New College Stamford/University of Lincoln

It appears that the relative calm I felt last week was merely delusional, as it’s full on proper stress time now. To complicate things, my boys are now on half-term from school, so the next couple of days will be spent juggling degree stuff (important) with mum stuff (even more important).

Our brochures have come back from the printers and everyone’s really happy with them. As it was decided that we wouldn’t have an exhibition brochure for the whole college (we’ve got individual postcards instead), us Fine Art students felt rather sad, so we decided to make our own little brochure just for the 5 of us. It was my first time a) using Indesign and b) getting something professionally printed, so I was really worried I’d screw it up somehow. The relief that it’s all turned out ok is pretty immense.

The private viewing for our show is on Tuesday evening but we’re being thrown out of college by midday for assessments to start (and we can’t get in on Monday due to the bank holiday). None of my work is installed yet (although I’ve painted everything white and put some screws in a board) as I have a list of minor and not-so-minor finishing touches to make – I’m hoping 3 hours on Tuesday morning is going to be enough time to put it all in place.

I’m excited about getting some sleep when this is all over.

I can’t believe this is finally it…tomorrow is technically our Last Day! Or, at least, it’s the last day for handing in anything we’re not planning on exhibiting. After that, we have a couple of weeks to add finishing touches to anything for the show, which opens for the private view on 31st May.

We have a degree show website (which is soon to have links to a personal page with some info and images): www.uncoated.co/. The Graphic Design students who we’ve been organising the show with have been absolutely brilliant – everything looks great.

Strangely, I don’t feel as stressed as I’d thought I would/should be at this point… maybe it’s the calm before the storm. After handing in my work tomorrow, I have a face-painting assignment at my boys’ school sports event (!) and after that, it will be an intense fortnight of getting things ready for the show. It all feels a bit surreal that after nearly 3 years the end is in sight. It’s a strange old mix of emotions.

We’ve recently had two visiting artists at college, Simon Woolham and Gurps Kaur. Both have been really interesting to talk to and bounce ideas off. Next week, we have a studio visit to Wysing Art Centre, in Bourn near Cambridge… can’t wait!

I’m trying not to worry too much about the fast approaching exhibition, and just keep carrying on (much easier said than done). Currently, my attentions have been turned to monoprinting, as I was feeling a bit disatisfied with the results of my glass domes. I wanted the images inside to have a less controlled quality, so decided to experiment with a bit of printing (which I’ve not done for ages – not sure this is the best time to start doing something that’s new but I like to scare myself sometimes…). Luckily, it was a happy experiment, and I’ve been enjoying the process.

I’ve also started making little collages and paintings on scraps of cardboard, which I plan to display in groups, or ‘constellations’. To be honest, these are interesting me more than the domes at the moment, so I need to make some decisions about what I plan on actually exhibiting in the final show. Or maybe I’ll just leave it til the last minute.

Plans for the show are coming along OK I think. We have all been assigned a colour, which is our ‘branding’ for the exhibition… I don’t quite understand it all, but I am a very pale blue. I’d probably not normally choose pale blue as a colour to represent myself, but Fine Arts have been given gradients of blue to choose from and pale blue looked the prettiest.

We have a photography studio at college booked for Thursday morning to get some of our work photographed, ready for brochures etc. The pressure’s on to get some pieces fully finished for then!

I wasted that £1.99, as my camera lead has now reappeared. At least I have a spare one now for the inevitable time when I lose the orginal again.

Here’s a mock up of the domes I’ve been working on. Not quite there yet. More domes have been ordered and I am in the middle of creating more ‘innards’ for them.