Now that all my work is finished and handed in, I have had to turn my attentions to the rather daunting task of deciding what to do next. As of August I am homeless and jobless, so I need to find somewhere to go and something to do. This prospect fills me with the same amounts of excitement and fear. I have so many options but I can't decide, and I don't know where to begin. It would be easy to stay in Brighton, or go to London where I have lots of friends already, which is almost why I don't want to go. I want a bit more of a challenge. I'm lucky enough to be part Yank, so I think I should exploit that. I loved New York last summer, and I have always wanted to live in San Francisco. I'm also toying with the idea of living somewhere in Europe, maybe Berlin or Amsterdam. It would be quite cool to do something crazy like move to a country where I don't know the language. I would love to teach English and work at the same time. I'm at a loss at what to do!
I have to admit, I set up this project at a very bad time. Everyone I asked to take part in the first round were art/design students finishing their final year and so, unsurprisingly, I only just started getting back films. These are a few photos from the first film I got developed. The first set was taken by the very lovely Laura Griggs, who is on my course at Brighton, and the second round was done by the beautiful Poppy French, who does photography at Birmingham, although we met on our foundation course. You can visit Poppy's blog here. Lots of lovely countryside shots. To see the rest, got o my flikr site here.
The other week at the Sunday Market I bought another stamp album. This one must have belonged to a child because each of the pages is labeled in biro with some very dubious spellings. There's some great stuff in here. When I get the chance I will have to scan some of the better ones so you can see them all large. I have a pretty huge stamp collection now. See some more on my flickr site here.
I have been super busy, and have finished all my uni work! The show is up, and my work was assessed today so there's nothing more I can do. I've had a few days off to enjoy the sunshine and now I'm back to work, getting things ready for the show and working out what I'm going to do with my life. I got myself a nice little diana mini as a present to myself for getting everything done, and I've got my first set of photos back from it. I used a split frame mode, which splits the 35mm film frame in half. I had a lot of happy accidents (and some truly awful blurry photos). The photo at the top was a fluke. I took a photo of the two ladies chatting on the balcony as I was walking to the Marina, and then a couple of hundred yards away I saw the gas tower and shot that too. I had lost track of which photos were on the same frame, and I didn't plan the photos but it's pretty impressive how well they lined up! I'm going around recording my last few months in Brighton now.
These are some of the finished letters. Each one took me between 40-60 minutes to sew if it all went smoothly, and I had to redo some of them. To see the images larger, go to the set on flickr here. Now I have a tricky decision, do I present it as a full alphabet for the degree show, or do I write a quote or phrase with the letters?
This is a typeface I made for a project back in November. Initially I thought I could thread it (use nails and thread to create the lines), but then I decided it was better suited to be sewn as that produced a more subtle effect. I revisited the project a few weeks ago and spent days sewing the alphabet. It's featuring in the catalogue for my degree show and I want to put it up in the show. It's one of my favourite pieces if work this year, but I can't stop going back and changing it. I only have a few weeks until the degree show in Brighton, and I'm debating wether or not to make a small caps alphabet and sew that too?
I get serious lifestyle envy when I look at some people's photos on flickr. None more so than Marie Eck (all these are taken from her n set on flickr). Who wouldn't want her life, based on her photos?
I have been working on a lot of things, despite not blogging about them. I finished my exam project just before easter and I'm working on it some more now. I based my work around issues with time and silence that we have in modern western society. As part of the project I dismantled lots of old manual clocks, which was so much fun! This is just a photocopy of a pocket watch, but I think it came out rather well. I eventually letter pressed the cogs and bits from inside the clocks to make a print series. I've done 2 more since handing in my project and I have 2 more still that I want to do. I will post them once I have some better photos of them, which at the moment is proving difficult.
I came across these gorgeous photos by Holger Schilling the other day. I love the subject matter (Eastern European and German train stations) and their bleakness. Makes me kind of miss winter. To see more, click here.
I went up to London on Saturday for my Mum's birthday and went to the Quilts exhibition at the V&A. It was good to get in touch with my inner granny and coo at all the stitching and patterns with my mum. No need to pretend to be a cool designer here! Although having said that it was a really interesting exhibition with really odd signage, which I really like. It didn't make me regret not doing a degree in textiles though, which I was worried about. My own quilts are coming on ok, and I feel inspired now to try and introduce some graphic element into my next quilt project. I'm thinking strict geometric shapes and abstract patterns. Basically the opposite to the very laura ashley type things I'm working on at the moment. I'm so excited to start! I wish they didn't take years to make.
Despite being snowed under with work, I managed to get to the Pick me Up fair at Somerset house on Wednesday night. I only took appalling photos so I don't have anything really to show for my trip. It was so good to get out of Brighton and see what's going on in London for a bit. It was excessively trendy though I have to say. But it was cool bumping into the guys from Evening Tweed who were two years above me at Brighton. They had a very cool country house room full of stuffed animals and the coolest globe/drinks cabinet I have ever seen. If you don't know them already have a look at their site here.
