ARTISTS TALKING

# 31 [12 April 2010]

What a difference the weather makes to the human condition...  last week I managed to get back into my studio (a.k.a. the garden shed) for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long, dodging the awakening queen wasps and actually making a start on some work.  Today I have been out all afternoon drawing at the local holy well (not to be confused with Holywell, which is not quite so local).  A really tranquil and restful spot.

Thoughts about the SSC are less tranquil, as there is still no sign of a contract.  However, we're all meeting up again next week to introduce ourselves to our prospective life model, and I'm also hoping to meet the students.  I hope they realise what they're letting themselves in for - I hope someone's told them that there will be a lot of research, and drawing and thinking involved (worry, worry, worry....).

# 32 [13 April 2010]

We have four broad headings for our topics:  Illustration/explanation; Art & Illness; Imaging the body; Death, art, culture & medicine.  Two of the students have chosen to examine the role of illustration in explanation, so I went to my local G.P.'s surgery to see what sort of patient information leaflets were available.  To my amazement, the few leaflets available contained no illustrations at all - just a few photographs of cheerful faces, and a lot of very dense text.  The asthma leaflet did at least have a picture of a couple of inhalers - which turns out to be about as much illustration as was available on a selection of websites dealing with the condition.  (To be fair, there were some video clips including several in British Sign Language, which looked pretty scary).  This is all fine, providing you a) have access to the Internet, and/or b) can read closely packed type.  There's certainly a lot of scope for an illustrator in this particular field, I think.

I think my GPs must feel the same, as they have tacked up two excellent, beautifully drawn & coloured A1 posters showing the effects of smoking and of high cholesterol.  Not very cheerful, perhaps, and one of them contains the facsimile of Henry Gray's signature - he wrote the text for the Anatomy book, but Henry Carter did the illustrations.  Carter is very definitely an unsung hero.

# 33 [14 April 2010]

I've had a kind & sympathetic email from the Wellcome Trust explaining how to distinguish "clinical" from "other" images - very reassuring. So that's alright, then.

However, I'm not doing so well with a separate copyright enquiry to A Publisher, although I have now had an automated reply with links to the website.  Following these, I thought I had found an article by Gray (of Gray's Anatomy) until I realised that it was published 14 months after his death....and they didn't have to wait for peer review in those days.  Turns out to be by another Henry Gray (Croly).  Ah well, never mind; and I could have had a look at it if only I had my Athens password.

# 34 [20 April 2010]

Just back after an exhilarating trip to the Medical School for the final pre-project meeting.  We've met our model, who turns out to be a talented artist in her own right - her planned research project relates to the physiology of drawing, so she will have a really positive impact on the project.   

We've also met two of the first three students, who are keen and interested, and have already done a lot of drawing. Excellent.   The dates and times of the drawing classes are arranged, the first tutorial is booked and we should be straight off the starting blocks next week.

While I was waiting in the foyer (having mistakenly arrived half an hour early) a batch of students emerged from the examination hall.  I picked up fragments of conversation  "...what about the woman with bronchospasm?..". "...and I completely forgot about E. coli...." ; Alan Bennett meets Harold Pinter.  Although I have to admit that they all looked a bit young, I was reassured by their general tidiness and air of intelligence.  I hope we looked fairly intelligent in the early 70s, but we certainly weren't that well dressed.  Afghan coats, bell bottoms and very, very long hair for both sexes.  O tempora, o mores.  And they don't do Latin at school any more, either.

# 35 [30 April 2010]

I am coming up for air after the first teaching session of the module.....

Got off to a good start, when I arrived to find that a very smart tutorial room (complete with PC) had been booked for my exclusive use for the afternoon, and that a visitors swipe card/ID had been arranged for me.  Unfortunately, although it got me through one set of double doors, the card didn't get me into the anatomy department or into the room allocated for the life classes as these are "restricted areas".  Ah well, you can't have everything.

Then, a good one-to-one session with our first student who has decided to investigate the role of "graphic medicine" in communication between patients and doctors -which is great, as I don't know much about it, but I know a man who does: http://graphicmedicine.org

The first life class probably a success, although whether I'm the best judge of that is debatable, since I did a lot of talking and general exhortation and hopping around, and assume, since I was on a self-induced high, that everyone else felt the same.  Anyway, everyone seems very keen, and they've promised to come back next week.  And I have had a lesson in thermostat management, so should be able to improve the ambient temperature for the model.  20.5degrees C. may be fine if you're wearing the normal complement of clothing, but it ain't if you're standing stock still without a stitch on....

# 36 [6 May 2010]

Slightly less frenetic this week, as I am learning to pace myself and consequently not as "high" as I was after the teaching last time.  I have always found teaching an exhausting business; more of a performance than a simple academic exercise.  Medics learn from a very early age to cope with speaking in public - sometimes in front of huge audiences in  seemingly vast lecture theatres (sometimes in foreign parts, with your own image projected behind you as if at a political rally).  Not everyone enjoys it, but somehow we get through it:  my coping strategy involves assuming a (probably highly annoying) super-confident extrovert persona, leaping about as if I had St. Vitus' Dance and trying to make people laugh.  Sad, really.  And very tiring.  But they do call it a Lecture Theatre, after all.

The life classes are proceeding in a satisfactory manner, and the drawings are getting better and better.  There's still a bit of reluctance to move away from the black line all around the form, but everyone is doing much more looking, and they are looking more critically and productively.

My student, Y.L., has decided to investigate the topic of explaining a common cancer to the "target group" using a graphic format.  Cue much discussion of the role of images vs. text, whether the provision of information can reduce anxiety, and how best to do this.  Yet again, most of the available Patient Information Booklets give precedence to text over explanatory images.  memo to self: must find out more about literacy rates & geographical variation thereof.

Arriving back home, I have remembered to vote - telling myself as ever that people died so that I could vote, and it's an insult to them if I don't do it.  Not that anybody I ever voted for actually got elected..... Now the mist has descended on the hill, and visibility is down to about 100 yards.  A metaphor for modern politics?

# 37 [7 May 2010]

Among other things, I am gaining an intimate knowledge of coffee shops and pubs along my route to the Medical School.  Opposite a smart little tea room in Audlem (great scones & pastry) stands a monument to a local doctor.  The inscription reads around four corners of the plinth, culminating in one of the best "so there" moments I have come across in a long time.

# 38 [13 May 2010]

Another week passes.....

"My" student is full of good ideas, and I'm expecting a draft of the graphic medicine page any day now.

Numbers were down for the life class (have I frightened them away?  It's possible) but those who attended are improving so fast you can almost feel it.  We did the old exercise where you take 20 minutes to draw the whole model, take a fresh piece of paper & fold it into four equal sections (i.e. A1 down to A4), and then home in on a particular area of the model and draw that in one of the quarters.  Next, you focus down on a section of the same area and draw it to fill the next quarter. And so on until you end up with, say, a portion of a toe occupying the whole of the last A4 section.  A good way of learning all sorts of things including concentration.

After the break (no tea -  the vending machine was out of order), the drawings were stronger and more confident - a result, I think, of the intense looking practised in the first half of the session.

# 39 [20 May 2010]

Another week, another round trip of umpteen miles, and another excellent life drawing session.  The attendance was down a bit this week (to put it mildly), but this is attributed to exams for 2nd year students, and essay deadlines for 3rd. year students.  One poor soul has had to expunge 1,500 words from a 3,000 word essay due to a misunderstanding by Someone in Authority about what counted towards the word count. (Not, I hasten to say, for an Anatomy & Art SSC.)

I am anticipating the receipt of the first essay (deadline tomorrow, 12midday) and will then have to get down to assessing it according to some pretty strict criteria.  This may not be Fun.....

# 40 [28 May 2010]

The first block is over; the second begins.  Two students this time, who have already decided what they want to do. The life drawing session was better attended, which was a relief.  I am assured that other waifs and strays will return once exams are over.

Having finished my first set of marking, I was flattered to receive an email asking if I would care to "second-mark" essays selected for distinction/honours grades.  I then realised that the message was part of a group mailing, and probably not really, really intended for newbies like me.  But it was jolly nice to be asked - thank you, Sharon.  As it's the end of the month, I might also get paid.  Whoopee.  My only other paid employment this month has been a two-day demonstration of Iron Age textile techniques to 8-11 year olds on Anglesey.  That would probably have been a whole project blog on its' own if I'd had enough notice, but I stepped in at the last minute to help out, so, little preparation and few photographs.  And I can't really link it into the Anatomy & Art project; although, it might connect into the ideas of healing wells, and things hidden and revealed in the landscape.