Our Frank

I'll admit I found the second year of my degree quite challenging, I had an extremely slow start and when I did begin to get going it was hard to muster creativity. To put it bluntly, I was a magician who had run out of tricks. Making work was a hard thing to do and concentrating and knuckling down was even harder.

However, once the Workshop Module started and we began to bring in ephemera I found that I could easily adapt on something already existing. Ephemera is something I love and have a considerable amount of, I'm not a hoarder but a lover of things, of objects. I'd bought some old books which were possibly worth a bit of money, but as I didn't care for selling them and felt that cutting them up might be of some benefit, I did exactly that.

The work I made with this ephemera was something very different and I really liked what I'd made, I was proud of it and I could see it going somewhere. I love words and I'm very fond of them so it seemed natural to combine both word and image to make work. The stuff I wrote as part of this investigative journey complimented the images I'd selected, I'd managed to impress myself. Not only was it using typography, collage and ephemera but it was incorporating my views on relationships and love - I'd not made work about these two subjects for some time.

So my Workshop Module and Studio Practice were working alongside one another and this was the whole point, to allow the two modules to intertwine. It was around this time that things got on top of me and everything just went by so fast, I didn't have time to catch up, all I could do was to stand there looking gormless, doing nothing.

At some point during the Exhibition Module I sorted myself out, I realised what needed to be done, what was important and how I could careen this sinking ship in a more stable direction. The stained glass windows proved to be somewhat of a saving grace. For all of the late nights and marker pens I plowed into them they were the one thing that managed to get me back on track.

When it came to report writing I found that I didn't struggle with this quite as much as others might have. I can write, and dealing with the facts and putting them in some form of logical order was something I didn't find hard to do. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the report writing and there's no doubt that it will come in handy in the future, for whatever career awaits me.

As I've wrote about the ephemera, it really did help me to vision things differently and allow me to be able to create work in a new way.

Another 'highlight' of my second year were my Jesus screenprints, these too were made with literally seconds to spare; I was fighting off deadlines with my limited kung fu knowledge. The outcome is one that I am incedibly happy with. By taking some engravings from my ever-growing collection of Bibles I was able to create some beautiful and very profound screenprints. The typography of which was influenced by the colours, decided through trial and error, and subject matter.

In conclusion, my second year is one of mixed emotions. In the end everything worked out and all of the worry really wasn't worth it. Overall I've learnt that finishing this degree and doing something I'm extremely fond of is what matters. Onwards and upwards, so they say

The Times They Are a-Changin'

3 years ago I would have considered myself to be immature, annoying and a general nuisance. Now, I am still all of those things, but slightly more so. I was just beginning to start art college after working for a year and a year-long stint of bad and unproductive relationships. It was around this time that I was persuaded (perhaps seduced is a better word) by Tom Howarth to enrol at art college and do what I love and enjoy and hopefully gain some form of qualification from it. In many respects he has helped me to see the light, not in any religious sort of way, but by encouraging me to break-up with my then girlfriend and making me aware that I should persue the thing that I am best at, which is art. The way I think, write and act now has radically changed compared to how I did then. Where as before I believe I put on a front and acted the way others wanted me to act. Now I do what I want, please and feel to be right. I'm not afraid to speak my mind or wear my heart on my sleeve.


N.B Done during the writing workshop, in conjunction with 'Monologue of a Coal Miner's Wife'.