

Mark King’s Residency – Week 2.5 Report!

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Mark King experiments with origami

The idea came to me while lying awake in bed staring at the dusty ceiling fan. My ah ha moment birthed a typographical algorithm for each piece I was to create. I quickly found a need to measure every pen stroke as I got down to sketching the first draft.

I began with a base fish fold. Then took on the frog fold. I practiced. And practiced.   First on 8.5″ x 8.5″ office paper and later graduated to 17″ x 17″ thicker student grade paper. The base fold patterns really intrigued me. The symmetry and the creased thick paper felt right. Thin origami specialty paper is normally used for the folds. But I wanted to go with thicker paper for a more strained pattern.

The first piece, Triple-A, consists of the letter “A” mirrored and repeated. The piece on the right reads, Piece Of Shit. The diptych refers to the triple-A rating Bear Stearns’ mortgage backed securities received from the rating agency, Moody’s. The firm referred to these as a Piece of Shit in internal emails.

The slightest lapse would wipe away 4+ hours of progress. This happened so many times. I’ve had a lot on my mind recently and this is part of the reason why I took on making origami patterns in the first place. It’s a cathartic process.

What I created this past week.5 is oddly in line with the targets that I brought to the residency already in production. In working out of Fresh Milk’s studios I am surrounded by an ocean of fractals. Repeating patterns are everywhere. It provides amazing inspiration for where this series is going. Maybe this is the common thread holding everything together.

Mark King’s Residency – Week 1 Report

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Mark King experiments with origami

I was greeted by Versia Harris knocking out work in the studio to the sounds of a very eclectic playlist on the first day of the Fresh Milk Residency. I carved out a space in the reading room to get started and laid out my supplies.

I came in with an on-going project in mind. One that centers around the recent financial crisis and banking scandals of our time. The project has taken my work in new directions. And I have yet to make a photograph. I will continue down this path of exploration for the month that I am here.

Week one was more about feeling out the space. Creating from the heart of the Barbadian countryside is unlike anything I have experienced. Birds, wind chimes, cows, roosters, and rustling leaves make up the soundscape. It’s the perfect creative incubator.

The environment is also great for failing. Something I’m really enjoying during this residency. I brought a book with me from home on Origami that I had been meaning to try out for a while. Craft isn’t my strong suit, which gives me more reason to play with the medium. Origami takes a high level of concentration and its pursuit guarantees failure. It’s humbling to go through a stack of paper when trying the simplest folding pattern.

Things are starting to come together. Outside of the studio space I continue to work on the pieces that were in pre-production leading up to the residency. Leaving new work to be explored while in the Fresh Milk studio.

I’m here until mid April. If you’re on island stop by and say hi.

Versia Harris’ Residency – Week 3 Report

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A visit to Workman’s Primary School as a part of my Community Outreach, kick started week three of my residency. I formulated a few questions and went with the intention of having a conversation with the students of class 4 about their thoughts and feelings on Disney films and characters, and also about the prominence of television in their daily lives. It was a first for me, interacting with that number of kids in that setting; I’m not very up to date on what the kids of today are like. However, they were surprisingly pleasant and very cooperative. In between the humor and fun that I had talking to these children, the answers to my questions were a mixture of the expected and unexpected. They gave me some insight into how they saw these films and how much they actually watched TV. Granted, this was only a class of about fifteen students, a number too small to be projected across the generation but they do watch a lot more TV than I did at that age. To them, watching TV was on par, if not more desired, with going outside to play. This relates to the concept of my animation about the push and pull between the physical world and the virtual one.

Later in the week Alicia Alleyne and Shanika Grimes came to the studio, along with my usual company of Katherine Kennedy. Even though each of us was set to our individual tasks and projects, I was glad for the company and the conversations. Sheena Rose and Mark King also came out to see my progress and to give feedback.

Through the laughter, the heated discussions and the dismantling of Annalee Davis’ work – which by the way took four people, two days and a lot of effort – this week also brought me some challenges with my work. Technological malfunctions are inevitable. But the despair of a program breakdown is magnified when it is your primary source of work. Obviously, working with technology for at least a year and half now, I expect it to malfunction or an important program to suddenly stop working, and yet after all this time it doesn’t get any less frustrating, especially when it hinders progress within the short period of time that I have. In any case all is restored and the animation continues.

Still from one of Versia's new animations

Versia Harris’ Residency – Week 2 Report

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Still shot of Versia Harris' work so far

Yay for week two at Fresh Milk! This week was my adventure week. I spent a lot of time outside, either working or exploring with happiness in my every step. And in between the swing set, the creepy but gorgeous gully, electric wires, dead chickens, being followed by cows, the feather finding and hill climbing, I got closer to a concrete idea for the residency. In fact, the back and forth between my investigations on the computer and my explorations outdoors is what solidified it for me. I began to see my computer as not only a passage way to a worldwide network of communication and activity, but also as some sort of cocoon or cage. In other words, it connected me to a virtual world of business and recreational interaction and also the “world” of my creation; my animations. But, at the same time, being connected through the computer meant I was disconnected from my surroundings and the environment I was in. I realized that just as the screen offered so many possibilities of interaction and exploration, so did the physical world. The work that I have been producing during the week is centered on these ideas. The lino block prints that I have been doing within the animation have been yielding results that I am pleased with.

Onward to week three.

Versia Harris’ Residency: Week One Report

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The Fresh Milk Art Platform studio feels a lot like home. Granted, my neighborhood scenery and atmosphere is not nearly as serene, but the quietness and time spent alone in the studio seems very familiar. That and the fact that I have spent a solid amount of time at Fresh Milk for various events and workshops since its launch in 2011 makes me comfortable in the space given to me.  For the first two days I wondered whether this was a blessing or a problem. Because I was so at ease with the space and with Annalee, the Director and Katherine, the Assistant to Director, I could find my groove quickly and be able to focus on executing whatever idea I had. But then, what if I wouldn’t be stimulated to create something outside of my comfort zone because of the familiarity?

I spent four days of the week at Fresh Milk; Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday I stayed home and realized the comfort I felt at Fresh Milk was because of a lack of pressure. During my daily life, after everyone has left for work and school, I have the quietness and space needed to focus my attention on my animation, one that I have been working on for the past 6 months. But I also feel a slight but constant pressure to produce something, anything of value; to feel like I am ‘doing something’ after leaving Barbados Community College (BCC). This pressure, self-imposed though it may be, keeps me active at home. However, when at Fresh Milk, I do not feel that pressure. The program gives me a specific purpose; there’s the ultimate goal of producing a fresh piece of work from this. It reminds me of having a deadline, like we so often did at BCC, which is comforting in its own way. At home though, there are no deadlines, no ‘projects’; I’m basically working to keep active and current, and therefore end up putting the pressure on myself to have work ready to avoid the feeling of idleness.

This past week I have been experimenting with lino block printing and my pen drawing in animation form. I have been considering the idea of incorporating lino block prints with my animated drawing for some time now, and Fresh Milk affords me the time and mental space to do that. I am stepping away from my animation film for a while to experiment with the printmaking. After a week, my thoughts and ideas are still very unresolved and scattered, but as week two starts I am intrigued by what could happen.