Alex CloadFirst Year – Artist book and Performance reflective writing

Reading Objects, Writing Images – Reflective writing piece

Artist’s Book

Looking back over my thinking processes, I can see what events led to another no matter how insignificant I believed them to be at the time. Before this project, I was rather nervous when it came to group crits as I can feel quite embarrassed when trying to explain my work. However, If it wasn’t for our group crits during this project, my book would have remained with blank pages and only one aspect (the light box) and I would have stopped working on it a long way back. The advice I gained from my tutor helped my idea to develop and I feel that I can now work from this advice and enjoy these meetings rather than dread them. At first, I found it challenging to part from my initial idea but as soon as I let go of my plans and allowed them to develop with the help of others, I enjoyed the process far more and found inspiration from the most unlikely places, such as the Harry Potter films. This flexibility was a hard lesson to learn as I often try to stick to a certain plan and agonise over making each detail the same as the first idea. Now I am willing to allow future projects to develop on

Alex CloadFirst Year – Artist book and Performance reflective writing

their own accord and am much happier to hand over control to the external influences that may pop up, no matter how insignificant they may seem at the time.

Alex CloadFirst Year – Artist book and Performance reflective writing

Alex CloadFirst Year – Artist book and Performance reflective writing

Performance

Group members:

Kern Baker Sarah Smart Shannen Vinent Ela Wisniewska Heather Seldon Alex Cload

(Image of our puppet)

I’d like to focus this reflection on the collaboration process as each lesson gave me vital skills that will benefit my practice and myself in the long run.

After our first session I asked myself, “Should I initiate the planning process to make myself feel more comfortable or should I wait for the others to make the first move?” I’ve been able to realise how I behave when set a project and can recognise my own habits based on the reactions of my fellow group members. I immediately wanted to get a plan set in motion as I tend to panic and have a feeling of being lost if we don’t have a structure to work from after the very first meeting. This caused me to go into ‘leader mode’ which may have had a positive effect on the project to move it along but honestly, I felt awfully guilty and that I was working against the group. When our the

Alex CloadFirst Year – Artist book and Performance reflective writing

performance deadline was getting closer, our group picked up and new people began to ‘take the lead’ which took the pressure off immensely. Looking back after performing, I can see that all that pressure and initial panic wasn’t necessary and perhaps it was more an issue of impatience on my part. I believe the most important lessons to learn here are compromise and to accept that people work in different ways.