This year’s progress

My week consists of three days at my part-time job, which helps pay the bills and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday working in the art studio at the Digswell Arts Trust.

Last week the value of the trust really highlighted itself to me. Wednesday I got chatting to one of the other fellow’s who has been there for 5 years and is leaving in March due to the length of his time with the Trust being up. He earns his money making canvases for other local artists in his studio space alongside making his own work. After March when he looses this space he will have to find another place to continue making canvases and his artwork.

We are all aware that this support is temporary and that it should be treated as a platform for us to then go on to become self-sufficient, but it still feels like a blow when someone goes and you see the struggles they face.

Last week I have been continuing working on my piece for the barge house exhibition. I have been working on a perspective 3d/2d drawing. It has given me a few technical problems that I couldn’t see past for looking. Luckily, I could go to another fellow and get advice and discuss. It feels so much like a supporting network between us all. It isn’t exactly all happy families but we definitely can identify with each others exasperations sometimes. I do feel like if I start going down that route of…what am I doing this for? I’m getting no where. Everything is crap! I can usually have a conversation with someone who can give me a bit of perspective (quite literally) and help me focus on the issue.

Another fellow who is leaving because of not using the space due to illness also came in to collect her things. She said she will be working at her home now, but I feel for her because I do feel that isolation is the biggest hurdle for an artist.

This week’s focus is working on this perspective piece and looking at different alternatives for ways to present it in the space.

I have started this year looking towards my main focus, that of pushing my work as much as I can and becoming as seen by as wider a variety of people as I can, to gain a diversity of responses that is challenging to my making and the ideas behind it.

First Exhibition of the Year: ‘Electric Blue’ Opening 12^th March 08 My first focus is a group exhibition that I am part of that is being held in March at the Barge House on the South bank in London. It is being organised by a good friend of mine who studied Fine Art with me at University. Titled ‘Electric Blue’, the show will feature work that is engaging and interacts with our senses in a variety of different ways. The piece that I plan to construct for the exhibition is a 3d/2d drawn installation piece depicting the image of a domestic scene. The challenge is the nature of the space, as it is a 3 storey warehouse building with rough brick walls and bad lighting. I have started constructing the piece in my lovely, white, bright studio space and am thinking about how it will translate into the gritty nature of the Barge House. I am trying to balance between keeping the feel of the piece, and practicality of constructing it, to letting the building become part of the work. I don’t want to mask the building out of the piece but let environment and work interrupt each others existence for the short time of the exhibition. My concern for my own work in this exhibition is that it will be over powered by the space. My work has a fragility about it that I hope doesn’t get lost within the heaviness and robustness of this solid building. I’m really hoping the contrast will be a success.