Who?
I am Naomi, human, married mother to three inspiring teenage daughters, dog and cat lover. Not too keen on being in front of a camera. I have just this year been diagnosed as dyslexic, my middle daughter was diagnosed at age 8 and the more I found out about it, and saw how she coped with things, the more I thought this sounds like me. I think had I known earlier in my life some of my decisions and paths would have been different, but I’m here now and it explains a lot how I see the world
Now a student, to broaden my horizons (but not the type that go round globes) to start thinking again
I made this in Feb 2022, long before considering an MA. I have been questioning for a while then! Still not sure who I’m kidding, but that bit isn’t clear to read. I am on the journey.
What
I think there is a bit of a overlap with ‘who’ and ‘what’. What I do defines who I am, and I do what I do because of who I am.
For the past 8 years I have been a globemaker. I designed a celestial globe based on the characters from Harry Potter, which was possibly my last ‘full on’ creative experiment, the last thing I got excited about creating. There was a fairly warm response from Warner Brothers, but their royalties where HUGE (I don’t normally shout in capitals) prohibitively huge for the size of company I work for, there were talks of the globe being an ‘exclusive’ in the shops at the studio tour…my employer was not massively supportive, I had designed it in my own time, encouraged to do so by my employer, so wasn’t paid, then we had Covid and the rest is a sad demise into history, a battering of my confidence and an increasing disillusionment of my current working situation.
Prior to that I was involved with an Arts council funded organization, the New Carnival Company, as a freelancer, and did a mixture of community workshops alongside creating my own costumes, and working as a team to create large costumes. I particularly liked foam modeling. Head of Ganesh, the rest of the costume was recycled.
Alongside carnival work I was trying my luck as a freelance print designer, represented by an agent, designing graphics and repeats for childrens wear. After a child birthing/rearing break I found an agent keen to take me on, but they tried to change my handwriting to fit with their portfolio. It was all speculative designing, and I found it frustrating and not particularly successful. When I asked for my portfolio back, to make globes full time, 1/3 was unaccounted for…
Have also toyed with screen printing, and painting and embroidery by hand which stems from the textile/surface design degree; these are from many years ago
Where
I live in Ryde on the Isle of Wight off the South coast England, I was born in Southampton and spent few years in London before moving back to the south coast; The island- because it is a great place for children to grow up.
The Isle of Wight from the international space station
Ryde, Welcome to the town on the beach, love this sign
I had the pleasure of taking these pictures from the flat of friend of a friend who’s house plants I was watering. I could have spent hours in his office looking down at Ryde and across the Solent to Portsmouth.
The last remaining commercial hovercraft in the world.
Obligatory map of Isle of Wight, an assortment of which can be found in many homes across the Island
Why?
I want to combine the things I’ve already done, with all I’m going to lean on the MA and hopefully come away with more direction and possibilites for my future
Doodles and notes
From lecture/studio practice films/reading matter and 5 am brain dump, when ideas are buzzing round my head
Discarded first idea for who, photos of my daughters eye, it’s better looking than mine
Doodle notes from lecture stuff
Visual notes
Quadriptic
Evaluation
I have enjoyed the challenge this week. The quadriptic was made fairly quickly.
Image 1
a bit of a clichéd image but I have seen a lot of maps and globes in the past few years, they are imprinted in my mind and the eyes are the window. It also represents the way I see the world, my view. I was toying with lightbulb/question mark to represent ideas and asking who I am, I also felt the eye was visually different to to my other responses. EDIT after another early morning inspiration I changed my mind about this image and decided upon the world and an eye in the infinity symbol.
Image 2
I really struggled with what as what I’m doing now is not what I want to be doing, I have also done a variety of different things, in the end I went for repeating globes pattern combining my textile design/globemaking
Image 3
Working with maps this image was very clear in my mind right from the start. It was this image that set the dimensions for all my images, the equirectangular shape that the map should be in before being made into gores for a globe
Image 4
I want to untangle the jumble and have a clear route forward.
The academic stuff frightened me, and again I started to question am I doing the right thing and am I up to it, I work visually and get rather lost in words, my recent dyslexic diagnosis explains this, Joe was very reassuring about research/written stuff on Wednesday.
My most difficult issues have been with getting my head round padlet/blog/canvas. I initially uploaded all my research onto padlet, then ran out of padlets and was told to make more I needed to purchase. This was cleared up on Wednesday with the BBB discussion. So I took it all down and added it here, quite time consuming. My technology is in dire need of replacing, I am going between photoshop on one machine and Illustrator and Indesign on another which is a real faff, I was unable to load an Indeisgn URL to my site, so had to do separate jpgs- all technical issues and probably not what I should be writing about!