Melting Pot Session March

Sam Halmarack, Sam Edward Taylor, Katherine Mitchell, Suzie Dzialdowski, David Lane and Rachel Aspinwall share objects that illustrate their processes.

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David Lane

  • Rubber band
  • Constant- fixed- flexible
  • Defined initial idea, metaphor, place
  • Risks can be taken but always goes back to a concrete theme
  • Changes when it combines and connects with others
  • Plastic adaptable

Sam Edward Taylor

  • Variety of different projects and processes
  • Most likely always some sort of writing
  • Shared a song/record that he has to listen to in order to start the creative process- conditioned creative response
  • Creates a focus and an associative energy

Rachel

  • Pine Cone, but was looking for bubbles and a rubix cube
  • Dynamics of the objects felt meaningful
  • tool kit-like cube and something freeing and illusive about a bubble
  • Pine cone is a seed – an initial thought, idea, spark from the environment
  • Beginnings of something bigger

Katherine

  • Ipod, photos journal, feather
  • Creating magic
  • Feather from walking in Gloucestershire – camping and walking -an experience where interesting lessons were learnt – positive and negative
  • Nature/magical object, worlds and possibilities
  • Journal with lots of notes and appointments and jotted down ideas

Sam

  • Recorder- but usually uses phone
  • Music central to the process- timing, recording sounds
  • Cycling normally provokes inspiration, after a period of busy work
  • Hooks come at times like that- the repeated catchy bit in a song
  • Voice memos and sketch

We talked about

  • How we spark seeds of ideas
  • Arrangements, first forms
  • What is a first draft?
  • Who do you go to with your first draft?
  • What is your medium of sharing?
  • Learning each others vocabulary
  • Adopting others methods- frames of reference and language
  • What do you define as narrative?

And the day’s exercise – First Site – ings

  • Going out into Bristol in writer/artist pairs, letting the city take you down routes you would never normally take, follow your curiosity, wait for a site to speak to you then follow some simple instructions for observing and experincing the site in new ways.
  • From individual thoughts and responses to collaborative ideas and feelings, how the presence of the other impacts your usual process

What stories are hidden in the views, plinths, shrines and cubby holes of Cabot’s Tower on Brandon Hill? David and Susie found themselves drawn to very different enquiries, from grand quests and ventures to the hidden life of birds and creatures living in the tower posting secret messages behind the metal bars of window cavities….

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The imposing old Hotwells swimming baths captured Rachel and Sam’s attention and they found themselves invited on a tour of its interiors where its past and present stories can be seen literally in the layers of its architecture, features and furnishings.

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