Laura Baker

Digital Portfolio

Contents

• Business Card

• Postcard

• CV

Term 1 (Optional)

• Life drawings

• Drawing Statement

• Journey Project

• sculpture statement

• Lens Based Statement

Term 2 (Compulsory)

• Drawing Space Project

• Drawing Statement

• Self directed Statement

• Self Directed work

Postcard

Artists C.V.• Laura Baker

• 169 Ashburnham Road

• Hastings

• East Sussex

• TN35 5LL

• Term time address:

• D103B Newarke Point

• 8 Newarke Close

• Leicester

• LE2 7GZ

• Mobile number: 07702546457

• I am currently studying for a BA Hons in fine art at De Montfort University in Leicester. I am working in lens and digital media making films and photography.

• Personal

• 02/03/1993

• I have lived in Hastings for 19 years and I live in Leicester while I study during term time.

• Education and awards

• DMU Year 1 Fine Art BA Hons

• Exhibitions

• My most recent and only exhibitions was in July 2011 when I presented a body of work along with other students from my college in my end of year show.

• I have been asked on a number of occasions to take photographs for events in the local area for schools and parents. These photographs have been presented within the schools.

• At this present time I have had no publications, commissions or sales.

Drawing Statement

I started the drawing module with life drawing. We looked at the model in a more figurative way, looking at the spaces around her and the shadows on her body, rather that concentrating on fine detail. I worked with alternative media and techniques; I did drawings without looking at the paper I was drawing on. I was interested in looking at line and volume. I used continuous line which I found really interesting and difficult, it’s hard to get proportions right. I used a technique of drawing as though you are wrapping wire around the body to represent volume. The first set project was titled “journey”. I think of the word journey in many different ways and I wanted to demonstrate this. I started by researching artists such as Tim Knowles and Catherine Yass. These artists influenced my sketchbook and film experimentations. I went on to work further in film and in the style of Catherine Yass. Her work is the main inspiration for my final piece. The journey I took for my final piece is a journey I used to take as a child, through my local park. I used a similar technique to Yass, but instead of attaching cameras to the front and back of the bike I attached them to the wheels. This creates a disconcerting slightly mesmerizing outcome to the film, the same way Yass’ “Lighthouse” film does. It makes the image unclear and this ties with the meaning behind my film. When I was a child playing in that park my life journey was blurred and unclear, but all I cared about was there and then and that’s why the journey never leaves the park.

Sculpture statement

This sculpture was created in response to a previous sculpture I had made of an unknown object. I combined my first sculpture with other students work and then sketched areas that interested me. I looked at the contrast between circular and geometric shapes. These were two shapes that appeared regularly is the combined sculpture. I continued to work with cardboard, but in a slightly different form. I used the beer mats because they incorporated text and image. This was also something that featured heavily in the combined cardboard sculpture. George W. Hart was a big inspiration to my work along with Keizo Ushio, both artists working with geometric shapes.

The starting point for my next sculpture was Richard Serra’s Verb list. I brainstormed ideas for each verb on the list and the one that stood out to me was “to Splat”. Splat sounds like a playful word so I wanted to create something that was fun to make. And that had a playful look to it. Jackson Pollock’s splat paintings were the first thing that came to mind so I researched them and I used his work as my main inspiration for my final piece. I enlarged certain areas of his work and tried to re-create the splatter shapes with plaster. His work is very colourful so I incorporated colour within my sculpture too.

Lens based media statement

• For my first lens based media project I worked in the style of Neil Hanson a fine art photographer, to photograph images of flora and fauna. The next project was to look at photography and time, I was interested in intervals of time and photographing what happens between these intervals. This project then led in to my stop motion film that I created using drawings and adding a sound track. My research led me to work in the style of an Indian mandala pattern. The next project was working with sound. I chose to create a sound postcard of a place that is memorable to me, the beach. I mixed found sounds from the internet with some that I had recorded myself to create the multi layered track. The final project was portrait photography; I took one image of how I think people perceive me and one image of how I want them to perceive me. My first image was of me in my rugby kit, this is how I think people perceive me, as a butch scary rugby player. My second image was of me in my normal clothes holding my rugby shirt; this is how I want people to perceive me, that I am a normal girl. I am holding the shirt to represent the fact rugby is a part of my life but there is a lot more to me than just rugby.

Space

Space statement

For this project we were given the title space and could interpret this how we liked. After brainstorming some ideas I chose to look at my mind as a space. There are many things that fill my mind some thoughts I have control over and some I don’t. I decided to focus on the thoughts I don’t have control over, my fears and the emotions I show physically when I experience these fears. My main fears being blood tests and hospitals. My work started expressively, looking at work by Kandinsky and de Kooning. Fiona Banner’s word-scape’s inspired some of my sketch book experiments and the idea of including text in my paintings.

I moved in to digital work from here and used social networking to ask my friends about their fears. I used the answers to create two large canvases in the style of Brian Rea. I then looked more at video pieces and performance art. Gillian Wearing and Orlan both influenced my experiments and final piece. My final piece is a split screen video showing the physical attributes of three emotions that regularly fill my mind. The three videos run independently of each other and the emotions overlap and change.

Self directed statement

This project is based around the word free and how we react to this word. I started this self-directed project by looking at media and subjects I like to work in. I chose photography and specifically wildlife photography. I looked at artists such as Steve Bloom and Joel Sartore and took photographs of my own but I didn’t feel the project could really progress. The words free came to mind while I was photographing a squirrel; the only way I could get a picture of it was to give it free food. This gave me the idea of looking at how humans react to the word free in comparison to animals.

This led me into video work and involving the public in my art. Marina Abromovic and Orlan inspired my video experiment with public participation. My final piece is a photography piece revolving around the idea of being consumed by consumerism. Andy Warhol’s repeat prints were the main inspiration for this final piece