a year in the smoke... January 2011

Well it's been quite a year and as I look ahead to the next 12 months, it seems worth taking the time to look back and see what I've been up to.

January 2011 - snowed in – but not under…

BEH200

The snow finally abated enough to allow a flying visit to the Derix factory perched between woods and suburban houses on the outskirts of Wiesbaden in Germany to see the Bristol Eye Hospital glass panel samples. It was a chance to see the celebrated workshops where much of the most ambitious and vibrant stained glass of the past fifty years has been produced.

We had a long and robust conversation about whether it would be possible (or affordable) to achieve the finely detailed sandblast patterns while making sure that the prints would be bright and luminous. I had a very particular idea in mind that seemed to pose an almost insurmountable technical challenge - the UK producers had assured me that it could not be done.  But the team finally agreed that they would have a go- but I would need to completely rework the artwork files. Many many hours of clicking and dragging ensued.

I was invited to stay in the home of the Derix family next to the factory, while my host Andrea MacKay kindly took another visiting artist and I on a whirlwind tour of the cultural sights, sausage joints and stylish bars of this tidy town. For more information about Derix, see  http://www.derix.com/en/

The Admissions team at the Eye Hospital invited me to create a pair of panels for their newly-decorated office, with their patterns on the one hand, and a single pattern combining their team data on the other. The file was so huge that this poor machine had its sleep function turned off, spending over 15 hours crunching and whirring on the kitchen table several days running until I found the pattern that seemed right.

Individual and group patterns from the Admissions team project and, below, panel installed in the office. 

Music

I was excited to hear that my entry for the Jerwood Maker’s prize had been shortlisted - a very rudimentary video shot by a fellow student Mia Fernandez of me playing a series of glass horns, singing bowls and borosilicate flutes. Andrew Lamb, curator of the Bate Museum of Musical instruments in Oxford suggested that the work might find a temporary home in his grand wunderkammer once the current exhibition ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ was over and we agreed to talk more.

Clear horn and black horn 2011, blown by Louis Thompson. Rain stick detail, borosilicate and corn kernels, blown by Shelley James

The visit to Oxford was a chance to spend time at the Museum of the History of Science, to enjoy the treasures there and prompt an outing with Claude along the Thames to the National Maritime Museum past the site-specific sculptures to wonder about different ways to present information. 

Oxford Museum of the History of Science, National Maritime Museum and site-specific sculpture representing discovery of longitude and latitude, January 2011. 

RCA

This was crunch time for the PhD proposal – working with tutors Alison Britton and Martin Smith whether to decide whether to apply for an upgrade from MPhil to PhD and whether I might be able to secure AHRC funding. Studio practice focused on refining the techniques developed in the first three months of the academic year, working with Simon to encapsulate and register matrices of marks. 

I also found time to go home to the warmth of my Frome Fireside and kind friends and to meet my new goddaughter Pip!