KeyPiece

KeyPiece was a combined research seminar and public exhibition that brought together ten leading researchers in metalwork and jewellery; Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill who initiated the project, Christoph Zellweger who led the workshops, and participants Lionel Dean, Maria Hanson, Grace Horne, Antje Illner, Drummond Masterton, Sarah O’Hana, Tine de Ruysser and Lucian Taylor.

Gallery event
Starting from the ‘object’, the question of how a ‘keypiece’ can be identified and defined provided the basis for debate between the makers. The works displayed functioned as both a physical reference and a catalyst in the development of the dialogue about the nature of research in the field.

To enable engagement with the public whilst maintaining the seminar situation, the exhibits provided a divide of the gallery space; one half public space, the other workshop setting, with paper covering walls and floor for participants to write and draw. After the workshop finished the whole gallery became accessible to the public, providing greater insight into the exhibited objects.

Multimedia documentation
The event was observed and documented by myself using video and stills and writer/curator Monica Gaspar. I used this record to create an online interactive multimedia resource for distribution within and beyond the professional community. The aim was to provide an engaging, accessible and durable documentation of the event, which will be of interest to practitioners, educators, researchers within the creative practices and beyond.

Who needs a web site?

Blogging software is so easy and so customisable, I feel that personal web sites are going to become a thing of the past. Why pay someone when you can do it yourself? Why wrestle with Dreamweaver when you can set things out simply and clearly on a blog?

I have found that creating a website with a blog is a different experience, because you tend to build gradually, rather than assembling everything, then putting it up in one go. However, if you are fairly organised and categorise as you go then a blog creates a rich resource that the reader can brows in many different ways. 

I started blogging for Kesurokai, a European-Japanese cultural exchange project I am involved with. I needed to create a project web site and also document the project between its start-up at the beginning of the year and the main event in August. The documentation has become a web site and has generated widespread interest very quickly and easily.

I have also just set up a new blog for my partner, Robin Wood to use as a sales page. He has been blogging for a while and gets on well with it, but cannot easily update the products for sale on his web site because it is too technical, and of course I am not good at getting around to it! So, I created a new blog for this and tweaked his existing blog, so they feel as if they are on the same site and tie in with his web site. Blogger isn't as sophisticated as TypePad, which this blog is on, so it was not straight forward but I am quite proud of the result.

Craft interpretation

When I was researching for my PhD and experimenting with interpretation, I found that a well-annotated drawing was what the learners responded to best. Photographs helped, but somehow gave too much information or the view was never from quite the right angle.

At that stage I had a hang-up about drawing which I have found many people suffer from. They feel that if they can't easily produce and exact replication of something, they can't draw, and give up. However, it is a learned technique and, given a little help from a few fellow students, I found I could sketch what I needed.Nowadays I can quite quickly produce drawings like the one above using Adobe Illustrator, but always start by sketching by hand to get a feel for the perspective that will be needed and how it will work in with the text. 

These pictures show my partner Robin Wood's latest development; a device for holding a bowl whilst hand-carving which he has called the BowlMate. He developed it for learners to use whilst he is teaching and there has been so much interest from the wider woodworking community he wanted to publish plans, which I spent an enjoyable day yesterday doing. 

You can see the results of my work on his web site here and also download a PDF here.

A vision of students today

I am not sure this video tells me anything I didn't already know and it certainly offers no solutions, but I LOVE the way it has been made. I also shows interesting use of Google documents to gather student opinion and experiences. (My thanks for fellow Open University tutor Derek Jones for posting that on our course forum.)