Hmm

Well a lot of water has passed under my bridge (so to speak) since November :)

My first year at Uni has gone well - all marks were top of 2:1 or firsts (sadly they don't feed into my final mark), so a good start: however need to tighten up a bit next year - recording left a lot to be desired :)

My practice is developing - I seem to be moving towards conceptual and activity based stuff at the moment. I'd like to get back to print making and start drawing and painting again - the black cloud keeps swallowing everything at the moment though.

I've started to get involved in the Art scene in Stoke - volunteering for the Common Ground art initiative in Hanley Park last month (this was a lot of fun, including helping to install a work in the middle of a small water feature) and for "shop" next month. I've also put a bid in for one of a series of interventions in West Bromwich, more for practice and CV kick starting than in the hope of actually being chosen as an agent for change, though it would be good to be involved.

On the home front I'm perilously close to insolvency and really need to put my CV into local businesses for some retail or similar work or we won't be able to pay the mortgage come November eek!

where did November go?

December now!

Yet another death last month - mother of friends I've known since being 5 years old, roll on 2010!

Uni a bit frantic at the mo - got a presentation and a small essay to do in next few days also tidy up studio space/notes/ sketchbooks and research journal for assessment over Christmas.

Pics of studio space and Recyled plastic maquettes on facing wall

Very very bad blogger!

Humm - what can I say! can't believe it has really been over 4 months since the last post.

The death year continues - added to the toll of the first part of the year are my father in law and a very old friend of the family. Both reasonably advanced in years but still a shock!

On a happier note I'm now an Undergraduate of the University of Staffordshire - the Fine Art is looking promising and there are lots of intersting bits of kit I'm aiming to get my hands on - so far I have been introduced to Computers and Wood, next come refreashers on stretcher making and photoshop, closley followed (I hope) by some darkroom, plastic and metal workshops. Studio space is generous however a little lacking in water and electric sockets - still lots of light and wall space.

Next thing I need to do is learn how to upload the odd image - and I have many many odd images!!

I'll have to send up the Bat signal for Lucy - her piccys of Durham are always good.

Ta Taa for now - don't hold your breath!! :)

Well another month has whizzed past :)

May has seen the addition to our household of a fourteen year old black neutered tom cat called Bagheera - he seems to like us, possibly due to swapping two slaves and a tidy suburban garden for 4 slaves and a jungle!

Also of note on the wildlife front are the great spotted wood peckers nesting in the ash tree just outside the back of the garden - visible from the kitchen sink as we wash up!! The young seem nearly fledged as black white and red heads can be seen popping out of the hole in the tree trunk whenever the parents approach accompanied by a loud squawking similar to that of a blackbirds alarm call.

I've also managed to make contact again with my best friend from school - we were still living where we had been last time we met, with the same phone numbers and only 15 miles apart, however had drifted out of touch. Really nice to see her, she has successfully survived bilateral breast cancer and is looking well if a little on the thin side. A bonus was being sold tickets to a do in her local community centre for which she is the keyholder - as part of the Leek festival, canadian folk group Crowfoot were performing - really good, husband another friend and I really enjoyed it. Wincle beer was supped and CDs were purchased.

An atypical bank holiday today - bright and sunny, was so nice yesterday we sat outside at my brother's barbieing and chatting till tennish, also atypically I imbibed most of a bottle of rose with no ill effects today (two glasses is normally my limit!!).

Bye for now xx

Definately a really bad blogger

More than 2 months since the last post!

Today was Sarah's birthday - she would have been 47. I keep coming across things that remind me of her: a plate she gave me, hats and scarves she knitted for us, favorite paintings and books.

I most miss being able to show her my developing Art stuff - I would have loved to know what she thought of it.


Back to college today after the Easter break - lots to write up - visits to the Whitworth, Baltic and Graves galleries, more interesting artists found during these, photos of bits of the peak district, stuff off the wireless.

Easter was quite a social whirl - had good times visiting my sis and her family, meeting up with my internet pals for a cracking afternoon out in Liverpool complete with 2 for 1 cocktails and a stroll to the Mersey, my "little" brother's birthday (not so little - he's actually 6 footish and now 48!!) and a cold but entertaining BBQ at my big brother's complete with bonfire and childhood friends one of which I haven't seen for a couple of years due to the whole "living in Cambodia" thing.

Off now - back soon - possibly :)

Dirge Without Music, by Edna St Vincent Millais ( for Sarah)

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go: but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, - but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, -
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. and I am not resigned.

Sarah Richards is gone and so has a lot of Joy and Fun, Laughter and Love

This should have been a happy post about the fun, creativity and mayhem of the field trip. However while we were returning, a bus full of knackered/energized art students from a wonderful time in Pembrokeshire the lovely bubbly Sarah was closing her eyes and quietly slipping away into the unknown her body giving up the unequal struggle with breast cancer and chemotherapy and resultant infection.

It was all so fast - she was only diagnosed in September last year, 3 successful rounds of Chemo, jolly parties of loud ladies accompanying her to Christies as she couldn't drive, chatty emails about how loosing a breast or two would be OK as no one had looked at them for 5 years anyway. the lovely Sarah still in top form - more concerned about making sure friends picked up enough cat food and looked after her furry friends while she was in hospital than about herself.

Now she's gone I'm trying to remember the joy and happiness and Fun that she brought to everyone who knew her, Mad Sarah spending the money she had put aside for mending the central heating boiler on a trip to New York and Vegan Yarn - always hopeful that her prince would come one day. Loving Chaotic Sarah one of my pillars of strength in times of darkness, taking me to Art Galleries and the Theatre, watching weird films at the Cournerhouse and listening to South Pacific and Peggy Lee, dancing with my sister, myself and other mad ladies to Sisters are doing it for themselves and hoping to Free Nelson Mandela (he was still incarcerated at this point), introducing me to Bookcrossing . I have known her nearly half my life, met in crisis between husbands one and two.

I can't believe she has gone so quickly, one minute a force of nature - the next an empty shell.

I'm trying to remember and be happy - I'm not - I am desolated, sad and bereaved, tears leaking out at intervals - when I heard the news I howled - I didn't think people actually did that!. It's so unfair - why don't the bad people die not my lovely Sarah.

Sarah Richards I loved you so much.