University of Wolverhampton

As a nu-Luddite (I have an Ipod) I have only just worked out how to get images on here. Wow. Embarrassing.

My work seems to be going well. A brief worry that I would have to produce as much as a dear friend of mine, who is working to be a production thrower i.e. mugs everywhere, for the final show has been dismissed and I need to concentrate on bases, thickness, and firings. My previous posts have discussed (cough cough) my decision to do what I want now, and it seems to be met with fair-to-positive approval.

I've also managed to start setting up my own website through a business grant I received, which is exciting. And sorting out a residency as well. Also exciting. And applying for an MA. Cor blimey.

All this means is that the final semester will be busy but it feels correct; all the work so far has built up to this time. The students who didn't bother last year, or even the first year, who weren't as committed or concerned – it's starting to show. The opportunities for those who are passionate are suddenly all the more obvious, as are the lack of routes to take for those who have thrown away three years. I'm not saying this with malice but fact. I worked like a demon first year; second year suffered some emotional issues (read, went crazy) and missed out; this year I have set out to achieve good things and I am achieving good things. Like anything you learn or realise in life, you wish they had explained it to you at the start.

I won't lie and say that I'm not gently, and increasingly, panicky about next year. Well, not even next year – a few months. But I am also gently, increasingly, excited. The desire to put on a great show is driving my work forward in a way I would never have anticipated. Maybe this is the bit where you're not a student anymore, you're a maker, or artist, or designer. The grown-up wants to stop playing and start showing people just what you've got.

All this is also brought on by the various rumours about our particular university encouraging voluntary redundancies. Discussing it in the department, the verdict is that this first year (graduates in 2011) will be the last to go through the doors, at least for our little corner of the School of Art and Design. The way of all flesh is, seemingly, the way of all clay.

How ironic that previous posts have been about the internal discussion I have about art/art discourse and the relative merits (or not), and my feedback from last semester centred on just that. Ironic but devastating, at least for a week or so.

It boils down to this: if you have a skill, does that skill have to consistently be applied to everything you do? I was asked why my writing skills aren't applied to my work, why, in fact, the concepts I was writing about were not driving the work. The simple answer is that I think about more than one concept, and I have different ways of expressing different concepts. When I explained that I purely wanted to produce objects that people were drawn to, enjoyed, and investigated through look or touch, the response was that these would just be…nice. Lovely and nice and not enough.

It seems with ceramics (as I can only talk about this from my own experience) that aestheticism is not enough; in order to validate it as 'art', not the dreaded 'craft', it needs conceptual grounding rather than pure, aesthetic responses. While I agree that some of the most interesting ceramics produced looks at huge, generic concepts addressed by many media forms, some of the most interesting ceramics produced also looks at what it is that makes ceramics so individual in the art or craft worlds. Rejoicing in an understanding of the medium you are working with is no less a success than rejoicing in the realisation of a concept.

Anyway, to that end I've thought fuck them and I'm going to do what I want. Third year is the time of the student (a bit like The Year of the Ox) and I want to make what I want. If they want me to explain, I will, but the primary objective of my work is now to produce those objects that engage people through aesthetic and tactile qualities. We'll see :)

Our fund-raising is trickling along. Our degree show is being moved from out of our department, which is odd. Everyone is stressed but having fun. It's my birthday tomorrow, so piss up ahoy and sack off sketchbook for a day or two.

Snare, over and out