University of the West of England

My partner, son and I have been galavanting through parks and charity shops this last week. I managed to come home with another huge stack of history and war books. I always get funny looks when I take my choices to the till. I don’t know what is so strange about buying Dr. Seuss “There’s a wocket in my pocket” alongside “101 War Movies”, “Hidden Secrets: The Complete History of Espionage and the Technology Used to Support it” and “IBM and the Holocaust” . Although my partner is interested in these aspects of history as well, I think he has been severely put off by my obsession.

The last two weeks before our easter holiday, I felt fairly prolific with my studio work. I can not believe how many objects and things I’ve created. In my second year, for instance, I only had three finished pieces of work to show for myself. I was painting, and I found it difficult to just let go and make. Everything I did had to be meticulously planned and ordered before I started painting, and only within those constraints did I feel comfortable letting go and doing something spontaneous to my work. It was time consuming and mentally exhausting. This year I have somehow come out of that, and completely let go. Especially so in the last month. I feel that I have really found my preferred way of working, when I am in ‘the zone’ and it has all just clicked into place. Making objects rather than paintings has much to do with it, I think. I was too precious about my paintings, and I have discovered that when making objects I feel much more free. I am not worried about how they turn out, or whether they are successful, because they don’t necessarily have to serve a concrete purpose themselves. Most of the time the objects are not finished until grouped with others anyway, and I have found these new possibilities liberating.

After an academic year of self doubt and confusion, I am actually confidant about what I managed to accomplish before the easter holiday, and I am fairly sure there is a piece to select for the degree show, if I am not able to finish anything new before then. The trouble now is choosing. I managed to photograph 32 possibilities, with about 8 of them being stronger than the rest. My tutor group has a crit scheduled the first week back from holiday, so it will be incredibly useful to hear some critical feedback on what I’ve been doing. I do need to be much more focused in this crit though, as it might be the last real chance to try out my work before the degree show. I’ll need to flag any potential problems, such as hanging and display issues, before then, so I can focus on other aspects during the crit.

Something else of dire importance, titles! Titling my work has proved a difficult task for me in the past. So I have started a list of words, phrases, ideas, that could morph into possible titles for the new works I’ve just made. At the moment nothing I’ve come up with seems to really work, and it is slightly worrying. I think that bouncing ideas off others will prove to be incredibly important in this aspect.

I’m off to work more on my research folders now, while my son is still at preschool and I have the house to myself. Hopefully I’ll have a good chunk of it done by my next blog post. High Ho High Ho, it’s off to work I go…

Being a direct entry student has been very difficult, but immensly rewarding. For much of the first half of the year I felt as though I was playing catch up with the other students. I had to get used to a new campus, new facilities, technicians, tutors, all while having to create new work and engage with people who were not in the slightest familiar with what I had been making the year before. Of course, my work evolved anyway, and as I became more familiar with my surroundings, I realized that most of the other students who had been on the course the first two years felt just as lost as I did!

Last year I was mainly painting, so it was a shock when I started making more sculptural objects. Most of the work I made at the beginning of the academic year were not finished pieces, but became a process of thinking for me, as a way to help me understand my practice. It took me awhile to pin down what I was most interested in, especially after the shakeups of our first few tutorials and group crits.

It has been really interesting to see how far we have all come in our personal practices since the beginning of the year, and I am looking forward to the degree show. We are on our easter holiday at the moment, and I have been frantically trying to work on my research folders needed for assessment. I am confidant that I am not the only one maniacally typing while scouring a towering pile of books, and that does make me feel a little bit better, if only slightly.