Professional Practice

As part of the course we are each required to undertake a exhibition of some kind whether in a traditional gallery or something more obscure.

I have been working with the National trust property- Wicken Fen which is a flooded fen land in the East of England.
The site has an array of  of insects and birds visiting and is a site of scientific interest.
 I was required to make work specifically for the fen. I started by doing drawing both of the scenery and closer imagery of some of the insects and birds found in the fen (some of my initial drawing are shown on the right).

I began transferring these images into litho prints starting with an images of a kingfisher. This print only uses 3 layers which is less than the number of layers I have used previously but I didn't want to over complicate the image.
I also transferred my drawings of dragonflys into print, I printed them all at the same time so the colours would be the same and they would be a cohesive set.
When visiting the fen and discussing the type of work that would be best suited, the importance of the work to be outside was a major factor. So I decided to transfer the prints onto ceramic tiles.
To do this I scanned the original prints and put them in Photoshop and printed them on decal paper (the same process that I used on my ceramic cups).
I rolled the tiles, bisque fired them, glazed, fired, put decals on them and then fired again. This is quite a long process and unfortunately I had a couple of tiles crack in the kiln and due to the time scale I was unable to make another batch of tiles so was only able to put the dragonfly prints onto tiles.
The tiles were not as white as I would have liked but I have learnt a lot doing this process about the making and also of how much organisation goes into putting of a solo exhibition.


A huge thank you to all the staff at Wicken fen for being so knowledgeable and open to my ideas.
The exhibition is still open until the 5th June, addition prices to the fen came be found on the National Trusts website.