End of term

Finally end of term is here. Today everyone in my year in my department are going for a pint at the State where our lecturer has booked the basement floor. I am really looking forward to it. It has been a long term, and we seem to have been drifting a bit apart while working on the Public Art Project so it will be good see everyone and have a chat before we start the holidays.

Also my partner and his brother is coming for a visit. We are going to be tourists and enjoy Glasgow for the first couple of days before renting a car and going north to Inverness, Tongue, Ullapool, Isle of Skye and then south again to Glasgow.

Wish you all a nice holiday.

Full Stop

Funnily enough, like Helene, my work too has become a little unfocused and difficult to get back into. After my group crit, I think I've become quite despondent about my work. It was a bit annoying that my tutor read my work as being about labour (although I think he has a slight bias as I think we are from the same sort of background) when I wanted it to be discuss human behavious. Labour used to be a big part of my work but it is definitely behavioural patterns which interest me more now. So I keep running into this brick wall of not knowing where to take my work now. Need to ask for a tutorial I think to get me up and running again but unfortunately it's easter soon so I don't know if there'll be time before the holidays.

Speaking of which, our exhibition is coming up soon in the Newberry gallery. My year has been split into two sections, for the two shows (the space isnt big enough for all of us). Luckily, I'm in the second group which buys me more time to produce something worthy of showing, I get to help the first group with installation thus attaining new skills in hanging and our show runs for 7 days and the first group's only runs for 4.

I actually saw a really good exhibition last night in the upstairs of the Vic by a fourth year painting student named Pete. The space is massive and he really considered how best to fill that (he cleverly used sound). I really impressed with the work.

Tonight will be the climax of about 5 months anticipation for me - Metallica live! Yus! I cannot wait!! And tomorrow I'm off on holiday so I can lay about and be extremely hungover all day :)

Raining again

After a wonderful weekend it has become quite cold and rainy again.
Yesterday I visited Pollockshaw Park and Pollock House. The Burrell Collection is in the same park.
I had a very nice stroll around the country park and enjoyed the glimpses of the sun. I didn't go inside Pollock House but enjoyed a little peak in the gardens for the house. It was very nice, quite baroque and geometric almos maze like close to the house, then a more forestry bit more like an English garden and also greenhouses, stables and a small bridge leading over the river to the golf course. I am definetely going again before the end of March to have a look in thehouse while it is still free :-)

After the interim review and the delivery of the CRS my work has kind of stopped a little bit and I am having trouble finding focus with/for my work. I try to go walking and enjoy the nice wheather and have also been doing quite a lot of drawing lately. This is all very nice, but I think I need to get myself a little bit together and start to make plans for a finished piece of work for the end of May/Final Assessment.

In addition I have started to work on the Public Art Project document, which in my case is going to be a little book with information and documentation, maybe even a small critical piece of text all relating to the Public Art Project I finished in the end of February, and was really unhappy about.

Looking forward to getting my work moving again - hopefully it will not be too uncomfortable a process.

Essay done and done!

Thank goodness that's the essay finished and handed in! To be honest, it wasn't my best effort but I think it'll get a pass. I know it's pretty sad but my favourite part of the essay is doing all the footery stuff, making title pages look pristine, getting bibliographys and lists of illustration done up, making sure captions are in order etc. I've got a wee compulsive thing about uniformity in essays hehe. So it was handed in yesterday.

The new term started on Monday (there was meant to be a new project but no notices up on the notice boards indicating an introductory lecture or anything...) It annoys me a wee bit about the department's arranging something and nothing happening or arranging something and putting the notice up the day before/on the day. But I shouldn't be complaining as I've lots of other stuff on my plate at the moment.

As I am completely skint I've had to start a drawing which I was commissioned to do by a family friend in order to get money to go to my Metallica gig on Thursday (Can't wait!!). Get paid the day after it which is a bit of a bummer, but at least I won't spend all my wages at the gig :)
So yesterday I spent my last pennies getting paper and a steel rule to start the drawing. Looking forward to starting it though, I enjoy analytical drawings and they really improve my skills. Also, money being an issue means I can't get my mum anything for mother's day this Sunday. Oops, going to have to be a hippy for a day and go pick daffodils or something!

Also I'm trying to get back on the diet as of this week (waste of time really considering the amount of beer that'll be getting drunk at metallica) so I started my day this morning with my stretches and 200 sit ups. Not bad. Put's a wee spring in your step for the rest of the day!

Sweet home

I've been away on a fieldtrip to Norway, which didn't turn out to be quite as productive as I would have hoped, but at least I got a little bit of work done, and I read quite a bit in Wanderlust, by Rebecca Solnit, which I think can be really useful to develop my work further.

The interim reviews and a tutorial with Sean Kaye (guest teacher from Leeds) was very good, and I have tons of work ahead of me, but at least I have little bit of a sense of direction. Just have to make sure I don't chicken out.

The trip took me from Torp airport, via Kristiansand to Sandnes were we spent the night before spending the day in Stavanger. Saw Anthony Gormley's Broken Column and Geocities installation thing outside the Oil Museum. In the evening we went to Bergen to my family.
Sunday morning we drove to Ulnes, where we stayed for a couple of hours before going south again to Oslo. It was absolutely freezing in Oslo. But still had a brilliant day, meeting old friends at th pub and going for dinner in the evening. It was very nice.

So happy spring is arriving in Glasgow at the moment. Nice to be back.
Tomorrow I am going to Ayr - a nice place by the coast. I went there last year with a friend who was visiting from Norway, and we had a great time on the beach. Hopefully it will be time for a short walk on the beach during my lunchbreak, but my hope are not too high.

Last Minuteness

Oh, I'm so frustrated at myself for having left my H&C essay to the last minute...again! I don't know why I do it. Well, when I was diagnosed with dyslexia last year, that was part of the explanation (bad organisational skills are normal for dyslexic people) but I honestly think it's that I dread starting it so much - all that breaking down of questions, reading source after source, structuring concise answers - that I just put it off for as long as I can. I've been really fortunate so far though, and never had lower than a B1 for my essays so that's pretty good. I guess I work well under pressure but it's so stressful! I think I'm going to sit up and read for as long as possible and then work on it all day tomorrow. Thing is, eventually I begin to enjoy writing the essays, it just takes a good while to get into that mode.

Can't wait till it's finished. *Sigh*

Fate 'n' that?

This has been a pretty weird week for me, mainly on a personal level. My ex boyfriend and I got back together on Saturday. I'm happy about it, even if a little cautious. But its better because things are slightly more on my terms - my time being single has really gave me back my independence and I don't intend to lose it. But for now we are just taking it easy and having fun which is nice.

Anyways! In terms of school this week, it's been pretty quiet. My chalkline drawings were, in my eyes, unsuccessful. Slightly disappointed but think my work is going to be much more scientific next term as I intend to investigate it from a medical point of view. I had my Final Project Crit on Wednesday (10am - 5pm) with Lynn Hynd and Craig Mulholland. I was really impressed with some of the work by the other students in my crit group - it's nice to see and understand what the other students are working on. The tutors gave really good and relevant advice to everybody and the group was quite chatty so it was pretty successful. Crits are notorious for being brain draining and very tiring...and I had to go to work after mines! I was exhausted! I was representing the school at a careers event at Calderglen high in East Kilbride. I fell asleep on the train there and back hehe. It was a lovely big school, a new build I believe. Staff and students were all lovely!

Also, I was commissioned by someone (family friend) to do a portrait of her son. I'm quite pleased because I've had quite a few requests now but also slightly concerned because I don't want people perceiving me as a portrait artist. Concept is a big part of my practice now and my investagation is much more interesting than doing portrait after portrait. But it keeps my drawing practice up and earns me a wee bit of extra cash.

The next deadline I've to meet is for my H&C essay which is due on Thurs 19th March. I'm getting very worried now because I haven't even started it yet! It is a tough question so its been putting me off tackling it for ages but now I have simply GOT to do it. I'll make a start on it over the weekend hopefully. So probably not going to be many blog entries from me next week as all my attention will be on getting this essay done and dusted!

Fieldtrip to Norway

Tomorrow I am going on a fieldtrip to Norway. We will drive from the airport and go around half the southern part of the country in three days. Should be really exciting!

I am doing Photography and Drawing as a part of the research for the trip, and hopefully it will be possible for me to make it into finished work for the exhibition which opens in the Atrium Gallery Thursday 19.March. If not I can exhibit some other time.

Will keep you posted with images. Tonight it is time for the State and a wee pint - hopefully Leeanne will come as well. Also have too pack - always nice to pack and plan a journey when you start too late :-)

Lovely day

Today is my Interim Rewiew - a kind of informal assessment toward the end of term 2 to allow you to prepare better for final assessment in term 3. I am quite looking forward to it, but what makes it a lovely day is that after this I can work and focus on studio and stuff without having to worry about assessment, deadlines and all the other stuff. I am really looking forward to a couple of quieter weeks.

In addition the weather is absolutely lovely. Sunshine and a little bit of wind. It`s really nice. Finally the spring feeling is kreeping back.

This week I am visiting Uddingston Grammar School and next week I will go to Ayr. I am looking forward to it. It is so nice to go to the different schools - for me its really interesting to see the differences between the schools and the kind of school I went to, and then also I get to see more og Glasgow and Scotland.

Finally weekend

Monday and Tuesday are interim reviews and I have to work on that through the weekend, but somehow it doesn't worry too much and I am looking forward to a "relaxed" weekend. At least the worst of my worries are now past me, and I can start thinking about the really big ones - final assessment, but because they are over Easter I am not going to panick about it just yet.
Doing and inke rubbing printing class today at the Rice Gallery. I am really looking forward to it - just to do something different, to unwind myself and just because I want to, and not because I have to.
There is also an exhibition going on in the Hillhead Street Project Space. It looks quite interesting and I think I might stop by during the weekend to see what they are up to. In the beginning I was thinking about putting stuff in it myself, but the timing was a bit wrong - and I didn't feel I had any work which could be finished on such a short notice. I have to get better at that - to finish things on short notice.
Enjoy your weekend.

Rabbit Skin Glue

This week has been pretty productive. On Tuesday I had a tutorial with Craig Mulholland. It was very interesting and has given me another slant from which to look at my work. He works a lot with digital art himself and there is a little element of my own work which is digital so he really helped me think about developing that side of it. On Wednesday I was meant to have a tutorial with Sam Ainsley but she was off ill. That gave me the chance to start making preparations for my final project crit coming up this wednesday. Thursday I cracked out the ol' rabbit skin glue (not used it in ages, it stinks!) and started sealing some MDF boards I had. I had to do it in my close though because there was no space to do it in my house. I got some funny looks of a couple of my neighbours hehe.

Then I very very carefully had to replenish the iron oxide in my chalkline (that's what I'm going to use to make my next series of drawings). Me, being so clumsy and iron oxide being super permanent and in powder form is not a good combination! Got some on my floor...so now it is VERY red. Ah well. However, I'm coming down with the cold again! This is the most number of colds I've ever had in the space of a year! So tonight I think I'm going to chill out a wee bit. Might have a bath and a bottle of beer while watching the telly...sounds like heaven!

PAP presentations

Yesterday we started doing the presentations for the Public Art Project. It was ok, but people were not very well prepared for it and we were a small group. Tomorrow I fear we will be a bigger group, there will be less time and I am the last person to present. Horrible! We are all going to tired and devastated by the time it is my turn.
At least I have something nice to look forward to at the end of the whole thing - I am going to Tchai Ovna for tea with a friend. Tchai Ovna is a little tea place by the river. They have tons of different teas, and were the first place which really opened my eyes to this custom - I didn`t like tea before. Its very small, very relaxed, and not too pricey. I have just gone over my finances again - I do it every month to keep track of my spendings and I really have to spend less money for the next couple of months - for fear of running out of them before I am supposed to. They will run out eventually, its only a matter of timing it to a month when it means I won't starve even if I have no money.

What a hectic wee while this has been for me. Things in my personal life have been a wee bit turbulent so coursework has suffered a little. The main biggy recently was my Interim Review tutorial on Tuesday 24th Feb. I was feeling quite nervous about it with regards to my practicle abilities (I felt as if they hadn't developed much) but was confident about my research (both primary and secondary) and my conceptual development. Thankfully it went really really well! I was so pleased. The tutors said they'd saw a big improvement in my work and have seen me become more ambitious. Thank goodness. I think a lot of that was to do with not having the distraction of a relationship anymore but I was aware of making much more of a concious effort to produce work and note thoughts/reflection more often. It obviously paid off. So that's made me pretty happy.

Also I've been going to a lot more openings lately if I've had the time. I find that's really benefiting my work. Tonight I went to the 2nd Year photography exhibition in the Newberry Gallery. I was quite impressed. Some interesting work. Also, the opening itself went really well - there was a good range of nibbles, beers and wine so I think it kept people there looking at the work a little longer.

Today in the studios, John, Gillian and I held mini informal crits of each others work and it proved invaluable to me! I've now generated a 'to do' list of work which should help me develop my work further. I think they both benefited from it too. Next week are the final project crits. I hope to try to make more work before then but lack of funds is making it difficult since my materials are running low. Roll on Friday.