ASU2. Then it made sense to see if i could make a mould without help at home. And i could. One of the reasons i wanted to do this was because an artist on instagram had posted a lead cast and said it heats at a low temperature and can be cast in plaster or wet sand. I have not tried this but i hope to cast this bowl in lead if i can after testing the process with smaller objects and maybe wet sand first. There are images of the mould making process on my instagram. 

ASU2. SNU. Perhaps i just have to carry on along this track and post pictures and words that i i hope make some sense to a reader and which act as a file of what i have done that may be a staging post, before writing the term up in a way that leaves out the thought process and emotion tho they are so much a part of my creative process feelings and thoughts are harder to mark than a bullet point document. I'm writing now in a muddle aware of learning outcomes but struggling to know what fits where and with whom. So to keep it simple. Here are the plaster moulds the three part mould piled up with the two two part moulds on top and the three part mould with one side removed so the inside can be seen. Of course a photo is not so much fun to see as a hands on experience of touching and handling but such is the life we are living. The black rubber straps by the side of the tower of moulds are bicycle inner tubes used to tie the moulds tight so the casting material doesn't leak out. They were kindly donated to me by Jess the print technician when i mentioned i needed ties and didn't know where to get some. 

   

SNU. ASU2. It is hard to know if this is both SNU and ASU2 or just ASU2. I could scratch a line through the mould making and say that although it was learning and related to the SNU driving theme, the printmaking skills could form one body of work, and the mould making and casting another. I felt that i needed to work with both as i built up to the master project which i expected to be doing in May, June and July. The story themes had begun to intertwine at this point and the work i was making became less clearly one module or the other. This i think is the nature of life there are overlaps, meeting points, and comings together, for sure division and stretch are also a part of life but connections seem to naturally happen without ask or effort if nature is let be. 
I thought to make a mould of two parts of a glass, hoping to remake the stem which i have lost sometime along the way. There is something about making things good again that i like and i looked at repairs and mending when studying my BA in Textiles. And if we fall, we get up and start over again. This has something of a resurrection feel about it. And resurrection is part and parcel of coming back from grief i think, a hallelujah i'm alive feeling that is the spark of life reigniting, the desire re-emerging.  
I took these two parts of the glass, the bowl and the base, and made two two-part moulds of them. This involves making a square frame with boards and clamps and packing clay around one half of the object, mixing plaster, pouring it and then waiting till it goes off (sets) when the packed clay is removed and the half mould plaster covered with clay slip to stop it sticking to the other side of the plaster mould. Its also important to seal the base of the boards and any gaps with a squidge of clay because otherwise the plaster, being initially fluid, runs through anywhere that it can. This happened with my first mould. 
I was pleased with the outcomes of these moulds but when trying to set the slush wax casts on cups to be invested for bronze i realised that my plan to build a stem from a riser and then twine a thorn twig around was not going to work as the joins would be too flimsy and the thorns were not pliable enough to be used in the way i had hoped. 
So i took another glass in, a very beautiful glass, unbroken, thinking that if i started with unbroken the stem would be stronger. But sadly this glass broke in the mould-making, first the stem and then the bowl. I was sad about this, both the glasses were relics from my grandparents house, they'd sat in a cabinet in their dining room and came to me after they died. Because of this i took the pieces home and made boxes for them referencing the chests that held relics of saints and of christ in the middle ages. The boxes the glasses are in are simple boxes made from recycled card but i may explore box making further on in time. 
The second glass was made in three part mould which meant that the bowl held its precise shape inside and out. I have made two and three part mould before but i wanted to jog my memory again in prep for the masters project should my leaning to make something require these skills. Just before the deadline for investment i was able to prepare two slush wax whole glasses, two slush wax bowls, and one base and all these came out intact tho' i only had time to saw them free before taking them home before covid19 lockdown. I also made 5 spare slush wax bowls and two stems as i was sampling the thickness of wax that i wanted, the heat to pour the wax the how long to leave it in the wet plaster  mould before pouring it out. I would ideally have spent more time doing this, learning my material. 

SNU. And moulds from the first few silicone mould making sessions including a two part silicone mould for the red shoe. Beginning to get a feel for the mould making material. 

SNU. First objects to be used to make silicone moulds.

  

SNU. Back to the nitty gritty and practical. Because my photographs were provoking deep and difficult emotions and i was struggling to keep my mind steady i decided to take a side step to making moulds out of objects. Remembering how to make plaster moulds was part of the brief i had set myself anyway and i wanted to find a way to make a mould of a paint tube so that i could compare the end product with the 3d printed painted tube and i'd hoped to make a slush wax paint tube that could be a bronze in the end. I also wanted to find out what kind of object worked in a silicone mould and then how the materials that could be cast in the moulds acted within the moulds. Similarly with plaster moulds. Also i was aware that i needed to press on with work for my ASU2 module but that my path to the work i wanted to make for that required me to build up a body of knowledge in preparation. That body formed part of my SNU practice. 
So to start i took in pebbles, shells, a square stone (that i had/have several ideas for), a paint tube (not my granny's cool LINO ink one), a single doll's shoe (red, with cinderella written small on the the heel-sole as part of the design), and a red aeroplane from a stencil kit that i had as a child. The links to my childhood are obvious with the latter two objects but they also link to flight, and foot prints, and walking in somebody else's shoes ergo empathy, sympathy and compassion, and fairy tales, and journeys, and work i have made previously. 
Work i have made previously also got picked as a thread that connected my SNU to ASU2. My creative process is a kind of mapping of ideas, a piece of work that comes out of the map acts as way marker and may be returned to as whim or pull moves me. My creative story threads are rarely completed they just get to a place where a stop can be taken. 
It was part of my wanting to know what the 3d print could and couldn't do that led me to take in two models i'd made at different, much earlier points in my life, to see if they could be printed. One i had made at school, at about age 13, it is two figures kneeling one with an arm around the other. It was just before i gave up art at school. There are points in our lives when we make decisions that lead our lives one way or another and there is no way of knowing how things would have gone if a different decision had been made. I gave this model to my granny for christmas that year, i was proud of it, its a grown child's art i could be embarrassed about now but it said something i needed to say. My grandparents had it in their sitting room for years and it gave me a boost to see it when we visited  Later after both my grandparents had died and their house was cleared i went up into their loft space for one last time. There on a window sill in the otherwise empty room was my model. I picked it up and took it home. It would have been rubble when the new owners knocked the house down to make space for their new home. The other model was a madonna, a mother and child, made in my early twenties when i was a young single mum. It is part of a set of three models, Gabriel, Joseph, and Mary with baby Jesus. It got knocked off the piano and broke in half at some point but you know what you value by whether you keep and or fix it when it gets broken. Again the broken things links ASU2 and SNU but at this point the theme is just emerging so it may become clearer later in the write up. 
The two 3d models came out well from the printer but because i love to see the process i had asked if the scaffolding and base could be left rather than removed. This was because print size means more or less scaffolding and the shape of a thing dictates the need for scaffolding. I found this fascinating because the scaffolding changed the objects. Also because the models were made from figures the scaffolding seemed to relate to social fabric, support systems, the way the earth holds us, how much we ask of the earth. It is also part of a build up of the invisible framework of knowledge that is what my SNU project has been about building. With the printmaking what makes a good image using ready made images to help my eyes learn to discern, why 3d how do i build a thing that rests steady on a surface, height is a factor, also the reach from the centre as much as the reach from our own centre, physical, emotional or mental, changes our balance and may create a need to reach out for help or support. 
At this point i went back to the counsellor i knew from my BA because sometimes leaning in towards safety can save a lot of trouble. I knew i was struggling but also that with the right support i would be able to define what part of my struggle belonged to me and what did not, to see my errors but also to let others carry their errors. This is more related to my ASU2 theme but all work is part of the movement that forms the sequence. Perhaps i am thinking too much for a short MA module but for me the emotional back story is an important part of the making process.
Starting the SNU module i was working with two threads,  perhaps i could say they were coming in at 90 degrees, right angles; North travelling South to the centre, printmaking, image-making, work in 2d, and East travelling West again coming to centre, my life story with Jon as a part of it guiding the thread but not dictating its line. The ASU2 and the SNU mould making and 3d work could perhaps be South going North and The Stations of the Cross, or any story that isn't mine, West to East. I don't really know if i am making myself clear with this flat compass graphic but my point is that all the work is tied together, coming to me or out of me but not as a linear torch beam but more as a round or sphere. 
If this is a research write up maybe that is probably too baggy an idea to put forward. But how does a person whose work is driven both by feeling and making write a research report without putting the felt process in as well as the manufacture ? Later my tutor pointed me towards phenomenology and i looked up a little about this but got stopped in my tracks by the virus which broke my ability to focus on anything mentally demanding for weeks. It is something to come back to as my ability to concentrate returns. 
The next posts will be pictures of the silicon moulds and the objects and the 3d printed objects.      

SNU. Working with photographs was becoming a little intense. Feelings i had not anticipated had surfaced, and feelings i had thought i would be working with were turning out to be more raw and open than i'd expected. In truth i'd hoped the exercise would be a walk in the park, a sunny day in the garden, a trip along a country road, it began in that spirit but had taken me into dark places. 
I decided to side step into working with objects in the 3d workshops. I had four metal origami flowers that had been poured at the beginning of the term that were sample pieces, they were me trying recall how to make paper pieces for burn out, and how the different metals offered in the workshops worked  and handled, with a mind to needing this knowledge for my masters project in term three. The feathers i'd spent a morning putting on cups with sprue and risers had not been successful but these were good enough to use as learning props. 
I also wanted to find a way to make a copy of a tube of lino printing ink that had come out of my granny's art studio bag when she died. The graphics were cool so i didn't want to burn it out or ruin it with plaster or silicon so i asked Steve the technician if it could be printed on the 3d printer. I had asked the term before if  a couple of wire horses might be reproduced on this machine but they were too small and slight so i also had a yen to know what could and couldn't be 3d printed, again with a view to holding this knowledge for my masters project work should i need it. 
Steve took the paint tube, photographed it and put the photographs into the computer, confirmed that it was viable and so it was printed. Success. And following that success i took in a ceramic bull that had been part of my childhood, an ornament that belonged to the same period as the CMYK screen prints. All the time when working my mind is making these connections, seemingly unrelated things have lines drawn between them that outsiders can't see. The lines are live wires. They burn. The burn intensity depending on the level of attention given or the strength of the connection. The bull was photographed and processed by Steve as before. One of the interesting things about the 3d printer is that it doesn't just replicate, it is a modelling tool in itself and also things being replicated can be sized up and down. The plastic comes in various colours but the paint tube and bull by chance were printed in red. 

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]     

     

Ok ... keep going. Its been a week of grief and tears but like walking in the rain its no good stopping. The pain of losing someone you love doesn't seem to get easier. Sorrow this week has manifested as a great dark weight in the centre of my chest that hurts with an insistence that cannot be denied. One step in front of another. I can hear voices saying stop making a fuss, what a fuss, silly fuss, stupid woman, let go. But also kinder voices including Jon's. I think it was him nagging me to ask for the letters. He knew what they were of course, that it was important that they came back to me. That sounds a bit mad but the dead do seem to hang about. I used to sometimes appeal to my granny for counsel, my mother's mother, who was fierce and not to be crossed but fair. And i feel my great aunt Leska as a benign presence in the background. I have one of her rosaries, red plastic beads and a metal cross made of some cheap light metal. I also have a little painting of a nun that came to me after she died. They are not things of value to anyone but me. Its how it is with things that belong to people who take up heart space. The pecuniary worth is of less matter than the moment or person that an object represents. Objects carry secrets. A thing picked up by two on a walk may be of no consequence to anyone else but could well be a port-key to another time and place for either of those two. It is how the letters i received have been this week. I haven't looked at them all but some of them take me back to his living room seeing them on the mantelpiece below which stood the two chinese figures that had come from his parents' house when his mother died. Some i can remember being attached to his fridge with magnets along with other things. Of course it means i've been occupying his house in my mind. Remembering the feel of how it was when we were together there. The stairs, the porch, the living room and kitchen, the bedrooms and bathroom and the views from all the windows and his beautiful garden, the smell of fennel on my hands, bees on the flowers and dragon flies and tadpoles, gold finches on teasels, the plants we bought together.
Enough. Enough already. Nostalgia is an addictive drug. Its a trip. It is but it isn't. I can return to a place, feel what i felt there, but it is out of body material. One of the things that Jon's death made me very aware of is that that which physically touches me has a worth that is different to that which is distant, historical or geographical. I can go back to my grandparents houses or my childhood home or any number of other places in my mind and they are real places but it is not real in the way that my body returning is real. My grandparents house was knocked down and rebuilt when they died. And Jon's house is just a 1980's end terrace housing estate house now. The place it was when it was his house and my home from home is in me. I wonder if the walls remember me and him but houses have so many occupants, our ghosts may be there, but they are also here and elsewhere. It's strange how even the living have ghosts. 
And ghosts reside within our bodies too. Ghosts of our past selves and those whose lives have touched us for better or worse. The mediocre tend to not be remembered so well only the very good and very bad. This blog is surely not reflective journal writing but it will be handed in with all the others when hand in comes. Because my work is always born out of felt experience. It is where it stems from. 
This week past we were asked to make a Pecha Kucha presentation, 20 slides 20 seconds talk per slide. I can't say i was looking forward to it, but i could see the point. I was less prepared than i would have liked but time just skids past and so it felt like an achievement just turning up and having a crack at it. And tho' i was dreading it, good things about being asked to do it, were seeing other people's presentations and being inspired, going back over the term's work and realising how much i had done and putting it together as a story, and being given feedback. My class mates seemed to like it more than my tutor who wanted more information about my process. 20 seconds isn't really long enough to explain the difference between a two part mould and a three part mould or why i needed to make both or any of the other things i learned from making those moulds and filling them with wax and setting the cast objects on cups with sprue and risers and if i'd gone into detail about that i'd have had to miss out other stuff so i went with my heart and made the story the process that i spoke about. 
I am not sure if it was this week or last week that we had a lecture in which it was suggested we go back to our manifestos and remember why we started out MA. It's good sometimes to go back to why. I've been disaffected this term. I did have a hiccup a month or so back but the disaffection has hung about for too long. I need to remember how lucky i am to be studying what a gift it is that i'm giving myself. I am too uptight at the moment, irritable and not nice to be with. It could be my projects' subject matter both of which have been problematic. I am currently being nailed to the cross for my ASU 2 Stations of the Cross project which clearly is not great. And having spent the past couple of weeks focusing on my teenage self i seem to have picked up some of her post punk "fuck you" attitude. Not very helpful when trying to conform to learning outcomes. It could also be a desperate need to play make, to make for pure pleasure and it may be that i have to let go a little of trying and just let what needs to come come. It's been inspiring to be in the print workshops with the first year BA students working on etching plates. Being with so many people working on one project producing such different work reminds me that there are many ways to get to a place, be that place a finished etching plate, the top of a mountain or the end of a long rainy walk with a heavy pack or heavy heart. 

The problem with not getting it together to write my reflective journal/blog as a good habit is that weeks go by and i haven't made a record of what i've done (most important for uni), what i think about what i've done (also important for uni), and what motivated me to do what i did (possibly less important for uni but important for me). So then i have to consciously re-run the days/weeks not recorded and surely some stuff gets missed out. The missing out of some stuff may be a good thing and i think when things are going too fast, or are overwhelming in a way that means i can't verbalise my being and doing, i can only hold my process and hope that i will remember enough, remember what is most important. 
Important, important, important. I wonder if the same happens on other courses but one of the things i have thought over the past few weeks is that it is very difficult to know sometimes if, or if not, you have lost perspective and become a self important wanker. Excuse the language. What i mean is that in arts degrees it's very easy to become very obsessed with yourself and what you do. I've noticed myself doing this, me-me-me thing and other people too. Talk to pretty much any of the full time MA students and they all talk of exhaustion, stress, deadlines, anxiety. Third year students coming up to their final hand in and graduation are even more wired. I remember living that thread, the end of year show was critical tho' looking back it feels like much ado about not so much. But there, you work three, four or five years, depending on how you built up your portfolio before starting your degree, and the need to make the energy those three, four, five years took worth expending becomes a high pitched whine. A mosquito that won't give up. If you knew then what you know after, which is that life goes on, you'd be a bit less fraught but it's hard to hold on to that. It is holding onto that that stops you being a wanker. 
Those are this weeks observations and they stem from me being in a filthy mood for the past week. I think i was pretty cross at the end of last week but this week my patience is so stretched it snaps at the least inconvenience, being even halfway nice has been a struggle and some people have caught my sharp side. Some people have deserved it but not everyone.  
Anyway all that said i'll try to jot down the course of the past weeks in work. For some time i have been sitting (not literally) on my CMYK plates of myself as a teenager, my brief bit of adult life before i became a mother. This is a funny stage of life, there is a breaking free, but also a not knowing how to be other than how your parents raised you. I'd been looking at the plates i'd made of this girl woman and calling her "horrible girl" because she has a face on her, sulky and dark. I do remember the moment the photo was taken, i was very hungover and totally fed up with the two blokes i was living with never clearing up.  But the more i looked at her, the more sympathy i felt for her (remember she is me but she is also just an image i am working with). I thought about how i needed to find my way. I thought about where my "fuck you" attitude stemmed from. Oddly this week with my fed-up-ed-ness i felt enough love for this younger part of my self to re-integrate the person she was, her mosh-pit elbows, her daring dress sense, her wilfulness and longing for risk. I was making the CMYK prints with a view to putting them in one of the MA curator's shows but the work didn't fit with the vibe of the show and i didn't fit with the vibe of the show. This was mutually agreed with the curator but there is an awkwardness that is not yet resolved. It is uncomfortable being told you are not wanted and do not fit, even if you agree that you do not fit. The course brief, i think, for the curators is to hold an exhibition in an unusual space and so they have chosen various venues. My not fitting into my curator's venue has made me think about where i do fit. I think this is LO11. It has made me think about how i would mount a show if i was putting it on myself and not relying on a curator to find and make the space. Where draws me ? and what would i put in ? I'm giving this thought, and more thought.
But reeling back to the beginning of the week after my last blog. If you've read it you'll know i had hit a pretty low ebb. I went in to uni on the Monday with my head down, feeling very sad and like i didn't belong. Was too wobbly to work in the 3d studios so retreated to the print rooms to finish the various photo etched plates i'd begun the week before. On the Tuesday things got worse, i'd gone in to make a plaster mould and my anxiety levels were so high i was in floods of tears and panic-y when the plaster leaked out from the mould. One of the technicians suggested i let myself go home and i took his advice and it was the right thing to do. On the Wednesday i was cheered by a really interesting lecture by two of last years MA students, one of whom, said "go with your gut" which was what i needed to hear. And a helpful chat with my SNU tutor. On Thursday we had a guest artist Melissa Pierce Murphy for our ASU seminar who also spoke of following your gut, nice to have it re-iterated. I loved her work and how it met other practices, dance and science, The workshop she led after her presentation with magnets and drawing and shards of polished steel was food for my hungry soul. Friday i think passed without too much friction and a feeling of starting on work for my ASU module helped me feel less shaky too. It is hard to balance the two modules, one always seems to dominate the agenda. However they are drawing together as the weeks go by and hopefully i am building a body of work that will meet the criteria i need to fulfil to pass.
Criteria and learning outcomes are frustrating. I know why they exist. In my head i know that they are useful and help us to draw focus but they are hard to make sense of and sometimes education can feel joy sapping. It makes me think "Of Mice and Men". If i remember rightly there are two brothers who are walking to a farm to find work. One is simple but strong and the other clever. The simple one has a mouse in his pocket but he squeezes the life out of it, later he breaks a puppy and a girl i think. It's a long time since i read the book so i may not have got the story all right but this is the way education can feel sometimes. The student is the mouse in the pocket of the big man.
After making a two part mould and realising that what i wanted to do wasn't going to work i then had to make a three part mould the following week. I managed a little bit better with this one because having made moulds the week things like mixing up plaster felt more familiar. After the moulds were made and wax cast the wax casts had to be set up on cups with sprues and risers ready for investing last Friday and the pour which is happening this Friday coming. Uni has lots of deadlines, the deadline for investing, the deadline for the Pecha Kucha presentation which is next Wednesday. All the time there's a feeling of needing to get this done, that done and not enough hours to make it happen and home is crazy, not a room tidy enough to be called comfortable and all the time more art (i guess it is art) pouring in and books from more than one library calling to be read. Not enough time, not enough time. 
There has to be enough time. One of the ways not to be a self important wanker is to remember that it is only art, that it is not life or death. It is hard to remember this tho because the desire to make something good or better is the thing that keeps me going. But being a horrible person isn't going to make my work better it's just going to make me and the people around me either miserable or cross. Yes keep going, keep trying, push to the limit but know the limit. And maybe hold back a little from the limit so there is a little gas in reserve for closer to the deadlines. 
The work that i was working on for the exhibition i am not anymore going to be part of has come out beautifully. It's exciting to know now how to print with more than one colour using multiple plates. This term i have used photographs mostly and it feels a bit of a cheat but has also got me looking at photographs and image making and learning basic print skills. It has been helpful because i have several pictures to work from and each of them is different and tells a different story and learning how to story tell with images is part of what i have come back to education for so that is a mission being achieved i guess. 
Enough with the blog/reflective journal i fear i have said too little and not enough but it's words down and they will lead to the next set of words like a stairway cut into a mountain path. There is more to say but the need to put together my Pecha Kucha is making a noise in the background so if there is more to say i'll have to say it another time. 

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.  

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.