Oh, and today I watched my first bronze pour. Before christmas I spent a week in the 3d studio at uni making molds for bronze casting. I think the outcome is likely to be pretty rudimentary and crude but I am beginning to learn the process. The objects are a rubber thing I found on the street which people tell me is something to do with the exhaust off a car, and a bowl made from home-made geranium leaf paper. The wax and paper burns out when the mould is fired in the kiln, this leaves a space for the bronze to be poured into. The things that look like legs are called risers, they allow any trapped air to escape.

Another step towards the end of my degree course. The dissertation is handed in. All I can do now is cross my fingers, and hope it is good enough.

To celebrate I bought myself a new book of fairy tales, The Red King and the Witch by Ruth Manning-Sanders, she is one of my favourite story tellers. I shall also be dipping into the copy of Duncan Williamson's The Broonie, Silkies and Fairies, that I picked up from a charity shop last week. I'm a sucker for a well told fairy tale.

And it's funny how one thought space can relate to another. In the group  project I made a 3d scribble of an idea and that got me thinking how it would be if that form was multiple. So as it was a simple box really, I made cardboard cubes and stacked them. By accident I made the flower/star shapes and so begins a new thinking pattern.

The last work for the group project got me thinking about connections. In the first year of my degree when I was studying at Lowestoft the ceramics tutor gave us a learning project about this which eventually became a series of slip cast bowls. I was interested in the space where the halves of the mold met, the ragged seam that was left on the outside, the relationship between the internal and external and where boundary became connection.

Currently I'm involved with a group project at college. It's an interesting process, trying to link the ideas of five different people. We've created a blog which acts like a notepad in which we are beginning to sketch out where we are going. One of our group, Emily, has made some vey lovely videos that are well worth a look. Check out her "trippy vids" on http://futuretextilesnuca.blogspot.co.uk/. This tree is one of her prototype videos. We'd really love feedback on our ideas.



Work belongs to Emily-Rose Barnes http://madebyerose.blogspot.co.uk/