City Flickers

Here is my final Arts Award Project where I worked with artist Richard Bolam to learn about time-lapse film and photography.

Day seven

Well today was a busy day to try and get everything done for my part D and some other work that needed doing. I was also meant to be interviewing an artist which I was looking forward to but Vicky told me she was busy and couldn't so I was pretty disappointed at first.

Vicky then showed me the work of a graffiti artist called Casper Carr. I was excited about the possibility of interviewing him and Vicky said she’d look into it. I was looking forward to meeting him.

In the morning I tried my best to get my blogs up to date, I finished the ones I hadn't done when I wasn't here. Then Vicky explained to me what I would be doing in my project assisting Richard and Chris.

After a while Richard and Chris came in so me and Billy went into the studio downstairs because there were too many people in the room for them to explain to just us properly.

Day eight

Day eight: Well today is going to be a busy day for us because we are visiting the Bank Street Gallery and helping out doing a bit of manual work there so we get an idea of other jobs that support galleries. We started out by finishing off things that we hadn't because we had a while before we left. Then Vicky told us we had a little competition to do today, to win two tickets for the showroom cinema. We had to take photos of 'Hidden' Sheffield. I thought it would be hard because we didn't have a lot of time to get to different parts of the city centre. As soon we left though I suddenly had loads of ideas in my head. Especially to do with the Peace Gardens. I managed to capture some good images.

I wondered around for a while to try and find some interesting things to capture or a new place to investigate but I couldn't really find anything that stood out to me. I walked back to the Peace Gardens where Vicky asked us to meet her. I found some of the group and we sat and had a chat whilst we waited. We all get on quite well. When Vicky arrived she said we had another half hour so we could all support with Bethan and josh’s projects. I had to play dead on the floor for Bethan which was a bit embarrassing in the middle of the Peace Gardens with a lot of people around. Everyone walking past was probably thinking 'what the hell?' but it was quite funny to do in a way.

We then walked through the centre of town to help Josh with his project, we met a very strange guy selling joke books. You could tell he was a bit of a joker himself. Vicky encouraged Josh to use him in his project and one of the group selected a card that would work for a good photo.

After taking a few more pictures we walked to Bank Street Gallery which seemed pretty weird from outside, more like a house. Inside though it was very cool and had a quirky set up. It was kind of surreal in the first main room with decorated deer heads on the walls by the exhibiting artist Susanna Gent. One of the deer heads was entirely covered in shells, this was my favorite.

She also had another room full of taxidermy. She skins dead animals herself and makes them part of other things, like a badger with a big glass bowl in its stomach. It’s normally the other way round she told us in the her talk. The most interesting part of the room was the video playing on the television. It was of Susanna skinning a fox whilst casually drinking a can of beer every now and again. I didn't like this much, I'm not a fan of the dead animal part but it was interesting to see.

Oh I almost forgot that we first went into one of the rooms at the front of the gallery to see a guy called Bryan Eccleshall. His work seemed pretty basic to me because he was just copying the work of postcards off the projector. It wasn't even his work it was other famous artists. It looked rushed so it wasn't very good but I liked the fact he kept asking us if he was cheating by copying it. He told us that it wasn't cheating because art isn't a sport which I understood but there is no point in copying art in my opinion, it is better to be original.

Part C

Check out my interview with urban artist Casper Carr

http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/story/151006/title/JessyBusgeethinterviewsgraffitiartistCasperCarr For my interview I will be interviewing a guy called Casper Carr, a graffiti artist that works with youths. The reason I chose him is because I like the urban art background and graffiti is one of the main arts that I'm really into. Also because I found most of his work interesting specially the work he has done locally for youths.

I first researched him on the web but couldn't find much so Vicky showed me his Facebook site and he had a link to his website called The Breakout Kids so I checked it out and looked at the type of graffiti that he and his crew does with the community. I also looked at what types of work they have done and will be doing and the people involved with them.

I found out a lot more than I thought I would because Casper's knowledge on the history of graffiti was really good because he didn't just know about this or the last generations history he knew about the whole background of graffiti but he also explained it with passion in a way that I could understand what he was on about which was really nice. I also found out more because his business partner Lee came with him and I took the opportunity to do a little interview with him too. He informed me on the ‘rules’ of graffiti, kind of like the etiquette, and what it’s like for a graffiti artist to have their work sprayed over by other graffiti artists. The thing that really interested me the most was the fact that they both really thrived off their work and the passion he has for working with youths and his background of being a b-boy.

Overall I think my confidence has got better because the interview went really well I managed to ask some good questions and I think that he enjoyed it because I like his type of work. In future I will be more confident from this experience.

Here are my questions and prepared…


This is Jessy Busgeeth interviewing artist Casper Carr as part of the Site Young Apprentice Scheme…..

How would you describe yourself as an artist and what type of things do you do?

And how did you interest in urban street art all start?

You’ve set up an organisation called ‘break out kids’. Can you tell me what it’s all about and why you set it up?

What do you enjoy about being creative with young people and what do you think creativity can offer young minds?

As part of your teaching work, you explain the history of graffiti and street art. Why is this important do you think?

How do you think the perception of graffiti has changed over the years and what are your thoughts about it?

What are you most proud of that your creativity has led to?

What’s been the most challenging or interesting piece of work you’ve painted and why?

what styles of art do you like, or if it’s easier, which don’t you like? 

In an ideal world, who would you like to commission you to do some work and where and what type of thing would it be?!

What advice do you have for young artists about doing something with their creativity?

Thanks for your time! 

Part B

Part B: Being an audience member

I went to the Millennium Gallery to see the Watercolours in Britain: Tradition and Beyond exhibition because I like the water colour art form. There was also work being displayed at the time by an artist I like, like Chris Ofili. When you first walk in it seems very dark because when you look at the paintings they are darker colours and about war and serious topics. I think the lighting it dark to stop the paint from fading maybe. As you walk in you see Chris Ofili's display on the right. There are five paintings of African women with bright clothing and jewellery. This stood out to me because it made me think about identity and it's importance to us individually and as a society. It was interesting also to see this work which is contemporary, with older pieces and the different themes.

It was quiet in the gallery so easy for me to be able to concentrate on the paintings. I saw that it was dark in one part of the gallery but then as you got into middle part everywhere was red even the walls to separate it from the other paintings. The second painting that I really liked was from an artist I had never heard of before, Edward Burra. The painting was called Soldiers A Rye. I found this painting interesting because it was surreal and you really think about what's happening. But you can't seem to figure it out so it makes you wonder more about it. I was standing there for quite a while trying to work it out with a confused face I realised :) I also liked one by William Blake (see picture). The William Blake who is also a poet and engraver which I didn't know before. His work is kind of spiritual looking and a bit spooky.

The layout of the gallery was separated into three different parts the first part was really dark and gloomy, the middle part was more red and bright it felt rich specially the layout of each paintings with gold boarders and the third bit was kind of simple to me just mixed with different types of paintings and like little table exhibits of watercolor paints, pens and like other equipments.

The things that I found bad was that the writings on the side were really small so couldn't read them whilst sitting down and the good things was that it was well set out and clear to understand the exhibition. Overall I really liked the first part of the gallery best because it was more my type of interest (contemporary) and the others were older and I guess harder for me to relate to. I've learnt about a few different artists and where they are from. The main thing I took from this exhibition is how varied and expressive watercolour painting can be. It also looks hard to create. I real skill.

Part D

For Part D I will be assisting an artist which is Richard Bolam to produce a time lapse film and learn how he does it and help him with setting out the cameras and other creative decisions. I'm also going to choose a piece of music that goes with the final work which I will put together. I chose this project because I'm into music production and film and I’m curious to see how they work together but using loads of photos as a starting point.
So will also be a good opportunity for me to be able to learn more skills and see a background of someone that works in that environment also to understand more about it. I want to be able to achieve a good short time lapse film that works with some background music.

We first went through the different stages on the camera that we would be using and Richard told us a little bit about what he wanted us to do and what we wants from the footage. He also told us about a software that is ‘open source’ which you can download and install into normal cameras like ‘hacking’ the cameras to do things that they weren't built to do. So I’ve learnt that you can hack cameras which I never knew was possible. Even though the weather wasn't great to get a good time lapse film I learn how to pick out small things to make the still compositions more interesting - such as getting shadows in corners or reflections when people, cars or other objects move. When we make the time lapse faster it will create good effects not just a dull boring scene. The main obstacle for me was that it wasn't really a good day for shooting (very dull) and not having the best view without zooming for the cameras.

Richard talked me through some ideas such as mixing parts of the videos together and getting bits and repeating them for example like the bus going round the corner over and over again which makes the video more interesting and he said that it would go with the type of music that I like, like fast tracks and stuff. He also spoke through the frames and made me see how the video would look like in 15 frames per second and 25 frames per second. I learnt TV has 24 frames a second and you can’t see them change!) I decide on more frames per second because it looked better. I was particularly interested to imagine how the grey clouds would move and appear to flow quickly through the air.

While we were putting the videos together, Richard told me about a video by pop music duo, Goodley and Crème, called the mondo video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AkaSfoQ92k ) which is a sequence of them making a track by filming different bits of them making a sounds. I liked their video as they’re really experimental. Richard also told me to watch some on the Chris Cunningham’s pop videos to get a few ideas off his stuff. We ended up watching some as a group and they were well crazy!

I really enjoyed today and learnt a great deal both learning to all the ideas and examples that Richard shared and in making my own decisions about the work we made. I now understand a lot more about image and film such as frames per second, composition, editing, sound tracking and how experiencing with how you bring these elements together can make for really interesting creative work.

NEWSFLASH: Here is our final project!

Day six

Day six: I visited the Yorkshire Art Space and had a tour around the artist studios by Rachel Dodd, she told us a bit about the studios and what types of artist are there and what they do. Also how much it costs for them to rent a studio.

We then visited the Emilie Taylor's ceramics exhibition and I found them quite interesting because they were different but had a personal meaning to what she drew on the pots and plates. This is contemporary pottery as the images depicted life now. Like tower blocks and their was ever lads in hoodies on one pot in her studio. She told us a little bit about her background and how she didn't know what to do when she left college and how she started experimenting with her art. She also showed us around her studio and showed us all the things she needed to make the pots. We checked out some of the work she was doing at the moment.

In the afternoon I started to plan out my Arts Awards part A and tried to type it up. I still need to think a bit more on this though. I researched Faunagraphics work (a female mural/graffiti artist) so that I could think of questions to ask the artist (Sarah) if I can interview her for part C of the Arts Award. Mostly about her background and work. After this I went out to the Millennium Gallery to visit a water-colour exhibition and write notes about it to share in a little review on my blog.