Long time since I posted…
Firstly, thanks to Degrees Unedited, a-n mag and Richard Taylor for rewarding my blogging efforts with a runners-up prize in the bloggers awards – I was surprised but very happy when the box of goodies turned up at my local post office a few weeks ago (probably more like six weeks). I had been unable to collect the delivery at home as I was otherwise engaged – after a month of preparing for assessment (and still not really knowing what I would show) I woke on the morning of the 20th of May to the sounds of my wife going into labour – sparing any further detail I now have a six week old son and a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Bath Spa.
I had been scoring firsts all the way through the course, but somehow knew I had fallen short of the marking criteria at the very end. No matter, as any artist knows, it’s not the grade you get in your degree that matters most; it’s what you do next.
So to my ‘next’…
Aside from changing nappies, waking up at all kinds of unheard of hours, and trying to convince myself that my part-time van-driving job is only for as long as needs must, my intentions are to continue to work as an artist, but to place more emphasis now on writing. So I will be moving over to artists talking, where I will blog about shows and sustaining a practice in a post-degree world while sharing in the responsibility for another human life and trying to write legibly on five hours of broken sleep.
I have shows coming up in Bristol – with The Diving School and Paper Studios, as well as a part in Meanwhile ptII, an offsite show curated by the Hansard Gallery in Southampton. My tutor told me I could apply for mitigating circumstances, what with the baby, and resubmit later in the summer and go for the first that I missed by 2.5%, but is there really any need?
With these shows, plus a writing job for a new magazine (Bristol-based ‘Paper’ – 1st issue Sept 2012), membership of Madescapes, a collective of recent graduates currently showing in the Bristol area and London, and the confidence in my own work that built towards the end of the year, I think I’ve got enough out of my degree. In fact, I’ve got more than I could have hoped for out of the university experience – I know I’d have squandered it, had I gone ten years ago – and the future looks promising, so watch this space!
