University College Falmouth

I’m the tiredest I’ve been in a long time, and the phrase “blood, sweat and tears” most definitely applies, but… my show is up!

I won’t put any pictures of my space itself up yet, I’ll keep you waiting until the exhibition opens (15th June), but I’ll give you a sneak peek of the recently-completed and newly-titled Palindrome. Look at that pristine wall!

It’s been a stressful hanging week, but nonetheless enjoyable. Things started off well (though I did spend most of Tuesday putting 2500 pieces of velcro on the back of wooden squares for my friend), but it all went a bit pear-shaped when it came to actually hanging the work. Two of the walls were really hard, which made getting nails and screws in very difficult, especially for me and poor Virginia with her recently repaired collarbone. We even cracked one of my mirror paintings trying to hammer a nail in, though I’ve tried to work it into the composition! In the end though, the boy hanging work in the space next to me came to the rescue, and by the end of the day the paintings were eventually hung.

Today I’ve been putting the finishing touches to things, making labels and painting the floor. A couple of last-minute things to do tomorrow, and then I’m free to enjoy the very long weekend til all support work is due in on Wednesday… and then I really will be finished!

From what I’ve seen so far, the show is looking really good. I can’t wait to see what everyone’s been up to while I’ve been beavering away at the bottom of the campus.

Studio time remaining: 1 day

Before I remove the last traces of my presence from my space, it’s time for some studio nostalgia.

Things I will miss:

The space itself, which holds so many memories of inspiration, productivity, boredom, excitement, blood, sweat and tears

Seeing the work of people around me evolving

Tutorials with the lovely Virginia

Living just around the corner from the studio

My comfy chair, which is so superior to everyone else’s plastic school chairs

Friends leaving crazy notes on paper towels masking-taped to the wall

My little palette table that I can drag around the studio with me

Having a store room in which to shove dormant work/paintings in disgrace

The strange intermittant tooting noises from the docks

Eavesdropping on hilarious conversations

Always having someone whose workspace is messier than mine

Things I will not miss:

Having a very spidery space, and texting friends to come and rescue me from them

Being situated right next to the fire exit where the smokers congregate

The hole in the ceiling above my desk- who knows what horrendous creatures inhabit it!

The Space Junk, a.k.a. the retro, completely pointless heater above my head that occasionally rattles into action and sucks all other sound from the room

Irritating studio neighbours

The black hole which certain materials (most recently my beloved mechanical pencil) mysteriously get sucked into. It seems to have a penchant for red oil paint

Now it’s time to turn it into a blank canvas once again. I wonder what adventures the next studio space will bring?

Countdown to show hanging: 1.5 weeks

At the moment I’m flitting between nervous, excited, and positively terrified! Thankfully I’d say 75% excited.

This time next week I’ll be preparing to clear my studio, which will be sad (and challenging- I’m terrified of the amount of spiders I’ll have to contend with), but this week there hasn’t been much I can report on, other than a very sore hand from the amount of mirror plates I’ve been screwing onto paintings.

I’m still going with the snowflake painting I’ve mentioned in previous posts, but will save the pictures for when it’s finished- I need to build up an air of mystery! I said I wouldn’t start any new work now, but I couldn’t resist (see photograph). Hopefully as they’re small boards I’ll be able to finish them before the end of next week.

So this is more of a checking-in post than one with anything interesting to say. Before I go and rip my hand to shreds some more, good luck to everyone already hanging their shows, and I look forward to seeing the results!

It’s been a bit of a strange week- bank holiday, final tutorial, and lots of tying up loose ends. I’m still working on the painting I mentioned last week. I’m pleased with how it’s going but the paint seems to be taking a lot longer to dry than usual, which is frustrating. I just want to get on with it!

As we only have 2 weeks left I don’t really want to start any new paintings, so most of the week has been taken up by the more mundane things like screwing mirror plates on, sticking collages in and writing To Do lists. I was given my own studio space as my area for the show, which I was very pleased about.

The tutorial went really well: I had to put a selection of work on the wall that I was considering showing, and have all my support work there for Virginia to look through. She was excited about the new painting and happy with all my support work, and gave me a few pointers on my artist statement and bits and bobs of different paintings. I love the way she describes bits of my work- “splintered islands” and “dinosaur bones” were notable examples! The next time I’ll see her is when I’m hanging the work. Now just to work out where and how to hang it…

This week I bear exciting news… I’ve been offered a residency! It’s in my old foundation course, and I get to do a bit of teaching as well as my own work, which is a dream come true for me. So you can imagine this post being said in a high-pitched giggly voice because I’m so happy. It’s such a relief to know what I’ll be doing next year, and that it revolves around continuing with my practice.

Ok, back to said work. As I mentioned in my last post, I went to see Trevor Bell’s exhibition ‘Links’ at the Millennium Gallery in St. Ives at the weekend. It was one of those special gallery visits where you’re completely absorbed in the paintings, your heart beats faster and you come out in a daze, knowing you’ve fallen in love with the work! Thus it’s been a big source of inspiration for my new paintings.

However, the week didn’t get off to a great start- stepping outside my comfort zone meant that I couldn’t approach the paintings like I normally would, and so I became scared to make even the slightest alteration to them. The shaped board paintings were the most difficult because I’m so used to thinking about composition in terms of a rectangle; when faced with multiple irregular-shaped surfaces, everything I painted looked overwhelmed.

Thankfully, I’d arranged with my sister and housemate (Lucy and Laura) that we would set out all the work we were considering putting in the degree show, and we would talk about any potential problems or changes we would make. It came to light that most of my work was mid- or small-scale, and that there was only one large-scale painting. This painting is one I really want to include, so we discussed integrating it better by creating a companion for it- similar size and format to balance things out a bit. Then Lucy suggested combining this with the shaped boards, so that the image was played out in positive and negative space across the wall (see picture of how it looks now). This was a lightbulb moment for me- I now have so many more ideas about now to develop this theme, and I’m back to thinking positively about the remaining weeks before the show.

So the moral of this week’s post is- when in doubt, get a little help from your friends.

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