Assessment time

We have been back a week and have been setting up our work for studio assessment. I have been juggling time between doing dissertation, gathering and pulling together work from this last semester and also sorting out storm damage to my home. What ever I might have left out of the assessment will have to stay out now. It has been a crazy week. The studio is looking strangely tidy!

 I have three pieces in the outside spaces. All three have altered. The shrine paintings are part of an installation, with video, furniture and added detail/objects.

It started like this :

and then became this!

Other two pieces to be posted later. I might well try and get a better photograph of the insulation. This   piece will develop further after the assessment. Health and Safety and resource person told me that the back board would cost me £40 if I could not return it to its original state. (made me rather cautious). It looks best in the dim light around 5.00pm. This picture is rather bright.

Travelling exhibition in the Uni bar.

At last my suitcase visited college! In the union bar of cause!

This item above was acquired in Rouen.

This addition was acquired at Brest

There was a skipe projection project happening at the same time. Two new items for the suitcase; one from our lovely sculpture technician. Spot the plaster safety goggles!

End of term

There have been a lot of things to finish off before Christmas. Prints, paintings and some experiments to do with film. We have studio assessments in the first week back!

I am now having to work out how I will install my two shrine paintings.

We have someone in our year who is a taxidermist and she did a workshop in Uni.

The two mixed media paintings are a mixture of gesso, egg tempera and encaustic paint. They are one meter square.

The above is ongoing in the studio, where I am having a clear up!

Studio update

I have cleared some work out of my space and into the corridor so that I can see what I am doing! I am now working on two square paintings (mixed media).  In the background you can see that I have framed two of the small pieces of the painting that I cut up earlier on in the term. With assessments in the first week back I am focusing on trying to finish off work.

I have already changed some details.

At last some Prints

Here are some of this terms prints.

Just been experimenting with colour photograms today! Always something new to get excited about. I have been doing one of my new suitcase exhibit...... A painted French leaf in a jar!

Travelling to France with my Travelling Exhibition

UCA is forging links with Art colleges in France. I have been lucky to visit Le Harvre, Brest and Rouen in view of participating in future collaborative projects.
I approached this with a spirit of adventure, and opportunism.  My suitcase was only opened three times.
The first time was in Brest. In the Musée des Beaux-Artes de Brest. I did a little experiment! We then visited the L'ecole des Beaux Arts. I have a new addition from Brest from the Beaux Arts machine shop. Taken from a black bin with the permission of the french sculptor tutor. Our schedule there permitted no time for me to make an installation.

(below) In Rouen a bit of play with my room mate in the hotel.

Then in a small installation in the courtyard of the Beaux Artes, Altre Saint-Maclou. An amazing venue. The art college is housed in a medieval medical hospital with a courtyard that was a communal grave for the victims of the plague. It is the most magical and inspiring place to have an art college. Not at all a macabre place but a place of real creativity. My personal favourite Art college!

I would have liked to have done an installation with the French students (following the Crate formulae) but without permission, and with no forward planning or support it was not possible.  It would have involved putting screws into a support. They had a good space for it though!
I am learning from all this. It is a question of how anarchistic I am prepared to be  (Not sure that it is about that!) or how much forward planning I can do without visiting the venue in advance.  I have a couple of brilliant additions to my exhibition from a Brest french Student called Antonin.

Studio Update!

Draft dissertation is handed in so now I am looking forward to doing some intensive studio work! The space is beginning to fill up. Still popping into the screen printing room from time to time. Prints to be posted later.

Below is the up date on the collaborative work with Alexi