Reflecting on reflection

Daunted by the many little things that need doing with the actual books, I turned my attention to gathering the "bits" off this blog that will be the "reflective writing" component of the assessment. The main compilations have been the monthly collection of "exhibitions and artists", which is meant to be critical assessment of all the looking-at-art we are doing, and the "book du jour", my catch-all for the various projects I have on the go.

I'd planned to keep up  on a monthly basis, but seem to have stopped several months ago, so that's another plan that didn't work out entirely as hoped. It came to a trawl through my box of leaflets taken home from exhibitions, and a sizeable list emerged, to which I'll add one-sentence annotations once I get away from the computer and can sit in a garden with a nice cool drink, of a summer's evening (the sun is actually shining here today!).

The book-making is now, after some concentrated work, divided by project; most are 20-28 pages long, and have been printed two-to-a-page -

While waiting for these pages to print, I realised that the reason all this is taking so long is that there's rather a lot of it. When my topic branched out into all these different projects, I wasn't setting out to make it difficult for myself ... I was making it interesting. How (or if) the different parts link up into "the big picture" is still revealing itself. Time will have to be made to reflect on how this is happening, how it's all part of "everyone's everyday journey".

The risk is that the separate projects won't have been thought through enough, and that this will be all to apparent. Last year the advice from a visiting tutor was to focus on doing a thing thoroughly, and I realise the value of that - it's part of the simplification process that strips away all but the essence. I'll be looking, as I fold the printouts, to see what more can be done to work towards "less".

And, seeing them all together - why didn't I stick to one font for the titles, one presentation style? Do you know, it just didn't cross my mind. The important thing is that the right posts were there. This is the sort of thing an editor picks up - I wasn't being an editor...

In the studio, a cheerful sight - lots of wood (or rather, mdf) has appeared - some of it for the boxes etc for my display, some of it for other uses -