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. 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.