Pyramid of Arts

I've been offered a position as an artist with Pyrmaid! I'm really excited to make a start, and this is the opportunity that I've been most fired up about in months.

SO MANY EXHIBITIONS

I've been making a conscious effort to kick-start my brain into doing something, ANYTHING even mildly creative by attending as many exhibitions as I can recently. If you're stuck in a funk, just keep re-feeding your brain until it starts working again.

This week I made the most of being in London, and saw two shows: The show of Laura Carlin's work at the House of Illustration, and (more excitingly), an exhibition of outsider art, curated by Jarvis Cocker, at the Museum of Everything in Marylebone. It was almost an extension of the Journey's Into the Outside series that Cocker made in 1998 (it was watching that series a few years ago that kindled my interest in outsider art), and it was just spectacular. Over this last year, outsider art has become a subject that is of real interest to me, especially as I've become increasingly interested in the therapeutic potential of art-making. That pure creativity can flow so continuously from an individual is an amazing, amazing thing. It's profound, even. Art-making is such a powerful force, we should never underestimate or trivialize just how powerful it can be, regardless of whose hand its from.

2 interviews

Went to two really great interviews yesterday, one with Pyramid of Arts Leeds and the other with Leeds Mencap, for a role as a volunteer arts & crafts coordinator. This role would involve being responsible for devising and delivering art-making workshops for kids with a wide range of special needs. Both interviews went really well, and I'm excited at the prospect of getting some real-world experience that could help me with my post-graduate studies. Feel so refreshed for a day outside the studio, life is better on the outside.

Paul Peter Piech at the People's History Museum

On Ben's recommendation, I went to go and see the exhibition of Paul Peter Piech's work at the People's History Museum in Manchester. It blew my mind, and heart, wide open. Although I really appreciate the work on a technical/aesthetic level, it was the content that made my seeing it feel oddly serendipitous; as if that work was precisely what I needed to see at that moment in time. 

Later, when I was thinking about exactly why I was attaching such significance to having seen the work, I decided that it was because the work actually means something. It's all alive with meaning and intention and reason for existing. 

Recently I've been feeling increasingly disenchanted with the constrictions that the term 'illustration' can place on art-making, and thinking that 90% of what we're expected to think and care about seems vacuous. This show was a reminder that humanity, and the emotion that pulses through the world and how people relate to the world around them is what is important to me.

I want to start writing. 

Pyramid of Arts

I've been offered an interview to participate in a Leeds based group called Pyramid of Arts, which focuses on giving people who are disabled or otherwise disenfranchised the opportunity to make art! I got in touch with the group because I'm getting increasingly interested in pursuing art therapy after graduation, as a postgraduate study programme. I already have experience as a volunteer worker (with children/young people with special needs), but feel it would be really beneficial to get some more experience in a focused 'art' context, rather than just as a caregiver/holiday club leader.

The organisation seem really interesting, and a lot of their practical work is centred around sensory stimulation and tactile use of media, both of which are becoming increasingly integral to my own practise.