The lovely silence of the beginning of lockdown is done ... builders are back to work and their noise drowns out the birdsong

May 21st 2020
Covid19 Diaries

Blue tit fledgeling in the bird bath

May 14th 2020
Covid19 Diaries

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Blackbird fledgling fly-hopping from one slender bough to another slender bough in the apple tree while i am hanging out my washing.

May18th 2020
Covid19 Diaries

Its been MA hand-in week. And i have handed in. But after i handed in i realised i'd forgotten to put my Pecha Kucha notes and images in and i wonder what else i have forgotten and if what i have handed in will be good enough to pass or not and i feel horribly sad because i have busted my ass to learn this term and it feels like it may be for nothing. Post hand-in blues.

May 13th 2020
Covid19 Diaries

ASU2. SNU. And here it is the end of this term. The last hand-in blog post. I feel sad because i don't know if what i have done is enough and after i submitted i realised i'd missed things out, the Pecha Kucha presentation for instance and its frustrating and i hope that links to here and my website will be enough but i'm anxious because i didn't submit folders of images and word documents, but it is now in the hands of my assessors, and my horrible lack of certainty in my ability to express myself as i want to express myself is overwhelming. A part of me likes that my submission includes opening one folder and then another to find the work within but i don't know if my tutors will feel like that or if it will draw a black mark. Whatever the result now of my submission i can only hope that the little ship sails and reaches port. And if she doesn't, if what i have done is not good enough i will have to try again. I had forgotten how painful the constant testing of education is. It is what i wanted but now i find it very difficult. Maybe it is too honest of me to say that in blog post that will be read by examiners. But maybe it connects to the themes of my projects this term, the awful stripped down nature of both of them demanding i lay everything bare, not a demand from outside but from within, to expose, reveal, let be seen that which is normally unseen. Why did i go there ? why did i do that ? it may be that having done that, and by necessity not just in the safety of studio space but also now online, i regret being so open. And if i had written what i have written on a word document would i have written it the same or is the nature of writing a public document also part of the process. Does it bring me closer to christ's very public death ? what a daft thing to say, or think, but maybe it does, so much of what hurts, what makes us vulnerable is kept out of sight, hidden, disguised, a part of this terms work has been to step out of the shadows and this too is what is happening here, now in this moment with a sickness that is terrifying, under a government that doesn't care, the good and the bad is now shown up. And there needs to be conscious reflection perhaps, a preparedness to see what we don't want to see. But after we have seen, what then ? 
My sadness today is perhaps also exhaustion, day after day of writing and writing, a term of working my butt off, weeks of re-orientating myself, to a new social climate and a new ask from my course, the same for everyone, and for each one of us something that will have thrown up its own problems. Still it is done. I will only post Covid19 Diaries for now on my blog until i am graded pass or fail. The Covid19 entries are one of the ways i found to make sense of the oddness of now, and my blog is where i put them so i know where to find them for later. They feel simpler and smaller, and i find them more comforting than all of the words i have been typing this past month. So i sign off and close this part of the story with this blog post hoping i have given enough. 

ASU2. I was planing before lockdown to go into the countryside and make shrines in specific places, leave them and return a few weeks later. I wasn't able to do this and then lockdown changed everything so i made three shrines over the course of the weeks to this date that we have been closed in. They are on my website as images too and i think that i will probably look more into shrines and shrine making over the course of my life. 

SNU. Acetates not used for screen printing.

I pick flowers from my garden and put them on a broken slate in front of the mirror on my dressing table. This week i have a big red rose, alexanders and and the green seed heads of honesty in a p.nut butter jar.

May 12th 2020
Covid19 Diaries

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My godmother died 5/5/2020

May12th 2020
Covid19 Diaries