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For the first class of the block we did several exercises designed to help us focus on material and materiality and how to reposition materials.
I think I produced some interesting work although I'm not sure that I really tapped into the materiality of the objects the way we were supposed to.

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-        ‘outrageously magical things happen when you mess around with a symbol’

-        Works in prints, drawings, performances, video, found-object sculptures, and paintings.

-        Transforms everyday objects into allegories of the experience of the outsider in the contemporary world.

-        Makes his sculptures with the ‘highly charged detritus’ of urban African American life such as hair gathered from barbershop floors, chicken bones, bottlecaps, and empty liquor bottles.

-        Commentaries on the cliches of growing up African American in the US.

-        Higher goals – group of towering basketball hoops decorated with metal bottle caps bent to look like cowrie shells. Nearly impossible aspiration of becoming a sports hero.

-        In the hood, a small sculpture made from the hood cut off a used sweatshirt and mounted on the wall like an African mask. Danger of wearing everyday outfits that are somehow perceived as menacing simply because they are worn by an outsider, or someone perceived as different.

-        His first notable work is his series of Body Prints done in the 1960s and ’70s. Life-size representations of his own figure would be transferred to the support by coating his skin and hair with margarine and pressing his greased body onto the paper, then covering those sections with pigment powder. These images would be paired with politically charged symbols such as the American flag. - https://www.mnuchingallery.com/artists/david-hammons

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Attempting David Hammon's body print method using lard and tumeric. Did not work out very well

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Attempting David Hammon's body print method using lard and coloured pencil dust. Worked worse than the tumeric

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-        Untranslatable word from India.

-        The way people deal with whatever life throws at them

-        Simple solution or hack to a problem

-        An innovative solution to a problem using the available resources

-        Turning rubbish into objects of beauty

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-        Anatomical heart out of book pages – preferably some of my favourite books if I can bring myself to cut pages out.

o   Stories I read shape who I am

o   They are imprinted on my  he(art)

o   Once I’ve read a book its just lying around gathering dust so this is a way to five my favourite stories new life.

o   Have my ex libris stamp wholly or partially visible

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o   Use butter or lard and place a sheet of paper over chair. The ones on a big role would work the best so it can also cover the back of the chair.

o   Wear skin-tight clothing. Put lard on parts of clothing / body that would come in contact with the chair. So that there is a visual map of all my squirming and inability to sit still.

o   Backside of the paper is kind of ghostlike as the oil / grease leaks through. Kind of prefer this side to the side with the pigment. Could definitely add to the meaning

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o   Maybe use horror books for juxtaposition

o   Use old pages from my diary.

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Things I can't get because of the floods

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Things I can't get because of the floods

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o   Question is whether to make essentials like bread and toilet paper or to make non-essentials like the things I ordered online

o   Concept is stronger with essential items but they said to reflect your interests and the things I bought online reflect my interests a whole lot better

o   Things I could potentially make include: flowers, books, perfume bottles, lipstick, bags, jewellery, shoes, sara b-day present (like a wrapped up box but use rubbish for wrapping paper and ribbon and gift tag).

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o   Use mesh or something to create like a little hollow ball or cave. Fill it up with tangled string. Like thread the string through the mesh super chaotic.

o   Large in size

o   Overwhelming

o   Different colours – clashing and everything

o   Maybe chuck some coloured string lights in there and have them on that sporadic mode that lowkey freaks me out and would def give someone a seizure.

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o   Metaphor for over thinking. How in my head I just keep picking at something and pulling at it and pulling at it and pulling at it until I can’t function like I should be able to.

o   A knitted item of clothing would be ideal since unravelling concept would work best.

o   Doesn’t have to be an item of clothing – what is the symbolism of using a jumper of say a blanket?

o   Instead of using a found object I could use some wool or string and create a ball or maybe a little human figure.

o   Using an object and then basically destroying it seems more meaningful since it can no longer function in the intended way

o   One of my favourite ideas tbh

o   The thread picker gets caught on the beanie and tears it. Thoughts tearing at the stitches of my brain the way something like a splinter in a bench might get caught on your clothes and tear them.

o   Therapeutic potential of destroying something

o   Add a painting to the garment I use to make it cross discipline

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-        working with self-portraiture and the classical bust made a mold of her head.

-        Made one chocolate bust on soap bust. Licked chocolate bust, washed down soap bust. Features slowly washed away on soap bust.

-        Through the process of licking and lathering she is slowly erasing herself

-        About the love hate relationship we have with our physical appearance.

-        Why would artists want to make a bust self portrait? To immortalize yourself but her materials are ephemeral. Also even stone has a lifespan, nothing is forever. Creating a public image of yourself, is it an accurate description? Are we more ourselves at home eating a meal or in the bathtub.

-        ANTONI: Yes, it took a long time to make the pieces. We spent several hours in the tub together. And I think what’s important about that is that we were very intimate with each other. And my hope is that you as a viewer can feel that intimacy. That’s what a portrait is: a way of getting close to the person that it’s depicting.

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ART21: Let's talk about your sculpture, Lick and Lather. How was it made?

ANTONI: I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture but also the classical bust. So, the way I made it is: I took a mold directly from my body. I used a product called alginate, which is the kind of material that you might be familiar with when you go to the dentist, that sort of minty tasting stuff. It's an incredible product because it gets every detail, every little pore. I even cast my hair. So, I started with an exact replica and then I carved the classical stand. I made a mold, melted down thirty-five pounds of chocolate, poured it into the mold. And when I took it out of the mold, I re-sculpted my image by licking the chocolate. So, you can see that I licked up the front and through the mouth up onto the nose, over the eye and back up over the ear onto the bun, and then down in the back around the neck.

I also cast myself into soap. She started as an exact replica of myself. We spent a few hours in the tub together. I slowly washed her down, and she becomes almost fetal because all her features start to be washed away. So, I was thinking about how one describes the self and feeling a little uncomfortable with my outer surface as the description of myself. And this piece very much is about trying to be on the outside of myself and have a relationship with my image. So, the process is quite loving. Of course chocolate is a highly desirable material, and to lick my self in chocolate is a kind of tender gesture. Having the soap in the tub was like having a little baby in there. But through that process, I'm slowly erasing my self. For me it really is about this kind of love-hate relationship we have with our physical appearance.

ART21: Is it also erotic?

ANTONI: Yes, well, the thing about chocolate is that it has the product phenylamine in it. That product is the chemical that's produced in our body when we're in love. So, I think that's why chocolate is so addictive.

ART21: Is there something humorous about this piece?

ANTONI: I think what's humorous about the piece is that I'm playing with a tradition of the classical bust, which is very serious. And I asked myself some questions about why, traditionally, would artists want to make a self-portrait. And I came up with a few answers for myself.

The first one is to immortalize yourself. But, of course, my materials are ephemeral, so I'm kind of trying to work against the grain of that. And it was a funny thing because I conceived the piece to be in the Venice Biennale, and I knew that there would be classical sculpture everywhere. And I arrive in Venice and, as you probably know, Venice is totally eroding. I came upon these stone sculptures, and they looked very much like my soap head because the features had been washed away. And I thought to myself, "What does that say about our mortality, that even stone has a lifespan?"

And then the other answer I gave myself about "Why make a self-portrait?" is this idea of creating a public image of yourself, an image that you were presenting to the world. And I guess my question was: is that an accurate description of the self? And are we more ourselves alone at home eating a meal or in the bathtub, in these everyday activities? So, that's where I got the idea to work with the chocolate and the soap.

ART21: Can you talk about the arduous quality of making the piece?

ANTONI: Yes, it took a long time to make the pieces. We spent several hours in the tub together. And I think what's important about that is that we were very intimate with each other. And my hope is that you as a viewer can feel that intimacy. That's what a portrait is: a way of getting close to the person that it's depicting.

ART21: And beauty?

ANTONI: In terms of the classical bust, an issue that my work deals with a lot is the idea of woman and beauty. And thinking about how women have been depicted traditionally in sculpture and trying to take that on. There's something quite startling about the erasure, of my process.

ART21: And also, the classical bust is traditionally a man.

ANTONI: The thing about the classical bust is it's usually reserved for depicting men, and usually very powerful men. And then, when we see women in classical sculpture, they depict hope and charity and love. I was particularly conscious of that when I made the bust and thinking about this act of erasure of this specific personality. With this particular bust here, I licked the chocolate and I licked right up the front and over the cheek. I also licked the eye and the lips and nose. And then I came around and licked, you know, over the ear and back onto the bun. And then I thought it would be nice to just lick under the nape of the neck, along up under the ear on the other side. It's modeling, in the sense that when you carve, you start with a block and you remove from it. But what I'm doing is starting from a representation of myself and then removing from it.

ART21: What does the removal process signify for you?

ANTONI: I think it's a funny thing when you think about the creative process and what we go through when we're making a work. A lot of times, there's this element of destruction, that we have to kind of unmake in order to make, and that interests me very much. And also, working from very basic materials. I'm also thinking a lot about this idea that there's this kind of relationship between me and her, that I'm literally feeding myself with my self and washing myself with my self. So, there's this circular narrative that's happening.

ART21: Is there a ritualistic aspect?

ANTONI: Sure. I was thinking of everyday rituals like eating and bathing but also other rituals. Certainly the Eucharist is about eating the body, so that also comes to mind.

ART21: How do you decide to shape a bust this way and not that? Is it simply intuitive?

ANTONI: In terms of the creative process, I think that I begin with a kind of conceptual structure. That I know to lick my self in chocolate means something, or to wash with my self in soap means something. When I feel sort of comfortable with the security of a very (hopefully) rigorous conceptual structure, then I can actually let go of that kind of thinking. And when I go to wash or lick, I'm not necessarily thinking, "If I lick this area, it means one thing or another" but really trying to get intimate with the process, so a kind of surprise happens, especially with the soap bust. You know, I'm in the tub, and all of a sudden this person appears to me, and I'm not sure if she's a relative or an alter ego, but she's related and yet different. And there's something so beautiful about that process, that lets her evolve through the process.

ART21: There's something happening in the actions you're performing.

ANTONI: I think that because the process is so, sort of, gentle and loving, there is some kind of idea of self-love. You know, of trying to come to terms with that surface being you. I think that-and I don't know about you, but-when I look in the mirror, I don't really recognize myself. I somehow see myself as I was as a little girl or in other manifestations of myself. So, it's always this contemplative moment, of trying to come to terms with what I see and how that relates to what I feel inside and trying to bring those two things together. So, I think with this whole process, you can imagine how jarring it is or how peculiar it is to lick your self. It's like being your own lover, like putting yourself in the position of your lover and trying to understand what they're seeing when they look at you.

ART21: Do you feel closer to the chocolate or the soap busts?

ANTONI: I really feel close to the soap bust because we spent a lot of time in the tub together. And I just sort of rub her all over and, you know, she sort of smoothes down, and then she becomes almost fetal. It's really quite a nice process. And it's interesting to think about cleaning and purity and just washing as a kind of ritual and its bigger meaning. I think this idea of cleaning is associated with purity.

I think I was thinking about purity in terms of woman, and that is a kind of idealized state, which of course is in contrast to the chocolate. Another way that women have been thought about is in terms of desire. So, the work is about looking at the flip side of those two states and not feeling comfortable with either.

The brown and white-really, with all my work-it comes from the material. So, I'm not so much thinking of my self in a dark color and my self in a white color. I'm thinking of my self in chocolate and my self in soap. But there is something beautiful about the way that, in her purity, she disappears.

ART21: Is there something about casting, in particular, that you enjoy? You seem to come back to that process in your work a lot.

ANTONI: I don't know, I can think of a lot of things that aren't done that way. Certainly you have your skills and your knowledge and you use it, and maybe there are many different ways to make an object, but you use the experience that you've had. So, there are certain processes that seem to come back. I was just talking to [my assistant] Melissa about this, this morning. We were moving some plywood around, and I'm like, "Why are we always making these diving boards?" Like, the way we made the rope, and then we use the same sawhorses to make the other piece. And I think we were talking about that-how there is this kind of repertoire that you come back to.

With mold making: it's just that you look around and most of the objects around us are made that way. And because I am always trying to replicate or in some way work with everyday objects, everyday materials, I find myself there a lot. Also, I am trying to make an everyday object out of another kind of material, so casting it into that shape makes sense.

ART21: Is casting a ritual for you as well? Like transformation or transubstantiation?

ANTONI: I was saying the mold making was about imitation, like I was trying to imitate these things from the world. For me, the transformation happens somehow when I am working with the process. The process is what transforms it. Sometimes that's in the mold making, but most of the time it's not. Usually, at least with Lick and Lather, it's afterwards.
This interview was originally published on PBS.org in September 2003 and was republished on Art21.org in November 2011.

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ART21: Let's talk about your sculpture, Lick and Lather. How was it made? ANTONI: I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture but also the classical bust. So, the way I made it is: I took a mold directly from my body.

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I Think I Think Too Much provides audiences with an insight into my experience with overthinking, it is a physical manifestation of my thought patterns and a therapeutic experience. By picking at the threads of a sweater until it is riddled with holes, destroyed, unable to fulfill the function for which it was intended, I represent the way thoughts are like loose threads in my mind, threads which I keep pulling at, stressing and worrying so that I am unable to function. The more I think, the less effective I become and the audience feels this in the way the sweater hangs lifeless and dejected.
Written with bleach, repetitively and obsessively, is the phrase ‘I think I think too much’. This is symbolic of the obsessive and all-encompassing nature of my thoughts which eat into me as the bleach eats into the fabric. However, the phrase also becomes a mantra, a way to aid concentration and calm thoughts. The repetitive action used to unravel the sweater works in the same way, as I repeat the action of pulling out threads or writing the words my mind is forced to focus and enter a meditative state in which the thoughts which ordinarily consume me are blocked from my mind.

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The feedback I received from Newell was really encouraging. This was a stressful assignment to complete since I missed so many classes due to the floods but it was good to see that I nevertheless managed to present an assignment that fit the criteria.
Newell's feedback indicated that my ideas and intentions are coming across really clearly so I have a good critical awareness of my work. My deviation from my typical materials and process, in favour of something more experimental, also seems to have paid off.

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-Comprised of more than two hundred earth-body artworks in which Mendiete carved, burnt, and molded her body into the landscapes of Iowa and Mexico
- Symbolic of Mendieta's belief of the earth as goddess
- Photographs are the only remaining traces of the works.
-Themes of presence and absence. Mendieta is simultaneously there and not there.
- 'I have been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape and the female body. Having been torn from my homeland (Cuba) during my adolescence, I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (Nature). My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that unite me to the Universe. It is a return to the maternal source.' - Ana Mendieta

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Where the first part of I Think I Think Too Much is a melancholic and desolate means of catharsis for the artist, the second part is a work with the purpose of allowing the audience to consider the more chaotic and overwhelming aspect of over-scrutinizing every action and decision. Thread is commonly used as a metaphor for thought and here the embroidery is messy and frenzied aptly illustrating the nature of my own thought. The thread is a bright and attention-grabbing red so that the audience cannot help but look at it, much like one cannot help but dwell on anxiety fuelling thoughts. The messy, chaotic nature of the embroidery paired with the intense colour overwhelm the viewer replicating the feeling of distress and overwhelm bought on by an overactive, anxious mind.
The thread, symbolic of my though twists itself around the subject’s neck, giving the impression of their being choked as often when getting worked up about something I feel as though I am being choked, as though I cannot breathe properly. The thread also acts as a blindfold, obscuring the eyes in order to communicate that over-analysing, rather than making things clear and obvious, often causes one to overlook the actuality of a situation in favour of farfetched and outlandish interpretations.

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I am very happy with the feedback from Salote. She indicated that I am at an above average level for the first block of the first year which is pleasing.
Salote bought up a point which I hadn't considered; part a lets the audience envision themselves in the jumper with their own anxieties while part b is much more personal to myself. I thought that was an interesting reading of the relationship between the two.

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This was definitely my favourite work from the day and my classmates seemed to respond to it as well which was quite encouraging

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I randomly threw the bag of buttons into one of the cabinets but everyone felt like it was quite evocative. I really wish I could remember what they said.

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Assemblage of works produced by myself and Josie who was my partner for this exercise

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Outcome of class task two - this time with Noah as my partner

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The making process. This one was a bit dangerous and I ended up cutting my finger open.

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First glass workshop was in the hot workshop.
We made these drawing things by pouring melted glass over a wet piece of paper so that the glass burned the design into the paper.

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I am really happy with my experience in XD and I am proud of the work I created. I feel like it really pushed me to create work which I would never have expected from myself - particularly in part a. All my work from this block, beside the assessments, is responses to lectures since I missed out on so many classes. It was difficult to connect with the content when I missed out on the class tasks and only had the PowerPoints to go off of but I feel like I made the most of my situation.

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Self-directed work in developing Part A : Material Experiments   

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Self-directed work in developing Part A : Material Experiments   

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Selecting materials from around the house and conducting playful experiments using the lists of actions from Richard Serra's Verblist

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The power of collections

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Using the candle as a tool for printing.

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I was hoping the words would show up in the print but it didn't work

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Manipulating how the candle burns so that it looks more interesting

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The paint kept its shape even after the wax had melted

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dripping burnt candle wax onto paper. Looks a bit gross

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This is by far my favourite result. It was created by holding the paper over the candle so that the smoke stuck on the paper.

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Second material - wooden skewers. These experiments were more focused on the action list than the last

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Something really appealing to me about objects grouped together.

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I tried weaving the skewers but they're not flexible enough

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Another fascination of mine - fire

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"As I encountered these items, they shimmied back and forth between debris and thing - between, on the one hand, stuff to ignore, except insofar as it betokened human activity (the workman's efforts, the litterer's toss, the rat-poisoner's success), and, on the other hand, stuff that commanded attention in its own right, as existents in excess of their association with human meanings, habits, or projects."

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"In this assemblage, objects appeared as things, that is, as vivid entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them, never entirely exhausted by their semiotics."

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This week we spent the Wednesday lesson making plaster sculptures. I thought it would be a lot more satisfyingly to work with plaster, not to mention easier, but I just could not get it to cooperate and the end result is very underwhelming.

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Sketch to inspire our plaster sculptures

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Experimenting with glass and photography by using a sheet of glass to create a double exposure effect

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My cut glass in the kiln waiting to be slumped

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Post-slumped glass!

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My other project - layers of painted glass waiting to be fused. Did not really think through the design and I wish I did something better

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Post-fused glass

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Monument to the Third International - Vladimir Tatlin 

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Monument to the Third International - Vladimir Tatlin 

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Group task to go to the Schaffer Library and find two artworks that are significantly bigger or smaller than a person

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Second artwork from the group task. Thirty-nine place settings for thirty-nine famous women

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Spider Series - Ainsley, Zuni, Gabby, and Nigeen 

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Spider Series - Ainsley, Zuni, Gabby, and Nigeen 

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Another group task - this time to take photographs that show scale. We tried to make this spider seem different scales depending on what else was in the frame however it was not very successful and we definitely could have put more effort in

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Lila, Nigeen, Taylah, Ruby, and I focused on texture and structure for our glass deep dive project.

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Looking for material inspiration in the Schaffer library and I stumbled upon this work by Ai Weiwei. I really like the use of repetition in this piece. I feel like the use of the bright colours on the traditional vases is very effective as one wouldn't expect to see those types of vases painted in such bright, inorganic colours

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I was really drawn to this due to the aesthetics. Both the glass structure, and the shadow of the structure are visually stunning. Sonfist's words in the artist statement, 'I don't think there is a difference between art and nature', also really resonated with me and I 100% agree with him on the subject.

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Another glass artwork. Parc embraces the nature of the material here and I enjoy how it's hard to distinguish between shadow and glass. I also like the contrast created by the reflected light on the background, scattered bursts of light among shadow.

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I was inspired to choose glass for my 3D assessment ultimately because of the following excerpt from an interview with the poet Emily Cooper;
‘As in the lens of a camera, it is there for my desire to capture moments and memories, to hold on to them tight before they get lost forever. It is in the windows of this house, beautifully represented on the cover by Makina designer Patrick Fisher who read the poems and seemingly crept into my visual subconscious as well. It holds all the many glasses of brandy and wine in the poems. It even represents the frailty of knowledge; of the myth that I learned as a child that glass is not in fact a solid, but a super cooled liquid, when in reality it is neither liquid nor solid, but something in between. It is the homophone of glas for green, for my eyes, and also the glasses that I almost always forget to wear. It’s something quite fragile but also able to survive centuries if protected. I spend a lot of time noticing the wavy glass in old windows; imagine existing intact in the world for so long without any kind of trauma?’
The quote made me see glass in a much more poetic way. It is everywhere in our lives and as a result it is linked to so many of our memories, both the good and the bad. To me it is a beautiful, poetic material and so I wanted to represent it in a way that reflects this sentiment.

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If there's one theme that permeates Emily Cooper's debut poetry collection Glass, writes James Patterson, it's the question of ownership. Who owns what and to what extent are we are allowed to take ownership of the different narratives and identities that shape our lives?

By beginning on this premise, Cooper is able to weave between big ideas about nationhood, gender disparity, the value of art, love, and family with a deftness of touch that calls to mind the lyric intensity of Eavan Boland.

This is a book of friends, warm and inviting as a discussion round the dinner table. But Cooper is careful not to be proscriptive in her approach. Rather, she allows her guests at the table space to be discursive, with her narratives ultimately circling back to the domestic space and the world observed empirically through the lyric 'I'. Here's what she had to say.
You've had quite the itinerant life growing up and I think it would be fair to say that this has influenced your writing. Were you conscious of this when you were writing Glass and, if so, how do you think it has shaped your approach?
I have no idea how many different places I've lived in. From my early twenties I developed a habit of running away. I think the first running away was to Greece when I was twenty-one, though I suppose I had already moved to Glasgow for university before then, but that felt more sanctioned than Greece did. I went to Corfu to work on a horse farm run by a woman who rescued (or hoarded) animals, the same woman who appears in the poem The Greek Owls. While I was there I had a kind of epiphany walking down the road to the shop. It was a moment of clarity, of pure understanding and acceptance of who I am or was at that exact point. As I got older and carried on this habit of running away to work in France and Portugal and back again many times to Greece, I found I was able to reset myself.

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Watch: Emily Cooper in conversation with James Conor Patterson and Jess McKinney
This reconfiguring worked to varying degrees and definitely wasn't permanent, but it allowed me to be comfortable in a variety of settings. Though not necessarily conscious, I think those different lives are present in the poems of Glass. I feel like I require a huge amount of life consumption in order to produce relatively small pieces of work. Months spent in a place can end up condensed into a single short poem. I am often amazed by poets who spend their whole lives in the same place but I think they must be much more efficient than I am. I need the change and stimulation to churn up content.
In poems like the eponymous Glass and The Greek Owls there's a palpable desire to engage with the visual arts and to acknowledge the legacy of women artists in particular. How important do you think it is for literature to engage with other artforms, and do you see yourself in the context of a wider artistic lineage?
In the last few years I have become very preoccupied with visual artists and in particular women artists, so I'm very pleased that you have picked up on that in Glass. Similarly to the way that Irish women writers and poets have been historically swept aside in favour of their male counterparts, I have found that there is a wealth of women visual artists from Ireland who just don't get the same attention as say Jack Yeats, Francis Bacon or Lavery. On a trip to Limerick to get a laptop fixed a couple of years ago, I stumbled upon the IMMA retrospective of Mary Swanzy that was touring in the Limerick City Gallery. I was bowled over by her work; it is so indescribably vibrant and varied. I couldn't believe that I had never heard of her. I've since gone down many rabbit holes finding out about Mainie Jellet, Evie Hone, Nano Reid, Eileen Gray, Norah McGuinness and so many other Irish women artists who have been obscured despite their successes in their lifetimes.

In another act of serendipity, I discovered the work of Dora Maar in an exhibition of female surrealists in the Picasso Museum in Malaga. I was intrigued by how similar the painting displayed by Maar was to a Picasso painting and was surprised upon reading her biography that she was a successful photographer, but during a long-term relationship with Picasso, she stopped taking photographs at his request and began painting, going from a master of her art form to an apprentice of his. Again, this has led to years of curiosity and an as yet unpublished collaborative collection with Jo Burns that centres around a painting by Maar of her and Picasso's other lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, engaged in conversation. I think engaging with the other art forms is something that can only enrich literature. In the same way that learning a different language enables you to understand your own and its roots better, viewing artworks that communicate through different mediums can only lead to a greater understanding of your own.

Sometimes poetry can read like a ping pong match that is happening behind closed doors, you can hear the thwack and the whoops but you have no idea what's going on.

During a recent visit to the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, I was lucky to be able to spend time with a dancer who generously allowed me to view a dance he was working on during his time there. As someone who has little knowledge of dance or its history, this was an eye opening experience for me that required I leave behind my habits of literal interpretation and allow myself to be spoken to in a language that I wasn't proficient in. It was moving in a way that I rarely experience with literature anymore, being so bogged down with years of learning and opinion. I experience these art forms as a novice and so am more readily brought to a state of awe. It feels like a privilege.

As for a lineage, I'm not entirely sure where I would fit into it. I don't think I like the idea of slotting into a group or movement; I'm too moody and inconsistent for that kind of thing. I do however feel a sense of responsibility to those women artists who haven't been remembered as well as I think they should have. Remembering is a continuous process, our memories are said not to be markings of the events themselves, rather a marking of the last time we remembered the events. In order for these artists to be remembered, work is required, we must bring them up into the light, not once but frequently, to establish their place in our cultural history. I would like to be part of that lineage, a revised one that establishes a more accurate representation of art and appreciates women and other neglected people for their contribution and their value as artists.
The title of the book Glass suggests transparency, reflectiveness, and fragility, as well as a certain hardness and sharpness if one gets too close! What was your thinking behind the name and how do you think it connects all the different speakers, scenarios and vistas explored in these poems?
Surprisingly the title came before the connection, or appeared to at least. I was having lunch with my boyfriend and a couple of clever friends in Letterkenny when Glass was in its early stages and we discussed what the title should be. It was agreed that it should be something short and memorable and Glass was one of the suggestions. After that lunch my boyfriend and I went to a charity shop and found a slide projector and that is where the title poem came from. It came to me fully formed, I tried a couple of times to split it up into lines, but it wanted to be prose-shaped and so it was and is. It is strange how that happens sometimes, that poems force themselves out of you as if they already existed in the world. Though perhaps I am remembering wrong and the pain of writing that poem has been erased as it is in childbirth.

Luckily, glass is the perfect medium to contain so many of my preoccupations within the book. As in the lens of a camera, it is there for my desire to capture moments and memories, to hold on to them tight before they get lost forever. It is in the windows of this house, beautifully represented on the cover by Makina designer Patrick Fisher who read the poems and seemingly crept into my visual subconscious as well. It holds all the many glasses of brandy and wine in the poems. It even represents the frailty of knowledge; of the myth that I learned as a child that glass is not in fact a solid, but a super cooled liquid, when in reality it is neither liquid nor solid, but something in between. It is the homophone of glas for green, for my eyes, and also the glasses that I almost always forget to wear. It's something quite fragile but also able to survive centuries if protected. I spend a lot of time noticing the wavy glass in old windows; imagine existing intact in the world for so long without any kind of trauma? I also quite like your description of glass, it feels like a representation of me, but perhaps I am just looking for that.
In poems like A fountain pen slices my leg through a bin bag as I move into my new house, domesticity is presented as a doubled-edged sword. On the one hand, we inhabit these spaces and eventually come to call them home. On the other, they can sometimes come to seem like our cages. How much does this complex conceptualisation of 'home' inform your work?
The home of Glass is very complicated. It is something that I think about constantly, the architecture of a place as well as the idea of it. In some ways I am searching for a sense of consistency; my obsession with old houses is borne from a need to preserve and protect that which I consider of value. Not necessarily material or financial value, but as a link to something permanent. It seems to me that as a nation we have a very anxious connection to the idea of home, having so often been ousted not just from the land but from the island itself. I spent my childhood in London and we were always looking back, reaffirming our Irishness even as we were elsewhere.

I feel like I require a huge amount of life consumption in order to produce relatively small pieces of work. Months spent in a place can end up condensed into a single short poem.

This is compounded for me by being a part of a generation for whom house ownership and renting are so prohibitively expensive that it is a source of constant worry. Glass is a book of spaces, but not one of them is truly my own. I am haunted not only by the people who lived in these houses before, but also by the knowledge of always being in someone else's home. I've lived in attics all around Europe, occupying extraneous rooms at the whims of others. So yes they do feel like cages, even as they are filled with the objects and possessions that signal ownership, this is in reality a myth.

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Watch: Emily Cooper reads Incredible Things Do Happen Part of what makes this collection unique, I think, is the sincerity and warmth at its heart. That is, there seems to be a belief in the redemptive power of love that sits in opposition to a lot of post-ironic modern poetry out there. How important is that sense of honesty in your writing?
I am very pleased by this reading! It reminds me a bit of when we would be taken on religious retreats at school and given exercises like writing a positive thing about each person in the class. Most people received compliments like 'nice hair' or 'kind' or 'funny' but the most common one for me was 'honest' which I took more as a comment on my lack of tact than an endearment but I was happy nonetheless. I find sincerity and honesty to be integral to the writing and art that I enjoy. Sometimes this can be misinterpreted into earnestness: a mode of writing that I dislike, even more than insincerity at times.

My poetry education coincided with the height of the Alt Lit movement, which was especially close as I was living in London at the time. It seems so long ago now, and that movement definitely had its value, but I was quite relieved when we were allowed to be sincere again. I am not cool enough to be that ironic. I want to write poetry that feels hospitable and I don't have much interest in writing work that will only land if you have extensive knowledge of poetry. Sometimes poetry can read like a ping pong match that is happening behind closed doors, you can hear the thwack and the whoops but you have no idea what's going on.

I hope that the readers of Glass feel welcome in its pages. One of my favourite things to do is cook a huge dinner for my friends, dump it in the middle of the table and watch them help themselves. In a way that is what a book is, an act of feeding. Consume as much as you want, digest at will, and I just hope at least some of it is to your taste.
Glass by Emily Cooper (published by Makina Books) is out now - find out more here.

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Heart of Glass: Emily Cooper on her debut poetry collection

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If there's one theme that permeates Emily Cooper's debut poetry collection Glass, writes James Patterson, it's the question of ownership. Who owns what and to what extent are we are allowed to take ownership of the different narratives and identities that shape our lives?

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Glass and light are combined to create an ethereal presence, striking the audience with a sense of wonder and awe but also peace and tranquility. The textural pools of light shimmer, mesmerizing the audience. Such a sense of ethereality is suggested through the fragile nature of the glass as well as the soft delicate light contrasted against the shadows of the object. The artwork is reminiscent of the natural world, the glass is broken and fragmented rather than uniformly cut to make the sculpture seem organic, as if one could stumble upon such a formation in an icefield.  This mimicry of the natural world echoes artist Alan Sonfist’s idea that there is no difference between nature and art. Similarly, the work draws on Tara Donovan’s themes of creating sculptures which are suggestive of natural phenomena by using man-made everyday materials. Glass is omnipresent in our lives, and through using found glass, commonplace in the average persons life, the audience is inspired to consider the potential in objects often over-looked due to their constant and unassuming presence. I want them to question how something so commonplace can be manipulated to create such a thing.

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Tara Donovan, Untitled (Mylar). 2011/2019.

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Tara Donovan, Untitled (Mylar). 2011/2019.

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Massive in scale, Donovan's sculptural compositions explore themes of accumulation and aggregation. By making use of mass-produced goods that are ubiquitous in society but often overlooked, Donovan's works force the viewer to reconsider their actions and habits in a world fuelled by consumption. Her commitment to an effortful, laboured, and site-responsive methodology connects her to movements such as Postminimalism and Process Art, with comparisons to artists such as Richard Serra. The visual impact of her sprawling works is a pleasurably profound experience; the atmospheric effects of her art has been compared to experiencing the immersive works of James Turrell. Many of Donovan's installations use singular materials by the thousands, and the assemblage of these individual components yield to the overall impression of the works. 'Untitled (Styrofoam cups)' (2003/2008) depicts a cloud-like form made from white styrofoam cups, bringing the cosmos to one's imagination. 'Colony' (2005) uses a labyrinth of pencils chopped at different heights, bunched together to suggest a contour map of an entire city or island, or the depiction of a molecular structure. Through this process, Donovan considers the beauty in everyday objects, twisting the familiar into something else-thereby translating our inattentive actions into aesthetic works of art.

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Tara Donovan's Bulbous, Undulating Works Consider The Beauty In Everyday Objects - IGNANT

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The American artist Tara Donovan uses materials and objects we use in everyday life-rubber bands, pencils, straws, cups-in massive quantities to create large-scale installations, sculptures,...

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I am totally in awe of Donovan's sculptures. I love how she takes everyday objects such as plastic cups and repurposes them to create otherworldly but organic structures. Her focus on one material in each of her works is very in line with this assessment brief as well.

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I am thrilled with the feedback from part a. I was fairly nervous when submitting this assignment as I felt like a lot of people had more complicated themes for their work whereas I just played around with the material until I found something I liked. I do wish I had talked about the images as part of the artwork but maybe that is something to explore in part b.

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In our final glass workshop we did sandblasting. Taping off the bits I wanted to remain clear was super time consuming and I spent a lot of time changing my design to something simpler and a lot of time peeling off little bits of tape. Definitely a lot of potential with this process but it was frustrating.