Monday 17 November 2008


It has been 5 years last week since the death of my mother and nearly 35 years since the death of my father and this weekend I felt very lonely. I know I am lucky to have my husband and daughter but other than that I have no family and when you are around people who all have large networks of family and friends you can feel very isolated. Studying at home can be isolating as well esp. when studying a contextual module which is so concentrated on reading and essay writing. Are all artists destined to be alone? I can hear my mum saying 'get on with it' - sometimes I miss her.

Monday 10 November 2008


It's disgusting weather here today -gales outside. The daughter came in from college soaked to the skin and the dogs and cats refuse point blank to venture outside.
I have been having a slightly skiving day today under the excuse having a lot of housework to do as its a Material Girls meeting tomorrow to de-brief on the exhibition, discuss some of the projects we've been asked to participate in arising from the exhibition and to start on the next exhibition.
We also had the second ERTF conference on November 1st. It was on the topic 'Making Money From your Work' but was really about ways of improving our professional practice. We also had to excellent talks from Carol Cann and Sara Impey about their work - which is completely different but both had used lettering in part. I think the 40 plus attendees all enjoyed it and we were able to give them a programme of events for the coming year including our inaugural exhibition (If you're interested look on www.ertf.org.uk ).
I think next year is going to prove even busier than this and I need to concentrate properly on my own work eps. my degree if I am ever going to get my work to the next level so I will have to think seriously, having launched ERTF, if I should remain Chair after April over the next couple of months.
Catherine - one of my OPUS fellow students -has placed a recording of part of Julia's funeral on our google group which really made me feel more connected than I have recently and strangely has spurred me on just to get on and work! perhaps Julia's just making sure we don't all give up .