I am coming up for air after the first teaching session of the module…..
Got off to a good start, when I arrived to find that a very smart tutorial room (complete with PC) had been booked for my exclusive use for the afternoon, and that a visitors swipe card/ID had been arranged for me. Unfortunately, although it got me through one set of double doors, the card didn’t get me into the anatomy department or into the room allocated for the life classes as these are “restricted areas”. Ah well, you can’t have everything.
Then, a good one-to-one session with our first student who has decided to investigate the role of “graphic medicine” in communication between patients and doctors -which is great, as I don’t know much about it, but I know a man who does: http://graphicmedicine.org
The first life class probably a success, although whether I’m the best judge of that is debatable, since I did a lot of talking and general exhortation and hopping around, and assume, since I was on a self-induced high, that everyone else felt the same. Anyway, everyone seems very keen, and they’ve promised to come back next week. And I have had a lesson in thermostat management, so should be able to improve the ambient temperature for the model. 20.5degrees C. may be fine if you’re wearing the normal complement of clothing, but it ain’t if you’re standing stock still without a stitch on….
Just back after an exhilarating trip to the Medical School for the final pre-project meeting. We’ve met our model, who turns out to be a talented artist in her own right – her planned research project relates to the physiology of drawing, so she will have a really positive impact on the project.
We’ve also met two of the first three students, who are keen and interested, and have already done a lot of drawing. Excellent. The dates and times of the drawing classes are arranged, the first tutorial is booked and we should be straight off the starting blocks next week.
While I was waiting in the foyer (having mistakenly arrived half an hour early) a batch of students emerged from the examination hall. I picked up fragments of conversation “…what about the woman with bronchospasm?..”. “…and I completely forgot about E. coli….” ; Alan Bennett meets Harold Pinter. Although I have to admit that they all looked a bit young, I was reassured by their general tidiness and air of intelligence. I hope we looked fairly intelligent in the early 70s, but we certainly weren’t that well dressed. Afghan coats, bell bottoms and very, very long hair for both sexes. O tempora, o mores. And they don’t do Latin at school any more, either.
I’ve had a kind & sympathetic email from the Wellcome Trust explaining how to distinguish “clinical” from “other” images – very reassuring. So that’s alright, then.
However, I’m not doing so well with a separate copyright enquiry to A Publisher, although I have now had an automated reply with links to the website. Following these, I thought I had found an article by Gray (of Gray’s Anatomy) until I realised that it was published 14 months after his death….and they didn’t have to wait for peer review in those days. Turns out to be by another Henry Gray (Croly). Ah well, never mind; and I could have had a look at it if only I had my Athens password.
We have four broad headings for our topics: Illustration/explanation; Art & Illness; Imaging the body; Death, art, culture & medicine. Two of the students have chosen to examine the role of illustration in explanation, so I went to my local G.P.’s surgery to see what sort of patient information leaflets were available. To my amazement, the few leaflets available contained no illustrations at all – just a few photographs of cheerful faces, and a lot of very dense text. The asthma leaflet did at least have a picture of a couple of inhalers – which turns out to be about as much illustration as was available on a selection of websites dealing with the condition. (To be fair, there were some video clips including several in British Sign Language, which looked pretty scary). This is all fine, providing you a) have access to the Internet, and/or b) can read closely packed type. There’s certainly a lot of scope for an illustrator in this particular field, I think.
I think my GPs must feel the same, as they have tacked up two excellent, beautifully drawn & coloured A1 posters showing the effects of smoking and of high cholesterol. Not very cheerful, perhaps, and one of them contains the facsimile of Henry Gray’s signature – he wrote the text for the Anatomy book, but Henry Carter did the illustrations. Carter is very definitely an unsung hero.
What a difference the weather makes to the human condition… last week I managed to get back into my studio (a.k.a. the garden shed) for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, dodging the awakening queen wasps and actually making a start on some work. Today I have been out all afternoon drawing at the local holy well (not to be confused with Holywell, which is not quite so local). A really tranquil and restful spot.
Thoughts about the SSC are less tranquil, as there is still no sign of a contract. However, we’re all meeting up again next week to introduce ourselves to our prospective life model, and I’m also hoping to meet the students. I hope they realise what they’re letting themselves in for – I hope someone’s told them that there will be a lot of research, and drawing and thinking involved (worry, worry, worry….).
