Final Tutorial

Mixed feelings as we approach the last few weeks of the final term. I’m so excited that we learnt so much over the past two years and are getting the chance to work together in the final show. But I’m also sad, it’s been such a great experience, I don’t know how i’ll feel once this chapter is closed.

The final tutorial happened some time ago, but I only just realized I haven’t turned the notes into a post yet. The final tutorial was bittersweet for sure. Jonathan is an amazing person to talk to, a great listener and guide, and just overall fun. So I definitely felt sad when it was over. But at the same time, it was so productive!

Before the tutorial started I had brainstormed a lot about what I wanted to present. That brainstorming wasn’t contained only in the two posts I shared on the blog, it was a process much longer than that. I kept writing things down, experimenting and, of course, hitting walls. Because encased as I am in Jeddah, I literally face the battles of shipping art abroad daily. Every time I have sold art, I have had to deal with clients not wanting to pay shipping, work potentially getting lost, shipping being far too expensive, shipping being far too unsafe. Suffice to say, I was well aware of the problems that were looming on the horizon.

So I had resolved, that the best way to take the work would be to take it myself. Bubble wrapped and marked fragile. Jonathan said that he was glad I had thought through all the minor details which put me at a good place already. I described the technique I would use to create the squares, but he understood that this was at a very early stage and I would go through some iterations before I perfected what I was making.

I mentioned my initial plan, which was a bit hazy and rough, to turn these iridescent squares into magnets, and allow people to be the ones to place them on a board. But I also expressed my concern that I’d be ruining one side of the squares by attaching the magnet, since they were equally iridescent from both sides. At this, Jonathan suggested a brilliant idea, which was to observe how they behave when light passes through them. If they are iridescent and translucent, they should look amazing. This theory was proven to be correct much later once I had the kind of squares I imagined.

We decided that a light box would need to be constructed on site, waist high, to accommodate the squares. The rest of my ideas such as projection on fabric etc needed some refining (such as testing it out on the fabric) but were simple enough to work easily considering I was traveling from abroad, and were unlikely to present any safety hazard either. So the next step was simply to start the process of creating the squares and take it from there.

After this tutorial I had two or three more chats/emails with Jonathan to discuss specifics which were again really helpful in dealing with minor obstacles and refining certain ideas.

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