I just got a cake in the post – my mum sent me a cake! And it isn’t stale…possibly slightly squashed. I’m pretty impressed that it got here in one piece.

Museology is another one of those things I get ridiculously excited about (possibly evident from the title of this), so being talked at for an hour about it is pretty much my ideal Monday morning (my actual ideal Monday involves having slept a lot more than currently). I even remembered my voice recorder this time (I’m not very good at concentrating on slides and someone talking at the same time, I’ve found I tend to go off on tangents too so I probably miss several important bits because it reminded me of a book or something)… Leicester was even mentioned, I actually looked (very briefly, and not very seriously – like how I looked at doing linguistics as an excuse to be pedantic all the time) at their museology department, but I didn’t like the idea of not doing studio stuff. Although they offer the MA in Museum Studies as a distance learning course…although I did have that amazing plan of doing my MA at Massachusetts College of Art… Hm. I’m assuming I can even afford to do an MA, or want to.

Back to museology…or sort of. It was all interesting and wonderful and I’ve got a list of books to find and decide if I should buy or not (meaning I probably will), and mentioned people I recognised. It’s always good when I’m not totally clueless as to what’s happening. There’s an essay I really like, Things & Words: Towards A Lyrical Museum by Mikhail Epshtein – which is vaguely where I got the idea of a museum of exploration, or at least a museum that selected only objects with ‘souls’ and tried to retain as much of that as possible. I’m not sure how successfully, because I knew the context behind the objects I put in my museum and no one else really did…too late for that now. Anyway! Quite a bit of it is about vesch (objects with souls), but there’s some nice categories of museums (which I guess makes it a taxonomy of taxonomies) and some other bits and pieces… I’m pretty sure it’s on Google books (it’s in Tekstura: Russian Essays On Visual Culture). I should probably read it again, it might be something I could fit into the sculpture project. I like categorising things after all, and coming up with a taxonomy for…something would give a pretty good representation of how obsessive I can be about some things. It could fit into the essay we have to do for visual culture too, the question I’ll (probably) do is creating an art school – I should probably ask about the essay, everyone seems to be pretending it doesn’t exist at the moment.

I’ve mixed up the paint I need for life drawing tomorrow (and left it in my locker so I have to carry less stuff), although I was supposed to have a reason for the colours I chose to use and I really don’t. Teal because it’s quite possibly my favourite colour, I have no idea why I thought doing red/green/orange/purple were good ideas too. It’s going to be quite a…garish mess I think. Ah well. I’ve done some sketchbook stuff for sculpture, it’s not quite as bad as I thought. Assuming I can get my hands on some wire so I have something to fiddle with (I might make the quotes I have out of wire, because that’s as 3D as I can think – or I’ll use the shoes, but I feel bad using the shoes). Although I did put up a freecycle ad for old shoes so I can ‘claim my territory’ with shoes…I already have two replies. I just need to decide if that was actually a good idea or not, else I’m going to end up with a load of old shoes. But if you have any shoes you don’t want…I might be interested…

I have no idea how I forgot this.

I have work on a wall. Which is unusual really, I have a lot of work that needs to be done so it can go on a wall. So it’s nice to have some done things. My contribution to mounting was trying to work out if it was level from far away (which was quite difficult, seeing as I don’t see straight). And making tea. And sweeping. Basically being a housewife. Lovely.

Anyway, it looks lovely, and I’ll probably have to keep going in to go “oh look! I have work on a wall!”, just to amuse myself. My feet didn’t enjoy it so much and I might actually sleep tonight. There was a slight ‘oh dear God no one’s gonna turn up’ moment, but my mum came. And my dad So that was good. She also brought a print (I think she probably would have liked to buy the whole series).

And I got to tell someone that I got into Edinburgh College of Art. Which is top of my things to tell people list. It still makes me smile.

No doubt you were expecting some wonderful, insightful, post. Sadly, no. My brain has wandered off without me. So ta da… All I can tell you is I’ve drunk an awful lot to tea, said ‘y fronts’ more than usual and eaten a very nice bagel.

My canvases look tiny. But it’s starting to look like a real exhibition, wouldn’t you say? I’m also covered in paint, no matter…

It should look even better tomorrow evening.

Isn’t that lovely and wonderful? I’m kinda sad I missed the 1000th view, but we can celebrate 1010 instead.

Things for the Vesch exhibition are going well, I have 3 of 4 prints all done and ready to go. I’m hoping that I can do the fourth tomorrow and it won’t go horribly wrong or anything. They look good all together. Everything else seems to be going well for it too, I’ve seen a lot of work lying about on frames anyway.

And I have nothing else to add. Apart from I’ve bought more books. And I heard some brilliant quotes today, and yesterday actually. Oh, and 3 of 4 search terms for today were quotes about facial hair. Is that good? Who knows.

• “I don’t want to sound snobbish, but I’m going to sound snobbish.”
• “visual plumbing”
• “art has to have a uselessness so we can discuss it”
• “all my nuts have fallen out of my bag.”
• “she licks my arse hole”
• “I’m scared of snakes, but I’m not scared of this ruler.”
• “It had a really sticky floor.”
• “It’s like he’s playing a part, but it’s him.”
• “…another one I’d marry for the surname.”
• “He used to be ‘lived with his mum’ Tony.”
• “I once got a detention for making an obscene gesture behind a Latin teacher’s head.”
• “I had to teach a student how to use a book.”
• “At least I know Margaret Thatcher wasn’t a dog!”

I had to come back and add this in…I published this and the suggested tags (next to each other) were Margaret Thatcher and ‘arse hole’. That made me smile.

Exciting things happened today, but my brain is all mushy. I did (used in the loosest possible sense, because it didn’t really work too well) colour darkroom printing. I managed to not walk into things, but everything came out pink or orange or green no matter what I did. Which is annoying. Maybe I should read about it before just running into things. Ah well.

The other exciting thing was that two of my final prints are now done. But I need lots more (I’ve currently spent £53+ on canvas, and I’ll probably need even more). But four or five of these are doubling as my contribution to the Vesch exhibition (which is due Tuesday). I was hoping to get another done today but it refused to be sunny, which was annoying. Maybe tomorrow.

I have a very large pile of things to take to Edinburgh in September, even more seeing as my mum brought me kitchen knives and towels. And a chopping board. I’m not sure how it’s all going to fit into my room though.

Isn’t it a pretty teal colour? I also match my t-shirt looking like that. All 6,747 words/52 pages…it looks  a bit smaller like that. 6,747 still sounds impressive though.

Whoever finds the most spelling mistakes gets a bagel.

These (or at least something similar) will be my final prints for my exam project (the juxtapositions of unrelated objects stuff).

It’s two separate gum prints on one canvas, except that I got the teal mixture past my line of masking tape. Anyway, it worked and it looks pretty nice now I’ve painted it (washing it stained the canvas an odd mix of red, yellow and teal). I’m going to do triptychs and a four piece version…what does come after triptych? Hm.

It even links (in and a round about sort of way) to one of the artists specified in the question, in that Hieronymus Bosch did a few triptychs. But that’s a good enough link for me.

-E.

Above: Inside front cover, type from original spine.

Below: Stitching on spine.

Above: Front cover

I don’t have much to show for it, well I have two hundred words. But I’m not convinced they’re terribly exciting. And copy and pasting it here misses out all the far more interesting footnoted books… Speaking of books, my list of books I’m currently reading has grown again…

-E.

I finally got round to scanning some test prints to see if it’d work for my final prints for this project… But it worked (well, the ones where I wrote on the white worked) so I can do more like this until I end up with enough for a book!

I’ve also started my essay to accompany this work, Veschism: An investigation into the collection, use and significance of objects in art, doesn’t that sound intelligent?!

-E.

I’m cutting this a bit fine, but I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do for the Sketchbook Project. I had started it ages ago (in October!), but I hated it so I took all the pages out and tried a few things and hated those too. So it’s just going to be my manifesto, or the original version of it at any rate. I have this feeling that poor old Veschism will keep on growing and evolving. Anyway, there’s some progress with this project anyway…

-E.

A pretty much empty tube of heel balm that was found at the bottom of my road whilst walking my dog. There’s a cut in the back, about an inch or two up from the lid where cream has been taken out. It smelt odd, and I didn’t especially feel like picking it up…but I did anyway.

In a round about sort of way it inspired my Explorer Remedies – which is an entirely different story.

Taken using a Rolleicord I TLR with Ilford HP5 120 film.

-E.

I came across the word ‘vesch’ whilst researching the use of objects in art for my current project. There’s no perfect English translation, but it means something like ‘an object with a soul’ or ‘an object endowed with human characteristics’. It fitted so well with my idea – or perhaps belief – that all objects have some inherent value, that I started to use it to describe my collections of objects.

It didn’t become a manifesto straight away; in fact the if someone hadn’t described me as being “a one woman art movement” I probably wouldn’t have come up with it in the first place! I never really intended it to become a “real” art movement, it was just an afternoon spent thinking up what I think art should be and what art is to me (as well as objects). But well…it’s fair to say it’s grown, I doubt it’ll be dominating the art world any time soon (or ever), but it’s inspired an exhibition and I officially have admirers/followers…

It was also a fairly perfect solution to my complete hatred of producing anything ‘public’, instead of hoarding it all in my sketchbooks…

-E.

]]>