[LAUIL601] Artist Research - Merlin Evans: Drawn to Medicine

https://www.drawntomedicine.com 

"I have spent a number of years exploring visualising states of mental health, not only as form of personal reflective practice, but also through a number of activist roles within health organisations. Partner organisations, associations and clients: Mind, Age Uk, Breathe, Psychologies Magazine, Association of Medical Illustrators, Medical Artists' Education Trust, Royal Free Hospital, Stafford County Hospital, Mile End Hospital, University College Hospital, Harley Street Children's Hospital, St George's Hospital, Kings College London."

Merlin recently did a visiting lecture about her work as a professional, but what most interested me was the work she makes around mental health. As well as documenting some of that through notes, and reaching out to her in an e-mail, I want to unpick some of her illustrative works through artist research.

Summer Holidays

• Summer Holidays is a loose illustration with deliberate stippled dot mark-making. It has a childlike and naive tone of voice through the use of shapeless, abstract forms. The changes in line quality suggest speed, liveliness, and swift gestures. The lines are asymmetrically placed on the lower part of the "canvas". A figure can just be made out through the disconnected shape of an eyebrow and eye, resting on a pillow in bed. The disconnect from the yellow to the white draws the eye down to find that pillow and face as that is the only part of the canvas not immediately filled with dense dots. Dot-work suggests motion, with an emphasis and direction beating down on the figure in a heavy weight. Summer holidays are spent in bed while the sun is shining in from the window. The world keeps on moving, people have fun outside, but we are trapped in the prison of our bed and our mind.

• Figure 1 depicts the loose illustration of the shape of a woman. The main focus and emphasis of the illustration, where the eye immediately draws, lies on the female figure as she is the primary source of colour blocked out in rough, dark strokes, The eyes move to her ties and bonds which are at a higher value of red. Her curved forms sag downwards suggesting weight of those mentioned expectations where her hands are tied. Colours are dark and sombre, muddy and dark in value. Textures are painterly and drab. Proportionately her feet are small and she, as a figure, is asymmetrical and uncomfortable to look at. She is leaning more towards the right-hand side of the canvas suggesting a motion of going "off." Off the rails, unable to cope, collapsing under the pressure. 

• Figure 2 is very abstract. No recognisable forms are present and the illustration is filled completely with dots, where some are highlighted in a warm tone. Specially it is disjointed and, as someone with retinal detachment, reminds me of floaters in my eye. My immediate interpretation is that that warm dots are days that were good or surrounded with family, friends or love, and the rest of the dots tells a narrative of days that were lonely, bad mental health days. Like a visual visual diary dispersed in a visual language across a page in time and motion.

[LAUIL601] Developmental Work: Cyberbullying Monoprints and Poem

• Recently I have been going through an incredibly difficult time due to being cyberbullied through Instagram. I don't know the person at all, have never spoken to them or met them, but through their own jealousy of the experiences I have had with my favourite band they have started to attack me and my Guide Dog through their instagram stories spreading lies about me. It has really revealed another side of the internet and fandom to me. I never get too involved in social spaces for anything like this to happen and have no provoked anybody. It has come out of nowhere so I feel caught off guard.

• It is especially troubling and terrifying that it happened around the time of the anniversary of Sophie Lancaster's murder, who was targeted for being different and part of a subculture as I do

• "Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks" Shannon L. Adler

• After my main instagram was compromised, separate from my art instagram, I took some time to contemplate jealousy, hatred, the internet in all of its parts, and society. This was also an opportunity for me to put art therapy into practice. How can I subvert what has happened to me and reframe it into positive outcomes? How can I put a container on this incredibly traumatic situation and use art therapy as a tool to heal and develop? What modalities can I use? Rewiring how I operate.

• Thinking of computer chips and motherboards, made up of colour palettes of red, green and black, I adopted an art therapist approach to making to work through my traumatic experience and self-direct a brief of a series of monoprints. Implementing my authorial practice, inspired by Peony Gent, I also channelled into words how I felt: I am alone in a battle. I am the girl who cannot see. 

• Using rough textured paper, acrylics and a gelatine plate I spread paint to blue worlds and circumstances with a rough hair-dye brush, creating an interesting, blocky visual language depicting a degrading, eroding, derogatory environment that eventually turns to complete darkness.

[LAUIL601] Secondary Research: From Bedlam to Bethlem Gallery and Museum of the Mind

Engraving by A. Soly of Bedlam

https://bethlemgallery.com

https://maudsleycharity.org/case-studies/bethlem-museum-of-the-mind/

https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/1050-1485/from-bethlehem-to-bedlam/

• Also known as St Mary Bethlehem, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam.

• The word "bedlam", meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the hospital's nickname. Although the hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform.

• In 1247 the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem was founded, devoted to healing sick paupers. The small establishment became known as Bethlehem Hospital. Londoners later abbreviated this to 'Bethlem' and often pronounced it 'Bedlam'.

• Its patients also included people with learning disabilities, 'falling sickness' (epilepsy) and dementia.

• The hospital regime was a mixture of punishment and religious devotion - chains, manacles, locks and stocks appear in the hospital inventory from this time.

• The shock of corporal punishment was believed to cure some conditions.

• Bethlem has long been associated with scandal and abuse in the public mind.

• The hospital has relocated three times, first to Moorfields in 1676, then to St George’s Fields in 1815, and finally to Beckenham, Kent in 1930.

• In 1999, Bethlem and Maudsley were merged with other South London mental health services to form the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

• On the website, there's an events page, archive and online gallery of patients' work which I will look more into! 

• Exhibition: Landscapes of the Mind Thomas Hennell (1903-1945) 

coincides with the publication of a book on the artist by Jessica Kilburn, titled Thomas Hennell: The Land and the Mind.

• "Spending time outside and in nature has long been understood to improve people’s physical and mental health, and these benefits have been brought into sharp focus for everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic. The parks and streets we use to exercise and the houses we live, work, homeschool and play in, have taken on new significance over the past year."

• Hennell was a successful professional artist, but also painted scenes that recorded his personal experience, including the time he spent as a patient at Claybury and the Maudsley Hospitals, the landscapes near his home, as well as the places he visited to paint and rest. This exhibition traces the artist’s life through these places and explores their significance and their impact on the artist’s own wellbeing.

[LAUIL601] Secondary Research: Museum of Mental Health

 https://www.southwestyorkshire.nhs.uk/mental-health-museum/home/

• Located in Wakefield, England. If not for the pandemic and not having Tami due to surgery and recovery, I'd do some primary research there

"Our extraordinary collection aims to support the empowerment of people, joining together combat mental health stigma and prejudice. Together we can co-curate a mindful, knowledgeable and active society. “Access to real, powerful and tangible human experiences inspires change; from the privately personal, to a collective revolution.” We aim to become a leading resource for the history of mental health care in the UK, and debates surrounding mental health and lived experiences. We want to explore mental health histories to help forge a sustainable future where people can live fulfilling lives in their communities."

• Museum featuring mental health–related artefacts from the 19th century to the present day.

• Address: Fieldhead Hospital, Ouchthorpe Ln, Wakefield WF1 3SP

• Manifesto is more than a document - it is a mission

Work with many local outreach groups

• The museum was originally opened as the Stephen G Beaumont Museum in 1974 at the Stanley Royd Hospital in Wakefield.

• The idea to set up a museum was developed by hospital secretary Mr Lawrence Ashworth.

• The original museum was named after Mr Stephen G Beaumont, the Chairman of the committee, who agreed to fund the museum and its development.

• The Stephen G Beaumont Museum focused exclusively on the history of Stanley Royd Hospital, which opened as the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in 1818. The museum grew to become the largest mental health provider in West Yorkshire in the 19th and 20th century.

• The Stephen G Beaumont Museum remained on the Stanley Royd Hospital site until 1995 when the hospital closed and the museum moved to its current location at Fieldhead Hospital.

• The old museum was largely visited by senior medical professionals and researchers, and it was inaccessible to many service users and local people in Wakefield.It became a space for broader debates around mental health care history, a place to break down barriers to wellbeing, combat mental health stigma, and be active in social justice.

•  Collections - Vivify: A Different World. Vivify engages people who access older people’s services and mental health services.

•  "Whether you are an author, production company, student, artist or an amateur historian, you may wish to use an image of an item from our collection in your work. If your work is commercial, like a TV show or a book, we may charge you to use our images. If you want to use an image for a non-commercial purpose, like in a dissertation or an information leaflet, then there will be no charge."

• Our Mission: 

- To promote understanding, empowerment and respect.

- To combat social inequality, prejudice, stigma, and ignorance.

- To contribute towards breaking down the barriers of well-being.

• Our statement of purpose: To become a leading resource for the history of mental health care, debates surrounding contemporary mental health care and treatments, lifelong learning.

• The Facebook seems to be a hub of more activity where they regularly share and update

Twitter: MHMwakefield

Instagram: allofusinmind

Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/MentalHealthMuseum/

Reflection: The website is pretty short and compact with lots of positive abd encouraging language around mental health.

The museum of mental health seems to be a more physical presence that you have to visit in person to get an understanding of the space, the collections, the impact of the history but unfortunately it's closed due to the pandemic. It was nice to have an insight to the beginnings and the current mission statement but not much else is available. 

[LAUIL601] Case Study - My Own Lived Experience With Trauma (Article Written for Balance Magazine)

I recently wrote an article for Balance Magazine, who invited me to share my story of how art impacts my mental health. As discussed with Amy in my tutorial, this can begin to form the foundation of my case study OR my reflective practice. Article below:

"I would like to invite you to imagine.

Imagine that you have the biggest dreams of becoming a children's book illustrator. Imagine that you have met your hero, Paddington Bear's author, Michael Bond CBE, at his home in London after writing to each other for some time and gifting your illustrations to him. He inspired you to work hard and to pursue your passion. Imagine that your first year of university, undertaking an illustration degree, has gone tremendously well. You have worked tirelessly to make the beginnings of your qualification a success. Imagine that you have been given the incredible opportunity to be part of Davina McCall's 'This Time Next Year' to make the dream of creating your first children's book become a reality. Imagine that you have received the interest of Walker Books in London, who have published some of your childhood favourites, and you can't believe that you are in their headquarters talking about the book you will publish with them. Imagine your heart being so full it could literally burst!

Imagine your universe crashing down around you as your mum, your absolute best friend and your entire support network, has a severe stroke in front of you and you are helpless to stop it. Imagine your world shrinking smaller in total devastation. Imagine giving up everything that you worked so hard for to be a carer for your stroke survivor parent, who is now very dependent and very disabled. Imagine your world slowly going black as the retina in your one working eye detaches in a matter of days leaving you with complications, high ocular pressures and blindness.

I'm Kimberley Burrows and this is the story of how art saved my life.

I was born as a premature baby in Salford, Greater Manchester, in November 1988 with Congenital Cataracts that were overlooked until I was 4 years old. My childhood was spent travelling between Manchester and London to have many appointments and operations at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and Moorfields Eye Hospital. All I ever really knew was the strange game of waking up in the early hours of the morning, getting washed and dressed, travelling a long distance in the car for hours, and then being in a hospital where I'd be in various states of panic without knowing the reason I was there and what was going to happen to me. I didn't know that my blurry world, out of only one working eye, was not how everyone else experienced living. I didn't know that people didn't have accidents the way I did because I had missed the footing of the stairs or where the door was.

Art was comforting during my extended hospital stays recovering from various eye surgeries. I always reached for the crayons and paper and scribbled away without thinking of creating anything in particular. This was very much the beginnings of my art journey. Looking back, I now realise this was my way of dealing with multiple, complex feelings happening all at once. A need for escape. It was an instinctive response to feeling emotionally overwhelmed and far away from home, and was the birth of what would later become a practice dedicated to reactionary, abstract, intuitive art.

I was an exceptional student despite my sight loss from an early age, with limited help back then, but art was where I truly flourished the most. It was my favourite subject throughout my school years before I went on to take it at GCSE level receiving an A* grade. After high school, my sight unfortunately started to deteriorate further so going to college became difficult. I began to reach out to sight loss charities such as Henshaws Society for Blind People, Guide Dogs, and the RNIB during this time to support myself as a young severely sight-impaired adult and to help build my confidence, social skills, Braille skills and mobility skills with my Guide Dog, Tami. As my confidence increased so did my interest in creating art again and I entered a competition to become the Royal National Institute of Blind People's 'Young Illustrator of the Year' in 2014. After winning, and creating regular work for their Insight Magazine throughout the year, I decided it was time to go back to art college and do everything necessary in order to receive my degree in illustration.

Leeds College of Art seemed the most suitable. It wasn't too far away from home and had a specialist course aimed at mature students wanting to get back into education and receive the qualifications needed to start a BA (Hons) degree. Travelling on the train twice a week with my Guide Dog, I was starting to live an independent life and truly enjoying the higher education that was denied to me when I was younger. I went on to become a Student Representative and Student Ambassador and received distinctions in all of my modules. My first year of university as an illustration student was equally as prosperous. I was the Student Governor, had won the Student of the Year Award 2016 at The Specialist Institution Awards and had even won the Guide Dogs Partnership Award for 2017, with my Guide Dog, Tami, at the Annual Guide Dogs Awards. I received distinctions in all of my modules again and spent the summer volunteering at an underprivileged school in Kasambira, Uganda, helping to build and paint a playground for the children as well as being involved with art and play sessions. I had the most amazing month while out there with absolutely nothing but my backpack and the love of the children and the team I was working with. 

When I came home from my amazing volunteering experience, I was contacted by ITV to ask if I'd be interested in being part of Davina McCall's 'This Time Next Year,' where I could make my dream of being a children's book illustrator a reality! I absolutely jumped at the opportunity and would record weekly video diaries of the work I was planning, the progress I was making and the publishers I was contacting. I met with Walker Books in London and recorded segments with them that would be used for the show, discussing the direction of the book I'd be writing and illustrating.

However, during this time, having started my second year at university and third year back in education, I was starting to fall into a deep depression. I missed the sense of purpose, community and belonging that I felt in Uganda that I didn't currently feel while being a mature student living away from home in Leeds. I was feeling isolated and began to negatively focus on myself and my weight. Anorexia quickly developed through heavy restriction of calories and misuse of painkillers but I finally felt in control of everything again, even though I was very far from it. I was sleeping all day from exhaustion, depression and malnutrition, but it didn't matter as long as I could wake up and hear my talking scales declaring I'd lost another pound. That was the ultimate success to me. It was beginning to turn into a serious problem when I'd lost 4 stone and had a dependency to Codeine. I had to withdraw from university to go home and get better, but the worst was yet to come.

At the beginning of February 2018, my mum had a severe stroke while we were out enjoying a Sunday afternoon at The Trafford Centre. One moment she was guiding me and the next she was walking into me and mumbling nonsense before collapsing onto the concrete floor of a clothing store. Everything felt like it was spinning and I could feel the blood pounding in my ears as the events unfolded before me. Staff members came rushing with oxygen tanks and first aid kits, people were crowding around and trying to find out what was going on, my mum lay crumpled on the floor. I couldn't strop crying and could barely see or remember the ambulance journey or hospital waiting room through the constant waterfall of tears.

My life had changed now and my mum needed me. Every day for the next few months I would go on the bus with my Guide Dog to visit my mum at the hospital while she was recovering and take care of the animals and the house in the evening, whilst still neglecting my own nutrition, to maintain that sense of control and power over a situation I was drowning in. I was very much alone. When my mum was well enough to come home, it was still extremely difficult for me to accept everything that had happened. She looked different, talked different and acted very childlike. I missed the person I knew and loved. How can you grieve for someone who is still technically alive? I would spend a lot of my time doing the best I could with gardening, housework, cooking and caring, but it was all too much for one person to cope with who had personal problems of their own that still needed addressing. My eating disorder was ever persistent and I was the lowest weight I'd ever been.

I could no longer set aside the time to record video diaries for 'This Time Next Year' and ITV quickly dropped me from the project. I was so, so heartbroken as I had worked incredibly hard up until this point. I was open and honest and had told them everything that was happening in my life with my eating disorder and my mum's stroke but they had tight deadlines to work towards and I was never invited back to the show.

In early September, I noticed something strange happening with my vision. It was like I was looking through a lens of tv static. I assumed I wasn't feeling well and went to sleep to try and rest my eyes but it was still there when I woke up later in the day. The morning after, I had dark floating objects across my vision. I was used to small floaters but this was something else; like an underwater scene of shadowed octopus legs swimming above me. I could barely see a thing and was horrified. In previous circumstances I would have rushed to my mum who would have driven me to the hospital, but what could she do now? Through tears I had to take myself back to the place I had been avoiding where my mum had had her stroke, The Trafford Centre, and go to the opticians for some assistance as it was the only thing I could think of doing. They sent me to Manchester Eye Hospital in a taxi where I was told that the retina in my one working eye was detaching and that it was a very serious issue. I was to have an emergency surgery after the weekend, but not before my vision changed again and a black curtain was pulling across everything I knew.

The next morning, everything was black. 

I can't even begin to describe this time of my life. A blurring of days and months. Emergency surgery after emergency surgery; needles in my eyes while I was awake under local anaesthetic to relieve the build up of pressure, my own screaming ringing through my head and the operating theatre. Lying face down in a leather pillow attached to the end of my hospital bed to constantly posture my eye correctly for healing. I wasn't allowed up unless it was for the basics of eating or self care. My other retina followed suit and detached 3 months later in December and this time a silicone buckle was inserted into my right eye to keep it in place, as it had detached from a different angle. I could barely keep either of my eyes open from them constantly weeping with all of the hourly eyedrops I was having, the swelling and the heat from my burning face where the buckle was trying to reject.

The only thing keeping me going was the alcohol during the Christmas period where I'd drink myself silly to forget how much agony and discomfort I was in, with the painful realisation lurking in the background that I still could not see after months of hospital visits. I had tried to restart my second year of university and, quite frankly, it just wasn't working out. I had started a month late because of my first retina detaching, and the current brief I was trying to work on during the second detachment comprised of making an animation over the festive holidays. I would have regular panic attacks in the workshops having to sit through visual instructions with a room full of sighted peers, knowing full well that I could not make something on my own animation-wise without wanting to throw the computer out of the window. I could barely write my own name.

My final operation was in February 2019 when a thick membrane was found to have grown over my left eye where the retina had detached first. I woke up from this surgery with stitches in my eye, rather than a gas bubble as before, which proved to have been a misjudgement of kindness by my surgeon as the stitches presented me with more problems. Two stitches became deeply embedded causing me a delayed recovery, shooting pains in my eye and my face, and constant headaches. I had to withdraw from university again as too much time was taken out for recovery and I had not really made any work since my eating disorder started a year and a half before. I had so much emotional baggage at this point that I was constantly carrying around with me from the PTSD of my surgeries and witnessing what had happened to my mum. It was a black fog that was suffocating me. I was experiencing my first intrusive thoughts of suicide.

Even though I was trying to start my life anew as a blind person and finding new ways to cook, clean and provide self care safely and efficiently, the biggest obstacle to my degree had become myself and my mental health. I simply didn't want to create anymore. How could I? What could I even do as a blind person? What the hell did I have to say that was of worth? My previous practice was digital, professional and imbued feelings of nostalgia using Adobe software and a Wacom tablet to create charming characters and settings. I absolutely could not do that now with no useful sight. Why was I even trying to be in university with the younger people, the next generation of talent? I was already past my youth and my adulthood was a complete disaster. My eating disorder was my normality now, and my dark thoughts and deep depression were my roommates. I no longer knew happiness.

My third and final attempt at my second year of university was finally going okay. I had created easy strategies of making work by cutting basic shapes with paper and using basic mark making. Though my heart wasn't really in it, at least I wasn't a carer back at home and I was working towards something. Until the global pandemic of COVID-19 and the country going into lockdown.

Any remaining independence I had was now gone and the aforementioned baggage was crushing me like a boulder. I found it difficult to get help with toiletries and groceries as elderly people were seen as the priority online, not blind people. Basic items were becoming hard to get ahold of that fully abled and sighted people easily had access to, and I did not. My Guide Dog, Tami, unfortunately had a large lump on her rib cage, which was found to be a benign tumour, where her harness could no longer close around the mass. She could no longer work and provide me with assistance. She was taken to a boarder to settle in, have regular free runs, undergo surgery, and recover from her operation. This process took a very long 16 weeks. I was completely on my own, with no family or friends, and a lot of other students in my accommodation had decided to go back home. This was not an option for me as I needed to finish my second year at university and I needed to keep fighting to look after myself every day.

By August 29th, 2020, the dark thoughts broke to the surface and I wanted to take my own life. I was so exhausted of being alive, feeling miserable, and being in total isolation. I had planned what I was going to do, where I was going to do it and had typed a goodbye message in my notes app that I would send to my mum and my best friend. My eyes were stinging and aching from hours of crying and I could not have been more desperate for something to cling onto. Anything. What was my purpose in life? Was it to suffer so much pain, be so completely alone without even my Guide Dog for so long? What did I ever do to deserve any of this? Do I not deserve a chance to see, to love, or to belong? The only way out of this was to end it but before I did, a small voice in the back of my mind told me to dare to paint for one last time. If this was truly the night I left the Earth then why not try what I had been avoiding for so long. If nothing happens and I can't bring myself to do it, as I was so sure I couldn't, then I would allow myself to find the bridge and end it. But let's dare to try first.

That night things changed for me and I finally found some peace. Maybe even a glint of genuine happiness. It wasn't immediate but a spark started to ignite. I began to feel tranquil, like I was in some kind of meditative state. I had found the thing I needed to cling onto. Hope. Since then, I have never stopped making and I have never stopped being fearless. I have created around 60 artworks and enjoyed a growing following on my instagram page at @gleamedart where I have shared my journey. I know that my artwork will never be what it once was when I could see, but so what? So what? What does it matter? Letting go of that self hatred for myself and what happened to me, and finally embracing myself as I am now, was truly a transformative moment. I now paint and use oil pastels while I listen to music and while I go through the spectrum of human emotions. Sight isn't needed for either of those processes. The colour of my tools are chosen at random by what 'feels' right and the marks made vary from being aggressive, gentle and caressing to illustrate my mood.

Creating reactionary and intuitive, abstract art through my own unique, blind lens has helped me to deal with a lot of my pain, my dark thoughts, my PTSD, and my loneliness and turn those negatives into something positive and beautiful. My problems are my no means solved but I have a more level-headed approach to dealing with what is manageable and what is not. The act of being creative makes me physically feel better and like I have a reason to be here in the world; to share my story and to share my art. My own personal journey and experiences with creativity informing, and positively impacting, my mental health has lead me to build my dissertation around the subject to learn more about the history and psychology of the positive effects of art therapy. I hope to continue being inspired by this work for a long time in my practice, while undertaking a Masters degree,  becoming a strong representation of a blind contemporary artist in the UK. 

Through all of the heartache, the pain, and the loneliness, I have always found my way back to that familiarity of creating. Just like the little girl I was at Great Ormond Street trying to understand what was going on in my life, I'm still very much doing the same now in my adulthood; yearning, questioning, unpicking, exploring. My output may be different to what I had originally intented to do as a children's book illustrator and this isn't the journey I thought I was supposed to be on but maybe, in the end, this is where I'm supposed to be. I will always keep fighting to be at peace with myself and my past. I've experienced some of the worst things a person can go through and, remarkably, I am still here through the power of art. 

I could never have imagined that."

[LAUIL601] Primary Research: The Other Art Fair Seminar

Tonight I attended an online seminar with musician and artist Brandon Boyd, of the band Incubus, with The Other Air Fair on Instagram. He said something very interesting regarding mental health and I wanted to make a note of it which may benefit my writing:

"As artists we are more prone to those things because we are more sensitive by nature. The more you create a life around art, the more you are opening that door more and more and giving it more permission to come in and if you don't have certain tools or skill sets or maybe a vernacular to be able to describe and / or assimilate that experience it can feel quite extreme. I've learned that by surrendering to the creative flow, the experience became consistently quite blissful. I think some of the mental health stuff comes when we "fight" the experience of creating."

[LAUIL601] Reflective Report 2 (376 words)

I don't really feel like my project is developing as well as it could be doing at this time, on the subject of art and mental health. 

I started rather open-ended with researching terms and sources, attending a webinar and an inside the studio with artist and musician Brando Boyd who touched briefly on mental health with an inspiring quote, but it hasn't progressed much since. I'm not on track in terms of the written or research aspects and I feel like I'm drowning in my own personal mental health problems. 

The only thing keeping me afloat in my little boat of the tempestuous sea is creating practical responses that I will submit for this module, to demonstrate as a strong case study how art does, indeed, benefit and promote your sense of self-worth and wellbeing. My brain just really cannot focus on anything academic right now and wants to shut it out and shut it away and close myself off as a self-defence mechanism. I feel like I'm in survival mode because of how isolated I am and how Tami, my Guide Dog, isn't home yet - much later than originally projected. I have no contact with the outside world with family, I've never had any friends to begin with here, but having my freedom lost because of not having my Guide Dog for 3 months is starting to impact me. I'm sure there is science or theory behind this and I can research it when Tami is back and I feel mentally up to it.

Because of my personal circumstances, far out of my control, the practical aspect has developed beyond my expectations with poems and many abstract expressionist works. I don't need to develop a plan of what to do, the work is there and demonstrates how art is giving me some kind of value to waking up to loneliness and four walls each day. 

My next steps are to keep surviving, keep creating any way I can and to return to academic work when able. This includes accessing texts, podcasts, videos, and journals with relevant quotes for my dissertation, building up an essay plan, Harvard referencing my bibliography, and marrying together the practical and theoretical to make sense of my own lived experience. 

[LAUIL601] Primary Research - Case Study: Catrin Morgan

Lovely to hear from you. I'm sorry to be so slow to reply! The last few weeks have been very busy at Parsons.

Here are my answers to your questions. I hope I'm not too late to be useful! Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best wishes,

Cat

• Do you feel your anxiety / mental health is positively impacted because of being creative?

The relationship between my mental health and my creativity is quite complicated. Sometimes making work feels

like something that is very good for my wellbeing but at other times I can become quite anxious about making work and when I\"m depressed I often make terrible work or no work at all. As I get older I\"ve realised that it depends a little bit where I am and what kind of care I\"m taking of myself. I need to have a stable home life both to be mentally well and for my creativity to flourish. 

• If so, why do you think this is?

Having said all of that, when my creativity is helping my mental space it is because it is giving me a quiet space to go to. Creativity can be very grounding. It\"s usually when work needs to find an audience that it becomes stressful.

• Could you tell me a little bit more about the art therapy sessions at parsons that you mentioned in your visiting lecture?

These are not art therapy sessions but a class that I ran last year which aimed to look at how illustrators might be uniquely placed to communicate mental health narratives.

• What do the sessions aim to do?

We explored writing and thinking around mental health and the students pursued self directed projects looking at mental health narratives that particularly interested them or were personal to them. They produced some really interesting and impactful work.

• Have you noticed that they have had a positive impact on the students? If so, why do you think this is?

It\"s very hard to say. I think that some students found the class quite difficult. We were talking about some very heavy subjects and this in itself can become a point for anxiety. Other students certainly found the space that they were given helpful.

• Are there any particular case studies that you can think of where these sessions have been a tremendous benefit to a particular student?

Hmmm.. not possible to say.

Reflection:

I find these answers provide another viewpoint in the argument, that there isn't always a positive correlation between art and mental well-being especially when we feel the need to perform for an audience. This could give an engaging read in my dissertation rather than 2 or 3 positive case studies.

[LAUIL601] Interim Submission: Essay Structure, Practical Work So Far and Next Steps

[LAUIL601] Visiting Lecturer: Decorating Dissidence

Visiting Lecturer: Decorating Dissidence

• A collective from Hull, London and Maine. Modernism, contemporary, feminist art history. Modes of modern art and modernism.
• Started in 2017. Decorative art and craft in modernism.
• Lottie Wayland. Women of New York. Dada book currently writing.
• Pretty much forgotten artist. Assemblage artwork. Household. Why craft is left out of modernism. Boundaries. Uniformly white. Masculine and Eurocentric.
• Group of "others"
• Craft isn't just materials – it's who is doing it that makes it craft. Fabric typewriter accepted as high art whereas other pieces considered as purely decorative.
• We aim to bring together artists, makers, interacts, academics and bridge that gap between them all.
• Looked online to show line new work which led to us to launch our own journal online.
• Powerful political acts that can empower marginalised voices.
• Why is craft political? Craft has been viewed outside the art history. Not as necessarily high value or important. 
• Our platform gives attention to lasting legacies of other modes of making.
• Black Mountain College, Carolina, 1933. New type of college. Unique environment, community, individuality of the Bauhaus international style. Key part of American modernism. Intersection quite early on of artists with different means and mediums. Women were pushed into weaving and craft at the Bauhaus. Students were encouraged to experiment, cook, tend to the land, especially the female students. 
• However many females were not paid and their legacy is forgotten. Now being uncovered.
• New York - The Dinner Party. 
• Different movements of voice in feminism. Contemporary craft. Ann Albers from Tate modern.
• Faith Ringold - craft, making the public aware of different narratives and perspectives.
• Such attention and detail to a commercial space. Really important works to a white space.
• Institutions taking craft more seriously. Nick Cave suits protected from abuse. In an abstract way.
• Crafts were fundamental to the 20th century. Bauhaus. German art school. Arts with the fine arts. Art back in touch with The every day.
• Dada. Zurich followed by New York, Paris and other centres. Collage, photomontage and other methods in their work.
• Gender, race, sexuality and class.
• Weave In. 16 performance artists live-weaving.
• The Bauhaus thought that women were suited to 2-D inventions and could only weave.
• Power poses in photos. Women were mainly involved in weaving workshops.
• Kinship and community.
• "The Event of the Thread"
• artistic research and performance. Two people leave together. If one person slacks then the whole thing falls apart. Collaborative system. The piece was made was done exhibited. There are videos of the weave in the exhibition too.
• Take Dada Seriously (It's Worth It!)
• Moved everything online. Focusing on the centenary of dada. Absurdism, the ready-made and collage. Can dada help us navigate through the chaos?
• Question dada through a contemporary lens.
• We have a website, Instagram and next year a podcast!
• We take submissions and open to collaboration.
• There is a mindfulness and a calmness to craft.
• Loom workshops online through zoom. Different theme every day. Still make and come together collectively.
• Craft caps of the political conversation that the government tackled. Form of protest. Making masks, making scrubs for the NHS. Taking agency over our lives again.

Reflection of today's Visiting Lecturers:

I really enjoyed today's session and it reminded me very much of doing Contextual Studies back in my first year of Access to HE with Frances. I'm feeling rather nostalgic for those times, when we had a sense of normality, freedom and when I had Tami, and this was a nice reminder of a time gone by. 

My practice does not involve craft yet, but it could do in the future so I found the history captivating - especially the political element of feminism. I would want to perhaps use craft to raise awareness of disability and to make my work more tactile, though the medium would need to be accessible to me.  

The particular comment "there is a mindfulness and a calmness to craft," stood out to me especially - linking to the work I'm undertaking and providing a reassurance that creativity boosts our mental health.

[LAUIL601] Visiting Lecturer: Dan Woodger

Visiting Lecturer: Dan Woodger (5th November)

• Inspirations include Nickelodeon shows such as Hey Arnold!, Doug and Rugrats, books like Where's Wally? and comedy/situ shows like The Simpsons.
• Owns lots of Simpsons' merch. Drawn to its humour, living and thriving community of Springfield, hub, character interactions. Richly defined world.
• Also loves Jurassic Park. When younger, built the world from Lego but questioned where do the dinosaurs sleep? Eat? Got the cogs turning on world-building and asking questions. Even made a little comic book about this to flesh it out.
• Then Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released in teen years. Sandbox game. Completely 80s. Little jokes on the surface level. Underneath the surface and looking more into the world and it's details – manual with products from the game, deep sexual humour and jokes that need lived experience and age to understand.
• 2008 Uni of Brighton. Picked the game up again. Immersed myself in the 80s. Final exhibition was an 80s bedroom scene. You had to play my final work on VHS.
• Enjoys attention to detail.
• Ideas perspective. Details. Nothing too crammed together. Nicely spaced out.
• Learned about a company called Line. Popular in Asia. The brief was to create 1000 emojis. 100 a week, 17 hours a day. When designing each emoji I had 600 x 600 pixels to work with. Constraint. Trick is to maximise how much info in that square.
• I was the first to finish and it was the second most read article on 'It's Nice That' when published in that year. Pepsi, even Paul McCartney took notice. Caught onto the trend of emojis at the right time. It's taught me about spatial awareness, every movement meaning something, small changes make a huge difference.
• Crowd scenes are enjoyable to do. Flesh out the details. Fearsome because there is never enough time.
• BT Artbox project. White plaster cast of a phone box. How many characters can I fit onto it? Completely freestyle, somehow pulled it off.
• Pressure brings out the best in me!
• Piece of work for Will Smith. Cuban scene with Will running in the scene. Lots of relevant objects and people including the Cuban flag, classic cars, street musicians. Spaced out so your eye can go around. I draw myself in there too. Few running gags through my work like a Where's Wally? scene. Planning and executing, building worlds.
• Individual characters. People I know, some objects. Some hang out with some celebs – Snoop Dogg.
• Animate simple gifs. I've become more confident in animating static images.
• Worked with Netflix, Apple, Samsung
• Samsung in Taipei – 10 days research and photographing using a Samsung phone and drawing with their pen tool. Press conference. Question & answer session. Animation from my research and visit. Projected onto a building. Orchestra, mayor, translator, pop-up store. It was wild!
• Working with MTV. Dream project stemming from love of 80s music. I wrote my dissertation on MTV. Just had to use their colour chart and a word. Picked dominant colour and then narrative. Chose blue and lazy.
• I had two ideas that I didn't really like. I went back to basics. Back to my love of the 80s and dinosaurs and Jurassic Park. Went back to that classic feeling of nostalgia.
• I wanted to focus on extinction. I really wanted to push my animation skills, technical side of things, new angles.
• Always love to doing things digitally but what would happen in the real world? Collaborating with 3-D artists. Looking at my work in a new context.
• In future would love to do more narrative stuff, TV stuff. I'd love to make a mini golf course.
• I am ambitious and have ideas, but I'm happy to let it take me where it takes me like the emoji project and Taipei Samsung project.
• I know my work will always involve characters and expression.
• Breaking up my colour palette gave me better opportunities and a good social media response. Be brighter, upping the colours and contrast. Comfortable exploring with other colours now. You don't need a set colour palette to represent yourself. Keep exploring.
• The work should be coming from you because you make it. Don't worry about chasing a project.
• I look at art directors, find who they are and what they do, then made a mail out to put something physical on their desk. CV, who I am, a print in a plastic envelope. Ad agencies and just try to get some one's attention.
• It's important to have a sense of self-worth.
• I now sit on the board of the AOI.
• It's a worrying time at the moment but there are a lot of opportunities for us as creatives.
• Learn new skills to broaden your already existing portfolio of skills.
• There are certainly jobs I didn't like. The 1000 emojis in a year was stressful. It made good money and it was the right time. Fallout game paid £7500 but it was a difficult job as it was a set style, which I didn't like working to. The money was worth it. 
• You do need to be enjoying this. If I have to keep making artwork that I didn't enjoy, I don't think that I would do this.
• I can now recognise red flags much better in a project.
• Don't be pushed to work in the style of somebody else.
• Illustration 101 – don't do someone else's style. Unless the artist gives their express permission.
• Email me for any more questions.

Reflection of Visiting Lecturer:

While our portfolios are not the same visually and we both work in very different ways, I prefer analog processes and Dan is more immersed in the digital world, I thought that he touched on something very interesting when he mentioned that "every movement means something." I find that this is the case in my own work with abstract expressionism. Every movement is deliberate tells a story and should mean something on the canvas. I may not be working in pixels and to constraints of 600 x 600 pixels but I am working on a similar blank space with materials  where my gestures take up real estate. I, too, have to consider where the paint is going and how it interacts in such a space.

Dan is very influenced by the 80s and I listen to a lot of 80s music when creating my canvas paintings. I also like to get lost in worlds and find them very immersive. There is something about escapism from our own reality that is very fascinating to explore and a real core part of being human. To dream and daydream about other places. My own abstract paintings become their own rich worlds, based on music and emotions, away from the reality.

I relate to pressure bringing out the best in me. When I have limited time to do something, I will actually start to think of systems of making and pushing myself in a small window of time.

There was also some really sound advice in regards to researching appropriate people and creating a mail-out to put something physical in front of them and to get yourself known.

[LAUIL601] Primary Research: SurveyMonkey Results and Analysis

I thought I would gather responses to some basic questions around art and mental health and whether my peers and friends feel that art benefits their mental health and wellbeing in some way. Or not. I can use these statistics and individual quotes in my writing to back up or challenge my research.

One thing I wanted to be mindful of at this stage was not to make the questions too specific or too long. Peoples' attentions tend to wander and I need to keep them engaged with the questions to gather as much information as possible for a good sample size.

I thought 4 questions was a fair amount and that 2 'yes or no' questions and 2 questions where people could input more specific answers would be a good start to my project at this stage as both statistics and quotes can be pulled.

Unfortunately, despite getting a god result of 95 answers, SurveyMonkey are only displaying 40 at this time a they want me to pay for a Premium service. Swines.

 [Link]

95 results

Question 1: Are You a Creative? (artist / designer / musician / cosplayer / etc.)

100% said yes

Question 2: Do You Find That Your Mental Health is Positively Impacted When You Are Creative? 

97.50% said yes

Question 3: How Do You Feel After You Have Created Your Own Piece of Art, Music or Design?

[I have access to 39 answers. 1 person skipped this question.]

• Accomplished, proud. There is a bit of a high involved

• Happy and also disbelief that I actually created it

• I feel a sense of achievement. I love looking at my work over a long period of time and seeing how I've improved

• Not really sure. Good

• Happy, less stressed, Joy full.

• Accomplished and ready to hopefully start another project or continue one I haven't finished yet. Of course though that is if my depression doesn't kick in first which I take a week or so break after posting my work.

• Proud and worthy

• Fulfilled and grateful it's done.

• Productive

• Relaxed, peaceful, unburdened

• I feel happier and somewhat smarter and a little bit more confident.

• I feel like I’ve accomplished something good, I feel very excited to do more projects

• I feel fulfilled and largely happier

• I feel a sense of real personal achievement and desire to make more.

• Inspired, fulfilled, empowered, energised, contented

• I feel satisfied, accomplished and happy.

• Accomplished and proud

• Accomplished, satisfied, happy, competent

• Proud

• I am a published writer. I write a little bit of everything but especially poetry, and I feel accomplished and liberated after I have written something.

• Very happy and calm.

• I feel relaxed and happier.

• Hyper

• Relieved, happy, yet drained when the adrenaline wears off.

• It makes me feel happy that I was able to finish something and that that artwork might bring a smile to someones face

• Satisfied and productive.

• Refreshed

• Lighter and able to think more clearly

• Fulfilled.. Satisfied that I have spent my precious time wisely

• After making even something like a warm up doodle, I have a soothing, rewarding feeling after. These feelings do intensify when it's art that's more challenging or for others.

• Fullfilled

• I feel rather pleased with myself. Really happy or excited.

• Refreshed, happy, proud of myself

• I feel great like I have really achieved something and it kind of makes me feel like us creatives have a special ability and it’s just a great feeling.

• Usually I feel fulfilled in a way. It's usually difficult for me to find proper inspiration and have my hands and/or mind cooperate with me, but once I've got it, it's liberating.

These were the opposing views that Id like to make note of and be aware of:

• It depends how I feel about the piece if in my opinion it was successful or not.

• If I like what I've and feel productive good, if not I will feel bad.

• I feel restless and stressed.

• I feel very, very bad. I never like what I draw, I always think I could have done better.

Question 4: In Your Own Words, Please Explain Why You Think You Feel This Way In Response To Being Creative and Why Do You Think It (Positively or Negatively) Impacts Your Mental Health?

[I have access to 39 answers. 1 person skipped this question.]

• "Because it's when I feel most like myself. It's an outlet to get my feelings out and to create what makes me happy."

• "I was constantly told as a child that I was stupid., I have since realised that I am autistic, my art helps my brain to concentrate on something longer than my usual five minutes."

• "It gives me a purpose! I work as an animator and do illustration work in my spare time, so I'm constantly creating. It feels like I'm creating a legacy and proof that I'm doing something with my life. This gives me a boost when I'm feeling low as it provides tangible objects that I can see to show I'm worth something."

• "It definitely impacts mental health because you are putting so much thought into something, it can be almost therapeutic at times."

• "Being able to creatively express oneself, to take something from inside your own head and see it Come to life, and then have other People tell you it made them feel something aswell, is an amazing feeling, and you feel like matter, which is always good."

• "I believe its positive because I'm able to let my mind flow away from my thoughts and worries. I envelop myself into the world I'm working with and put myself in my own characters shoes. I'm able to fully relax then."

• "I feel this way because when it’s something I love and I put so much effort in creating it, I feel I am doing something I can be proud of and it definitely makes me happy and being an insecure person, it also makes me feel worthy. Art, or being creative in general, truly impacts my mental health positively!"

• "I feel like I've been able to do something productive with my time and to be able to see a physical representation of that is so rewarding."

• "Gives me a sense of achievement and like I have decluttered some thoughts or ideas"

• "Writing a blog is like your own therapy session and hopeful that someone else can benefit. It's like removing a piece of armour and allowing people in while being comfortably at length. I enjoy seeing my life as a story and taking time to concentrate time going through how I've felt about things methodically."

• "When I'm doing something, I need to (and want to) put all my energy and thoughts towards completing it. When I no longer have anything else left on the project, I feel empty because it's like I've lost something. My brain still wants to work on the project, but there's literally nothing else to do. I have difficulties switching projects and I have a tendency to hyperfocus due to ADHD, so I think those are the main causes of this. I think it negatively impacts my mental health because there's a very nasty feeling of being useless after I finish creative projects. Going from working so, so hard on something to being completely done with it but still having the motivation to work on it makes me very sad. If I'm not being 'productive,' what's the point?"

• "It relaxes me and makes me feel like I actually can do something too. Something productive, nice and/or useful, in a way. I usually feel the opposite of that."

• "I think when I’m writing music it calms my anxiety down, giving me a platform to express myself and being able to do something that I like, clears my mind and calms me down.."

• "Because I've overcome a creative challenge, or it's given me a sense of purpose for the day"

• "I think when being creative or when making it allows you to be fully present and therefore eliminates all worries or anxiety which often cause our mental health to suffer."

• "I suppose what you create is a part of you; it reflects you. So when it is impacted for whatever reason, you are also impacted."

• "I think it positively impacts my mental health as I am witness so something new and exciting coming into the world."

• "Due to having seen something through to it's conclusion makes me feel motivated, positive and satisfied."

• "It's an outlet and a distraction from mental health and keeps me busy."

• "Creative people need an outlet. Sometimes I feel very antsy if I can’t create and have come to the accept that due to circumstances, sometimes I can only create in my head. But if that goes on too long and I can’t do something creative, whether it be writing or altered art, it does negatively impact my mental health. Oh! But when I have time to explore my creativity that is absolutely the best mental health boost. Completing a creative project gives me a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction like nothing else. It really is a euphoric feeling that I need for my mental health."

• "Because I have managed to make something I have imagined become real. Because I have been able to use learned skills to make a useful or beautiful object. I enjoy the positive comments that others make about the thing I have created as that boosts my self esteem. Having the skill to make something helps me to feel able and resilient. I think making something unique helps me to feel significant and to feel that I, individually, am important to the world in my own small way."

• "Because when I'm finally able to create something I like , it's a big thing. Usually my mental health makes we share at the paper for hours and that makes me frustrated and sad"

• "It is kind of difficult to explain, but I will do my best. A lot of my poetry has helped me make sense of past experiences, especially difficult, traumatic ones. I found that I was better able to put my feelings into words via that medium than I probably would have been otherwise, and I do strongly feel that writing has, in part, helped me heal. It also kind of boosts my self-esteem to know that I have created something that I am happy with."

• "The act of creating something is calming because you can immerse yourself in the action and shut out any negativity."

• "Being creative requires focus and when that happens, I achieve the results I want."

• "It stimulates my brain and makes it run a mile a minute with ideas. I’m terrible at finishing things because I’m always thinking of how to push it further"

• "The exhilaration of being creative produces endorphins and adrenaline. Being involved with something you love (like being with family, or pets) creates a positive mindset for me."

• "It's just the dopamine rush of completing something, especially when you think you did it good. I see making art as a frustrating hobby where the end result if it's done well will make me or someone happy. Maybe it's not the most mentally healthy way to go around it but it's how I'm."

• "Completing any task in a positive manner stimulates one's self worth and happiness"

• "I find being creative a very therapeutic thing so after making I feel it soothes me and calms me down because I’m focusing on a specific thing and my mind isn’t spiralling with thoughts."

• "Its because I am able to use my creativity to express my emotions. Instead of bottling it up"

• "Mental health is not just about feeling depressed, lonely feeling down.. There's a negative and a positive and people who suffer from issues.. Oscillate between the 2 states.. Being creative brings the mind and emotions to a better place" (This is a really great observation and experience of mental health)

• "Art has been a near lifelong favorite creative activity of mines and it's always been a hobby that's brought a lot good things to me. I'd like to say that these feelings while making art has positively impacted my mental health by making my overall mood and state of mind a lot lighter."

• "I think it impacts my mental health because art has been a big part of my life. I believe I feel this way in response due to my never ending need to create, or make something."

• "It’s a very relaxing process and I feel like it gives me a sense of fulfilment and completion once I haven’t finished it"

• "Creating something makes me feel fulfilled inside."

• "Doing what I love allows me to escape for a while. Humans nowadays are sooo busy and never really just sit and take a breath. Drawing allows me to take a breath. If I didn’t draw I think i would go insane. It’s vital for me to take this breather out of busy life. Nothing beats a good drawing session and some good music."

• "It's most definitely a double-edged sword. If I have pride in a piece, I typically show it to people. Sometimes I feel that I don't receive enough "praise" for it. But it is still nice to create something all by myself. It's nice to do things myself in general, although my overall mental health makes it difficult. The factor of "overcoming" what hinders me probably adds to the feeling of accomplishment whenever I finish a piece."

Opposing view -

• "It's possibly because I am a perfectionist at heart, so if something I create doesn't turn up as good as I want, I give up on it and then feel shame. I tried many times to get back to art and drawing - at this point I think it's better for my mental health to stay away from painting."

Reflection: I'm really proud of myself for setting up this SurveyMonkey and promoting it as much as I did. It's frustrating I don't have access to all of the information because of a paywall but I guess that's the modern world. If you are successful with promoting something, the website host will block you in some way and want money for you to access it. Sigh.

Regardless, there are some incredibly thoughtful responses - especially to the final question - that have the wheels turning in my mind. A number of these can be pulled and used in my final writing. I now need to investigate the scientific hows and whys regarding being creative makes us feel the way it does but I find it interesting that not everyone feels these benefits and instead feels immense pressure hat they put onto themselves. 

[LAUIL601] Primary Research: Case Study - Merlin Evans

Me: Hi Merlin! Thank you so much for agreeing to answer my questions which will greatly help me with my dissertation! Here they are below:

Merlin: Hi Kimberley,

Just going to answer these questions now as I have my laptop open and daughter is momentarily occupied!

What made you attracted to the idea of illustrating emotions and mental health?

- I felt that this was a core part of what it was to be human, and as the arts seems to be a vehicle of expression to explore what is human (and perhaps even what is not), it seemed core to my practice. My emotions and mental health have shaped my creative practice for decades, so it also made sense to me to explore this in a more focussed lense. As a medical illustrator, you are not trained at all to visualise what I call the 'subtle' anatomy - that of thought, feeling, emotions - just the blood bones and guts. This to me seemed a huge error and oversight, seen as we are not just walking around as mechanical string puppets /plumbing.

• You mentioned using interesting and natural tools like herbs tied together to paint with as a brush in your video lecture - what significance do you think that kind of mark making brought to the work?

Play! Often to get the sense of play in my drawn work I need to feel like I am playing as I make it. I'm always trying to make marks with items that are not so traditional - it's probably the rebel in me. I like the idea of making a polished illustration using toilet roll for instance. There's a sort of democratising of materials if they aren't all made with expensive sable watercolour brushes!

• Will you be continuing this series of paintings based around emotions? Will you continue using interesting tools?

Yes - will be doing a number of these paintings over the next year. I am currently on a residency at the Center for Performance Science, linked with Imperial University and the Royal School of Music - I'm mark making performance of error, so will be continuing to build 'error' tools for this residency.

• Do you find that being creative has positively impacted your own mental health?

Being creative has positively and negatively impacted my health in equal measure! It's also a challenge to show up each day and express one's inner thoughts and feelings outwards, be judged for it, and try and make money for it. It can do as much damage as it can uplift. Takes good boundaries to ensure it is only a positive impact (something I'm learning - lifelong student of this!)

• Do you believe in art being a good tool for therapy?

YES. And yoga. And nature. And animals and SLOWING DOWN.

• Have you ever read any interesting books or articles about the subject of art therapy and it benefiting mental health? Is it an area that interests you?

There's so many in this area - the field of somatic therapy and embodied therapy is absolutely huge, a growing field. There are tight rules from art therapists on what does and doesn't class as art therapy - but I like again to break those rules. For me, all art is therapeutic. You don't need an art therapy degree to realise that (I don't think) - but if you want a specific holding through triggering or trauma, then seeking professional training and support is of course advisable. The Body Keeps Score is an interesting textbook on the role of stored emotions in the body, and how we might release them. I have about 200+ books on my shelf at the moment on this area of illustration/art so can't really list them all here, but yes, in short. Area does interest me!

[LAUIL601] Visiting Lecturer: Esther McManus

Comics, publishing, storytelling. 2020 Award at the London Centre for Book Arts.

Esther_mcmanus@hotmail.co.uk

esthermcmanus.co.uk

• Background as a printer. How I approach shaping the message and meaning. Interested in production process and how audience engages with it.
• Skilled jobs, workshops, distribution and consumption and the relationships that occurs because of these objects.
• Roles are not clearly defines of author/maker. Audience, publisher and we can become all of them.
• Illustration and print, conducting research. Undertake quite a range of work. People and places.
• I graduated 10 years ago. Print and print finishing at London Centre for book arts and teach elsewhere, undertake commissions.
• I've always been working on my own comics and research and those things are always taking over as personal projects. By working on what you want to make, people will approach you for that.
• I was approached by Peter Jones at the University of London, in the history department, who had seen scenes of maps with stories I'd done. He approached me to work with him and another in an academic library. Papers, books, essays. They wanted to look into history for homeless men and women and wanted to work with an illustrator to bring together and communicate information in a new way. Believed in the eloquence of images. Audience can experience and feel in a poetic way rather than in an academic text.
• I worked with this very big academic taxed by an academic publishing. It was £80 for the book or £20 to download each chapter. That is not going to come into most peoples' lives and is not accessible.
• He pays a lot of attention to the text and the extra text room elements and what message we can learn about what we were to experience.
• Images, layout, materials of the scene.
• He couldn't explore it in a meaningful way in his academic text.
• You learn something through working.
• Even though we work in different specialisms, we developed a shared language.
• Archival research of homeless people in the Senate house library and archives and records.
• Strange big book of pamphlets down together in one book. Range of materials. What kind of sources record homelessness, how are they recording, how are vagrants described? As criminals. Who is saying these things?
• Criminal records, walking records, become visible, document pamphlets, conditions of migrant labourers, reports about vagrancy.
• When examining, I had to start thinking about what I wanted to do with this information? How do I want to present it?
• Legal judgements or moral judgements of the time.
• How people give accounts of themselves and others. Emic, Etic. (Etic: relating to or denoting an approach to the study or description of a particular language or culture that is general, non-structural, and objective in its perspective.) objectivity. Cultural insiders and outsiders can produce accounts of their culture. Emic - about themselves in their own terms. Etic: interpretations from outsiders expressed in terms or forms not set by the group.
• Interesting way of how voice could be used/could be featured in the publication. What would my voice be like? Even when not making a loud voice, the things are from my position.
• Public walk that James Greenwood took in the "On Tramp" book. He dressed as a tramp to move across the country and then turn into a paperback book. Following the great North Road. We did to Stevenage to Hitchin. With local residents or a historians or people interested in 19th century literature.
• People had different perspectives and contexts and valued expertise. My interest to see what clues could be picked up in the landscape. The distances we were taking. Understanding the routes and lives.
• Group writing activity to reflect in language on the things we absorbed. How did people communicate what they saw? Some of that was used in the publication.
• My role was to piece things together for a nonspecialist audience.
• In the pamphlet I wanted people to see the landscape. Any time frame and contemporary but also to incorporate the vagrant and tramp of old and from the archives and the 19th-century book. To bring in contemporary scholarship and journalism but to also bring in the audiences' experiences. Logical, clear, argument, image-based approach allows stillness and space.
• Which physical materials? Made with cheap materials. Sugar paper similar to what was in the archives. Grotty stock. Portable, pocket sized, relationship with audience with original text.
• Bring something to the text, and a meaning, legitimised a scholarship academic form. As opposed to something more tangible.
• Unique access as someone not studying at this institution.
• British library and Mayday rooms, women's library, women's art library. Access to really old books, zines, pamphlets. Elaborate way to access archives.
• I don't think you need to access a special collection or archive. I'm just interested in archives but it can be what's around you. Collected ephemera can be a personal archive.
• MA practice – looked at historic printing, physical forms, and experiences they communicate. What the form communicates.
• I'm interested in how archives do the same thing and how they communicate the time.
• "Textures of feminist publishing"
• Being in the archive itself – it's one thing to experience things as they are and as they happened, and another to be in the archive looking into that window. It's strange seeing addresses that are familiar to me and then ones that are less obvious to me. Handling the same papers that people did in the past. These people are similar in many ways. We want the same things. Strange relationship to time. Eager to keep exploring in my work.
• Felt very contemporary. Time is an abstract concept. How that could be told. Feel and experience some of these things. Comics, things happening across time. Physical book form. Conventional and flexibility.
• Comics and illustration can be effective in communicating these things, rather than text. Visible solidarities.
• Comics are good at showing relationships to time.
• Work extending up to the present and future.
• The hands of the researcher is always present to show that I'm always there.
• I got quite stuck in March because of Covid and is accessing archives. 
• How soon is now? The book of Marjorie Kemp. Carolin Dinshaw. The Me is Me. Hope Allen.
• Working on the manuscript that was unearthed. Interested in hope. Hope Allen. Intrigued by this work.
• Reading books, bits of Chelsea, looking around, drawing, connections in the landscape. Connections on angles. Exciting to go on location. Architecture of the time.
• Experiments with comics and how to show objects across time represented visually. Relationship with people like me showing history and contemporary people and narrative and imagination.
• Effective attachments, latch on sympathetic, contemporary person in our minds.
• Enjoy listening to podcasts about how history is just the same as the present.
• "Between friends "comic. Feedback made things seem more compelling. It wasn't an interest before but now I can see it. Emotional and personal level.
• Hope to communicate. Always thinking about the audience and how they access the work and respond to it.
• Institute for historical research.
• Making personal work in a passionate and joyful. Ultimately I think my experience of making things is a good thing but often I feel keenly work on something out of my grasp and never know how well it will go. So I want to improve what isn't going well. Doubt, frustration, but still satisfying in some way. Drawing is joyful but ideas and subjects and my passions keep it interesting. Whether commissioned or personal work
• Doubt is minimised because someone else sees its worth when commissioned.
• I'm not personally a big collector of comics but I enjoy engaging with them. Comics are stimulating and joyful.
• Physical materials, interacting, interactivity, that someone has hand made. There is something very human that I respond to. Analog processes are fascinating to me because they are laborious. 
• You don't have to make a book by hands. It can become collaborative. Then it's significant and social. So many businesses, skills, industries, can operate together, human labour and specialisms, meaningful. Video that eloquently shows the typesetting of the last of the New York Times. Meaningful. Showing in the work that I make through the attention. Skill sharing, materials, equipment. Living to make. Decisions on what I choose for reasons.
• Insiders and outsiders. Missing something and not understanding is inevitable when communicating. Misinterpreting. Because you're coming from your own position. I have a responsibility and I feel that keenly.

Reflection of today's visiting lecture:

Lots of interesting points raised during today's session including thinking about the research that we are obtaining, critiquing it, being mindful of where it comes from, and how to present it in a meaningful visual way. This ties in directly with the work I'm doing with my dissertation. I learned of the words emic and etic and their definitions. Parts of this were really poignant especially when talking about the archives and holding printed objects that others had at different points in time. We are all human and all have the same wants and needs that can be felt and reconnected when holding an object from the past. I also briefly connected to the idea of analog processes being a labour of love, labourious, being an authentic voice. "Living to make" has left a certain impact.

I ran out of time to ask some questions but have emailed them over to Catrin and look forward to receiving a response. 

Questions and answers from email:

Thanks for your questions yesterday, and apologies I didn't answer them before you had to shoot off. 

Here are some answers, which I hope are of some interest. Feel free to shoot back a reply if you want to talk about any of this in more depth!

Very best wishes,

Esther 

 

When you have gathered information from people and places, what is your next step in the process to visualising your research? Do you make roughs and thumbnails? Do you just start making from ideas?

I take a while to digest my research in archives/locations and build up a picture of all the interests I have within a specific project. I think it’s worth taking some time to get clarity on how I might approach it and start setting some parameters. 

Generally right at the beginning (when I have the least clarity), I gather notes and archival or textual research and essentially make a big mind map with scraps of text and small sketches. Seeing everything together really helps me. I also keep some text documents readily available so I can constantly refine some short texts (or even bullet points) about what the project is ‘about’. At the same time I start making small layouts or compositions and reflect on how successfully they match up with my intentions for the project. 

I try to draw and visualise things as soon as I can, and also consider whether my research suggests specific book structures or materials. I find it important to make images and not get bogged down in reading texts/making notes! These initial sketches and ideas will probably not end up in the final work, but they’re essential for informing where the project will take me. Roughs and thumbnails are the only way I can understand the material I’ve gathered and how different elements have visual sympathies with each other, so I make countless rough layouts on large sheets of paper. Often I’ll scan those and play with the compositions digitally to tweak them more easily. After a few rounds of doing this, refining as I go, I'll generally have a good sense of what some final artwork might look like. 

Have you ever reached dead ends in your archival research and how do you tackle those?

Yes, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and confused in archives. There is so much material, so it’s really hard to know where to start, what to focus on, and when to stop! There’s always the fear that you’ve missed something important. I’ve found that taking time to read and reflect on archival research, letting some of that intensity of being in the archive cool off, can be a good way to assess what I want to respond to from my research. 

I’ve never really found a ‘dead end’ in an archive as there’s always something there, even if it’s not what I expected. Spending time with a collection has always led me somewhere, and I’m now accustomed to the fact that this is often out of my control! It’s impossible to predict what you’ll find, so I try not to approach with too many expectations. Being flexible and open to what you’ll find is maybe a good way to tackle that uncertainty.