Don’t go into the studio with your admin head on. It’s a waste of time. At least something good came out of Monday, even if I got precious little sculpting done.
I’d spent Sunday evening mocking up a poster to illustrate a project I’ve had in mind. My plan is, as a group, to put on an open exhibition in Ashford and get the second year HNDs involved as well. It’s far easier to explain by means of a visual aid than giving a description without props. Overall it was a success, as most of the group thought the idea of an open exhibition in the town was a great one, and the student rep for the year below was quite enthusiastic as well. I was relieved to have finally presented that idea and cleared the way for it to go ahead next term, hopefully with enough time to gather plenty of volunteers to help me!
I’d also been worrying about the lack of small-scale fundraising for the end of year show, particularly when the HNDs and fashion students have been bombarding us daily in the refectory with cake sales in aid of their exhibitions. I’d taken in a few large bags of remnants to the studio several weeks ago that I thought could raise a few pennies if we sold them to the fashion students, but hadn’t got around to sorting, folding and pricing them. As I still had my leadership hat on I managed to set it up and let the fashion classes know, and by the end of the day we’d made a few pounds out of it, with no baking involved at all. I left an honesty jar, but as we had a trip to London scheduled for the next day and I haven’t been back to the studio this week, I’m not sure what – if anything – will await me when I do go back in.
The London galleries trip amounted to only a couple of hours for me, and I couldn’t stay for the Grayson Perry show at the British Museum, which was the exhibit I had most looked forward to. The curse of being tied to the school run. Oh well. I was glad to see Ellen Altfest’s “The Bent Leg” at the White Cube – right up my street in terms of both my practice and my dissertation! It says a lot to wander into a room full of pictures of men’s body parts and have the entire class say, “this one’s for Lee”.
Now that the folly of organising a trip home – on the very day that my first module is due – has sunk in, I’m working hard at getting the paintings done so that I can hand it all in and have my crit a week early. All the daylight hours are set aside for painting, and the night time is the right time for paperwork. And worrying about painting, of course. The wooden sculpture isn’t going to completed, but hopefully the combination of the clay sculpture and the five portraits will prove to have successfully accomplished the aims I wrote in the brief.
The next challenge will be making a portable practice for myself, if I’m going to get any work done while I’m over 4000 miles away (I’m not from around these here parts), and deciding how many books to take for my dissertation research. I think I’ll actually enjoy setting aside a few days at the library in Bridgetown! I won’t be able to think clearly about any of that until this module is over though. For now it’s head down, on with the work.
