From the start of this year I've used the access to Teeside Uni to further develop my printmaking skills, focusing on etching. I've not had time due to my other work commitments, to take advantage of the sculpture workshop facilities as much as I had intended. I have however used the workshop facilities to cut and shape the metal etching plates - this has been invaluable as it has allowed me to add another element to the printmaking process. 

As it's almost at the end of the access for us at Teeside, we are looking at bringing together our work produced during the 6 months to form an exhibition, which will show our range of processes and approach. Details to be posted soon...

Blob_010. Digital image. Ima Pico©. 2011

I am not a ceramicist!

That said I offered a mould making workshop which took place last Thursday,

Thirteen students signed up, three made apologies, four turned up, others presumed MIA.

Those who did attend experienced how (and how not) to make a two part plaster mould.

Each brought there own object except one who made a mould of my work for me, and properly better than some of my efforts!

We made moulds of tiny figures, figurines, a money box and an alarm clock. The latter proving most difficult - becoming stuck in the mould at one point due to slight oversight. Alas. My fault I feel, we were in a hurry for lunch and it was St Patrick's Day - pint of the black stuff and some hula-hoops. mmm....

But we have managed to successfully make casts of all objects, although the clock doesn't look quite like its original. Next step is to fire them in the next batch to inhabit the now working kiln which had its inaugural ceremony giving life to some of the parian cast work i produced over a month ago. I'll get some images uploaded soon.

And as well as plaster mould making I also showed the group alginate and with great results we produced some replica hands and toes. A fab, quick and easy mould making/casting technique that always amazes first time users. They're all telling me there gonna get more of the stuff now. Pretty positive response :)

A few weeks ago, the Old English blog interviewed me about my medieval jewellery work. I've also put the interview on my website, and it has photos and some step-by-step instructions on some of the processes I use.

The interview can be read here on the Primitive Method blog.

As I'm nearly in the final month of the reisdency I have started to begin work on some final paintings.

I hope to hopefully stay on until the end of term, october. As we have a show here in cambridge school of art. I have bulit up work space up and it would be great to continue to complete the work i've started.

best,simon prescott

I cant believe that its nearly April and our last month on this years AA2A, I have enjoyed exploring Bradford College using my pinhole cameras. I have collected so many images students have been amazing and very patient allowing me to work around them. The difficulty now is choosing the images to frame for the end of project exhibition and I also have a solo exhibition in October where I would like to show some of this work. I would like to thank Georgina for featuring my project in the last newsletter.

Hi All

Georgia has been so busy this week, I thought I'd do the weekly blog for a change.

It's been a really busy few months.  We set up AA2A as an organisation in its own right in September to try and secure the future of the project, so we're now a 'Not for Profit Social Enterprise' called AA2A Ltd (previously our funding has been routed through various host organisations).  We've had our hands full doing all the stuff that goes along with being a responsible new organisation eg. a new business plan, applications to Esmee Fairbairn Foundation (they said No!) and the Arts Council (awaiting a decision), and we are currently working on a potential sponsorship deal with a major store.  It's hard work!  Its great to have a browse of this site every few days to remind myself why we're spending so much time trying to get the funding sorted out.... the work you're producing and the blogs you write really are my inspiration.

There's not much time left of this year's schemes now, so do make best use of the next few weeks and keep in touch with us as we have plans to have a more active membership scheme for ex-AA2A artists.  All for now.  Wendy

Blob_009. Digital image. Ima Pico©. 2011

Hi

I've not posted for a while (again!) been so busy with the project. I managed to almost finish scanning everything and had a mad 2 weeks where I was cleaning up the scanned 35mm images using photoshop for ours every day. I'd like to say the hard part is over but it's really not, thats the easy part, now come the editing.

In the meantime I've had an exhibition at the James Hyman Gallery with the other National Media Museum Award winners which was lovely, the preview was great and I got to meet up with a Greg Hobson from the NMM, James Hyman himself, the lovely Valerie who has been keeping me up to date with everything, my Bbrother Antonio (www.antoniolulic.com)  and few friends including Valio who I trained with in Miami before we headed to different cruise ships, Val is from Bulgaria but lives and works in London, and Orlando, an old froind who is now the new face of.. wait for it... Rowntrees fruit pastilles TV ads. I was invited to a lovely artists dinner which was fantastic, really tasty.

here is the link for the exhibtion which is on until late April for anyone in London:

http://www.jameshymanphotography.com/pages/exhibitionintro/1382.html

I'm about to upload alot more images, as I feel the work is forming a more cohesive body of images which I can start editing into a book. I forgot to mention I also met up with Gordon MacDonald, in Brighton! we went through the images and he helped me clear up a few things and look at my images more in depth. Editing is alot harder than I thought it would be and this is the largest body of images I've had to work with.

So.. I'll have some studio pics from the late night scanning session uploaded to a folder here, and past images from our group exhibition at Northumbria, we have another one in the pipelines soon and I'm also exhibiting in a slideshow type evening in London in april with Contact Editions which I'm excited about!

here's the link:

http://contacteditions.co.uk/home

... I blogged on this site.

 As an ex AA2Aer I've kept a low profile but since finishing the course things have been ticking along. I've done a show with an artists group, sold some work and got a couple of other irons in the fire. I'm also submitting some work to the RA Summer show for the first time in fifteen years (its a long shot I know - but you've gotta try).