SNU. ASU2. This is where my SNU and ASU2 projects begin to physically bridge. This old work used as objects takes me into the story of Jesus' journey to the cross simply because one of the models is Mary and child. If  Jesus' story is used as an allegorical tale then there is not really so much space between my personal history, the Jesus story or anyone else's story. The cross is the life you carry on your back and it is a lighter or heavier burden dependent on those you meet, the way that you came to that cross, and how long you have felt its weight on your shoulders. 
The models are human forms too, and perhaps that is also pertinent. The need to see outside of oneself to understand that our needs do not stand alone, they do not stand alone, and covid19 is giving us chance to see that, to understand that we as people do not stand alone, and we as a species do not stand alone. I have always baulked at the notion that man holds dominion over this earth that supposedly Adam was given in the garden of Eden, i feel that man has abused that gift. Again covid19 is letting us know that man does not have dominion. 
In older paintings of the crucifixion there is often a skull placed at the base of the cross, this is Adams skull and represents the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. Jesus' death is meant to assuage the sins of the fathers and thereby allow passage back to the garden of Eden. Is there something we can learn from this whether we are christian or not (i am not). I'd add in here too the suffering of the two women left to grieve, his mother and his companion, their suffering should not be brushed aside. Their grief. Their pain. I wonder if the dead also suffer after death or if it is only the living, i guess i won't know till i die myself.
But here, the point where the SNU and ASU2 meet is with these models, the originals slightly bigger and the 3d models with scaffolding and base left intact. The hold between the two projects and perhaps any two living entities is understanding and compassion. 

ASU2. I hope i haven't lost the thread. These are a few scribbled drawings for the Judas' Kiss plates ... knocking out ideas roughly with pencil in a europa notebook. I like drawing ideas out on lined paper i think it feels a bit like writing and a bit like drawing and not like either which  frees my hand.

ASU2. SNU. Judas & Jesus. You'll note that i've introduced the label/tag "Social Contract" this is one of the connecting points between my two projects but not just my two projects. The social contract is what binds society together, it is laws, it is government but it is deeper than the law or government of any country or institution. It is basic tenets of grace and respect that are seated within the body, a union of body, mind and heart, that commands the government of an individual within society. A society that might be any institution made up of more than one living being, from a brief encounter to a global civilisation. There is a lot to go into here and i'm not sure where to begin. 
Here at this moment in time humanity as a species stands at a crossroad Covid19 is running the show. The relationship between us as a species and the virus is that the virus has the upper hand and its a bit of a shock. What is happening to us as result of becoming subject to this virus is that we are meeting ourselves with all our clothes off. It is not comfortable our rights and wrongs are being exposed, that which is good and that which is bad about who we are as individuals, and within small groups and culture too is being revealed by our impotence.  
The element of being stripped naked is part of the stations of the cross, Jesus at the foot of the cross station 10 "Jesus is stripped of his clothes", and so it could be said that we as a species are there with him at the moment, but i am skipping ahead of myself because the work i am giving you now is related to Jesus' last night. 
Jesus went with his disciples to the Gardens of Gethsemane. He and three of his disciples/followers went to the Mount of Olives to pray. The followers fell asleep. Judas came and planted a kiss on Jesus' cheek. The guards took him. Simon Peter cut the guard's ear off. Jesus chastised him. But also he chastised those he had taken with him to pray for sleeping. Maybe they were tired but he in that moment raged that had failed to keep him company on his last night of freedom, his last night alive. In the morning he was taken before Pontius Pilate and sentenced to death by crucifixion. 
I am in a muddle here with how i take this blog/journal forward because my work here was a criss crossing of  thought streams but it may be that this thing, the social contract, is the hub of it. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss thereby breaking the contract. But Jesus had publicly admonished him when he took issue with Mary washing Jesus' feet. To publicly humiliate another is to break the contract. The disciples had fallen asleep and so broken the terms that Jesus had thought they were under. But also maybe Jesus had asked of them something they were unable to do also breaking contract. And so on and so on. Because this is the thing and it is why the social contract runs deeper than state laws or government. It is about common decency but each person's life and their fore-fathers/mothers lives creates the essence of that contract and its about survival, physical, social and emotional survival. The social contract asks that we step into someone else's shoes and respond with understanding and compassion and that they do the same for us.
I say that it is the hub of my projects but its also the hub of the universe, the contract we make with our surroundings, not just human intercourse but our intercourse with the world we live in. In the UEA/NUA collaborative project we looked at those who were homeless and how those who were not homeless related to homeless people. When questioned few gave money and most of those who did were in "low skilled" jobs and had lower levels of education. The sentiment expressed was that the government ought to be helping. There was discomfort with seeing the homeless which made people turn away. We know when we witness suffering that we should help, but are stopped, often by fear, sometimes by revulsion, sometimes by denial, a refusal to see. To help us to not see we make that which we don't want to see other, not us. To ask what is home allows us to meet the absence of home in ourselves. To ask what is love allows us to meet the unloved. To feel homeless or unloved with the other helps us to understand and feel compassion and thereby meet the others needs as well as we meet our own.
At this time i was also applying for various exhibitions, the Raveningham Sculpture Trail, The Bishop's Prize, an MA student-curator's exhibition called Self Love (more on that later) as well as finishing a postcard for the charity auction at Mandell's Gallery. I'm not sure why i mention this now except maybe because it was yet more divergent paths i was treading. When writing a proposal for a piece of work for an exhibition I have to take myself some part of the way down the road of making it in order to know it is possible, to be made it needs to be conceived and given time and body space to grow. Art does not appear out of thin air, click it is made, there is a process behind it. The curator writing to accept or reject an artist's proposal is respecting that process and the work being offered. It makes it worth the time and effort it takes to make the work. The formal acceptance is part of the exhibition framework for me, it feels right, makes me feel valued and supported as an artist. 

ASU2. Prints from drypoint and hard ground scribble plates, worked into twice. Not finished. And note the faces are merely different types of face to distinguish between them. I'm looking at how a thing is seen from a different point of view. I haven't really seen in my head the faces of either character as i want to draw them. Next page is some scratchy drawings but not anything worked into. Do I see Jesus as more refined and Judas as rougher ? or the other way about ? it is all in the looking, the viewer, perspective, perception.

 

ASU2. Plates. The drypoint scribble plates and drypoint and hard ground Judas and Jesus scribble plates.  

ASU2. I feel with this blog now a bit how i did months ago when i was at this stage of the term, my head spinning and like i have too many balls up in the air. I was aware that i had done very little for my ASU2 project. Remember, The Stations of the Cross. I'd been thinking the story, walking it through in my mind, the last days, Jesus' in the desert, Jesus' ride into Jerusalem, Jesus at the temple, the last supper, Mary Magdalen washing his feet, the conflict within his inner circle, the shared meal, the feeling of foreboding, Jesus talking about betrayal, "one of you shall betray me tonight", "one of you shall deny me before the cock crows three times", the blessing "eat, drink, this is my body which i give unto you, this is my blood". Who knows if he actually said those things but this is the story that has been passed down through the ages. 
And then Jesus and his disciples leave to go to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray to contemplate or maybe just to hang out, a group of twelve men after supper taking a walk on a warm evening or night, was it warm ? or was there a chill or a breeze ? maybe there was tension in the air, did they feel Judas' absence ? did they care that he was absent ? Was he the fall guy, the mate that got pranked and teased ? Was he fed up with it ? Was he jealous ? Jealous of Jesus ? Jealous of the other disciples ? Jealous of Mary ? Was he a bad tempered lout ? or too stiff for the group ? or too sensitive ? what made him give Jesus to the men of the temple ? what drove him to do that ? his suicide after suggests he regretted it ? was it an impulse ? a fuck you ? a cry for help ? a please see me ? his name has gone down as the name of a betrayer but maybe he too was destined for the role he plays in the story, maybe his life led to his end as inevitably as Jesus' life is led him to his. 
Jesus went with three of his friend to the mount of olives. I guess they were the favoured few, the inner circle. I imagine him looking out across Jerusalem, the sounds of city at night, animals, insects, and the small lights of windows, fires, the smells in the air. I feel him to be tired and sad, worn out with being idolised, by crowds and even his friends, i feel like he is thinking that the show is over. I don't know if he knows he is going to be crucified. Maybe he thinks he will get a hard beating and that afterwards he'll take his girl home and let go of his boyhood. Or maybe the atmosphere is so weighted its hard to ignore the feeling of impending doom, the dark politics that require a sacrifice, a scapegoat, an example to be made, rebel and you'll suffer, see, see how this man you all thought was great can be taken down, can be shamed, can be broken, can be killed if we like. 
At last as dawn is breaking Judas comes with the temple guards. He greets Jesus with a kiss. The kiss is the sign. This is the one. How does that kiss feel ? is there a moment of love between the two ? a warmth from that contact that strikes like a knife ? the guards move forward to arrest Jesus, one of his friends, Simon Peter ? steps forward and strikes the guards ear with a sword or a knife, protecting his master, the leader of the gang. Jesus remonstrates. He knows now that some rough justice is to be handed to him. Does he know that fighting is pointless ? Does he seek to spare others ? Why doesn't he fight ? Why does he yield to punishment ? Does he feel he deserves punishment ? What is his back story ? What is he thinking. The guards take him away. Peter denies him three times before the cock crows, realising only on the third crow that it was he his friend spoke of. Or was the story made up after. Stories are fluid at their beginning, it is only later that certain parts become set, the bones of a myth. 
And I am thinking about this part of the story of Jesus and i'm thinking that i want to make fourteen, or maybe fifteen if i include the resurrection, prints each depicting a station. I am thinking that i want to learn how to do drypoint on a copper plate and also how to make hard ground plate. These are pretty much new to me processes, i have done a little drypoint a good decade ago on aluminium and plastic but nothing really since, hard ground i have never tried. 
I am feeling exhausted and my nerves are rattling particularly because of the collaborative project so i ask to be excused from a taught session because i know i need to drop down a gear, i cannot take in other people's seed ideas and i cannot let mine out without losing it. I should not have asked. I should have just taken. I thought i was being polite. I regret trying. I stop trying. I hate everyone because all i wanted was a moment to breathe and because i asked i have less moments. It is resolved now. covid19 makes before covid19 feel like years ago, another life, but i write it because it was part of the process. 
I took the time tho i was told not to. And let myself scratch into a small copper plate front and back and an aluminium scrap too. Not good work. Resting scribbles.
The following day I took two scrap copper plates of the same size and worked on the back of one in drypoint with Jesus' face showing as Judas comes to him and worked into hard ground on the other with Judas' face as he approaches Jesus. Then after the hard ground was etched and cleaned i printed from them, one print each, and wrote on them to show what i liked and what i didn't, what was a typical drypoint mark and so on. The following week i worked into the plates again rubbing out parts and making further marks. I did not have time to write on them. I had planned to keep working into them. But there is never enough time. I printed on two types of paper the second time to see how that changed the prints. The prints are not good work, they are working work, learning work. I like how they look with the writing.     

ASU2. In the same afternoon of the tutorial i let myself work with some mono printing ideas. I was trying to make a postcard for a charity auction and thought i had got something which when i tried it did not work. This happens. There is bad work and when it happens I thank heavens i am only an artist and not a brain surgeon or the president of the USA or even a hairdresser. If my work isn't good nobody's world will come to an end, the sky will not fall in. It is however frustrating and sometimes debilitating. It is ok if the bad run only lasts a little while, but if it goes on too long, a jigger of uncertainty sets in. Sometimes in this bit of time when nothing goes right it can feel like there is no point, the ugly work casts a dark pall over everything, later it may be that there are small ,nuggets of gold, or the beginning of something, but in that moment its hard to see. This happened that afternoon and it knocked my confidence for a few weeks. Later i discovered some little mono prints i had made thinking about the Pieta and i was quite pleased with them and ideas i tried out then came into play later, but that afternoon most of my work felt like dud work. I would like to do more mono printing to offset this knock. One afternoon of bad work is not a reason to not try again. Lets have a think about how that sits with the stations of the cross, Jesus falls for the first time. This stations of  the cross story could well be an allegory for life. There is a need to keep getting back up. And again there is a thread that connects my ASU2 with my SNU but again just thoughts building small bridges or asking for a short leap or a stretching of the imagination. 
In the same week the collaborative project group met to discuss ideas for a questionnaire to get information about people's attitudes towards homeless people. It was interesting working with the other students but not easy. I proffered the ask "what does home mean to you ?" i think if we are thinking about homelessness maybe that is a root question. 

ASU2. I was making these prints of Jon and Southwold and thinking about how to work with the seagull images but as I was due for a tutorial with my Fine Art tutor i figured i needed to give some time and attention to that module. Remember i've got two story threads going. ASU2 is about Jesus, the stations of the cross and his life leading up to that. 
My brain is on fire trying to carry and work with these two pretty intense emotional journeys. For ASU2 I am thinking about the last supper. Looking at Leonardo Da Vinci's last supper, thinking about last suppers, thinking about Judas, thinking about the garden of gethsemane, thinking about jesus at the temple, just before his crucifixion and jesus at the temple as a young boy, thinking about all the people who have relationships with jesus, his disciples, his mother mary and mary magdalen, also his father, thinking about the politics of his time, thinking of politics now, thinking about Corbyn & Tom Watson, about betrayal and denial, the cock crowing three times. Thinking about how the life of one may impact on another. This links to my SNU story thread but the link is a filament thread, a thought thread. I am also looking at Michelangelo's Pieta in Rome and Bill Viola's Pieta video. 
As well as this a collaborative project that was begun last term needs attention. This project is with four young business students from the UEA we need to put together a presentation for St Martin's Housing Trust in about four weeks. No work has been done since we were initially introduced by our universities, NUA & UEA last autumn. I had not realised i was signing up for a collaborative project when i went to the first meeting which was described as an opportunity to learn about branding and story telling. Story telling is one of the things i want to learn. That is an aside. In fact the theme of the project feeds into the ASU2 theme in some ways. We are looking at homelessness and how the homeless are witnessed by society. 
Work made for the first tutorial is just ideas, the christmas sketchbook which i don't think i showed, and also some working thoughts in my Playbook of Jesus in the garden of gethsemane and also the last supper, the empty table after the party has left to go to the garden. I think that Mary Magdalen is there unseen, left behind while the men go off. I think of all the people thinking their separate thoughts no one quite knowing what the others are thinking. I think about Judas and his thirty pieces of silver and Cornelia Parker's piece with that name. I think about him hanging himself. The betrayed and the betrayer both damned to hard deaths. Who is the victim in the story ? I am looking at all the points of view. My mind is a little fried. 
I am also thinking about the colour palette i want to use for my stations project and how the pencils, paints and inks i want to use act on the paper in the book i was thinking to work in. The colour palette i'm thinking of is not the brights in my Playbook but more sombre, darks with blues and reds and maybe golds i am thinking about medieval paintings and also the italian masters, of paints made from gem stones, burned and raw earth, lamp black and real gold.  

Bibliography
Goldscheider, L. (1950) Michaelangelo Sculptures Complete Edition. 2nd edition. London: Phaeton Press.
Parker, C (2000) Cornelia Parker Catalogue for exhibition. 2nd edition. Boston: ICA.
Walsh, J. (ed) (2003) Bill Viola:The Passions. Los Angeles, California: Getty Publications.

SNU. Having got into the studios my first push to work was taking photos i hoped to work with, and putting them into photoshop so i could play with them to greyscale them and accentuate the blacks and whites to make them better for making acetates for putting onto copper plates coated with a photochromic ink and also for putting onto screens for screen printing. 
I had a picture of Jon which i chose because it was the whole of him. Using photographs to make my etching plates allowed me to look with new eyes at my photographs, to view a picture as someone unconnected to the story and to see what drew my attention, held my gaze, was distracting, amusing, frustrating, divine, it gave me information about composition, what makes a picture work, what makes it worth a second look. This was/is valuable information, it is what i call hidden learning. 
I have mentioned in previous blogs how working with pictures of myself made me see my image as an object, this happened too with my Jon pictures. It made me sad and unsure, i wondered if i was being exploitative even though the intention behind working with his picture and my feelings about him was to give him place in my life, a belonging that felt important, was it alright to do that ? And it was strange having his photograph in the studios at university. It may sound weird but giving him presence there was both comforting and uncomfortable simultaneously, it is funny how opposing feelings exist as companions. The need to hold on and let go acting against each other. These contradictory feelings fed into my ASU2 project, the cross that Jesus bore being perhaps a metaphor for the swaying balance which is consciousness calling to us to constantly reweigh, reassess, rejig our values, notions, ideas and systemic patterns so as to keep them alive rather than dead weight, habitual. 
The picture of Jon that i used is one from our last holiday together. We have stopped in our walk and are taking a break, gazing over a view of fields, the sun is shining, a tractor in the distance is stacking bales of straw in a field of golden stubble. You can't see that in the picture. You can't see the rest of the walk either, can't hear the buzzards call, or the feel the fear when the farm dogs attacked us, or the relief of the trees in the woodland behind where we are taking pause. You can't know the conversations we had that holiday or any of the other details because you weren't there. All you see is a man, smiling, looking to the side, he has a roll up in one hand, the other hand holds his wrist, the time is a quarter to noon, he is stripped to his waist which means his tattoos on his upper arms are part visible. You don't know how it feels to be me to see those tattoos that were part of his skin, part of my waking with him for the time we were lovers. You don't know anything apart from what you see and what you project on to the image and so it is with all images. Is the power of an image its ability to draw the viewer, to give the viewer what they want to see, to allow a viewer to project their being on the picture ?
The other picture was chosen because of its weirdness, the statues, the chair, the wall, the house behind and the dogwood stems behind the wall. I chose it because it had meaning for me but also because its oddness conveyed the oddness of that day which being a return to soul place within a time in which i was so deep in grief i was more dead than alive. I may speak more about this in reference to an object made in a blog further along the line. For now perhaps i say that i chose to make this image one of my first plates and that i was planning to also make plates or perhaps screen prints from photographs of the statues but lockdown stopped that from happening. 
Also in this week i was looking at photographs i had taken of seagulls and planning to use them to make screens for screen prints. They were taken when my daughter and I visited the beach at Bray, nr Dublin, my daughter was feeding them chips and i was taking photographs. It was the weekend before my birthday in 2017. I returned to an email telling me that Jon had died. 

ASU2. SNU. I will begin at the beginning! I will begin at the beginning of the beginning of the two modules i need to submit. The two modules are called SNU and ASU2. My ASU2 module is built upon retelling the story of Jesus Christ's journey to the cross, known as the stations of the cross, in my head this also includes the story of his birth, and life, and the people who are part of his life story either because they have a relationship or because they are actors within the story i.e Veronica or Simon.. My SNU module began with a desire to give space in my life to Jon, who i loved, to give the time we spent together record because it was mostly unwitnessed, a between we-two experience, to give it place on the thread that is my life in the hope that acknowledging our time together would let me also acknowledge that his death was not the end of my life. I came to my MA hoping to learn how to tell stories using visual media, most specifically wanting to learn the basics of printmaking, to build rudimentary foundations that would act as a platform for learning after graduating, the year to date has been about picking up these skills from knowing little to nothing. 
In term one in RIPU i looked at objects and their meaning and how objects could hold a story. And in ASU1 i explored the story of Rama and Sita's love affair as described in the Ramayana. I used time in the print studios to begin to meet my materials, exploring papers, mark making on copper (sugar lift, soap ground, photo etching and soft ground), mono printing, inks, colour and layering. I also occupied some space in the 3d workshops working with objects being cast in metal using the burning out method (organic materials that get burned to nothing when the metal is poured into the cast. My aim in my second term was to keep learning about printmaking processes, and to learn how to make moulds of objects to extend my knowledge of casting materials. Also to cast objects in wax to use for metal casting using the same principal as the burning out method described above. I think this is called lost wax casting. I also wanted to find out more about working with the 3d printer in case it should be a tool i might need to use for my master's project. One of the things i had hoped to be able to do was to use this term to learn more about finishing objects cast in metal but unfortunately lockdown prevented that and all the wax objects i have made this term, apart from the origami bowls made at the beginning are unfinished, tho I was able to retrieve most of them from the workshop and saw them off their base cups using a hack saw in the week before the university closed. 
If i am to begin right at the beginning i have to go back to the christmas holidays because that is when the seeds of the stories i was planning to tell were planted. Having handed in, and recovered from the bewildering shock of the Conservatives winning the General Election, in the run up to christmas i began drawing, with a found rainbow pencil and and a brown pencil and an ordinary pencil, scribbles depicting the christmas story and christ on the cross, no more than doodles but allowing my hand to give my thoughts body. At the same time i was looking for a specific image of Jon that i knew i had on a memory stick and found several pictures of him i didn't realise i had, Jon in his garden, and mine, and others. It brought it home to me that i needed to give him physical space in my life. He is/was important to me, the love of life, and yet i had almost no pictures of him except on my computer so i scoured through what I had and picked one to make into a photo etching when term restarted. I also decided to make a companion print from a photo of a strange scene of two statues in a garden in Southwold that i took on my first visit to Southwold after he died. Southwold was one of our places so returning there was an important part of my grief process. 
When the university opened in the new year it wasn't possible to get into our studio spaces as our term1 work was still being marked so i spent time in the library looking for books and films that related to the themes i was exploring and also to printmaking. I discovered the film Hunger by Steve McQueen and watching his interview on the DVD extras about his process led me to leafing through the only book i could find on the library shelves devoted to his work, some of which was interesting, some less so. I also watched Shame which i found less good than Hunger. For me Hunger was a film i needed to watch again, Shame not so much. I also re-watched A Thousand Times Goodnight and Jesus of Montreal. And for the first time Stations of the Cross directed by Dietrich Bruggemann. I became interested in why people become to driven to die for a cause or their faith. I thought about the conflict of interests going on in the middle east especially the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. About land and territory and how Palestine was given to Israel by people who had no right to give it. I thought about how Israel has bitten chunks out of Palestine for decades now and wondered how i would respond to another party acting in that way towards me and what i considered to be mine. I found a book first published in the 1934 "In the Steps of the Master" by H.V Morton about the state of Palestine before WW2. I also looked at poets: R.S Thomas, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Sharon Olds and others. 

Bibliography
Anderson, D E. R S Thomas: Poet of the Cross. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/04/20/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross/8661/ (Accessed December 29th 2019)

A Thousand Times Good Night (2014) Directed by Erik Poppe [DVD]. Sweden: Arrow Films
Freidli, I (2012). Steve McQueen Works. Switzerland: Laurenz Foundation.
Hunger () Directed by Steve McQueen [DVD] 

Jesus of Montreal (1989) Directed by Denys Arcand [Film]. Canada: FremantleMedia. 
Lehoczky, E. Cartoonist Lynda Barry: Drawing "Has To Come Out Of Your Body" https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/782921983/cartoonist-lynda-barry-drawing-has-to-come-out-of-your-body?fbclid=IwAR3tS5-0Z4WwSIwK9zcTVEwXeKelQcFmcv8OtaUoJVQdLLvavf3jniyXD48&t=1577682071685 (Accessed December 29th 2019)
Morton, H.V. (1934) In the Steps of the Master. London: Rich & Cowan Ltd.
Stations of the Cross () Directed by Dietrich Bruggemann [DVD]     

     

Easter Monday ... what is destiny ? some weeks back, when most British people (including myself and the government) were still being stupidly blasé about the covid19 virus thinking it happened to other people in other countries, my mum and i were talking about the Jesus thing and his being crucified and it not being a great way to go when she said "well, it was his destiny". Hmmm. Is destiny changeable ? Sometimes in life when things go wrong there seems to have been a horrible inevitability that has brought about the wrong. Sometimes its obvious, a chain of events shows how one decision after another led to the calamity. The same could be said when things go right. Here the foundations for good things were laid. The corner stones set in place with care and so on.
Its easy to look back and say "ah well, if only" but "if only" is no good at all if you fall victim to the wrongs of others. In England/Uk I'm thinking about the Grenfell Fire, I'm thinking about the thousands of Covid19 dead. What if the government had moved sooner ? What if the media had got behind the other man, not Johnson but Corbyn ? What made them make the decisions they did ? Why are we where we are ? And the thread of thought goes way back into an unfathomable eternity of which we are a small part, we as individuals within our own tiny lives, we as a nation, what is a nation ? we as a species, we as beings. Our being is the most important part i think. Being is our common ground. Strip away everything else and leave just the notion that we exist and we find ourselves in unity with all things, the living and the dead, the animate and inanimate, i'll spell it out, we, who consider ourselves lords of this earth, are one with all bodies, animal, vegetable, mineral. And in that grand mass of bodies i suspect that the animal bodies are least likely to survive an apocalypse. 
What has that to do with destiny ? Is destiny inevitable or can we change our stars ? When my mother said that Jesus was destined to be crucified because it was prophesied i baulked at the notion that anyone could be born to that fate. Looking at the story of Jesus as i have done over the past few months, i have thought about the trajectory that led him to be who he was. 
In life we meet good fortune and bad. It might seem like being born rich is good fortune but i look at the man we are supposed to call our prime minister and i see a great chubby lummox who has developed a joker's mask to cover his failings. I see a man whose father uses his son's position to platform his opinions. Was it the prime minister's destiny to play puppet-king for men whose ambition was blocked by their lack of charisma ? At what point was he trapped into the being he is now ? When did he begin to become the monster he is now ? Surely no child is born bad.
Being a parent is a hard job. I think of Mary holding her tiny baby, married off to whoever would have her it seems, after, god knows, a rape, i guess, of some sort. I think of this young mother holding the body of her son after he is taken down from the cross. Was his life mapped out not because it was prophesied to be as it was but because his start was difficult ?
When i was beginning to look at the story of Christ i kept finding images of Shamina Begum in the newspapers i was using underneath my plates as i wiped them in the print workshops. I am not saying that her situation was all that like the Virgin Mary's but she and her now dead child were treated without kindness or care. They were just two whose lives are/were considered expendable by the Uk Government, a young girl and her tiny child. Will we look back and say it was clear from the way that our government treated those two that later they would see us as expendable too. Should we complain  or realise that our complicity then has led to the dreadful debacle we are living through now ?
I'm yarning on. Not saying anything that anyone else with half a mind isn't saying or thinking or has said or thought already. Maybe i need to draw back to my project work, how does today's politics connect to my work. I started my MA with the hope that it would give me a year to explore how to tell a story, specifically how to visually represent a story. But stories move. A picture or statue only moves as far as the viewer will take it. 
For my SNU module i've been learning skills using photographs and objects that tell a story to me but how do i let a viewer know that story without giving it to them explicitly. And if i have a photograph of someone other than me i can tell the story from my perspective and i can guess at theirs but i won't know it bodily because each of us own only our own being i think. Jon's ex-wife talked about how if there was something they didn't want in Jon's possessions they might let me have it as a memento. I give her credit for naming the part of my project that is dealing with objects i cherish that recall a moment. I think that her use of language was meant to belittle me and i spit it out on to this blog page feeling still hurt and pissed off. But what made her speak in that way ? What causes a person to be who they are ? Back to destiny. 
In all our life, all the time choices are being made and we don't know the outcomes our choices will lead us to. And i think i have spoken about this before in this blog and most likely a number of times because i am fascinated by maps and the choices we make are markers on the maps of our lives. We stand at a crossroads, or divide in a path, and decide to go one way or another, and one way (or more) is "The Road Not Taken" as described by Robert Frost. 
As part of my Memento collection i have a red doll's shoe that belonged to my doll Matilda that i had as a child. A single red shoe with Cinderella in small capital letters on the back of the heel. I made a mould and have cast this shoe in wax, plaster and bronze tho none of the cast shoes have come out very well. I also was able to have printed 3d replicas of my Caterpillar boots that have walked many miles with me and these too are part of my Memento collection. Lastly i have two small 1940's silver party shoes that maybe belonged to my mother or aunt and were part of my childhood too. My hope for my SNU project was to do something with these but i haven't as yet. I speak of this set of shoes/boots because as i look through the passage of destiny, the judgement calls others have made, and i think that shoes represent our journey and how not knowing another's path to where they are makes it difficult to know why they make the decisions they do. 
Where am i going with this ? I'm wandering i think, and do i keep going or start afresh ? Where am I going ? I think i am trying to find my feet in this strange space we are living in. To validate letting this blog fly. When putting out work for exhibition or even submitting a proposal there is an amount of beavering away, background work, preparation but in the end you have let go, allow that which you've made or propose to make out to survive or fail as it's worth justifies. Is there a measure of destiny in this ? 
A thing born out of the best of us must surely have more chance of survival than that which comes from our worst. Perhaps that is where i am at at the moment and though this blog is perhaps a bit fluffy it is my way of putting one foot in front of another at a point in my life when i do not know how to move forward because moving forward seems to be a blocked path. I come back to my learning outcomes which i don't love but which may be helpful. I think i am being asked how my work fits into unusual contexts and it might seem like this, this virus situation, is the unusual context, but what if this is our new usual how does my work fit into contexts that go beyond the now common online exhibitions, how do i reach an audience outside of that space ? what am i trying to get seen/witnessed ? and who do i want to see/witness it ?     

It would be a bit daft not to mention covid 19 aka the corona virus in this blog. I am in England and it has begun to take lives and there is fear in the air. We saw China lock down Wuhan and we thought this is a Chinese thing, then it shifted to Singapore and we thought it's an Asian thing. Then it hit Italy and still it felt like something that happened to other people. Oh the innocence. Oh the wilful ignorance. 
A week ago when i was writing my blog i was blithering about this and that, all relevant then, all relevant now, but also very yesterday. To coin a phrase "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away". Britain is discovering who it is in crisis. Each of us is discovering who we are when trouble hits the collective. My university is apparently still opening on Monday. Academics are now teaching online - I imagine this will feel weird - but technicians are required to come in as the workshops will be open. Is this right ? I guess that what we see as all but essential workers pull in is who is essential and who isn't. I went in to uni on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week as i had things i wanted to finish or at least saw off their sprues and pouring cups so that i could take them home. I also had a few print things i wanted to do. On Monday I questioned my decision but also had shopping etc to do, by Thursday it began to feel really socially irresponsible to be doing things that were not essential and so from Thursday evening i have seen and spoken face to face with no-one. 
Ordinarily this kind of solitude would be something of a treat. I am reclusive by nature. I need solitude as much as, maybe more than, i need company. But in the current atmosphere its a little scary. Rough voices on the street outside on Friday evening remind me that not everyone has pulled in. Friday was supposed to be the last day of trading for pubs, restaurants and bars. I gather that many were packed. Of course they were. 
Of course they were ? Why ? Because for some the response to the proximity of Death is to want to go out in flames, do or die, i live to live let Death take me if he can. Why is Death male ? Is Death male ? I am shyer of his embrace. In retreat i worry that i have a temperature, is that a tickling cough. Will I die ? Am i strong enough to beat the thing that threatens my, and others, existence. 
It is odd to be so close to a disease that may or may not be biblical but surely is a reminder that many years ago disease took more of us than most of us can remember, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis all common enough, my grandfather's parents died of TB leaving him an orphan at 17. Hard to imagine but TB has become a hidden killer in recent times, some strains resistant to antibiotics. Please fact check me on this. 
Death has stalked me all this year, in the form of grief for Jon, yes years gone now, but not forgotten and still loved for better for worse. And also poor Jesus sentenced to death by crucifixion, carrying the bloody cross to the site of his execution. This week i have been dying on my cross, it can surely only get better from there. Stations 13 and 14 are "Jesus is taken down from the cross" and "Jesus is laid in the tomb respectively". The resurrection is optional. I have cut out 14 pieces of copper and covered them in hard ground and i hope to scratch out marks on these over Easter. But whether i do the resurrection will depend i guess on whether the resurrection feels pertinent. 
The Easter story is a potent tale. It is one man, calling out for justice, willing to carry the sins of the world on his shoulders, to die for that world. Make no mistake this is a hero. No wonder the story has lasted. Its a shame he has too often been poorly represented by his priests and worshippers. 
One of the things about stories that last is that they resonate. They resonate with a part of us. My blogs about grief and Jon have had more hits because people relate to the story. Lovers torn apart, death, grief, all these things are invested in our body memory. If we have never loved, we may long for love, if we have loved we may feel another's pain, if we are a wretch we may scorn love and the ring is different but the call to our hearts path is still clear. 
Here i am blogging, let me say its my reflective journal. Because i went in to uni last week i have lots of bronze things to finish at home, they would have been finished amateurly even with Jim's help and guidance in the workshop at home their finish will be even less well executed but they are symbols of my trying. I doubt that it will be clear how much work i have put in in a digital portfolio. That's sad but not the end of the world. This term has been hard it has taken resolve and determination to carry on. There have been falls and i have had to get back up. But what i know is that in my body like invisible ink i carry the work i have done. This i think is all we can ever take out of life that which we have done is ours to bear. 
I think its awful that Jesus had to carry the sins of the world. I think if God was his father and made him do that then he was an awful father. I think that each of us must carry the weight of our being. Not in the manner that Thatcher's selfish-me-first cult decrees but as our belonging, as our knowing that that which we are is the trace that we leave behind when we die and to be mindful of the trace we leave for it makes a difference.