Samantha Humphreys

Art, Photography & Inspiration

Tag: secure

A Big Fat Metaphor

 


 

Inspired by a recent mini task on the course I teach on where the students had to bring along a photograph and an object that holds meaning and has impact on their art practice.

The first image is a print I made a few years back, it is my Nans block of flats. At the time of making this piece, my Nan still lived there, and I was starting to think that one day, I would never visit there again. Over lockdown, my nan has become unable to live there alone and has moved into a care home.

As this is all happening over 200 miles away, she has turned 90 over lockdown with only socially distanced visits from family living nearby (thankfully most of the family live nearby) and filmed efforts and cards from the rest of us. It is now very unlikely that I will visit the flat again, however-as long as I can visit her eventually, what does that matter? I look forward to that day.

The second image is my object, it is a paperweight.

When my Grandad was alive, he was the caretaker of these flats and he had a workshop downstairs which was filled with things he was repairing and other paraphernalia. I loved visiting him down in this workshop and I can still remember the smell of it. I have had this paperweight for as long as I can remember, initially it was just special as my grandad gave it to me, for a long time I didn’t even know it was a paperweight it was just a fascinating colourful object-it had been thrown away by someone and he rescued it.

Later on, when I was older, I learned that the pattern I was so fascinated with had been created using a technique called Millefiori, which I taught myself with clay when I used to create dolls house food. The way it works is that you work carefully with a short fat cylinder, making it a long thin cylinder which you finally slice and somewhere inside, there is the perfect slice of orange, kiwi or hot cross bun. Thats how it works with clay anyway, I have less of an idea of how it is created with glass as in my paperweight.

I keep this paperweight on my desk, I see it every day while I’m working from home. I think of this technique as a metaphor for how art practice develops and therefore it helps me both in my art practice and my teaching practice.

As an artist, when you are developing ideas, you have all your thoughts, sketches and ideas rolled up within your fat cylinder of clay, then you carefully and thoughtfully work your way through all these ideas and sketches, teasing out the ideas but carefully preserving the whole idea which will eventually narrow down to one you will use. When you have your long thin piece, you slice away at it with care, then eventually, after much thought, somewhere inside that cylinder, you find your perfect slice of final piece which makes all the hard work worth it.

The point is, there is going to be lots of what could be considered waste at either end of the cylinder, but the final outcome would not be possible without the discarded bits that help you get there.

But also, it’s important to remember that no art is a waste and should not be discarded!

 

DA042815-A85B-4503-B941-F46489407DAE_1_201_a

Aspiring to Matsutake (2020 An element of the second year Developing Ideas in Art and the Environment module on the course I teach on began this semester with an extract from the book The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. As we (we, as in all of […]

The Walk

DSC01659

The Walk, Acrylic & Ink on Plasterboard, Samantha Humphreys (2016)

This piece is a narrative from memories of my Grandma combining both early and latter recollections.

Selfie

 

 

I have been investigating the trend in our culture today which requires us to be photo ready and the self obsession this brings with it. Perceived realities are getting somewhat confused with the realities we are likely to experience, as society is influenced by and taking inspiration from sources such as celebrity culture and reality television instead of learning to be true to themselves.
My selfie represents a moment of reflection, breath of reality,  a rare half a second of solitude in a society in which we are put under constant pressure to be perfect.

Breath

Not Photo Ready

Today it seems important to be always camera ready…it isn’t.

notphotoready

realityisnotlife

Honeypot

A short film about habit.

Beach

Rare Summer in Essex

Collecting

Frinton

Just so…..

Because life just is……

Happy

Friends

Drag

What If?……..

Life doesn’t turn out how you expected it to?

photo

photo-3

beatenbarbie

Discomfort Part Two

The second part of a series of works I am experimenting with, placing my belongings from a time when I felt secure, in places where I felt most uncomfortable.

DSC00915 Discomfort 2