Today, for the first day in weeks - no, wait, months - I spent an entire day making pictures. I feel like a great thirst has been slaked. But also suprised by what has emerged. Not what I was anticipating...

Reading other the posts of other AA2A artists and student representatives I'm reassured by the shared feelings of helplessness at time slipping by and of the cacophany of excitements and anxieties. This week I've had all these things bundled into one; relief at having finished some major writing commissions, excitement about the prospect of making new work, anxiety in the studios and workshops as I try to reaquaint myself with people, situations and grumpy technicians, misery as I realise I have a very long essay to edit and another to write before Monday morning. But it pays the bills...

Since my last AA2A blog post a great deal has happened both professionally and personally, both good and bad (and in that order). SUPERCONDUCTOR has been a great success, not only on paper in terms of attendence and feedback but it has consolidated and moved my thinking about a number of things on. I was chosen to recieve an arts council bursary to attend State of The Arts in Salford in a couple of weeks. I also did a reading at the historic Literary and Philosophical Society for the Newcastle based artist Ben Jeans Houghton (who was coincidentally this weeks visiting lecturer at Northumbria University). The whole event was rather phenomenal with many inspiring talks and performances. The chance to read a piece of text that I have written in collaboration with Ben's images - and a piece which I had the rare opportunity both to be creative with and to explore new ideas, worlds and approaches to writing - was enlightening. And has cemented my ideas about what I intend to make whilst on the AA2A residency.

Hmm I didn't intend to make this a long, dour post about what I've been doing; I actually wanted to write a little bit about the revelation I've had in regards to my work. Basically, for a long time, I've been grasping for a metaphor, a personal lexis to articulate the abstract concepts I've been thinking and writing about. Namely, how to shape the unbounded; how to address the issue of the void in visual terms. It's sort of an oxymoron I know but I've found some things to work with and I'm going to see where they take me... First of all, I've become interested in the idea of Meteorites as a sign for the (potential) beginning and ending of everything; 60 million years ago it was a meteorite storm that not only reset the biosphere and ended the dinosaurs but also planted the diverse elements and strains of molecules which founded the evolutionary chain of events to human beings (perhaps, probably, but not definitely). There's much more to this concept from assosiative properties to narrative, science, auratic properties, history, poetry etc etc but I don't want to spell it out and I don't want to exhaust possibilities WRITING ABOUT THINGS because I have spent the last year of my life writing about art and not making it. 

I hope this is the beginning of a sea change. 

“Words convey ideas. When ideas have been absorbed words cease... Only those who can take the fish and forget the net are worthy to seek Tao.”

Tao-sheng (ca. 360-434) 

Ordered some metal today. Going to be doing quite a bit of welding and combining laser cut pieces into the sculptures. I am really excited about these and as I have designed them to be interchangeable and can be shown in. Different positions I hope that they will be great proposals of models for bigger pieces. I quite like the idea of interchangeable sculpture. I am also doing some research into potential companies for larger scale laser cutting so that I could go larger if needed.

I have never tried embossing before, but that's what this programme is encouraging me to do, experiment. After dry embossing on card, I decided to try it out using the computer and one of my photographs! My first attempt is not brilliant I know, a bit rough around the edges, but still quite an achievement for me!

Take a look in my image album ' experimenting with embossing'. You will need to look closely as it's quite dark I am afraid, but in some ways I like that, having to look deeper into the fragility of the image, as it just starts to appear on what otherwise is seemingly no more than a blank canvas, and yet it is a photograph. Interesting...

I will need to practice of course and will hopefully add more images as I progress. 

I've had a fun afternoon today playing with movement and markmaking with 4 students from Salford University.  Hoping it's going to be the start of an exciting part of my residency.  We've taken some of the ideas from my Motus Immotus work and started experimenting with multiple performers creating a drawing.  It's been fun to work with others in this process, and we've got a bit of a plan for what to do next including a drawing on mirrors, a test performance/intervention in the dance studio and hopefully something more public.

The new year has started slowly, as I'm sure it has for everyone.

Last week I invited six fine art students to my studio in Byker to discuss the idea of making some artist books for my project; Book Apothecary; The Travelling Museum of Artist Books.  They had found out about this project from a talk I had given last semester.

They got the chance to see a lot of the work that we had already toured and we talked in depth about how the act of making books could relate to all of their individual and very diverse practices.  It seemed clear that books was a universal object that could cross the paths of painting, photography, sculpture and that in itself was a very exciting prospect.

This year is a further exploration for the project of working in different mediums and I've launched a new scheme that invites young artists to take the lead and make work that responds to travel, to suitcases, to the olympics of which we are funded, in a variety of art forms.  I have sent them away to think about what they would like to do and to submit an application for a project.  This project will join 6 other recently funded projects and go on tour later this year.  In additon to their projects they have the opportunity to bring in an artist mentor of their choice and receive additional training in book making and project management.  It's going to be an exciting year for all of us I think.

At the same time, I'm currently working on a commission for 750 sculptures for a US hotel and perhaps a commission in India for a library, that's pretty exciting.  I hope I get to go.  But more excitingly (is that a word?) I'm making work for two simultaneous exhibitions coming up in March.  One is at Globe Gallery - a group show with two other fantastic paper based artists and the next is at Dovetail; a wonderful space which has in the past been curated by Allenheads Contemporary Arts.  The two exhibitions managed and curated by Globe will link the two exhibitions and present new works on paper.  The Dovetail space is all to myself, so much to think about, quite daunting and a lot of work to make for it.  I've buried myself in the library at northumbria researching like crazy.  I forget how much fun reading is.  

Later today I've got the biggest drawing table in the world arriving - 2.4m x 1.2m.  I plan on using this to make very large pieces of paper work.  I'm used to working with small sculptures in multiples which end up large scale so even though the end result is of a similar scale, it's a new way of working.

I'll be making the work both in my studio in Byker and within the workshops at Northumbria.  I cannot wait to begin printing!

Manchester Metropolitan University's library's third floor features the library's Special Collections. This is a collection of books such as rare books, illustrated children's books and artist's books. I love this collection and find all the books fascinating - the delicacy of the pages, the detail of the illustrations and the variety of the covers (hardback, paperback, multi colours etc.). 

On my Interactive Arts course, we were set a site specific project where we had to create work based on a specific location in the campus and exhibit it there. I chose the Special Collections.

After contacting the librarian of the Collection and getting permission to exhibit there for a week, I set about creating my own books. I made the books myself after taking part in a bookbinding workshop and created them in a pop up format however, the books act more as sculptures each featuring one pop up image illustrating a chapter of a story. The story I chose was 'The Red Shoes.'

When exhibiting, I put the books in random alcove throughout the library and left mini ballerina figures between them so that visitors could follow a trail; and follow the story.

Fortunately, I received positive feedback from this idea which I had feared would be a bit confusing for people as it is not a conventional mode of exhibiting, but a visiting college group were apparently really intrigued by the search and it thankfully completed it's task of getting people to explore the collection more thoroughly, successfully.

I hope to continue making books throughout the year and shall document my progress here!

Tom 

I went along to the Aru Faru talk today about abstract art. It was really interesting. I particularly identified and found intruiging the comment made about all art being an illusion.

I also found the work of R H Quaytman interesting and will be doing more research into her work. 

lately i'm aware of a bit of a shift within my well being.  it's a combination of things.  i viewed the staff exhibition in the bonnington gallery, with a specific peice to view, made by robert the technician in the sound studio.  i feel that describing robert as technician is understating the gentleman's ability and talent.  i enjoyed spending time with his sound sculpture.  i enjoyed spending time in the gallery and for the first time the notion of enquiry made sense.  i know that might sound a little far fetched, but in my slow processing of information way, it has taken me a long time to understand where enquiry sits.  

i have had an opportunity to test this notion of enquiry out with an ma student, whom i met last year in the sound studio.  he's working on a new piece and invited me to see the work as it was and comment on what i thought.  with my new found understanding of where enquiry sits within an academic sphere, i was able to view the work and chat with him in a way that he later told me was very useful and insightful.  i enjoyed the experience very much.

it's taken me a long time to settle into the residency.  

one aspect of the residency at ntu that seems to be unique to ntu are sessions with a mentor.  we had our second session last week.  the sessions provide 1:1 discussions, an opportuntity to meet with the technicians and a group discussion.  our meeting was the same day as an artist talk by juneau projects, so three of us visited that too.  i've not been to a formal artist talk of that nature for a while and i'm really pleased with myself for being confident enough to be true to myself and critical enough of the talk to be able to gain something from the experience.

i continue to work in the sound studio.

my reflection at the mid point is that when i began the residency i was slightly without head, and so i was a headless chicken.  now the head has been drawn in and i see things more clearly, and as a result am calmer and more centred.  

I've been having a really good time using the knitting machine at Bradford College. 

I'd like to do a projest on knitted eyebrows.

I'm feeling quite up beat about my work on AA2A at the moment - this week I will be making photo-etchings using a couple of the photograms from my last session in the darkroom. I'm quite excited about this and it will also mean I will have more direct contact with the students. It will be intersting to see whether the images lend themselves to the process.

I have agreed, along with Michelle Trip who is also doing AA2A at Teessside, to be an AA2A group representative for Teesside and get together material about the experience of other artists in the group, in order to write a blog. I'm in the process of contacting the other AA2A artists at Teesside as I rarely see them on campus as we are all doing different things at different times!