http://www.showstudio.com/projects/multiclothing/start.html

Stephen Willats.

There's something interesting about the notion of wearing your words - wonder where I could take this with my own work...

Ideas so far for practical investigation include: Text printed onto surfaces - manipulating 2d into 3d - perhaps weaving, ribbons, paper, fabric, heatpressed images/text on fabric, hanging, intertwining text, kinetic elements, using name tapes with text embroidered into them, scanned pages of text manipulated as 3d materials....

Lots to be getting on with then..

I am currently doing a masters module in teaching and learning that involves pedagogical research through art practice which is really exciting and very new to me. Traditionally I have painted - yes, I occasionally throw in a bit of mixed media but on the whole it's all very painty.
However my interests in contemporary art have long strayed from this medium, instead focussing on artists who collect and collate ephemera, map histories and document peoples stories and inner most thoughts... for example, Jeremy Dellers' Folk Archive show really stayed with me. I think it was the authenticity of the original work and media used - and that the work wasn't made as 'art' but that it has been reappropriated by an artist in a way that highlights its qualities - aesthetic and functional - without skewing it or taking away its original meaning.

So this is a long winded way of saying that for this module I want to explore how we can learn and develop as practitioners through our own histories - and that using that our actual history rather than a fabrication of it might be the best and most challenging way to do this. In terms of its link to my academic practice, I'm always concerned about the histories of students coming in to study art at undergraduate level - particularly their understanding of what art is/can be, the ways in which art can be made and the influences and motivations that can inform art making. I am most concerned about students inability to connect life and art in a fluid way. It seems that their formal art education has a lot to answer for in this respect; suggesting that successful art making is about themes, topics and thorough, linear development processes.

So this is what I need to untangle. The relationships between the individual, their personal history and the leap forward they need to make from teenager studying a-level art as a subject to adult undergraduate making art for arts sake. And I need to explore this using my personal history - otherwise it's all merely guess work. At the moment I think digging out my old diaries might be a very good starting point...these are where my teenage words live so it would be good to converse with them in some way.