she's back!

A couple of you kind bloggers have expressed an interest in reading these updates, so here goes...

Since I last wrote, there is substantially more daylight about and I have been having a wonderful time playing in the grit, drinking gallons of strong tea and failing to read Lacan and the Superstructuralists.

Which I will have to do in the next three weeks in time for my interim exam...

On the glass front, I have been playing with colour for the first time, experimenting with ways of getting basic transparent coloured images inside simple forms. As usual, have been trying things out in hot glass.

hot glass dish and block with coloured print inclusions

And seeing what happens in cast glass...

lost wax cast of fistwith copper oxide prints

Have also been continuing my experiments with the lamp in preparation for an upcoming exhibition at the Centre for Alternative Medicine in London next month, of which more in the next post...

lamp worked 'T cell'

The Bristol Eye Hospital has now confirmed the commission to create a piece of glass work with the staff to celebrate their 200th anniversary. Currently playing with ideas, sketches and budgets to present in the first week of May. It's my first proper 'public engagement' project and I'm trying to come over all cool and confident but I'm Very Scared.

Bristol Eye Hospital entrance

On the academic front, an abstract on my research has made it through the first round of selection for a conference on Innovation in Glass at the University of Wolverhampton in August - it's a very prestgious thing, but now I have to write another 10 pages of the stuff!

I also published an article on digital print in glass in Printmaking Today this month, will give a lecture at UWE as part of a seminar series on Art and Science next week and am in the process of setting up an art and science seminar in partnership with Imperial College for the end of the summer term.

The next big deadline here at the RCA is the Interim Exam on the 7th of May, at which I need to present work so far set against my original proposal and plans for the next stage, written up as a 3,000 word report, plus a chapter of the thesis - again, around 3,000 words or so.

Have also started playing the recorder again, having the first of what we hope to be regular duet evenings with a girlfriend in Islington last week. Not sure her neighbours are so keen...

Have also been to Paris, dancing and life drawing - great fun.


Not a lot of time for sitting around in my little garden in Frome - but planted loads of bulbs, scattered seeds liberally about and dug in a profusion of roots and shoots donated by a dear friend's father.

So we will see what has grown next time I make it back there!

out to grass

Spent the past week at a residential conference with phD students from ICL at a once-fine county seat lost in scruffy fields between Wokingham and Bracknell.

group photo at Eastman Park

Fifty fiercely bright, beautiful and supremely sheltered young scientists and two of us older and rather less-sheltered representatives from The Arts inched through a long sequence of personal development exercises, energetically facilitated by failed slightly older scientists with the help of a Learning Journal and lots of flip charts.  Mountains of fried food were scooped at speed from the all you can eat buffet, while competition for the last slice of chocolate brownie almost cracked the veneer of civility.  Lots of horsing about too - and the chance to meet some very talented and thoughtful people who I hope to see again. 

Back to London and looking forward to getting down to some work in the studio - as well as getting down to writing a 3,000 word essay due by the end of next week.  

More soon...

packed...

Busy and exciting times...

A long-held wish to be invited to lead an arts project for Bristol Eye Hospital seems as though it might just come true. 

For their 200th anniversary, the Hospital is refurbishing the building and have asked me to set up an installation of my work (with a real chance of them actually buying some!) and to lead a staff project to create a piece of new work to celebrate this milestone.  The proposals are in the process of review by various Boards and sponsorship being sought from companies, so nothing signed yet.  But it really does seem likely to happen...

A chance meeting with the head of the Medical School at Bristol University in December led to my writing a short piece on creativity for the students - and I have now been asked to make a video about my working practice for inclusion in the course materials and online.

Yesterday, I was invited to be part of the very prestigious ReCollect exhibition in May and some new and rather fragile work has just gone off to Singapore as part of a touring exhibition that seems set to globe trot for the next six months - let's hope it survives.  

And, in the meantime, have been ploughing on with the research for the RCA - a big tutorial on Thursday kept me burning midnight oil for most of the week.  Seems to have gone ok, but, although I am making piles of samples and learning a lot, it's not yet entirely clear where it's all headed. 3,000 words to write in the next two weeks and a formal presentation the week after - need to find out who on earth are Derrida and Deleuze.  Keeping me on my toes. 

hot glass test...

lamp work test

rhino test

Plus the Bristol house - still not sold, but apparently lots of interest.  A group of young men move in on the 12th to help  with the mortgage. Let's just hope they do the washing up from time to time and don't scare off any potential buyers. 

And Frome - a wonderful if currently rather cold and scruffy refuge. Getting through the logs at an alarming rate. Finally got a first coat of gloss on the windows last weekend and hope to get up a ladder again later today to get a second coat on - weather permitting... Hoping to get the broadband connected too so that I can skype and surf in my beautiful light and airy study. 

Frome...

Off to the Mall Galleries to collect work that was rejected for the Originals exhibition.  Feel disappointed but there is plenty to be getting on with...

back to school

It's hard to believe a whole month has passed since last writing this. 

A blur of biting cold, broken boilers, heavy boxes and bed with raging sore throat. 

Plus some magic moments - London Dungeons with the Desbons, roaring fires with friends in Frome, bombing downhill on a sledge with the Bartons and light airs on the Levels. 

Heartily glad to be back at college - and some exciting plans afoot - potential project with the Eye Hospital to create a display of recent work in the new building and to create a new piece with all the patients and staff to celebrate their bicentenary. Plus a chance to work with one of the nurses there to create a series of new artworks to help her to explain how the immune system works. 

And a film with Medical School at University of Bristol to consider how art and science can work together. 

Plus college stuff - getting to grips with lamp working, learning about the history of glass and my very first rapid prototyped model using the Rhino software all on my own!

Much to look forward to - and now back home to Frome to get some green air in my lungs.