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!
