[LAUIL602] Professional Practice Presentation and Script

 Presentation Slides:

Professional Practice Presentation Script (Timed at 18 minutes 31 seconds)

Slide 1: Welcome to my final Professional Practice presentation.

Slide 2: "Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts," says Catherynne M. Valente, and I believe this summarises my whole university experience: developing my practice over the past 5 years. I have emerged from my cocoon and transformed into something largely different than I originally intended and could ever have imagined. Some of this is, in part, due to facing many challenges and having to adapt to difficult circumstances.

Slide 3: Here is an overview of my presentation and some of the facets to my journey so far that make up this unbreakable diamond, created from huge amounts of pressure from all angles of life. I feel that in order to reflect on Level 6 and the work I have undertaken to develop my professionalism, it is important to contextualise my journey by looking back on where I started, the destination I have arrived at, and where I'd like to go to next after I graduate.

Slide 4: My first year of university, at Level 4, can be described by the words 'perfectionism,' 'proving,' and 'pressure.' I put a huge amount of pressure on myself right at the beginning to be a professional illustrator with perfect outcomes and achieving high grades. There was no time for play or experimentation, I felt I had done that already on the Access to HE course and wanted to start illustrating without experimenting. It was difficult to sustain and I wasn't enjoying what I was creating. Ultimately, I worked incredibly hard, and created a strong foundation of illustration work, but burned out very quickly.

I was constantly looking to my peers, who I felt had a better understanding of image-making than I did, and to professional illustrators to guide me on what to do and how my work should look. I felt lost and my output wasn't authentic even though it looked professional. Though I deeply enjoy the visuals and the escapism that children's books and their visual language provide, and I wanted to be a part of that world and contribute in some way, it constantly felt like something I could never quite tap into.

The final project of Level 4 introduced me to a different way of working and thinking, inspired by Zaha Hadid and her organic structures and architecture, and it allowed me to step away from character-creating and composition-building, to create the beginnings of something more genuine and immediately impactful through a variety of experimental outcomes. 

Slide 5: The first year of university also offered me the opportunity to visit Uganda for a month, with the charity East African Playgrounds. I have always been a charitable person, working with sight loss charities such as the RNIB and Henshaws before joining the Access to HE course, finding that giving your time is the most valuable thing you can do to help another person. I wanted to imbue that ethos with my love of childhood, play, and painting.

I helped to construct a playground, with other students across the UK, for an underprivileged school in Kasambira, Jinjer. As well as digging holes, mixing cement and bolting tires, I became the resident painter of some of the bigger structures, turning them into fun characters, and our own planet, to engage the children's imaginations. The trip fulfilled me in ways I can never fully explain and I found it incredibly difficult to come back home and adjust to Level 5.

Slide 6: Progressing onto level 5 provided me with many struggles and challenges in my personal life. Upon returning from Uganda, and being back in a studio where I was largely ignored by the illustration cohort, I developed a severe eating disorder where I lost a huge amount of weight in a very small timeframe. I wanted to hide myself away and found it difficult to come to campus and engage with the course. I could no longer concentrate on my studies and decided to take the year out for my mental health.

The year that was meant for healing turned into the worst year of my life, as I witnessed my mum have a severe stroke and she became extremely disabled as a result. Immediately I was her carer and was alone with such responsibilities as my other family members didn't want to help. I felt abandoned. My eating disorder was reinforced and continued as my only sense of control.

I took the necessary steps to come back to level 5 that September - but my retina detached just before term started and I was blinded. After two emergency surgeries and a full recovery, my other retina detached in December and I needed further emergency surgeries in both eyes to remove a membrane that had grown over the lenses and kept me from seeing properly. When I was finally fully healed, the academic year was over, and I was struggling with a huge amount of sight loss.

My third attempt at Level 5 was finally successful though I held feelings of shame and failure, and really struggled with the visual elements of the course. I still do, but try as best as I can now that I'm working alone. In hindsight, I had rushed far too quickly to come back onto the course to avoid being a full-time carer.

Slide 7: As a result of my significant sight loss, my creative process and my visual language started to change. I had begun to challenge this at the end of level 4, years before, but it was now happening organically in response to severe sight loss and was apparent when approaching the same brief twice. The character-driven outcomes of Agatha Christie were created in September and October of 2017 and the more textural, multidisciplinary approaches of repeat pattern and shape, with handprinted type, were created a year later. There is value in both responses but the publication I eventually made, printed on acetate to cover and uncover objects, felt more ambiguous and playful. It was something I really enjoyed making. Experimentation, while dealing with the trauma of my sight loss, kept me returning to university. Every day held a new discovery and it showed me that my life wasn't over. This brief was impactful to me in more ways than one.

Slide 8: "Creativity takes courage," a powerful quote by Matisse, and something that resonated with me a lot this past year.

Slide 9: Level 6 was not without its struggles and after progressing, despite the pandemic, my Guide Dog could no longer work for me because of benign tumours which prevented her harness from closing. I made the difficult decision to agree to surgery but it was a very lengthy process of recovery and coming back home to retrain because of the second and third lockdowns in November and January. Somewhere amongst the severe depression, I turned to abstract expressionist painting to intuitively illustrate my feelings and work through all of the traumatic events I'd been through. Isolation was the hardest thing I'd faced so far. 

Slide 10: I eventually built up a genuine portfolio of experiments, canvases, and poetry, spanning a range of mediums. Each piece is created with intention, using my body as the vessel to my fractured heart and mind. I have never been more vulnerable and honest with my work and it holds significant personal value.

Slide 11: "Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health, and in all other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art." Neil Gaiman.

A favourite musician of mine, Chris Catalyst, built a song around this quote and concept, aptly named "Make Good Art." The song reinforces my personal beliefs of grafting in spite of, and alongside, trauma, and helped me through Tami's absence.

Slide 12: As part of this year's Professional Practice work, I have amassed a wealth of knowledge and insight into what it means to be a professional. I built a visual identity that was crucial to my online presence. A consistent use of a logo across my current platforms, using the visual themes of abstract, painterly elements, describes the work that I do in a minimalist, immediate yet easily identifiable way. The logo sits well within the context of Instagram and other online spaces. Keeping it simple is very powerful. It's easily transferrable across a range of digital and printed assets and represents me at this point in my emerging practice.

Slide 13: Giving strong consideration to online platforms, and where I exist, has also helped to contextualise my practice. I already have an instagram in operation, so I worked on a mock website. I do not wish to make it live at this time as it is not needed at this point in my practice. From the website research I undertook, I found it's best to keep things simple with a white background, and a few relevant links in the navigation bar. Too much imagery and information becomes visually confusing. I also researched into some of the available website hosts. Squarespace seemed to be most fitting in terms of ease of use with templates, features available, value for money, and accessibility.

I designed two pages. A portfolio and an "about me" section to explain my ethos and values through a mission statement. I kept the colour scheme simple to reflect the visual branding I worked on.

Slide 14: In terms of a portfolio, instagram serves me well at this stage in my emerging practice as an open space to showcase my canvases, magazine publications, poetry in the captions, and audio poetry in videos. It has all of the functionality in one place to combine image, video and audio, with accessibility options through alt text for each post.

Google Slides was the most appropriate and accessible way to combine multimedia - giving consideration to image and texture.

All of these formats incorporate the visual identity I created.

Slide 15: I took a lot of time to understand the Instagram platform better, as that it where I largely situate myself and share my work. I attended an "Instagram for Professionals" webinar to understand the algorithm and hashtags, how to create engaging high-quality content, as well as all of the features and functionality available for free. After the session, I had feedback on my Instagram page to see where I could improve, which is to start creating video content to achieve a bigger audience reach. The algorithm favours video.

I took the time to learn about my analytics through Insights, which allows me to better understand my audience, who they are, where they exist, and their age, how big my reach is and how many people are viewing my work within my own audience and beyond. I can immediately see which posts performed better and start to unpick why. All of this will better aid me to make decisions about my content, and when to post, to reach maximum visibility.

Slide 16: The various webinars I have attended this year, from various professionals and networks, have been vital to gaining skills, knowledge and understanding of social media, building a framework and schedule to engage an audience and reach more people, how to set up my own business on a small budget, implementing Search Engine Optimisation for maximum visibility through Google, self-advocacy and representation as an artist, and unpicking the various e-commerce stores available to me. It has also allowed the opportunity to begin networking online and sharing my social media links with others in a start-up position.

Speaking with graduates at the student symposium has helped to contextualise professional life after graduation, and Toni Thornton, in particular, imparted some very valuable knowledge of being a contemporary professional painter running her own team of employees and even protecting and trademarking her canvases.

Speaking with Ashley Bowersox gave me a better understanding of paining at a professional level and the range of brands and mediums available. Molly Fairhurst shared tips on professional life and how she implements visual assets to adhere to different audiences. Dr. Diana Basquez-Simpson, a professional Art Therapist, gave me a preview into her job, the qualifications needed, and shared an impactful case study to help me decide whether art therapy is an avenue I'd like to pursue. 

Slide 17: The Freelancers Summer School, set across four evenings, was instrumental to opening my eyes to what freelancing life is really like and all of the elements to consider. Everything from building your own brand based on your values and skills, pitching an idea and winning clients, pricing your skills and services, VAT calculations and taxes, the invoicing process, practicalities and technicalities, and how many days to work per year to stay afloat, were all covered - plus much more. A lot of information was condensed into 8 hours. I had a very naive view before of freelancing but now have a better idea of what to do in the future, after my Masters degree is completed. 

Slide 18: I researched thoroughly into two different Masters courses, available at institutions across the UK, and took time to consider what is best for me and my professional career - MA Fine Art or MA Art Therapy? I engaged with 'art as therapy' in my practice this year, understanding its benefits, and analysed the Art Therapy profession and the psychology behind it as part of my dissertation. It has become an area of great interest and it is always my desire to help other people.

I communicated with a professional Art Therapist, Dr. Diana Basquez-Simpson, in Denver, Colorado, to understand the work that she does and the qualifications she gained in order to do it. After looking into the courses available from the British Art Therapy Association PDF, there is no available funding for an Art Therapy Masters - though bursaries may be available. My experience as a carer for my mother would not count towards the amount of experience needed either. These challenges helped me make the decision towards an MA in Fine Art instead.

Pursuing a masters in Fine Art would help me to continue developing my practice. I've arrived at a different place than where I began on the course and I feel there is still much to learn. I only began to make my own canvases this summer and would like to experiment more with what a painting can be and how it can be achieved. Talking to David Steans, the course leader of the Masters course at Leeds Arts University, helped me understand the course better: giving me a module overview, detailing the requirements, and encouraging me that the course is mostly remote. I would develop specialist knowledge and skills in my area, in a more flexible capacity.

Slide 19: Sharing my story in various places across different contexts and lenses this year has given me the opportunity to educate, inspire and network as well as open up further opportunities. I hope it will be something I continue to do long after graduation. One thing I learned from the webinars I attended this year, is that people are attracted to people and their stories - the artist behind the art. This will be something I continue to be mindful of when using social media and developing my website further.

Slide 20: To finish and reflect, I am extremely proud of everything I've achieved this year at Level 6 - in Professional Practice and beyond. I have worked independently, every day, from April onwards since Tami came back home to salvage my degree and create a body of work that I'm very proud of. It has proved to me my resilience, my drive, and my determination to work and to achieve despite all of the difficult circumstances I have been through. 

Working alone and in my own time greatly benefits me, my productivity, and my mental well-being which reinforces that freelancing is an entirely viable option in the near future - setting my own schedule and goals. I am able to plan my time accordingly, with accessible to-do lists, working in conjunction with healthy eating and meditation to create a sustainable and enjoyable life beyond sight.

I wanted to drop out so many times these past few years and I'm glad I kept pushing forward. No matter what happens and what grade I get, I did it all on my own and should feel a huge sense of pride. 

What's next? I have a commission from the student accommodation I'm staying at to paint a canvas for the games room, which I will complete after my August 9th submission. I have a list of online events and webinars that I'm interested in attending over the next few weeks which will develop my skills in CVs and cover letters, networking, LinkedIn learning and pathways, and searching for jobs.

Over the next year I will continue caring for my mum, and using any free time to complete the building of my website, expanding my portfolio of paintings, and networking online and offline as the world goes back to normal.

I remember being asked in my interview for the illustration course how I would measure success and I was unsure how to answer at the time. Success is defined by our own definition and I think the goal posts have changed since the pandemic. Each day holds its own little successes and waking up in the morning, creating work and sharing with others is a success in itself. Overcoming trauma to complete a degree is also a huge success and something I will always be proud of for years to come.

Slide 21: "Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will." Anselm Keifer.