My art is not like your art

I was supposed to be working on Directed Studies last week, and blogging like a regular person, and then realised I had three assessments with a combined weighting of 100% due in five days. And had not really done any work on them. So the armour had the brakes applied, to my chagrin, and then it was a week later.

I guess one of the more exciting things I can say about this week is that I should be able to start with the foam soon. Like, next week soon. I may have been aiming to have the whole thing finished as of last week but hey. Better to do a good job than to do a quick-and-sloppy. Especially with the materials I'm using.

Just saying. Cutting corners is all very well, but if you're paying a stack for materials regardless, you may as well do a proper job of it.

So I have the belt and the handplate to finish, and then all of the paper is done. It's an exciting prospect.

See the breastplate? That's more than 12 hours worth of cutting, folding and gluing. I didn't actually believe the guide when it said it'd take about 300 hours to make.

I take that back. I'm fast with the construction, but not incredibly so.

What can I say to get back on topic?

Ironfest was last weekend, but I wasn't able to go. No time and no money, and 70% worth of assignments that I wasn't ready for on Monday. It bucketed rain in Newie, and my housemate was out, so I kind of shut myself in and worked. Jim got to go though, and enjoyed it.

Fun fact?

Ironfest 2012, I went with three mates and we dressed as Weeping Angels. I blogged that visit, actually.

But the 2013 program leaflet-booklet-thing had us in it. It was essentially this picture, taken by someone else, so it was from a different angle.

So yeah.

This week. And last week.

Wait, was it the weekend before?

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

I had to try and explain Cosplay to my Directed Studies supervisor, and we stumbled across a few different things that make a Costume Designer in Fine Arts make a little more sense.

See, most of my classmates make the standard kind of art. Photos, sculptures, paintings and drawings. Things that you can hang in an art gallery and actually sell. And there's stacks more to it than that, but it's the basics. They make stuff and it's good stuff and it's quantifiable and looks good and sells.

And I make costumes by shredding old pairs of pants and sewing them together differently.

Pictured: Watt Space's Open Show project 2012

I worked a straight week on this

and barely slept

Result: finished thing. Got nowhere in the comp though.

It's been an odd peeve, but in spite of my being in Fine Arts, I've not ever felt like the typified 'artist'.

Maybe it's because my outlook on life is different. Maybe it's because I cannot draw as well, or make typical art as well.

A note to the artists reading: I am aware that the art world is trying to gravitate towards non-traditional art. I am also aware that it's usually traditionally-presented art that actually generates an income, and accolades and awards and attention.

But yeah. Cosplay.

Miranda asked me if the Halo armour I was making was original.

But that's the odd thing about cosplay. It's something that is original and not at the same time. The design is established by someone else, and the idea is established by someone else, but you still have to figure out how to make the flipping thing work.

And what usually happens is you end up checking out how everyone else did it as well, or if anyone else has done what you plan to do. You find out from others whether or not things worked for them, and how to make things kind of work for you too. And then you contribute to the circle of life and tell the internet how you did it too.

I don't think cosplay would have worked as well in the world before social media or the internet. Manga and Anime and video games all existed, but less people would have thought about replication to the Nth degree and then going to a convention where everyone else was doing the same thing and interested in the same thing and been super friendly with complete strangers.

But I digress. Cosplay is odd because it's original and it's not.

And it's my art form, but it's not like traditional art.

I wouldn't naturally hang it in a gallery, as it's not traditional art. But the equivalent would be taking it to a convention - it gets to be seen and interacted with a bunch of people who are interested in it.

Will I actually put in in a gallery?

I'm planning to in first semester next year. And have a bunch of cosplays wandering around in the gallery space. Just because my art is not like that of my cohorts doesn't mean they shouldn't get to see it.

I'd be nice to actually have people from Fine Arts get to see my stuff as opposed to just being the shut in that I am.

..

What else can I cover in this post?

There was the last week. And my art is not like your art. Um.

I get to try and explain everything that I'm doing to the rest of my class next week. So this is kind of like a precursor to that. Biggest challenge with that is explaining everything that I'm doing for Breaking Down the Fourth Wall in five minutes.

Yeah, good luck.

It's actually my hope to have a timelapse of a paper pattern done before I'm finished with all of them. Can't tell yet whether that'll actually happen as I only have the handplate as something that isn't finished yet, and it's not the most amazing thing. Maybe we can have a timelapse of a transfer to foam?

Time will tell. I'm going to go get the next thing done.

Brooke out.

Adventures in Newcastle. Part Three - Another Funky Friday

This was another marvelous friday - full of...interesting things. I'm not sure.

I am pretty certain, though, that it's really important to blog about what you saw or did as soon as possible in relation to the event.

For example, Bec and I saw a Meteor Shower on our way to Uni this morning. I don't have any good photos of it because we were driving at the time. But it was rather cool. Really cool. Uber cool, even.

Anyway. This friday was um..not last friday but the one before. It started with the simple mission that went something like 'We are going to a gallery for our friday lecture. Get there at 10am'

We set off at the usual time, still keen to avoid traffic. We turned off en route to pick up a classmate in need of a lift and proceeded to make our way down to the foreshore in the hopes of locating this gallery.

I was mega keen to park somewhere, so we found a parking lot and placed the car quite lovingly into its care. Then we went in search of the gallery. In completely the wrong direction.

There is no feeling quite like finding a map after climbing and descending the steepest hill in Newcastle and going over hill and dale and realising that the car was parked approximately 800 metres from the gallery. We'd travelled probably at least twice that distance, maybe even three times.

It was okay in the end - we got exercised and still arrived on time. The gallery was partly interesting, partly listening to the woman tell us about how these paintings are technically part of Modernism, even though we'd done nothing on them so far. Here or there, the time passed quickly.

I took a photo as we left the gallery, and we were back on the road.

One quick stop at Uni, and we headed home, mildly curioused as to what we'd do.

Enter Glendale.

Glendale Stockland is this massive horseshoe of stores; retail and food and JB-HI FI. No joke, I walked in to that shop a couple days before the last trip home and was like; I think I'm in love. Whooooah.

There was like, CD's everywhere and they were better priced than Sanity at home and there was variety and DVDs and an entire shelf of Anime. Not just one little section. Not just a couple of Naruto DVDs and a Macross Box set that's been there since Macross came out. A whole frikkin shelf!!!

Me and JB HI-FI? We're gonna be good mates. Once I have a reliable source of income. In the meantime, it's nice to wander the aisles, looking at the five million CDs. Have not even ventured into the other side of the store yet - that side sells entertainment systems and stereos. It's exciting.

How about I stop ranting about JB HI-FI and find something else to talk about?

Bec and I were in need of some time to wind down. Things had been hectic and the day had had a couple of disappointments. Either way, I was craving caffeine, so when Bec suggested that we go to Gloria Jeans, she didn't have to twist my arm too far.

From there, we sat down with beverage in hand; Bec had a smoothie of some description, I had my almost-manga coffee. (If Manga Coffee sounds a little otaku-ish odd, I'd suggest going here for the normalspeak version)

From there stemmed a wonderful period of chill. I can't remember too much of the activities, since it was two weeks ago, but there was this gem we uncovered in between me picking up excess sugar packets for later and us watching some kind in a red T-shirt macking it past the shopfront.

This gem?

It's a game.

I remember us talking about parkour and the mood lighting in the shop, but that was about it.

I really enjoyed that coffee.

P.S. Dear Bec, I don't care how much you want to mess up my photos by bombing them. Because I'll post them anyway.