This one-to-one session with Sarah is in preparation for the proposal for a public workshop. To be honest, I don’t think I will be sending in a proposal. I learnt so much from the workshops, and one thing is that I do not want to teach. I find it extremely hard to organise ideas and thoughts, let alone into a digestible and easy form for the public to learn from. Sarah was very kind and understandable, said it’s not for everyone. Though most artists are also educators.
She gave me a few tips on organisation and in general (I also asked her about my unit 8 essay because I’m struggling)
- one of her lecturers told her that it is like a map, you know where you’re going at the start, your destination, and you may have different ways of getting there, eg getting the tube, bus, to get to Birmingham. Don’t stray away too far. you are giving your audience a map to get where you want them to go.
- put really boring/rigid headings to start off with. be clear and succinct in the beginning and end and do all the flowery artistic stuff in the middle.
- I showed her my mind map for the essay (I said it seems too broad right now and she laughed and said her mother is a writer and said it’s like building a bridge to nowhere) and she agreed that there are many overlaps within the movements, and said that I could group some together cause they’re kind of the same thing eg surrealism and the everyday. expressionism is its own movement. romanticism and dark romanticism can me with each other.
- the essay is like the lesson plan. (but for lessons there is the timings- which gets easier, always plan more time than you think you need) for someone who doesn’t know your mind. you just need them to take away that one thing. you’re only showing them the tip of the ice berg. almost have to backtrack and simplify, how did I get here?
- she said her mind is really chaotic too and teaching made her learn how to organise it. for my lesson plan idea, she said it sounds like I want to say how you can let go of control and how to do so eg automatism, freedom of gesture, and I could do the exquisite corpse thing but think about the splitting of groups or doing it all together etc.
- I asked if the space was available for use and she said of course, one of the main things about this workshop is for artists like us to know that this space is for them. and I can email her anytime if I want to come in and do some research. I asked how researchers do their research here and she said it’s all different. some bring their laptops, some draw from the collection, some use magnifying glasses. she stressed to please feel free to use the collection.
- she said don’t feel pressured to submit a proposal if it’s not for me. we also mentioned how some artists are bad lecturers. she said the worst she had is artists who ask why students draw things in this way. quite offensive. some waffle on and on.
- she said she doesn’t want to impose her ‘artist historian’ mindset on me cause this workshop is supposed to be artist led, so use my own expertise in my own practice for the lesson plan.
- anyway, I said I learnt so much from it, how to learn from drawings themselves, how to read them, and now art history is much more interesting to me now.
