Business Cards

Front side

Back side

In preparation for the show, I thought it woud be a good idea to create business cards for people to take away with them.

I wanted it to be simple, without labelling myself. No 'contemporary artist' or whatever. Just my website and one of my more successful paintings, it won't exactly lead them to believe I'm a florist (my mum thinks I should have at least put artist)... The image I chose also helped to link the painting that was down the corridor from my space back to me. The colour orange is there to link it back to my Degree Show, in the hope that they would remember my floor.

Thankfully they arrived in time (I paid enough for them to do so...) and I recieved a free, handy little card holder, so I'll be able to keep a few in my bag when I go out. The only challenge now will be getting the courage to speak to people and hand them out. The next issue was finding a way of having them on display without making people bend down to pick one off the floor or have a table in the way. The answer was to search for 'business card wall holder' on Amazon and find one suitable. Then all I had to do was attach it to the wall with velcro and a bonus is that it can stand on its own so I can put it on a table if I wish.

(Images from designing my own card on Vistaprint).

Degree Show set up & take down

Thankfully, I had a good idea of how I wanted my paintings set out for my area of the Degree Show, it really helped making a model (see it here) and planning what I wanted to get done at the end of each day.

I decided to hang first in an attempt to minimise any footprints that might have appeared. As people were busy sorting their own spaces out, I decided to do it all by eye and it didn't turn out horrendously. The floor edges were next and then all I had to do was simply fill it in with a roller. It was a lot of work, made worse by the fact the studios always get too hot!

My fellow budding artists seemed to like the orange. Although, one of my tutors had doubts - I proved him wrong! It was suggested to me at the beginning of the week that I should rearrange my paintings. I wasn't so keen on the idea, I wanted the space to be filled up and I was worried that the pieces may not work together as well. Apparently it was a unanimous decision of the marking team and I felt I had to.

The large grey painting was moved down the corridor and on the morning of the Private View, I finished moving what was left to make them all on a single level. I was definitely feeling the stress by then!

After the show was open to the public and finished, I had to get on with painting the floor back to grey before I returned home for a few weeks. Seeing it returned to the normal state of the rest of the studios, the orange was most definitely the right decision. Don't you think?

The final part was taking back to my room the paintings I decided not to put forward for the Truman Show in July. Then with the rest I covered the front in bubble wrap and put them downstairs in storage.

Headlines Degree Show

Me at the Private View of the show.

Boo! A blog post from me has been well over due once again. These past couple of months have been very busy; it all seems like a blur now... Our Degree Show went well, but I'm glad that is over and I have returned home in Suffolk for a few weeks. Back to family, friends (well a friend) and cats!

Check out the paintings I put on display here.

Below is a video of the Fine Art exhibition, wonderfully created by Leyla Mojtahedi. Check it out!

Elesym II & III.

These are the next set of elephant skull symbols that I have created.

I will write about them at some point, I just feel as though they are not finished yet. I'll move on to other work and come back to them if I remember. I had originally decided they were finished, but there's something about the triangle pattern not matching on both of the paintings that I'm not so keen on anymore.
 

Knees VII - XIII.

Close ups of each of the little knee pieces.

You can see the layers of oil paint and how rough the edges are. The knees have been simplified by shape and colour. They also have little parts of my fingerprints in them.

Display Time.

The day before hand in. It was time to put my work up and see how it looked. It was also the chance to work out where the eye line will be around the room, using my height cos I'm short and we have to cater for everyone haha. Then there was the question of how we were going to put them up. I was adamant that I wasn't going to use velcro, because I didn't want it to that stuck to it when I took them down and I didn't want to use pins/nails, because I didn't want holes in my work.

Painting Sand.

Painting the sand valleys. Sounds interesting yes, but probably not as interesting as you may think, I hope I didn’t get your hopes up. Today I finally got round to painting the lines I carved out in my sculptures, these ones names are ‘Red Sand’, ‘Orange Sand’ and ‘Purple Sand’. Original, hey? You will have noticed I am not the best one for naming my art work. These names may not stick, but they’ll do for now. I had a really good, I don’t want it to all end next week. There’s still so much I want to do, but I know it won’t happen. I’m trying not to panic.

I started off the day by acquiring pva, a brush to put it on with and a brush now named ‘Sand Brush’ (it’s for brushing off sand - sculptors need these things haha). It felt good to buy something and not have to worry about if I can afford it or not for once. I mixed up a water/pva solution and gave my sculptures a couple of coatings of it, in the hope that it will stop the sand from crumbling much more (I found at the end that this did not help as much as I wanted it to). Then taking a colour at a time and adding a little pva to it, I painted in the carved lines. I took photos of the stages for each sculpture, you can see these on my Facebook page. It was very enjoyable to do and Clive helped with more options for my work set up to hand in.

I have discovered how nice it is to work without my shoes on in the studio (and no, my feet did not stink). I had to do this because I have blisters on my feet from walking loads in London yesterday. I shall hopefully explain more about that at the weekend. Tomorrow I plan to buy some gold paint. I am so excited about it! As well as that, I shall be working on my plaster sculpture I made on Tuesday, maybe it will be another good day.