So, I never did come back to write yesterday. I really don't mean to be quiet or rude or to never reply to emails and such, I've just been having a really bad spell of health lately and I've not been on line much at all this weekend. Yesterday I did a lot of laying down and a lot of sleeping while trying to avoid episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Bitch and do a bit of writing at the same time. Applying a large image of Samantha Janus to my door must have really exhausted me yesterday because after that I tried very hard to get on the computer to catch up with emails but I just found myself back on the bed, my eyes closed and my mind dozing.
The poster was worth the effort (and the constant stickiness of my slippers for the rest of the day!) because it looks pretty nice on my door now. I remember the first time I ever saw Samantha Janus, I was 15 and Game On had just started. I remember watching it with my parents and just thinking, "My god - who is THAT??" She just has such a classic beauty, a sexy smile and eyes that could almost swallow you up. I suppose she must be one of my longest-running crushes, actually, even longer than Jaye and Gillian. My word, that's quite a feat.
My weekend was quite.... bizarre in places. I did some more sorting out of stuff - yeah, I know it sounds as though that's been going on forever but I can only do a bit at a time or I'll end up feeling knackered and falling asleep in the middle of it! And believe me, you don't want to wake up laying across three ring binders and a roll of masking tape. It happened to me once and it wasn't pretty....
But I found some rather intreguing things as I was turning out more bits. I found my whole bag of art materials from college which left me with charcoal-covered hands and various shreads of paper all over me, but the smell of the marterials just took me right back. There was the pungent cow gum that reminded me of long days pacing up and down, mounting six sheets pf artwork at a time for the diploma show, there were the sticky fixers that reminded me of the second show - the HND show - and the painstaking process of putting your last two year's work in a nice arrangement on the wall, there was the box of paints that I'd used for all the sheets in my bermuda triangle project - I came close to winning some weird prize for that and had a large amount of fun in the process - and the acrylic paints that we all used in the first year and which sent the whole room full of seventeen-year-olds sky high on cold days when the doors were closed and we lacked ventilation :)
I miss art college. I miss the whole way of life. I miss the buzz of creativity, the walls covered with layers of paint and charcoal, giant sheets of paper everywhere you looked, sinks that were filthier than the hands being washed in them and the sound of easles being carted from one side of the room to the other. I miss the mixture of people, all different ages and backgrounds, colours and creeds, influences and inspirations. It was a fantastic environment.
Of course, there were hard times too, especially when it came down to a couple of the tutors who were a little bit.... strange. I think they'd been around the acrylics too long. And there was certainly no slacking when it came to work - I know art students are a worldwide joke but if you actually want to get good marks then it's *not* enough to spit on a piece of paper and submit it - I worked damn hard throughout my four years and I enjoyed what I did.
No one except my parents expected me to go to art college. I was always the teacher's pet at school, the nerd. The A-student who always did her homework and who was expected to want to go and do normal subjects and have some career in nuclear physics or something. But I had had enough of the academic side of things. I knew I wanted to have a creative career and I wanted to follow that straight away. I suppose I had expected my parents to give me the usual parental lecture about doing A-levels and going to university, but it never came. Instead, I was told that there was an art college with a fantastic reputation just out of town and that they'd take me to the open day.
Lucky for me, that art college started to run higher level courses in the same building so after I'd done my doploma, art A level and a smattering of computer qualifications that we didn't even know we were doing until the certificates arrived, I was able to stay on there to continue my education rather than go away to University. I wasn't ready to leave home, mentally or physically, so staying where I was seemed like a perfect solution.
Looking back, I have a couple of regrets about my time at college. I regret taking some of the stupid comments that a couple of the tutors made. At the time I was a far weaker person and I just put up with it because I didn't have the strength to fight back, but if I had my time over again I'd have nipped it in the bud. And the other thing I regret is not being more experimental in my work. I was almost frightened in a way of exploring new techniques in case they didn't work. I really wish I'd taken more risks with my work now. I wish I'd taken my opportunity to explore every possible medium.
One thing i adored when I was at college but never did enough of was printmaking. Unfortunately, choosing illustration and graphics as my speciality I didn't get the chance to explore it as fully as I wish I had. There was lino print making, collograph making and so on. I loved the smell of the inks, the physical effort of pushing the giant Albion press down and peeling the sheet of paper away from the lino afterwards, and even the cleaning of the rollers and the messy ink areas, along with scrubbing the crap off my hands with the horrid orange hand cleaner.
I have the opportunity to revisit both those things - the college and the printroom. My jewellery making course was cancelled so I started to look for other courses I might like to do and there's one that - no matter how many times I try to tell myself to be sensible about it - I just want to do so much that it almost burns.
There's a full year's printmaking course running from September onwards, every thursday, five hours each week. I want to do this so much. But I keep thinking about how it could affect my health and how I'll cope when the heavy presses get too much. I can't expect people to make exceptions for me if I find the going too tough - but I just want it so badly. I miss being part of a college environment - that was another thing I loved about working there for a year.
I need to think this through seriously before I decide either way. If I go for it then it might end up being a mistake - but if I don't, I could end up regretting it for the rest of my life. I adore printmaking and I love that college. I think this will be a tricky one. Hmm.
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