A day for "personal work", as Core Studies will mostly be from now on. I'd brought various things - too many perhaps - the essay, my sketchy ruminations from last week, the "statement of intent", the sketchbook, my tuesday-notebook, the little notebook, the to-do list -- and a flask of coffee. It was hard to get settled in and get on with something useful.
Some people went off to the UCAS fair to find out about undergraduate degree courses all round the country - which left lots of empty spaces at lunchtime -
One bit of new knowledge was a quick lesson in using this old-fashioned instrument, the parallel rule - Jo brought in the one that belonged to her dad. (This bit of technology isn't part of the curriculum!) You hold down the little knobs and "walk" it down the page to draw parallel lines -
Other bits of new knowledge came from the drawings I made, after flicking idly through a book on sculptor
Richard Wilson. His "interventions" got me thinking about interior spaces -
which led - after conversation with one of the tutors about liminality, especially spaces between walls - back to a photo that Betty sent a couple of months ago, of the damage to her house - which needed the rain-soaked interior walls to be removed, a rather drastic bit of domestic archaeology. This ties in with my own history of watching my father build, from the ground up, several of the family's houses. (There was also a family house disaster, when it burnt to the ground.) And it recalls my own domestic archaeology, renovating the house in Halifax and the flat I live in now.
I think this - house walls, Canadian-style - will be the new direction for my project - it fits the theme of "inside outside in between" in several ways. I just need to get past the emotional burden.
Some people went off to the UCAS fair to find out about undergraduate degree courses all round the country - which left lots of empty spaces at lunchtime -
One bit of new knowledge was a quick lesson in using this old-fashioned instrument, the parallel rule - Jo brought in the one that belonged to her dad. (This bit of technology isn't part of the curriculum!) You hold down the little knobs and "walk" it down the page to draw parallel lines -
Other bits of new knowledge came from the drawings I made, after flicking idly through a book on sculptor Richard Wilson. His "interventions" got me thinking about interior spaces -
which led - after conversation with one of the tutors about liminality, especially spaces between walls - back to a photo that Betty sent a couple of months ago, of the damage to her house - which needed the rain-soaked interior walls to be removed, a rather drastic bit of domestic archaeology. This ties in with my own history of watching my father build, from the ground up, several of the family's houses. (There was also a family house disaster, when it burnt to the ground.) And it recalls my own domestic archaeology, renovating the house in Halifax and the flat I live in now.
I think this - house walls, Canadian-style - will be the new direction for my project - it fits the theme of "inside outside in between" in several ways. I just need to get past the emotional burden.
I love where this is leading, Margaret, and look forward to seeing where it goes. Ah - the emotional burden...always something to get past, but I find I can get past it by using it in my work. I suspect we all do, to some extent...and that's what gives our work some meaning, in a sense.
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