University of Kent

The end is nigh.

The end of the first term, and a week more nigh for me than for everyone else in my group. Still, I did it to myself, and I’m not going to complain. My essay is complete and I’ve been working on my sketchbook/research file, on top of scraping together the hours of natural daylight for finishing my paintings. And what does it amount to? I can’t say I know. I’ve been able to define myself more clearly in the last few months, and feel more confident in some ways… but there’s so much ambiguity yet ahead. But ambiguity is just part of the future.

My plan to start raising funds for the end of year show worked better than I’d expected; in one week we’d made £20 thanks to my boxes and piles of remnants and an honesty jar. No extra effort. A fellow student in my group brought in some small items of surplus stock from her former business, a gift shop. Despite a rival group’s mince pies being sold on the next table (the nerve) we did rather well. Now, I don’t want to think about it again until I come back in January.

I’ve been hacking away at the limewood block to bring the form out; there was never any way I could have finished it by the end of this term, but I want to leave it in a state of visible promise, both for the hand-in and for myself when I come back to it after the vacation. It’ll be interesting to see how the presentation goes, and what feedback I’ll get. Right now I’m tired, and I just want to tie everything up with a knot.

I can’t wait to get back home.

Don’t go into the studio with your admin head on. It’s a waste of time. At least something good came out of Monday, even if I got precious little sculpting done.

I’d spent Sunday evening mocking up a poster to illustrate a project I’ve had in mind. My plan is, as a group, to put on an open exhibition in Ashford and get the second year HNDs involved as well. It’s far easier to explain by means of a visual aid than giving a description without props. Overall it was a success, as most of the group thought the idea of an open exhibition in the town was a great one, and the student rep for the year below was quite enthusiastic as well. I was relieved to have finally presented that idea and cleared the way for it to go ahead next term, hopefully with enough time to gather plenty of volunteers to help me!

I’d also been worrying about the lack of small-scale fundraising for the end of year show, particularly when the HNDs and fashion students have been bombarding us daily in the refectory with cake sales in aid of their exhibitions. I’d taken in a few large bags of remnants to the studio several weeks ago that I thought could raise a few pennies if we sold them to the fashion students, but hadn’t got around to sorting, folding and pricing them. As I still had my leadership hat on I managed to set it up and let the fashion classes know, and by the end of the day we’d made a few pounds out of it, with no baking involved at all. I left an honesty jar, but as we had a trip to London scheduled for the next day and I haven’t been back to the studio this week, I’m not sure what – if anything – will await me when I do go back in.

The London galleries trip amounted to only a couple of hours for me, and I couldn’t stay for the Grayson Perry show at the British Museum, which was the exhibit I had most looked forward to. The curse of being tied to the school run. Oh well. I was glad to see Ellen Altfest’s “The Bent Leg” at the White Cube – right up my street in terms of both my practice and my dissertation! It says a lot to wander into a room full of pictures of men’s body parts and have the entire class say, “this one’s for Lee”.

Now that the folly of organising a trip home – on the very day that my first module is due – has sunk in, I’m working hard at getting the paintings done so that I can hand it all in and have my crit a week early. All the daylight hours are set aside for painting, and the night time is the right time for paperwork. And worrying about painting, of course. The wooden sculpture isn’t going to completed, but hopefully the combination of the clay sculpture and the five portraits will prove to have successfully accomplished the aims I wrote in the brief.

The next challenge will be making a portable practice for myself, if I’m going to get any work done while I’m over 4000 miles away (I’m not from around these here parts), and deciding how many books to take for my dissertation research. I think I’ll actually enjoy setting aside a few days at the library in Bridgetown! I won’t be able to think clearly about any of that until this module is over though. For now it’s head down, on with the work.

Never underestimate the impact that white goods have on one’s soundness of mind. No dishwasher or washing machine for half a week can lead to extreme agitation. This information should temper the following rant.

I hate CVs. I hate having to write them, I hate having to edit them, I hate having to read them. It makes me feel so artificial and self-conscious. What I hate even more is going to all the trouble of doing all that hateful stuff, and then coming up against a job that won’t take them, in favour of an even more hateful application form. Last week I did some work on the website aspect of our Professional Practice module, and this week I started to think about the dreaded CV in all its incarnations. We’ll have to make three different versions for use in different situations, which is useful, but still a pain. Having done a similar unit last year during the HND course, none of this is too alien. Actually, this year’s brief doesn’t seem any more complicated, dare I say it.

So why the whinge? This module isn’t due to be handed in until next year! I suppose I just feel like it. I probably feel like it because far from being all theoretical, I’m actually in the process of looking for work, and it’s anything but straightforward. Finding something exciting, only to realise that the hours would just be impossible to fit in with childcare or the university course, or wouldn’t pay enough to cover a childminder, is more than annoying. Trying to summarize all of the skills I’ve picked up as a rolling stone/mum/artist/functioning adult is also annoying. In a funk of annoyance I decided to try to draw a diagram style CV instead… which actually turned out to be more enjoyable to do, and may or may not go down well in certain situations. On reflection it seems that our course does quite a bit to prepare us for life after university. I just feel the need to hit the ground running, which puts the stress on.

On the other hand it’s been a good week in the studio, and the wooden block has been moved to the sculpture room to be hacked away at with mallet and chisels until the finer detail can be addressed in front of the clay model. After a domestic day in the middle of the week, cleaning (really) and – shudder – CV writing, I started some work on the paintings at home today. Alternating between the sculpture and painting is a must to stop my right shoulder and wrist from suffering too much; I can still feel the effects of Tuesday’s hammering now. One more day of it tomorrow should show some good results though. Another good thing – my essay and brief for this first module are complete, a month early, and I’ve given them to a tutor for feedback. Even with a bit of editing, that leaves plenty of space for dissertation writing. Whoopee! I actually mean that.

Oh, and I caught an exhibition at the weekend – Leonardo Da Vinci at the National Gallery. But that’s a post and a half in itself!

Planning the blocking-up of the lime planks took up most of Tuesday’s studio time, and left only a frenzied forty-five minutes to actually start laminating the wood. Going in a few days later to finish the job on my own seemed a good idea at the start, but the drawbacks in only having one pair of arms quickly became apparent. Nevertheless it’s glued and clamped, not as well as it could have been, but hopefully well enough. My first meeting with the staff was scuppered as they planned it for the end of the day when I make my mad dash for the school gate, so I had to appoint a deputy and send her in with my typed list of student feedback. How annoying.

Reading through the modules we were given at the start of term, there’s an essay on curation and a case-study ahead, and I’m quite glad that I’ve completed the essay and the brief for the first module, Visual Research and Working Methodologies. Getting some feedback on them next week will be crucial to refining them and then sticking them into the corner until hand-in, so I can get on with my dissertation.

Recently I’ve been thinking about how to improve my website… it’s a basic drag-and-drop site, which could be worse. I’m not too keen on it though, and I need to improve the images and make the most of the pages, but as I do it all myself it’ll have to wait until I can set aside the time. I want to hold off doing the major refurb until the new work is ready to be uploaded, but as I want to make a writing portfolio as well as a visual art gallery, I decided to try out a WordPress site. Not a lot on there at the moment, save last year’s dissertation and a few bits and pieces. At least it’s something to start with, and as the writing comes along at least it’ll have somewhere to go. We’re assigned a Professional Practice module, but this is something I’ll be hoping to do more of in the future, regardless. Anyway, I’ll leave a few links to my online footprint:

www.leedevonish.com

www.leedevonish.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/LeeDevonishArt

www.twitter.com/LeeDevonish

Back to the brushes.

After a strange start to last week I locked myself indoors and did some work on the five paintings I’d started the week before. My new method of working involves being far more precise than I ever have been, but so far it seems to be working for me, and I can spread myself between more pieces as each dries in turn. Having a high amount of detail in the unfinished pieces lets me imagine them in relation to each other as well as the ones I’ve yet to start; as they’ve got to work as a group it’s quite useful.

It’s time to start blocking up the limewood for the sculpture, as I’m happy enough with Phil’s clay model at the moment… it’ll be interesting doing that tomorrow, hopefully with lots of assistance from the tutor who conveniently happens to specialise in wood carving! A bit cheeky after making such a pig’s ear of the crit last week, I know.

I think I’ll need to do some drawing overnight to work through some ideas for the final sculpture, as a likeness alone isn’t what I’m after, and that’s all the clay model is. I’m envisioning lowering the cutoff to further down the chest, but not necessarily with wood. A lot of it may be in the positioning, but I don’t know yet. Lots of thinking aloud – on paper.

Meanwhile, tomorrow will bring my first real work as the student rep. I’ve jotted down some of the group’s feedback to pass on to the staff in the meeting; here’s hoping it goes smoothly. I’m also to write down We may also be joined on the course by a new student who’s giving us a look over tomorrow – we’re to try our best to appear normal so as not to scare her off. Well, we can but try.