Mx.D.P

Amid a tattooing summer, I have my eye on my Art life. BorthFest will come around sooner than one thinks, and a new festival earlier in the year in the neighbouring town is starting to build on the creative network.

Tomorrow’s meeting with Sally will look more deeply at funding and setting up the CIC community interest company. We are up against application deadlines, and as always, I take a pragmatic approach to what is sensible to achieve within a given time frame. Slow and steady wins the race. Jess is also joining the meeting, and it’s great to see the community college my son went to 10 years ago wanting to become involved. Once September rolls around, I’ll be contacting Aberystwyth University. The proposed festival might work for the students, but one never knows with semester timings.

Back at the MA thesis, the second round has been written, and I’ve e-mailed Hillary Powell on another platform just in case she didn’t get the first msg. Though I don’t expect she will have time to answer my questions but, you never know!

I enjoyed the UAL doctoral workshop on study statement writing, which helped shape my PhD proposal statement. I’ve shared it with Dr Giz, Dr Ellen and Dr Chris… As well as my friends at Aber Uni/Aberrations, and I’m getting feedback. I’m dealing with complex subjects, hopefully in a straightforward and easy-to-understand manner.

I was going to travel down to Romford to Dr Giz and Dr Ellen’s commitment ceremony, but Transport for Wales has decided in its wisdom to only put on two coaches this summer instead of the usual four, which means travel as a ‘Crip’ person just became hellish! That, combined with the cost of a black cab between Euston and Tottenham court road (no buses or tubes for ‘Crips’ on a class 3 scooter!), a couple of nights in a hotel, it all looks impossible, and I’m in my box again…. But these are the experiences of a Crip… and the choices that we have to make.

Workshop-wise, Tom turned up to the online social media collaboration and reel-making session for the MA course, and we had a good chat. Still, I think it’s possibly unreasonable to expect course members to turn up in summer. We looked at reel making on IG and using their templates, which seems to get more algorithm engagement, so I hope Tom will give it a go.

Clem and I have come up with a new name for our lecture/online presentation, and we are developing the power-point. I’ve been working on a short animation for the presentation. Animations take a lot of time and need a lot of drawings; 54 so far, and you need brain space to think about how they move along. I often put them in small bites to adjust timing; this is one very short section. This is probably too fast, as you don’t see the head movements, but maybe you don’t need to!

The tattoo designs underwent a different mounting process to resemble the electronic presentation. It took all day and looked awful, so I had to cut out all the little paintings with a scalpel to get them off the mounting board… I threw them on the floor… I did rescue them later… I knew I didn’t like the mounting after the first 3, but I continued… there are lessons to be learnt there… what I was angry with was the wasted mounting and laminating pouches.