Our Graduate Artist-In-Residence Janet Tryner has got off to a busy start to the year, and has been making great use of her studio space at Eaton House. Have a read of her latest blog to see the direction the residency is now taking her creative practice…
“I have been busy in the studio sewing polythene oak galls and as my current body of work is in production I find I have become less reflective and more practical in my approach to it. Having got used to working in a studio and finding that I like it, I’m now reaching out for ways to sustain its presence in my life.
The art I am making now is generating ideas for other work in an antecedent sense so that although the original idea is still present I have plenty of ideas around where to take it next. I turn polythene round in my hands and realise the potential in its materiality and it becomes a parent, then grandparent of the next. This is a rather more internal way of working than the reactive way I’ve been used to, and I often check up on my old external stimuli; the Knopper oak gall wasp, oak trees, and ground-level activity. However, one of the reasons am dwelling on the work and not out recording, is that my experience of life as lived relentlessly is not reflected in the experience of my subjects whose annual cycle of growth, decay, and hibernation cannot be circumvented. In their absence I am busy.
Assembly of work is intensifying, involving requirements to transport and produce singular, packable entities as multiples specifically for sale, based 
on another singular work. Again, this is new and having dedicated studio space has helped manifest this in my practice. However, I made this work as an experiment to investigate a certain idea, so making it into something else destined, ideally, for departure feels different. I feel I have a responsibility to retain the thought and meaning of the original piece within the creation of these autonomous pieces, and this creates an inflection onto the work that I feel needs to be reconciled physically within it. It’s quite odd in a way; I feel an attachment to it that I hope veers more towards responsibility than cloying preciousness. I’ve given this work a lot of time, so I feel justified in expressing attachment to it, and I also worry about it holding up in the world. Therefore, I am kept busy planning secure boxes and sewing. Fellow studio holders pop in now and again to tell me they like the sound of my sewing-machine wurring away. It’s a good thing they like it as it’s not going to stop any time soon!
To give myself impetus to move other bodies of work onwards as well I’ve committed to showing with fellow alumni and art student friends in April. Deadline driven experimentation is often productive, given enough time and it will give me a bit of a break from the sewing machine. Also, to that end, I have organised a couple of explorative trips to research sites and conferences in February and March that might extend my network. And, of course, whilst all this is happening, I am carrying on with my field-walking pavement picking project and have written about that on my own blog site, the link to which is here: Particles of life – January 2020”