Photographs from the opening








Exhibition opening 04/05/13

The day finally arrived  it was the 4th May and nerves of excitement had kicked in. Myself, Jenny, Jess and Samantha arrived at the apothecaries hall at 10:45 am to set up. As the drawing and book binding materials for the workshops needing to be put out and also the refreshments needed o be ready for the opening at 12. With us all working together setting up was a doddle. Al we had to do know was to wait for the public. With the drawing workshop we drew a few things on the paper ourselves, as we didn't want a big sheet of blank paper immediate the public and deter them away from taking part. With a steady flow of people coming in, we got people of all ages to join in. he most rewarding to see was young kids just going for it, not being afraid and just expressing themselves an having fun. I am still taken aback by one 6 year old girls drawing of a flower. It was by far the best drawings of the entire day. Just getting people to have fun and adding a mark of their own to our opening day made it all worthwhile, as it was the public that were paying to come to view our work. I myself wasn't at the bookmaking workshop that much as i was manning the drawing workshop. But from what I heard off the other group members it was just as successful if not more so than the drawing workshop. As the day went on, and as it slowly died down it was time to pack up and do a bit of tidying.
Starting with the materials from the workshops. Tidying up an mess left over from the workshops, bits of charcoal etc. Then clearing up any mess from the refreshments table. Then it was time for the hard graft when we had to remove the tables and chairs and put them into storage. The last thing on our list was to decide whether or not to leave the drawing workshop outcomes on the walls or whether to take them down. As a collective we decided they should stay. Mainly because it added a sense of playfulness to the room and brought a more personal feel, as the public had a joint part in the making of the exhibition. In addition it actually complimented the first year prints that were hanging. They incorporated the same colours and source material, and they just seemed to fit together really nicely. So with that it was time to leave. The opening was thankfully a great success and all the build up to it, the hard work we put in was all worth it in the end. This was most certainly a steep learning curve and has given me a great deal of experience for when i leave  my degree and try and make a living for myself. With future exhibitions i hope they go as well as this one has. Until next time..

Day 2 constructing exhibition 03/05/13

Today was merely a day of tidying and finishing off last minute tasks. This consisted of fixing the spot lights to the walls and positioning them correctly to get the maximum shadow being cast on the walls. I then took one of the ladders and was able to cut all the excess thread off to make the installation look more polished. Some of the other girls went around the Gardens and put out posters to promote the opening. Then within the cabinets we placed name tags and the titles of the works beside the pieces, also a list of names of all the people that were involved in the 1st year print work. Ad all the people involved in submitting a label toward the installation. When this was all completed we all pitched in, to help take the scaffolding down and to load it into the trailer. Also we cleared out all the tools and equipment to then hoover all the excess bits of thread. And what do you know we were finished everything. To be honest it was hard work and stressful at times but very much worth it all to see it at the end of today with a weight being lifted off our shoulders. It has all been a major learning curve but tomorrow is definitely going to be a fun and exciting experience, here's hoping the weather holds out for us.

Day 1 constructing exhibition 02/05/13

First day of constructing our exhibition. We had a full day of piecing together all our work and it was a greater challenge to what i had imagined. Putting the work into the cabinets, took the most of 5 hours to look aesthetically pleasing and to a high standard. So with everything, flowing and placed in the correct position, myself and Samantha started taking designated objects from the apothecary (bottles, boxes etc) to also set on the shelves to compliment the work. When we finally got everything to fit it was well worth it as the final look of the entire middle room came into place and looked really well. The installation as well being a big task especially as Cath our tutor was basically one of three who were only allowed up on the scaffolding. So with her the only one being able to attach the labels to the rack on the ceiling the rest of the group helped as much as they could with cutting the fishing wire to differing lengths, attaching them to the labels and from the ground help give directions to Cath of where to attach them. As a team they worked incredibly well. Other tasks that were carried  out today included blacking out the windows with sheets of paper, so we can get the full effects of the spot lighting to cast shadows on the walls from the installation. As well as myself and Samantha getting our pictures taken by a photographer for the Carmarthen journal to promote the exhibition and the Medicines in May event. All in all at the the end of day 1 everything has gone very smoothly and it's back to work tomorrow for the final push. 

Finishing Ads for cabinets 30/04/13


So with pretty much all the prep work work done to do with the installation and the posters and refreshments  bought i finally got time to finish off my work for the cabinets. I obtained some fine textured ivory card to be the the material for my ads to go onto. So with all the text printed off and my illustrations drawn up, it was time to piece them all together. With the much needed assistant of carbon paper. As i wanted to have the style of the text but not to have to print them using a laser jet, carbon paper was he perfect resolution as the outcome is that it looks hand printed. I created 5 but unfortunately i didn't notice a spelling mistake in one of them, so i will be exhibiting 4 in total.  

Poster 29/04/13

As its not far off to the exhibition we thought we ought to better get the posters created, printed and put up around the uni. So myself, Jess and Samantha took most of the information from the invite and placed in in a word document, added a photograph of our labels and experimented on Photoshop with Tony then giving us a hand. We printed it out to see what it was like and to be honest it wasn't great the information was all there but aesthetically it just didn't look to be of a high standard. With a much needed help from Joe and Liz, who tweaked the colour, made the text more noticeable and hey presto we had a far better to print off and place around the uni.

Decals day 2 26/04/13



Yesterday I was approached by my tutor Cath who asked me whether i wanted to help put decals on old medicinal objects to be put towards our exhibition. I happily took the task on as yesterday was so interesting and i wanted to find out more about decals and how they worked. To have more work that i helped to create being put on display was an added bonus. You would think that being given the task of cutting around lots of pictures of plants fro approximately an hour or two, would be boring. But oddly i found it quite therapeutic. When that was done i thought the easy part was to come. As yesterday was pretty much a doddle putting the decals onto the flat enameled labels but how wrong i was. With all the objects being curved it was a far harder task pushing o all he air bubbles before being fired in the kiln. Though with patience even after the decals ripping in half and not sticking properly, a few hours later we got all the objects covered to a really high standard. They turned out a lot better than we had hoped. Another thing ticked off the list. Only 8 days to go.  

Decals day 1 25/04/13

So when we thought we couldn't do anymore to our labels, Cath introduced us to decals. Cath very kindly screen printed labels of old medicines bottles onto sheets of paper with two layers. You can peel one off, just like stickers. The process being one of the easiest but probably the most effective. You basically choose a label that you wanted to cover, choose a decal to put on it. Cut the decal to size, place in a basin of water for about 30 seconds, peel the back layer off. Place onto the label where you want it, pat dry with some paper towel and push out any excess air bubbles. Put in the kiln for a minute and there you have it, the decals are permanently fixed to the enamel. These are some of the outcomes from today



Invitation 24/04/13

Myself, Jess, Danielle and Samantha came together and decided we needed to get the invitations together and set to work on writing the text. We took inspiration from other invites we had gathered from other exhibitions and made it simple and to the point and just put in key information being the date,place,time and that we were holding workshops. Thankfully Samantha knows a welsh speaker who kindly converted our English text to welsh so we could have both languages on the invite. We then obtained the tags that we had made to date and i had my camera to take some photographs to use for the back cover of the invitation. We then sent the text and photographs to Cath our tutor who very kindly put the invitation together and printed it off. Myself and Jenny then on the 26/04/13 went around the galleries in town and handed out leaflets and invitations to promote the exhibition.

Meeting 23/04/13

Joe and Liz called another meeting, to discuss important decisions that needed to be made made regarding mostly the workshops and the itinerary for the exhibition opening. Sadly again a lot of the group was missing, so myself, Jess, Danielle and Samantha had to make a lot of executive decisions. We decided on the refreshments and snacks to get and to hopefully get £6 from everyone to fund this. Though the main decisions we made were on what we were gonna do within the workshops. For the bookmaking we decided     that we would keep it simple and make pamphlet stitch books and have various stencils, stickers and text to be able to decorate them. Then with the collaborative drawing workshop we would supply herbs for the public to crush using a pestle and mortar,have old bottles to draw from and lots of photocopies of botanical illustrations, first hand photography of plants and lots more. In addition we decided we want materials we wanted to have supplied for the drawing, being charcoal, graphite sticks and earth coloured conte crayons. This meeting surprisingly went on for about 4 hours, but with what we got covered it was well worth it.

Collaborative statement workshop

Joe and Liz held a group meeting to try and get us started on writing a collaborative statement. It was hard, as only half the group was there, so getting ideas out was difficult as there wasn't as much discussion as we had hoped. But we tried are best and put together an introduction and bullet pointed important sentences that we thought would be good to use throughout the statement. The workshop was good as it got us started and we had a template to add too, but we will have a work on this a second day when the entire group attends. To stand a better chance of getting it resolved.

Elizabeth Turrell workshop 02/04/13

We had the privilege of meeting Elizabeth Turrrell today who is an expert in enameling. She presented a slideshow of her work and other major enameling work and also gave us a brief workshop and helped us with our labels. She taught us even more processes to do with enameling, and the fact they are so simple makes it so much better. Such things as using stamps on the enamels to create different marks, with some of the outcomes being beautiful. Here are some examples of her work that she brought along to show us.





Extended cabinet experimentation 01/04/13








I started making more sketches of what i want the aesthetic of my advertisements to look like. I'm thinking i am going to make around 4/5 ads some with illustrations and some with just text. I started looking at different fonts to see which one's worked best and had that old type theme. I then started playing about with the content, referring back to the remedies and adding a modern humorous twist.

Day 3 of enameling 22/03/13

Third day in the sculpture department carrying out more enameling on our labels for our installation. We worked from 10am unil 2pm. So it was a fairly brief day in the workshop but we gt just as much done as we have on the previous days as we have had the teaching in the way of the process and we all now know the steps in making the the layers on the labels. I myself spent a lot of my time todaysanding back the already fired image and adding more marks and tone to the drawings. These are what a few of my labels look like at the moment.



Day 2 of enameling 20/03/13

Day two of enameling. We carried out the exact same process as we did yesterday. But in this post i want to focus on the other happening of the day. I called for a group meeting on the subject of the work thats going into the middle room (apothecary) as I jumped at the chance of the fact everyone was in uni at the same time, and it was definitely worth while. We finally got a chance to all voice our opinions on what we wanted the feel of the room to be. We helped each other push forward and refine the actual work we were all going to produce, as all of us were unsure on whether the rest of the group would approve of others individual ideas and concepts. This is exactly what we needed to get us all back on track and to give people a sense of direction and that wen we work together we will get the job done. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will have many more meetings like this to make sure we get to the finished outcomes in time.

Day 1 of enameling 19/03/13

So today was a big step forward for our exhibition, as we had our first workshop in enameling. I have to say I found it a lot more fascinating than i assumed it was going to be. The fact the process is a lot simpler and a lot faster than I had imagined. With the end results being better than I had hoped, the fineness and sharpness of the detail you can produce on the metal is amazing. It was a very enjoyable day. Seeing the labels being fired in the kiln, applying glazes and then being re-fired before we could draw images on them was very interesting to carry out. A big plus was the speed of the process. The fact the labels only need to be in the kiln for about a minute was great, as we didn't have to wait about, we were constantly busy. Which i like. Today has definitely been the first of many days i will be experimenting with enameling.

Label Drawings 18/03/13

Today I spent a few hours putting together several drawings that im going to use for my enamel labels. I specifically made the drawings 14 cm by 7 cm. That being the exact size of the steel labels we will be enameling onto. My drawings focus on the bottles from the apothecaries hall, and also the actual book in which the original herbal remedies were written in.

Advertisement research 14/03/13




Cabinet work notes 13/03/13






For my work that is going into the cabinets i wanted to write down all my thoughts and pick through them and see what would work best and then start to piece it together. The main points are that i am interested in is advertising, and the more absurd/strange remedies.  

Mock up installation 11/03/13


Today we as a class collectively created a mock up of what our installation piece may look like, for our first room of our exhibition at the Botanics. We cut approximately 200 shaped tags out of paper, tied them to individual pieces of thread, attached them to wooden blanks and suspended them form the ceiling.
 For the finished outcome we are hoping for the tags to be made from a mixture of steel and copper. We also want the tags to have unique and individual hand-drawn images that will be fixed to the metals through the process of enabling. The images on the tags are all going to be centered around medicinal medicine. The overall look of the installation will come together with the use of directed lighting that will provide an atmospheric feel to the room.
All and all, we have the main components figured out, but we all just have to make the physical artwork which we will be starting on the 18th March.

Library meeting No.2 01/03/13

So this is the second group research meeting myself, Jenny, Samantha and Jess have carried out ourselves. Today them three kept focused on the installation piece, but I focused more on the work I am going to be creating to be placed in the cabinets in the middle room. I went in search of certain books that were centered  around old medicinal medicines, and luckily enough I came across the most perfect book.I really couldn't ave got any better than this. The Book being the Physicians of Myddfai, that had ancient herbal remedies associated with the legend of the Lady of the Lake. So having remedies that were actually used within Wales was just what i was looking for. So i spent the day writing out a dozen of remedies that stood out to me, the more absurd the better. All being the basis of what i want my work to focus on.

Library research 22/02/13

Myself, Jenny, Samantha and Jess took it upon ourselves to visit Trinity Library and gather research on installations. To discuss and make a few decisions on what we think the labels should look like, shape, size colour etc. The day was a great success as we seemed to work a lot better and be able to speak out our own opinions in a smaller group with out feeling uncomfortable. As we had more time to think of what we wanted to state and non of us were put on the spot. This is hopefully going to become a weekly thing.

Workshop with Pete

A few outcomes today from our workshop with Pete using source material we gathered from the Botanics. 




Room Plan meeting 12/02/13


Having all had a group meeting we have come up with a plan of what kind of work is going to go in each of the three rooms. The last room collectively we thought we would utilize the high ceiling and create a hanging instillation piece. With the theme being centered around bottle/plant labels and use the process of enameling on steel to create the pieces. With Samantha, Jenny and Jess focusing on this and managing all the in's and out's of the installation. The middle room having been given approximately 6 cabinets to place work in, we loosely have come up with the idea to make individual pieces of work that complaint the space, they are subtle and blend into the surroundings rather than being brash and bold. With myself, Tony, Danielle Siobhan  and Carla creating the work. Then within the first room we have decided to approach the first year painters to create pieces to work within the space. Fingers crossed we have all made the right decision in letting the first years incorporate there work.    

First visit to the Botanics 29/01/13


As a class we visited the Botanics today to get a feel of what the Medicines in May event is all about. We wanted to gather information and take inspiration from our surroundings to help us make our pieces for the exhibition. Most importantly we got to see for the first time where our work will be placed for the public to see. And this was not to disappoint. We having been very kindly given three separate spaces that all flow into each other under one roof. The first room being an information exhibit with a video screen, text on the walls and and cabinets that are filled with medicinal objects. The second room being a mock up of an old apothecary. It is such a beautiful space filled with amazing history. Then the last room basically working as a blank canvas. Its function being a teaching/training room. After this we also had the privilege of being shown the library catalogue of old and new books all centered around botanical matter. What interested me the most was an official acopercaries record book all all the names of people of obtained remedies off him and what exactly that remedy and all the ingrediants that went into it. So having seen the space and taken in a lot of information, it was off to the drawing board, to see what we could come up with as a collective.