10.11.2018
After discussing different possible opportunities with my lecturer about companies or places i could gain some industry experience, i got in contact with ClayBody Theatre. They were in the middle of preparing their latest show Hot Lane and invited me to spend a day helping them set up. I arrived on location at 11am Saturday morning and was introduced to their scenic artist who i was going to be helping out for the day. We spent most of the day painting some red lines into the wallpaper of a backdrop and getting a first coat on the skirting board for it. It was quite challenging as we faced a few problems such as paint bleeding from the type of wallpaper it was, and halfway through had decided to tape all the lines so it would take less time. Although it was time consuming it was fascinating to see the attention to detail and care we were both taking to what could be seen as a minor detail, but would only take one person to notice it from the audience and it could ruin the whole illusion and fantasy of the set.
This was a great taster at prop making/set design and after speaking to the scenic artist i helped, who works at the New Vic Theatre, i will hopefully get a chance to help out there for a bit. This has defiantly inspired me to take some more time to think about my future as an artist and start making some connections to the industry.

04.10.2018
As part of our professional practice and placement module, we spent the day in Festival Park, Stoke on Trent looking into how an artist would interact with an environment and create an intervention within a space. We started off with some drawing exercises such as one minute sketches up to 10, created a Haiku for the space, and created short voice recordings describing either a route we were taking or what we saw on the route. I then also wanted to respond to all the fallen leaves and bare branches surrounding me, so i took to the pet cemetery within the grounds and patched back together some trees and branches. By using a very thin wire i was able to then attach these 'branches' back onto a tree or a bush, it was almost unnoticeable which i loved. No one walking by would ever have known that the leaves on the branch were in fact dead, and the thin wire gently danced in the wind identical to the natural branches. This very man made intervention among something as natural as trees gave a fairly confronting notion of how we as humans are so damaging to our natural environment, and think that by patching up the problems will make our damage go away. I also collected different amounts of pine and bound them into 3 different sized paintbrushes. Using these i created quick 5 minute landscape paintings of the surrounding area. This was a fun way of using the environment to help me recreate it.
I learnt a lot on this day about different approaches you can take as an artist to respond to any type of location. On reflection, being experimental and really taking time to take in the space and really explore are key to creating an interesting intervention.