Breaking Ground

BEAN – WISLEY MAGIC

Amanda Champness has sent some photos of her magic bean, the souvenir seed from Breaking Ground. The shooting bean is growing leaves now. I am sure she is going to keep us abreast of its progress.

LOOKING FORWARD – LOOKING BACK

With two talks to plan this week about our collaboration, this seems like a good opportunity to review what we have done so far and begin to make firm plans for our project space work in the coming months.

While choosing images for my slideshow, I came across a series of drawings which I did soon after arriving back in the studio from the allotment. I had been sorting out my collection of seeds and planted some quick sprouting varieties in the studio. I observed their progress daily, and documented their progress in drawings for a while.

I was interested in how my old life drawing skills seemed appropriate in representing these contorted little bodies.

COLLABORATION

Struggling with making slides for the powerpoint and thinking about the collaboration – how we started out and how it developed. The good points and how it helped us work. How we worked alongside each other. Side by side. Assistance. Discussion. Meetings always turned something up, pushed on our ideas. Looked forward to meetings and seeing what would come out of it. A pairing, like my seed names and nature stitches, overlapping, layering, producing textures.

TALK

Photographed my prints ready to become slides for the 2 presentations I am starting to build for the Talks in 10 days' time.

The first is on Breaking Ground and collaboration. The second is for the printmaking students. Duncan Bullen, the tutor, has asked that we talk too about how we have made artist lives for ourselves after graduating from Brighton.

I will design and email a poster for him to put on the noticeboard next.

TUTORIALS

Today I did some tutorials with the printmaking students – enjoyed this in spite of having a heavy cold. First years are preparing for their Exhibition on Monday and third years getting ready for the Final Show. I noticed how as you look critically at someone else's work and comment, you learn to look better and clarify something in your own mind or identify a muddle. Again I notice that if you help students to articulate their thoughts and feelings about the work and making the work, they find something out. It mirrors my counselling work.

One student is unsure where to begin again. I draw her attention to another blog on AN – "You can go anywhere from anywhere" Jane Ponsford's new project, a quote from Anni Albers. See her post 17 March for link to yet another blog and text.

I collected my finished prints and cleared out my plan drawer and locker.

Arranged a date for our talk on Breaking Ground – 2 weeks today.