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Still not getting anywhere with son. Emotionally exhausting dealing with his teenage proclivities.

So, the Apparatjik bike thing – I seem to have sourced a few spare bikes! I just need to get them to the space to tinker with. No news about the ones in the police station, but I do hope to play around and create an Apparatjik Disco Bike of some sort.

For the Revival anniversary, I set up an LAN:LAB bird workshop for last Friday in the old arcade space. I was pleased to be joined by fellow Lincoln graduate Becca Reid, and she has a lot of ideas for art projects. For various reasons, I haven’t made much use of that space for some months, and I now have a couple of artists that will join me to have regular Lincoln Artists’ Network projects and events on Fridays to make use of the space. The Bird workshop was an excuse to invite people to come and make cardboard bird wings and beaks to create a flock of birds as part of the Outer Trial Bank project.

I’ve also set up regular bike rides, although it’s proving quite tricky to encourage artists that aren’t cyclists to come and join us! Cycling is one thing I do to relieve the frustration of all the failed grant applications and general failures…

Today I got a headache from staring at the computer screen, not doing what I should be doing; that is, what I’d planned to do today, so I decided to go out in the sunshine and go and check out the brand new Art, Architecture and Design Building, and go and see the MA Design show. In my wildest dreams I plan to do an MA in Illustration, when the magic funding fairy appears…. so I pretended to be a lost fresher, and went for a spy round the new studio spaces, as I had 20 mins to kill before a meeting with the manager of the Hilton hotel, to discuss the prospect of exhibiting art there. This is a fantastic opportunity for us, aside from my own work with various pop stars, the space is secure, with a large amount of guests and visitors – potential audience – and refreshments readily available, and with paid staff there to keep an eye on the work, we don’t have to worry about invigilation!

I’m quite excited about this, I’ve often followed the Artist Residence in Brighton and wished we could do something like that here, or something like The Thief in Oslo – this errs more towards the latter :-)

I sent my illustration of Michael Gove, a very carefully drawn piece of screwed up paper in the bin, with a broken pencil, to the Art Party Conference, but I wasn’t imagining being able to go. I inquired whether there was any funding to cover travel / accommodation, and was met with a negative, so that put me off.

Considering I face the prospect of a drop in income equivalent to approximately £81 per week, it would be best if I didn’t have to pay to attend, and it’d be a shame to miss out when Mum won’t mind having my son at hers, and he’s old enough to go on the train on his own now.


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Thankfully, I’ve started to pick myself up this week. No, I didn’t get the jobs I applied for. But they were evening jobs, so not ideal anyway with a 14 year old with various homework demands.

How has it come to the point that I’m so desperate for any paid work that I’ve begun to sacrifice the notion of that long held stalwart of single parenthood – I can’t work evenings. Or weekends.

I started to do work again. Just looking at other options, researching funding, but mainly, carrying on with the Kickstarter campaign. I don’t think it’ll be successful this time, there’s only a few days left, and its hardly gone viral, despite receiving some promising support.

So I will resubmit it next month and try again. I’m not able to get much work done for the actual graphic novel while I’m doing this, mind :-s

I started tinkering in my studio, and taking a step back to look at what might be achievable.

I came up with another possible idea following on from all of this bike riding I’ve been doing.

I want to organise a cycle art event that ties in with the Outer Trial Bank project (that I was starting to think of as a dead horse). There’s an anniversary for Revival coming up (soon) and I’ve asked if it’s possible to make use of the stolen bikes that are kept in the police station for a temporary sculpture.

I had a concept for an Apparatjik disco bike, but I’m waiting to find out if we can even use the bikes.

I felt as though I wanted to give up the Outer Trial Bank project completely. I didn’t get funding, which wasn’t going to bother me before, but then the issue with the free space came up, and trouble with son, and I felt as though everything is against me ever doing anything remotely creative. But it seems ludicrous that we do have use of that space, to not do something there in time for the Digital Arts Festival would be a no-brainer.

I had other artists send me some work for it, I had someone offering to perform, it might not be as ambitious as I first planned, but it was always meant to be experimental anyway.

I mainly feel as though I’ll get through all of this somehow. I always have before.


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