Prized moments...: last week of Degree time....I can see the light!

...so this time next week everything will be handed in...put on show and marked....job done!

we had a busy day on Thursday, it was no fun I can tell you... preparing our studio space into an exhibition space is a serious job and hard work too...

....as you can see...."stand and deliver....the paint if you please!"....fetching head wear to protect the hair from looking any greyer!

We had help from some first and second year students too....only to find that a day later the lecturers asked us to go over every room and fill in all the holes......and believe me there are loads!.... a truly thankless task and on MDF panels...I shake my head at the thought!........we were only given four tins of paint to cover 3 large rooms...so, needless to say feelings were running a bit low today!

I thought I'd show you some of the stuff I'm not exhibiting!....

...but that I really quite like...

think I went a bit OTT when I thought about the map like details found on pebbles!!!....I still use maps within my work but not so full on!

I really like the pebbles I was making from recycled tubing, if I could have produced a vast amount of them like a small cove it would have been really effective I think, but that would have been all I would have been able to produce for my show!

Annette Messeger

....but maybe I could have done something like this....

...you know when you can't stop thinking of ideas even though you are exhausted....a drift of manmade pebbles and a series or selection of large scale images influenced by pebbles....mmmmmmm

Jaume Plensa

or there's the case....you think your being really original and then months later you visit a gallery and see this artist ....Jaume Plensa.....

Jaume Plensa

and then I compare...

....and maybe my ideas are not that original!!! different subject but similar use of materials, aesthetics and composition...so now I must be influenced by someone I never heard of until after I've produced the work?....clever

(The sketch is just studio practice, the installation is however going into my exhibition....)

I do like my ...."To the rescue" but it's not in keeping with the rest of my work really.....well it is in a way....through the pull of the moon the tide is effected, which effects the life of a pebble etc...but also..I like the fact its all contained within a tea caddy....thats because sweet tea is what you get given when you've been rescued....simplz!

these two prints just don't work for me! experimenting with printing was good but not everything works how you want it to in your head!...but in they go for studio practice marking...

This is the maquette I had made to see if my sculpture would work....I wanted to do it in mild steel...Anthony Gormley esk... but it would have cost £272 and I wasn't sure if it would work so I had a mini version laser cut in MDF....I love the burnt edges...it's only about 15cm high...my lecturer thought it was a piece of my art display...the thought of it in steel still appeals to me, seeing it rusting away really ties in with the worn out and decayed element of the mark this was taken from.