2012 has so far proved to be as busy and exciting as I thought it might.
New Ferry Butterfly Park empty shop project is well on its way, see my other blog. www.a-n.co.uk/p/1838820
My job at Deane Road Cemetery is going well, the restoration is looking amazing so far, not too many new volunteers yet but I am working on that.
I’ve also just been offered the opportunity to do some sessional lecturing at Wirral Metroploitan College for the BA Fine Art course. It’s the course that I attended a few years ago, might seem a bit strange going back to teach but I am very excited about it I have to say. The whole reason I went back to Uni as a mature student was because I wanted to teach, I knew by the end of my degree I wanted to teach at BA level or above so knew I needed my MA which is why I went off to UCLAN.
I then got so embroiled with my own community engaged practice that I’d kind of put the idea of teaching on hold. This opportunity is only one day a week and only til the end of March but will be a fantastic opportunity for me I think. Can’t wait to start now, see what these syudents have to offer.
Then finally I’ve almost completed my piece of work for the SCI Supermarket exhibition in Stockholm. Just have to make a box for it to travel safely in now.
The piece is about ‘Spero’, this means Hope in Latin. Over many years I have collected my losing lottery tickets, I never knew why I kept them really, just knew that one day I’d make some kind of artwork out of them. I’ve only ever won a tenner here and there, it seems fruitless to continue buying the tickets really but there was always the hope that one day we’d get that big win. The same as every other one of the millions of people who play each week, I wanted to help my family financially, pay off my mortgage or even better buy a bigger house. Go to Austalia, this was my main thing, my brother has liver there for nearly 15 years, he is married now and has two gorgeous children. I want to be able to afford to go and visit him, see Melbourne, the place that he settled in and see why that one city made him want to stay across the other side of the world from all his family.
Of course, he has his lovely new family now but we all still miss him, that doesn’t stop. Being a starving artist doesn’t pay well enough for trips to Australia, specifically as there are four of us to get over there now. So the lotto was my one hope.
I wanted to know what other peoples ‘one hope’ would be if they won. I asked around and the responses all differed but the primary thing was a house, a home – security seems to be the overlying thing most people want. I was suprised at the lack of travelling, though some people did want to travel, they want that house first. Lay down their roots and then go and see the world after…maybe.
A few people want a farm and self sustainability. A few people would give to charities.
I decided to base an artwork around all of these hopes.
I had precisly 562 hopes. Thats how much I have spent on losing lotto tickets over the years – £562. Not that it would have got me anywhere near Australia in this day and age but still £562.00 is a lot of money.
I have made a book of peoples hopes using the three wasted lotto tickets that I actually won £10 on (and then stupidly forgot to claim) and the binder of the book is a beautiful piece of old oak, sanded back to its former glory. Within the oak I’ve drilled holes and scrolled many of my collected tickets into the holes spelling out the word Spero.
‘Dum Spiro Spero’
Cicero
“While I breathe, I hope”
