For this
project I really struggled at the beginning on how I was going to tackle the
theme. I felt very overwhelmed and that I had too many different ideas in my
head of what I wanted to do. However it has helped me to develop my way of thinking
allowed me to look at different techniques and try out other medias rather than
just sticking with what I normally do. This gave me the opportunity to learn
and grow as an artist.
So once I had
decided what I was going to look into, tourism and people’s views of the city,
I felt more comfortable and more willing to try new things. From my research I
discovered that I want to look at what I thought of the city and how I felt
about, practically focusing on an aspect of my childhood. As Edinburgh wasn’t a
place I visited as a child I wanted to keep that childlike curiosity within my
work. This is when I began looking into postcards as a way of expressing my
ideas, postcards were something I seem to receive more of when I was a child,
so I began looking to traditional postcards and mail art which lead me to the
decision that I was going to take pictures of myself in the city but with a toy
of an object to represent the childish nature of what I was doing. I started
looking into traveling gnomes, but in the end settled for a small Paddington
bear that I owned.
Something I
decided to do as a way of keeping a record of what I did and creating something
different that I’d never tried was I documenting to process and made a video.
This was fairly stressful as my video editing skills were new and not the best
but it was enjoyable experimenting with and I like the idea that I would’ve
been able to show different people what I was doing rather than just telling
them. I like having other people interact with my work, which is way I later
decided that once the postcards had been sent out I would ask people to “add”
to them by painting over the image, drawing, writing anything they felt was
needed. That way the postcards had more of a reason for being sent out and I
was going to get a response from them, something your rarely get with a
postcard.
There was a few bumps in the road with this project,
my nerves, lack of experience but overall I’m happy with what I’ve produced
because it’s not my usual and it’s helped me decided what kind of an artist I
want to be.
