Why do people do what they do ? What is it that makes an artist pick up a pen and begin to draft an idea ? What is it that makes any man or woman do what they do, do what they do when they do, do what they do as they do it ? I am looking at motive. If living is an art, and i think it is, then we are all artists. 
I have had a couple of weeks at university i would rather not had happened. I was struggling to assimilate conversations i'd had earlier this month with my GP and the surgeon who would perform the operation they advise. I was feeling drained, my body was giving me issues, run down and exhausted i asked my tutor if i could be excused from a taught session that week because i did not feel strong enough to hold my fledgling ideas intact if i gave them to a group of other students i hardly know. I also felt too debilitated to engage with their ideas without damaging my wellbeing. I have been told since i should have emailed admin to say i was unwell and therefore unable to attend but i didn't i spoke face to face because it felt more honest and respectful and adult to explain why i felt unable to attend. I thought as a fellow artist he would understand. I was wrong. He did not understand. It has been implied that he thought i was being high and mighty and picking and choosing what i wanted to do. Anyone who knows me well will know that i have chronic & destructive low self-esteem and an inner critic that loves to take me down. I think because i smile it makes people think i am more confident than i am. Should i smile less ? 
As a result of trying to explain myself I received what felt like an aggressive email from the person above my tutor to whom i am given understand he had complained. The email seemed to accuse me of poor attendance and not engaging with other students. It felt like slap in the face, a denial of my need to self-care at that moment. I was hurt and bewildered. I asked others if they had received emails when they missed class. It seems i am the only one. It felt wrong and has made feel wary of certain people and my trust in the university is no longer as it was. I do not know how I will move forward. I hope i will re-find my flow. I feel less open and less free.
Trust is a gift given. If trust is given, be careful with that trust. Trust is like a rope. If trust is broken the cuntline within the rope is irretrievably divided and the feeling will never be the same. Trust comes into all our relationships. If we cease to trust our sense of safety is compromised. It is hard to regain trust. It is hard to trust again someone or a body that has broken trust. It is political.
How can errors be made good ? It has to be ok to fail. But what lies behind a fail is important. The intention behind an action or word makes all the difference. In shiatsu, as i have come to understand, it is the triple heater meridian that paired with the heart protector regulates and holds us to appropriate social boundaries.  I have been studying and practising shiatsu for over twenty years now. Intention is key element to my practise. How do i come into another's sphere what is my intention when i address another. My intention when i spoke to my tutor was to let him know that my absence was born out of my needs and was not a rejection of his teaching or the other students. I am sad i was misunderstood. I think it may be better not to speak if i can stop my mouth.
As an artist ... ugh, what is an artist ? As an artist, i want to give presence to ideas that i can't express in words, to make thought tangible, that i guess is my intention. Other artists will have other driving forces. Maybe one of the good things that has come out of a bad week is that it has forced me hard up against why i am doing my MA because when i considered leaving i had to think about what i would be leaving. What i would be leaving is the chance to explore further with people who i like and respect ways and means of doing the above, making thought tangible, giving ideas presence. And there now i feel like i've blogged the best of me and want the world to go away, not look, not see. 
I came to my MA with a desire to learn about printmaking, specifically etching, drypoint, mono print, collagraph and screen printmaking. Last term i occupied space in the print studios and this term i have too. I have been working with photographs exploring what makes an image worth a second glance or a longer look, how images connect, how to tell a story using my own story, and also how to print, how to print CMYK, seeing how coloured layers change a picture, how to print the same image unaltered, what is the difference. What is it that draws the viewer in. I love sampling it is a serious part of my creative practice. I sample and compare and by sampling and comparing i learn how i need to make what i need to make.
Currently i am making plates of an image of myself as a nineteen year old. It is a strange thing to look at oneself, to look at oneself over and over again. It feels peculiar and narcissistic at first and then the self becomes an object, a thing that could be a teapot or a flower or somebody else. A few weeks ago i screen printed a picture of my five year old self. I think it would have been around about the time my grandpa died and i need to look into that because this week while all the horrible-ness has been going on, as well as finding myself in the thick of Jon-grief, i also discovered i have a child's grief. 
My grandpa was the only adult i remember as playful from my childhood. He would swing us under his legs. When he got ill i remember being told off for showing him a book i'd been given and was proud of. It was a big book, he was in hospital and i lumped it onto his chest as a child would and was told off and he said no it was alright. He was dying but i didn't know it. Even dying he was kind. I remember the phone call we received when he died, "grandpa is dead" i was told. I was in my bedroom with red curtains reading "The Cow Who Fell into the Canal". And i remember going to see him at the morgue and thinking if i cried on him he might come back to life but of course i wasn't allowed close enough to cry on him and it wouldn't have worked even if i had would it. And now i remember his absence. Absence i think is a huge part of grief.
Photographs trigger memories. My nineteen year old self has flicked switches on the lack of self worth i had then. I have put in a proposal for one of the Curation MA students exhibitions, the brief is Self Love and my working with this image, whether she accepts my proposal or not, is an act of love back passed to the girl-woman i was then. I have over time learned to love myself a little more, i cannot change my past and my innate lack of self confidence is a demon i think i will always struggle with but i can give my self of then kindness and understanding i couldn't give myself then. 
For me understanding is the bedrock of my practice. Understanding on lots of levels. My SNU project is a lot about sampling, i am exploring the emotionality behind the images but also those images are giving me the opportunity to learn about the materials i am using and this for me is how i build my practice. If i know my materials i am better able to use them. I often say that thought is my medium it is true even if it sounds a bit pose-y, but university gives me the chance to explore the physical process under the guidance of experts. NUA has some fantastic technicians.
So what else have i been up to this week. Well last term i and others met with some Business school students from the UEA and we were given a brief and asked to give a presentation based on that brief which we delivered last Friday. That has taken up the best part of three days this week. Although we are in the same city our campuses are about an hour apart and collaboration has not been easy as we are all studying at MA/MSc level and have ongoing commitments to our courses. Still my group managed three further meet ups, a brainstorming session, a brainstorming for the presentation session, and then a presentation run-through, before presenting last friday. 
I learned from this presentation, i was a relatively silent party but I nudged to get things going when there was silence from the other side. My four partners were hard working and committed and we all made all the meetings and we all had a voice in brainstorming sessions. They made the questionnaire and slides but i gave ideas and i think created emotional connection to the subject matter. I was impressed by how cool they were and unafraid. I suppose if you have travelled from far away to study for a year in a strange country you have to be a bit plucky and able to handle yourself. I learned from their courage and self confidence as well as their skills and it was good to be in company with their self assurance. It was hard to speak in front of people especially as i was having a difficult week but i did speak albeit for just a few minutes. 
Also I finished making and made some new silicon moulds of things. I am learning and brushing up on mould making in case i should need to know how to do this for my masters project and also with a view to making things for my ASU 2 and SNU tho time is always a factor. Everything takes longer than i think it will which adds to the stress as the weeks and days tick down towards deadlines and finally leaving. 
And i had a meeting with Maria Paveledis who is a printmaker who works in Norwich. I have seen her work in exhibition and like it a lot. She asked on facebook if anyone was free to help her with running a print workshop for the XR pilgrimage of the animals this Easter and i said i would love to and so i am, it feels like a privilege.
Maybe on that note i have to give myself credit for holding it together through a rough week enough to make four extra-curricular meetings (3 x St Martin's Project & Maria), to have made six new copper plates almost finished and prepared one more to also finish next monday, I have made some new moulds and a two part mould and have begun exploring how epoxy resin behaves in a mould. And I have made new marks on my drypoint and hard ground test plates which has also led me thinking more about Judas' kiss. And yesterday i went to Holt Church to see the representations they have there of the Stations of the Cross. And by chance met and spoke to a retired Cannon about the Stations which was very interesting and he gave me the name of an artist to look up. Life goes on. Life always go on. 
My SNU began with grief as its seed and a need to look back and look forward. All the time this balance is something that i feel. Perhaps this is my cross. Maybe this is how i carry forward my ASU 2 work. And there again i say more than i want to about my creative process. Reveal too much. let myself fall and be vulnerable. But how can i make work if the work i am making asks that i be that and i refuse. It can't be done. If i must feel the scourge of whips, of nails in my hands and feet then so it has to be. But i must remember that imperfection is ok, for me and for others. And if i fall its ok too.  

Homework this week for my SNU module is to look up trade journals and go to resources. I think that these links will probably go into my bibliography page but as it's a specific demand and will make them easier to re-find in future i'm giving them a blog page of their own that i can return to. I will add to it over the course of the term and maybe start a new one next term that may well include some from this page again. Education demands a physical structure that everyday life does not. Its because teachers and assessors need to be able to see their students working mind, normally these processes would be more covert and almost certainly not laid out on the table as i am doing now, but its a tracking business, and at this moment i need to lay a trail. 

Another Gaze .. https://www.anothergaze.com/?fbclid=IwAR3EieCliQ0rro5uWAE2q9lE3m-on0Cp3TowoqcuIzXyANrvdHJ6bhp7jN8

Artist's Newsletter ..

Crown Point Press .. 

Curator Space .. 

Printmakers Council .. https://printmakerscouncil.com

Visual Verse .. 

And breathe. It has felt like a long week. I already had that "could it be Friday please" feeling on Tuesday morning and got little done that day although i did have a meeting with one of the MA student-curators and discovered inking and wiping my plate blind, i think i blogged about this just after but its worth a second mention as i've been doing this more and it makes a lot of sense to meet the plate like that. Sight is just one of the senses by which we know the world but is perhaps the one people rely on most heavily and would be most conscious of losing. One of the students in my SNU group is basing her MA work on this and listening to her talk about her project development is fascinating. It is coincidence that Jess suggested inking and wiping blind but its nice to meet someone else's enquiry with my own body knowing. 

Today is Saturday, i plan to go over my this weeks work in this blog, and to fill in my bibliography page so i can take DVDs and books back to the libraries they come from, and to try to scrape my home into a shape that allows me to move forward next week. Tomorrow i have a meeting with the women from the UEA business school with whom i am giving a presentation next week on how people feel about  homeless people and homelessness. This collaboration was set up last term and i think we all went in cold and not really understanding what we were letting ourselves in for, but maybe that is normal and how one learns is by doing, and having done it, next time i find myself in a position similar, i'll have more to give because i have this as some experience. 

Back to creative work, noting down doings tho' they may be no more than crumbs on the table. Monday began with a doctor's appointment following up the one i had last Monday at the hospital. I think these have probably thrown me a little. I'm putting off an operation and conversations about the need for it slightly knock me. In the afternoon i finished the plate that is called the Spain Years but some of it is not wiping properly which means i really need to give it some focus to work out why and i've not had the head for it this week. Is it the plate or how i am wiping it that is the error. Jess gave me some easy wipe to add to the ink and it has a nice feel as it comes out of the tube so i think that has helped and the blind inking/wiping too will hopefully allow me to build into my body a sense of how a plate feels when it is ready to print, there are so many variables, paper, temperature, press, my own energy levels, the more i learn the more i realise that printmaking is not easy street art even if it made from a plate that is made from a photograph, hell even there there are variables i had not considered. There is no way i am going to learn all the variables in the six months i have left of my course, its a life's work. I wish i'd begun this earlier in my life. 

On Wednesday i was in the 3d studio to fill the moulds i'd made a week or so ago with epoxy resin. I am learning about surfaces because i had expected the resin to be see through but Jim and James explained that if the surface of the thing i have made a mould of is not smooth the silicon mould will pick up the objects skin and therefore the resin will not be glass smooth as i had expected. I was disappointed for a moment but now its something to work with and also something to test. I think my nerd self has been released this term  and i am getting very excited about sampling which is part of my textiles practice so its natural for it to become part of my fine art process too i guess. Is my fine art practice separate from my textiles practice ? I don't think so. 
I also made some new moulds on Wednesday morning to repeat the learning from before and because having done it once there were other things i wanted to try. One of the things i am making a mould of is a doll's shoe that is needing a two part mould and walls of clay not circular walls. Everyday i am learning new things and i think its easy to forget how exhausting it is to be constantly learning, trying to take in and assimilate what is going on, and simultaneously exploring like an octopus the ideas that are arising from the new learning and the ideas that are feeding the new learning. 

I think this is why i had to excuse myself from one of the taught sessions this week. Instead that day i scratched into the back and front of a small copper plate Jess gave me and an aluminium one too making crappy prints and not minding. And in the afternoon finishing my metal things from last term and unleashing my new moulds from their walls. And going home a little earlier which meant walking home in light instead of darkness, not much earlier but it is Spring and the days are lengthening. Eyes meeting light makes a difference. 

On Friday after Thursday's drypoint tryout and having also made ready a hard ground plate. I made a couple of awful prints using drypoint and hard ground to see the difference. I haven't had a chance to look at the results properly i know they are awful work but sometimes i have to make awful work to get to better work and tho it may take me months before i make something i'm pleased with at least i am now beginning to explore these two new ways of making marks. 

It is making marks that i have come to uni to explore and so tho' i know i will growl at the prints i've made because they are ugly on Monday morning i will also be pleased with myself for starting out and hopefully be able to see the marks i like within the mass of the print and remember how i made them and will try to remember how i made them and to repeat them as soon as possible before i forget.

This blog may be very boring but i needed to get it written so i can let go of the week past and give my next week a new page.  

NB.. i also want to note that this week on the night between Monday and Tuesday i dreamed that a snake came out from under the skin of my left forearm, reared up to look at me as it was emerging before disappearing. It was dark and disturbing dream. I think that maybe one of the reasons I am immersing myself in process is because the stations of the cross is a dark story and allowing myself to imagine how it felt to be the man who was Jesus Christ and how it felt to be those who cared about him, both lovers and haters, is not comfortable. Process is my shield. In much the same way my SNU module is allowing me to meet my feelings and memories, some of these lovely but some are less good and working with these is not so easy. I don't know why i have chosen to hold these two balls of dark matter in my hands this term but i have and so i am very conscious of giving myself room to back off if i need to in order to maintain my mental stability.  

So continuing my blog as i am sleepless. I think i am sleepless because i decided yesterday that i need to not go to a taught session today. A decision i haven't made lightly. As a mature student i'm aware that when i miss lessons taught by professionals i am throwing away something i cannot get back. But sometimes it is necessary to let go. I feel at the moment simultaneously full up and empty. If i was describing this in chinese medicine i'd say i am slightly qi deficient. Both yin and yang stretched to a limit. I feel this as exhaustion. That's ok i know that if i give myself a moment to pause, to rest, to assimilate and be quiet within, if i take things in only a little at a time and let go when i need to, and allow myself to hold still when i need to too i will come back to balance. One of the beauties of getting older is understanding my body is not a machine to be forced but a delicate thing to be treated with respect and gentleness, listened to and cared for. It is this that has driven my decision to not take up the opportunity to be part of the group crit session this morning coming. I know that if i give my ideas to the group i am not strong enough to hold them in the face of criticism and by the same token i am also not strong enough to absorb and digest the ideas of others. 
Its ok not to be strong. Its ok to need to be weak. In the stations of the cross Jesus falls three times, maybe this is a fall, each time he falls he gets back up. I am not really likening myself to christ although maybe the archetype that is christ is something we all have access to should we wish to encounter this aspect of ourselves. 
It seems odd that i'm writing about not going to a class, what is there to reflect about that except perhaps that it is exceptional because my attendance is good. I enjoy being taught and my teachers are good. But sometimes intuition is a better guide than a timetable and when it comes to mind and body matters if the gut says no its best to follow the gut. I guess decades of practicing shiatsu has taught me to listen to signals and pay heed, it doesn't mean i always get it right but it means that i honour my elemental creature body. Man is a funny creature, civilisation has brought benefits but has also cordoned us to walls and forced our growth to obey unspoken rules that may or may not suit the individual. 
Its timely perhaps that i come up against these rules at a moment when i was needing to meet my ASU project with open arms and the chaos element that Marie spoke of yesterday afternoon in the SNU lecture. In chaos i encounter Jesus sweeping the tables of the money men in the temple, in chaos i encounter a young Mary pregnant, who knows how, with the child that would become Jesus, I encounter Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, I encounter Mary holding the body of her beautiful strange and beastly son, broken on the cross, both Michelangelo's Pieta and Bill Viola's Pieta inspired by Michelangelo's Pieta spring to mind. In chaos i am a fly on the wall at the last supper, Da Vinci's last supper, and other last suppers including real and imaginary last suppers, or not suppers maybe last kisses, last points of eye contact, did Jesus catch anyone's eye as he walked the via dolorosa or hung upon the cross his life ebbing from him or was he contained within himself and his only moment of not being contained his cry to his father that is written as anecdote in the gospels (i must check if this is in all the gospels).
I wonder if now i have written out my thinking i might be able to sleep. I'd like to sleep. Have i justified my decision to let go of the morning's ASU session. My intention is to go into the print studio in the morning and play a little on some copper test tiles making marks in hard ground and the same marks as dry point. Play making as a way to try to find my "chaorder" a new word tho not a new notion to me. In the afternoon i'll be working on metal things that need finishing or discarding. And at some point i need to re-submit my learning agreements which like my Bishops Prize registration of interest is not readable as the attachment i've sent, its readable on my computer. but not the ones at NUA. Resubmitting forms is frustrating. I guess receiving attachments that can't be read is also frustrating. I wish my computer and NUA's computers were more compatible.   

Bam bam bam. The journey continues. The days/weeks are flying by. Am i managing to keep up ? The problem with studying this MA full time is that tho' there is the advantage of having studio space and the project modules can lean into each other i feel like i am travelling on two tracks rather than a single one. I've never been ski-ing but i have a cartoon image of Goofy on skis with his legs getting further and further apart and that will be me if i'm not careful. 
There is distance too between the part timers and full timers because the courses are in many ways quite different. It feels like we are three groups travelling along different roads to the same destination. Second year part timers now have months to work on their masters projects and seem to be quite laid back while full timers know the masters project is coming but cannot really give it space until May. And first year part timers are just getting started. Some of the first year part timers complain about not having studio space but having studio space was one of the considerations that swayed my decision to go full time. I guess that our studio spaces allow us to pit stop in our one breathless year of learning. Maybe part timers need that less as the pace of their MA is different. I wonder how it is for teachers juggling the different needs of students. 
I have stalled a little on my stations of the cross work for my ASU project focusing more on technical exploration related to SNU rather than creative movement. I think i am right in doing this as technique is the bedrock but its un-nerving and i'm having to keep a mental timetable in my head, and also allow for the university being closed for the holidays just before our hand in meaning work in that period will need to be made at home. This is probably quite good preparation for building a work practice that is sustainable after the MA is over. I rely heavily at the moment on Jess in the print studio and will need to be at a point where i feel confident enough to do the do without her intelligence to turn to by the end of the course. 
Last week i spent making the CMYK screen prints in half tone and diffusion dither. The results were surprisingly different. Knowing differences bodily is how i begin to understand. If i look in a book i may pick up some of the feel but prints made by myself change my knowing. Ideas come up as result of mistakes or just thoughts that happens during the making process. I find screen printing quite meditative when i get into flow. Tho' a bump on my head on a hard corner of the lifting up bit of the table (find word) made me swear and lose flow somewhat. I am hoping i have picked up a tiny scar to mark the moment and to serve as a reminder to stay soft and maintain focus but whether i have or not only time will tell.
I think i mentioned in my last blog that I am using personal photographs in my SNU project and a part of me is chafing at the bit to draw more. To draw more, on copper, on paper, in ink, with ink, with  paper, wire, anything, in movement, in words, to learn more about physical mark making rather than copying. I will have to do this soon as the desire is beginning to tear a hole in me but learning is not a short path. Using the photographs is allowing me to learn fundamentals, details like registering, and remembering to pick up my paper out of the water it is soaking in with a piece of paper so that i don't get fingerprints on it or else to make the fingerprints a decision rather than accident. Printing looks messy but keeping the work space as clean and tidy as possible makes it easier. Often the creative process suggests flamboyant abandonment but taking a scientific approach yields different results to the looser parts of practicing. I think i need both elements to make work. In many ways they represent my back, my parents, which i mention because the SNU project is driven by my life story and clearly my parents are part of that. 
This week has started a bit scrappily. I finished etching three further plates with photographic images on and i have just begun to try printing these. The one of me and my sisters and our next door neighbour during a formal photographic session came out very badly yesterday evening. I was printing at the end of the day, using up ink i didn't want to waste and wanting to know how they printed but not really having the energy to give the process time. Its stuff like that that is part of my learning process, knowing when to stop, knowing how much ink to put on the table so i don't waste it, such basic learning but still learning. And as i am learning i guess it is not wasted learning, tho' it is annoying, when i find i have got it wrong, printed with "tired hands". I actually also yesterday had a breakthrough printing from the Jon plate with a different type of ink. The first print i did i had over wiped and so lost some definition and Jess suggested i try wiping the plate blind, so i did, inking, then tickling (not rubbing) the ink off the plate with scrim/tarletan and lastly gently brushing the last of the excess ink away with flat tissue paper all with my eyes shut, the difference was startling, much better. I'm going to do this again because even the doing it was dramatically different. It also nicely fits with the creative impulse behind the work which is memory. Memories need to be felt to be met, they need the tenderness and vulnerability of eyes shut and an open heart and mind to be coaxed from the unconscious, feelings and connection can be lost in glaring light or if handled too heavily or over thought. 
I have to stop now in this blog as college and the 3d studio calls but there is more i need to make note of so i mark this page as ... to be continued