Wirral Metropolitan College

Well, it took me a week to recover but I finally got all the elective work displayed – just have to wait now. That part is always the worst for me.

On a different note I have been researching cardboard tubes – mad the things you have to think of on this course but so useful. If I was a working artist and my work that I am producing at the moment had been commissioned I wouldn't be faffing around with making wooden transportation frames, so I researched how else I would be transporting the books.

8ft high cardboard tubes is how, cut in half and hinged to be removed once each book is hung – ingenious.

AND only £250 for 10 tubes – I am so tempted – life would be sooo much easier with said tubes but then I have to feed my kids too – so -cardboard tubes and beans on toast all month or hard work and let them eat cake?

Today is the day.

Site specific Elective work all going up today, I was up until 3am finishing off, just got to mount everything on board – Assessment is Tuesday but as I work on Mondays mine has to go up today.

I'm tired

I'm stressed

I'm feeling too old to be doing this.

Is it harder for mature students or does everyone get like this I wonder?

:(

Will pop back after the weekend and I'm sure I'll be revitaised and raring to go again.

How things change. I have decided that instead of using hooks in the ceiling as I usually do, that I will use metal grills suspended from the ceiling of the gallery that will then have the 'exploding notes' secured to them coming directly up from the books.

This all happened because I happened to go to Leeds last week to the artists book fair – £25 train ticket to see what other artists do with their books. It was interesting, there were some books that intrigued me but I was expecting a lot more to be honest. It was good, don't get me wrong – it just wasn't what I was hoping for.

Anyway, on the way to Leeds I was reading the Guardian and noticed in the 'what's on' guide that The University Gallery was showing an exhibition (Perhaps Nothing, Perhaps Something) that included the work of Cornelia Parker.

Her work 'Neither from nor towards' was simply amazing, I would recommend anyone who happens to be near Leeds to pay a visit, the exhibition includes other work that was also fantasitc but Parkers piece just held me in awe.

I have long been a fan but through books, magazines and the power of the Internet. I have never managed to see a 'real' Cornelia Parker piece. The installation was so well thought out, so meticulous in it's design and orchestration that I confess I spent far too much time (or maybe not enough time) circling and viewing from every angle.

Anyway, the individual pieces of rock were all hung from a suspended metal grill which gave me the idea to use the grill (that was kind of a round the houses explanation of why I have chosen to use grills instead of hooks in my own work).

So in my search for fabricated grill, realising the expense involved and as such thinking on a smaller scale, I have discovered replacement grills for speakers, pre-fabricated circular metal that is ideal. The books are all music based and so to have them exploding 'into' speaker grills seems very apt.

God, I'm going on!

Also this week I discovered another student on our course has folded books – the amazing thing is, she is doing the degree from 250 miles away as she moved house in the summer so everything is done with her tutor by email and she only returns for seminars and assessments. When she came up this week we noticed our books are very similar which was a bit of a shock to see but then I still have to explode mine, so they wont look alike by the time I am finished. It was actually good to see the differences, Louise's are so neat & very perfectly folded in a way that I really didn't want for mine but hers did look fantasic.

What else – oh had many headaches and migraines this week – definitely due to stress but it means my concentration is not great – JUST as I need it to be! May try acupuncture if it doesn't settle down soon.

Making frames to transport my work safely into the gallery for the degree show. The books are very delicate and are usually made on site but we have less than a week to set up and each book can take a day or two to make.

So I have to make all ten of them in college and somehow transport them safely into the gallery to then be re-strung onto their ceilings.

The maquette of the frame worked well but the actual frame I made this week was laughable, about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Then thanks to puting heads together with a lecturer and one of our ex students we came up with a plan that should work and is now part way through being made so next week may well see the first one made which would be a big relief.

Last week I was working for Liverpool Biennial in the ideas shop with David Bade again before his return to Amsterdam and I made one of my book sculptures in the shop – site specifically. Using an A-Z book I carefully cut out any piece of the Leeds/Liverpool canal on any page and the surrounding parks and roads, the roads were cut from the index too but kept completely to the Seaforth area. Then I threaded them through the pages and hung the book and some of the threads from the ceiling and walls. It's meaning is to draw attention to the slow down of local regeneration and how it had affected the different threads of the community and how by working together they can be united once again. It went down well with community members, some of whom had offered to help set it up.

This weekend will be spent tidying my studio so that I can actually fit in there again to work!!