nearly halloween

so it's now nearly halloween and i realise i am a bit useless at writing about what i've been up to on here

first things first we went on a trip to the liverpool biennial exhibitions... there was a lot to see but in my group we managed to see 4 of the exhibitions: the john moores painting prize at the walker art gallery, 52 renshaw street, scandinavian hotel and a foundation liverpool. highlights for me included a performance by sachiko abe, i liked thgis becuase of the simplicity of it and the calming nature of the performance.
painting being a medium i enjoy to work in i liked seeing the exhibition at the walker art gallery, seeing where painting as an art form is today. i liked a range of the works on show especially the work by jon braley, elizabeth mcdonald, nick fox (one of the prizewinners), annabelle shelton and cara nahaul. these works especially gave me ideas on how i could move my work forward.
after seeing the exhibitions n liverpool we went to see the anthony gormley statues on crosby beach. thankfully the tide was out so we could actually see them. i'm still undecided about whether i like gormley's sculptures or not but this i liked i think more becuase of the day we went on, it was very cold, windy and a bit grey! this added to the isolation felt.

back in manchester i've been doing some of the inductions on offer. everybody has done woodwork and i have chosed to do screenprinting, letterpress and plaster casting. i think of all of these i will be using letterpress the most. i didn't realise the variety of materials that i can print onto and i really liked the result from printing on a leaf.

the mary greg project is still going well and i visited platt hall on tuesday afternoon. i was feeling pretty ill that day so i was not as enthusiastic about the objects as i normally would have been but i still loved seeing the variety in her collection. i loved the embroidery on lots of the objects and i am thinking of incorporating the letters into some embroidery pieces of my own. i also liked the collection of dolls there, i used to play with dolls when i was younger and i liked seeing what children would have played with in mary greg's day. there were also a lot of doll's accessories, an old version of barbie! these included beaded handbags, necklaces, shoes and even umbrellas and fans. as i said earlier i'm thinking of using the letters in my work possibly with embroidery or doing something with the letterpress. mary wanted people to be inspired by her artwork and her own creations so i want to make something myself from what inspires me in the collection.

finally i recieved my sketchbook from the sketchbook project tour. all the sketchbooks entered will go on a tour of america and finally end up in the brooklyn art library and be catalouged there. i have the theme 'make mine a double' for the project. i'm still thinking about what i could do for this but i want to focus on the mary greg project for now and do this later.