Decmber, 20th; Almost Christmas!

Well then, it`s the Christmas Holidays!

And luckily, I`ve got 5 weeks off from University right now so I`ve got some time to just sit and do absolutely nothing until I work. The only thing I`m not looking forward too, is working on Christmas day.

Unfortunately, that is the price that people who work in healthcare have to pay at this time of year; and yes, I`ll be working the early shift in the care home that I`ve been working at since back in March. People take it in turns every year to work shifts at Christmas, so this year I`ll be working the early shift on Christmas day, but next year I won`t have to work Christmas day.
So your one year on, one year off really. I don`t mind it seeing as I`ll be making the lives of those who are ill and lonely, much easier and a lot more cheerful than what would be if there was no one there.

This is going to be my first time working on Christmas day, I`m not particularly looking forward to it seeing as when I get back from work; I would of missed my nephew opening his presents, I would be ready for my Christmas dinner and I`ll most probably be quite tired and not want to play any Christmas party games or drinking games.
But then again, I`m improving the lives of others; if I wasn`t there then who would be?

I would also like to add, that for work I had to complete a unit of work on basic healthcare, safeguarding, health and safety, first aid and adult protection; I managed to complete all 15 modules and have now achieved my Care Certificate!

Besides working over the Christmas period, I have had another photography session where I managed to get 156 photos; pretty soon I`ll try and upload a few of them to my art blog and I`ll also attempt to try and go over the new project.
I`m still a bit confused about my next project as I`m not sure as to what I`m going to produce or how I`m going to produce it over the holidays... But I have a bit of an idea and I should hopefully cover that when it comes to uploading photography.

The next time I update on the Diary blog should be after Christmas day, so until then..
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Have an amazing Holiday, break from work, break from all of that coursework and go get a little bit drunk!

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December, 8th; End of my first semester!

Well, the last week of University has gone extremely quickly; I`m not going to discuss my final piece on here though, I want to save that for my art blog since it`s been a while since I updated on there. Plus, I could do with putting some kind of updated work on there right now...

Tomorrow is my last day at University, before I break up from University for the next five weeks or so. In between that time, I will be given a new module to be working on and I`ll be picking up a few more shifts at my part time job in the care home.

This first semester has been seriously weird for me, University is just a completely different environment that you somehow have to adjust too at the click of a finger.
To begin with, I don`t even live in accommodation, so to get to University it takes me about an hour or so travel time; that`s to walk to the bus stop, get the bus, walk half way through Derby and getting into Uni. Just that in itself is rather tiring, and I have thought about moving out for my second year since I`m not too sure if travelling will be best for me when it comes to producing some more serious pieces of work.

Then the whole studio atmosphere is really strange and hard to get used too.
The 33 of us got split up into three different groups of 11, and my group was completely separated from the the other 2 groups; meaning that we didn`t get too see them that much too start off with. You get a small desk to begin with and the second and third years work busily around you... Just seeing them working gives you some sort of insight into what you`re going to be doing in the upcoming semesters.

Then the lectures, there`s three different lectures and they all come in on different days. Because they`re all in at different times, you have to begin planning out what you`re going to be doing and who`s help you`re going to need on different days. It can also be like that when it comes to the different Technicians, you practically have to hunt them down if you need help since they all get so busy during the day.

The whole University experience has been extremely strange for me, it`s nothing like they tell you it`s going to be... And I do mean that in a good way! It`s just that when the students come round and tell you everything you need to get ready for University, you don`t really need it. It`s like you actually panic for nothing.

You`ll make friends and you`ll lose them even quicker than making them! Fresher`s is bloody pointless, you miss all of the important stuff during your first few weeks and you don`t want to leave your flat at all because of your vomit covered floor and clothes. They big up all of the parties and nights out, but you miss out on vital information, you make drunken mistakes, drunken arguments and then get yelled at for not attending university for the past few days... Fresher`s is literally; get drunk, vomit, get yelled at, vomit some more.

The overall experience for me has been pretty great; I`ve only been out 4 times actually, and each time I`ve gone into university the next day and got on with my work... And each time I`ve swore that I`ll never drink again, that doesn`t work by the way.
The studio space I work in is huge and I love it! Mainly because we`re also based around the second and third years work spaces; so we get to be nosey and talk to them about the course and what we`re going to do over the next few semesters. Since Derby only accepts a small amount of people aswell, we all get our own workspace and a lot of one on one time with the tutors.

Next year, I genuinely don`t quite know what to expect.
I know that the tutors are defiantly taking a huge step back, and we become a lot more independent in the way that we work and what we start to produce. Over the next five weeks that I have off at Christmas, I also need to get quite a bit of journal work finished and I need to begin thinking about what I`m going to begin producing over the holidays.

We need to being working off of two words.
The first word has to like to the Form of what we`ll be producing, for example; 2D, 3D, photography, multi-media.
Then the second word has to be the content.
I`ve already got a few ideas, and I know for definite that I`ll be working with multi-media, but then I don`t know what the content of that work would be... Something like abandonment and then I begin working from photographs of abandoned buildings or abandoned objects that I`ve come across.
Multi-Media Abandonment... Not too sure yet.


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December, 3rd; Deadlines and Stress.

It has been a while since I updated, if you didn`t know I had to work on a week long project which was extremely stressful and time consuming; I did update about that on my art blog, here`s the link:
 http://melonheadamy-artblogging.blogspot.co.uk/

It`s been a very hectic couple of weeks, we`ve had three weeks in total to work on our final, "final" piece of work.
I`m currently on my last week, but as always, I`ve been rather busy with trying to get the majority of my work done. Over the past semester, we`ve done a number of workshops (all of which you can find on the art blog), and within the last 3 weeks of University, we have to combine some of the techniques we`ve been working with into one final piece. So far, all I`ve done is experiment with a lot of ideas and I`ve still not even thought about making a final/refined piece of work ready for hand in.

The worst thing is that my deadline is Friday the 9th, and I`m still thinking of ideas and ways to bring all of my work to a conclusion.
The worst thing is, the only technique I`ve enjoyed working with is the print making. When I was messing around with the prints I made before with the weird bright colours; I want to re-create that again with new prints.

My original objects where 3 different phones, all of different sizes and all have different buttons. After working with the objects and creating work form them, we then had to put the objects into context, so for mine that would be texting, calling or social media. Quite obvious things really.
Now, when everyone goes onto facebook, you immediately see selfies, group pictures, celebrities and pictures your friends and family have posted; the same with any other form of Social Media actually.

Instead of focusing on self image, which would be the first thing you think of when someone mentions social media, I want to focus on what you would get in response to putting a picture of yourself online.
Then, to put this into context; I`ve been gathering messages that have been sent to my personal facebook account, my facebook page, my Instagram and my MeetMe account. I`ve also asked people on my course if they could send me screenshots of messages they`ve been sent; all of the messages I`ve collected have been sent by random people who no one actually knows personally, just random people who`ve messaged us out of the blue.
What I`m working with is actually a topic that does need to be addressed in some way, all of the messages I`ve used are from people who are a lot older than us (some being around 40 years old), these are all harassing messages, messages asking for nudes, messages asking us to perform some kind of sexual task... IT`S SERIOUSLY WRONG! Even my lecturer Carl is slightly confused as to how people can happily send these messages out to just anybody.

What I`m doing is turning something that is instant and private, into a process that takes a lot of time and detail which can then be seen by everyone. Something very private, and very instant is becoming a lengthened process which is made public.
What I`m going to be producing is the exact opposite as to what I`m working with, it`s going to be really hard to finalize the work; plus I`m struggling to find a way to make this whole piece resolved.

A lot of people at the moment do seem quite shocked by what I`m getting through on my phone, and then using. I see this as normal, I get a lot of horrid messages on my phone every single day; so these kinds of words and phrases really aren`t new to me. But a lot of people are a bit shocked by them, and find them quite odd.Which I guess it`s the kind of reaction I want to get out of producing work like this. Another thing is, I still have to work within a framework.. Literally a frame at the moment, out two other lecturers, Dennis and Jeremy have gotten it into everyone`s head that we have to work within a box shape. So now I`m even more confused and lost as to how I should present or finalize my work.

I`ve been very, very lost these past 3-4 weeks or so.
Which is why there have been no blog updates lately aswell.
University does have me very stressed at the moment, and I`m there five days a week and then I have to work at the weekends. It is hard, and I am struggling; time is going by so fast that I haven`t really realized that I haven`t blogged, or reviewed, or uploaded recent photography.
Everything that I had going on before Univeristy does seem to have come to a stand still at the moment, and over Christmas when I`m giving my next module handbook I can imagine it`ll get harder for me to find things to update and write about.



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November 13; Oxford Trip (Rather Brief)

So then... I should of really updated about two weeks ago.

All of the images below are from the Pitt Rivers

Gallery and Museum.

Basically, in the middle of another three weeks of workshops and inductions, our lecturers decided that we should all go down to Oxford for the day and have a lovely walk around the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Gallery.
Unfortunately, because they decided that it`s be great to do this during more inductions; I never actually had any time to talk about it and share it with you guys. But, because it`s been about 2 weeks, I can`t bloody remember what I exactly saw when I was there and I`m annoyed at my camera at the moment because all of the images are still on my camera... But the wires for my camera at my boyfriends University flat.

This isn`t going to be very fun to do without any images, and my forgetfulness.

During the Ashmolean museum, our lecturers dragged us up to one of the top floors so we could have a look around the modern art exhibition which was apparently a "special" exhibition that they had on. All I`m going to say is that I wasn`t impressed at all, we couldn`t take any photos, the room was very small and cramped and the work that they had on display was just a random load of work all mish mashed together. None of it made any sense and it wasn`t impressive at all. That`s all for Modern Art at the Ashmolean.

The rest of the museum was absolutely brilliant; they`ve got giant collections of historical art from around the world with detailed explanations into their cultures and into some of the items that have on display there.
The only problem with the Ashmolean is because it was sooo big and we only had an hour or so to walk around the building; we couldn`t get around everything in time, so there was a lot of work on the upper floors that many of us didn`t get too see. I think most people stayed around the same kind of three floors sandwiched in the middle.
I ended up rushing one of my god friends Lucie around the building so we could go to the lower floors, look at the preserving history area, look at the Japanese and Chinese areas... It was a struggle to rush around that building.
I think that if you seriously want to have a good look around there then you need to spend a whole day in there just walking around and taking it all in. There`s too much to see in there in too little time, and it`s also very, very easy to get lost and confused as you walk around. The maps don`t help that much, they could really do with something a bit more detailed with a floor plan of every floor in the building, the amount of times I got lost was ridiculous.

The Modern art area, let me down; a lot. But the rest of the gallery is hard to explain, it`s extremely big and had a large range of historical art work and art work from around the globe. Just putting it into words is extremely hard, and it`s been two weeks sooo... Just look at some of the collections online, there`s some really good stuff on there.

The Pitt Rivers museum and Gallery was much better in my eyes.

It`s quite old and historical, the outside of the building seems quite dark and everything inside is original. At the front of the building is the more museum-y part of the building; it`s got large fossils and skeletons hanging from the ceiling and placed in cases. Along with the large range of fossils, skeletons, gems, crystals, insects and taxidermy... You can go to the very back of the building and they have one of the largest collections of found objects from around the world. It goes something like that anyways, they have a collection of over 20,000 objects that are all on display all of the time.

This area has three floors, the area itself is very darkly lit and is seriously just packed full of glass cases with these weird historical items in them. All of the pictures on this blog are from the museum, you can find a lot more of the pictures online and they`ll be a much better quality than the pictures I`d taken.

October 22nd; Nottingham Contemporary Visit! (Marguerite Humeau).

Unfortunately, David doesn`t know how to bloody smile.

I`ve had a wonderful little break away from University today, this has been one of my weekends off and I wanted it to be productive in some kind of way.
Last Friday a new exhibition was put up at the Nottingham Contemporary, two different female artists this time around and one of my friends from University, Jas, was one of the people who actually helped to set up the whole thing! Marguerite Humeau; she explored the ideas of FOXP2 (I`ll explain later). Otobong Nkanga; the encounter that took a part of me.


Otobong`s work was really interesting to walk around but didn`t strike me on an emotional level, and I`ll explain what I mean by that later. Her work was site specific and one was a commission piece, it was large scale and quite dramatic.

One room had a metal strip that curved throughout the room; it was then filled with white pebbles, and small boards of work placed on top. Some areas had odd but large rocks, and some vegetation. Then right at the back it had an embroidery piece on a large stand that was absolutely gorgeous. It was strange everything being completely white, but it still made the boards of work stand out since the colour scheme was dark brown.

In the next room, which was also site specific. It had a large wall piece that went all across one side of the large room, and then an embroidery piece at the end of it that kept with the dark brown colour scheme. Then there where cases filled with some smaller pieces of work, and pieces of work then hanging off small metal cylinders that come out of the side of the cases... I`m not too sure if I even explained that in a way that people can actually understand.
Her work is impressive, and I loved the scale of it all; but it didn`t quite affect me on a level that the other artists did.


Marguerite`s work is something that I hadn`t actually experienced before and it was very, very strange to experience. At first I even put a status on facebook just saying that I didn`t even know how to react to the piece.
To begin with, a whole room had been turned into two corridors. You just walk down and turn left and then walk down that one and there`s just pure light coming through a rectangle door. The corridor area is pitch black and only has some small blue-ish lights coming from the edges of the ceiling. Within the corridor are loud and weird sounding noises, to be more straight forward the corridor plays a choir of 108 billion voices. These 108 billion voices re-enact the time our ancestors gained the morphing gene FOXP2, FOXP2 was a gene which allowed our ancestors to be able to develop speech.
So, as you walk down this corridor you can hear these weird and strange noises coming from every direction; but it`s nothing like anyone talking, it`s even lower than baby level speech and there`s so many of them going off at the same time that it`s almost overwhelming.

When you walk through into the next room, through the seriously bright rectangular door. You find a large room with salmon pink walls, and boxes with large white sculptures on top.
In this room, she explores elephants, yes; she explored the possibility of elephants becoming sentient beings, instead of us humans. So basically, if humans hadn`t of evolved into knowledgeable creatures with feelings and emotions, would elephants? I`m not too sure if it was like Elephants would be the dominant creatures on earth if it wasn`t for humans, or If they just gained the FOXP2 gene instead of humans.
To then explore the idea of elephants gaining the gene, there is a serious of different elephants throughout the room that are all doing completely different things and are expressing different feelings.

Unfortunately, none of these images

will be in order due to how quickly
I was trying to update, if you want
to see all of the elephants, then google the
artist and have a look at some of her work

online.

The centre elephant, is one that is sculptured in a way that makes it look like it`s taking it`s final breathes, and the noises it creates are unsettling. This ones called Echo.

There`s a series of three at the opposite side of the room, and these three are built in such way that makes it seem like their larynges have dropped so they sing in an articulate language that sounds really strange... Not unsettling, but strange. These three are called Edwina, Amelia and Antonia.

This is Echo, the elephant who

is currently taking it`s final

breaths.

There`s another one which was almost creepy to walk past, I was leaning right over the box that the sculpture was sat upon so I could get a better look at it. Enid, is programmed to cry out of sadness.

There was only one elephant that wasn`t making any noise whatsoever and it was the only one that didn`t have tubes or speakers coming out of it. It`s called Jean and it watches the others in "a sense of wonder".

One of them made some seriously strange noises as you walked around it, and was almost in sync with the other one right next to it. Felicie is engineered in such a way that it`s drunk, and the noises it`s making are from it being drunk from ethanol which comes from the masala fruit.

The front of Echo.

One of them kept on making very heavy breathing sounds and then made an eruptive noise. Emmett is made to be aggressive and loud, and made me jump a few times.

A quite one, was by the one that made no noise and also behind the aggressive one. Bastein is a foetus being born, and it made quite whining kind of noises aswell as breathing sounds.

Throughout the room, you could constantly hear loud heart beating noises, that where literally non-stop. But because the corridor that was blacked out was right next to the pink room full of elephants, you could also hear the choir of 108 billion voices along with the sounds of the elephants.

I seriously cannot describe the way that the elephant pieces made me feel, it was seriously strange to walk around witness.
the piece was amazing, yes, I`m not saying that it was bad in any way, definitely not saying that because I was honestly blown away with what I saw because I only thought it was going to be a small range of sculptures.

It was strange to witness I guess, and upsetting in some way; when I first walked in I just though "wow, this is amazing". But after sitting in there for ten minutes I just thought about how they where feeling and why these noises where coming out of them, and the noises where just like something I`d never heard ever before. Sitting In there for ten minutes also made me feel like I wasn`t quite supposed to be in there, like I was intruding.

It was a mixture of weird emotions just from being in that room and seeing those sculptures made me feel slightly in-easy, and made my head slightly confused. It was definitely amazing, eye-opening and made you think about the piece. It was brilliantly effective and I bloody loved it.

if your around Nottingham or just passing through, it`s by the Broadmarsh shopping centre and is free entry. Also, look up the artists and have a good look at both of them, it`s actually Marguerite`s first major solo exhibition so it`ll also be good too look at her previous work before this exhibition.

I also apologize for not putting up all of the images, and for not putting up the ones that I do have in the right order. you`ll be able to find them all on the Facebook page later on in the day!

Thanks for reading everyone! I`ll be updating again very, very soon!


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October 16th; Inductions are now over...

So then, if you remember in my last update, I mentioned that the University was starting us off with inductions; which spanned out over the course of three weeks.
Correct?

Well it should be because I had to go back and check as to what I`d written because I`d actually forgotten already. Yeah, I`m that tired.

Well then, We`ve finally finished those first three weeks of induction work, which felt quite prescribed and we had to do it all without fail. Along with that, there`s the out of hours lectures that we have to go to, all of the research and then journal work and contextually referencing everything we see.
I`ve been very tired (once again) and I`ve actually been at work again this weekend, I had last weekend off which felt amazing since I was still quite sick. But I ended up doing absolutely nothing the whole time and ended up staying in bed. You see, University is making me very lazy whenever I`m at home.

This next week at University is going to be extremely weird for me and I haven`t come up with any plans as to what I should do yet.
Over the three weeks we`ve had with Photoshop, wire and paper work; we now have to combine two of those elements and create a weeks load of work based off of those two elements alone and then on the Friday we have to present it to our whole class.

I should really be making plans on as to what I should do for the week, but so far I haven`t really planned anything out at all. I know that I defenitly want to use photoshop and paper, I fell out with the wire work straight away and ended up being quite passive aggressive towards my teachers because I hated it with a burning passion.
But I still haven`t planned out what I`m actually going to do, the last set of photoshop work I did, didn`t actually turn out great; which means I`m going to be struggling quite a bit, I think later on tonight I`m going to do some more planning work, and when I say more, I mean actually begin planning...

I also mentioned in the last update that I was quite sick; I went to the doctors on Monday and he gave me a quick look over. It turned out to just be a severe chest infection and a Viral bug that had both hit me at the same time. I`m finally over it now, which is a bloody miracle because if I hadn`t of gotten better then I would of had to have time off of work this weekend.
Time off of work, means that I won`t even be able to get to University; Student finance money won`t even cover my equipment costs, it`s ridiculous.


Nothing super interesting has happened over this past week, which is a shame really.
I`m really trying to leave myself more time to do things like catching up with blogging, creating my own personal work and having a little bit of time to watch my animes for reviewing.

Tonight I`ve been watching Plastic Memories, even though I haven`t finished yet and I can`t really say as to what direction this show is going in.
It`s an incredible watch, it`s based off of robots with synthetic souls that humans buy for companionship. It`s isn`t incredibly sci-fi, and I`m seriously enjoying it; if you want to get ahead of the next couple of reviews, then go and watch Plastic Memories!



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October, 9th; How`s University?

Helloooo, it has been quite some time once again. For the past two weekends I was at work, then University every other day... I have been somewhat tired recently and I`ve gone back to not having that much time to myself again.


We`re finally half way through our induction weeks now. Throughout these weeks we had to work with Photoshop for one week, and then paper and card, after that we work with wire. I`ve just finished the photoshop and card stuff since every group has to do them in different orders, tomorrow I`m moving onto the wires, which I`m looking forward too.
The idea of starting off with just these three simple things, is to get us used to the idea that we have to start off at the smallest points to then further our work. We`re not supposed to have ideas about what we want to do straight away, we`re supposed to do small things first and then the ideas eventually come to us, (supposedly).

It`s slightly weird just starting off with literally no idea as to what I want to do throughout the first year at University, I`m starting to get used to the kind of things that the course leader expects from us and I feel like I`m really getting on my feet now.
So really, I feel like University is going quite well for me at the moment.

I`m getting along incredibly well with the people on my course, we`ve already been for a night out together... It ended up with me falling into my boyfriends wardrobe a few times, I think that`s definitely the drunkest I`ve been.

We do get along though, and everyone is amazing and we`ve all got different ways of producing art; it`s very weird seeing 33 people take on something very simple but have rather different outcomes.


I`ve been very busy... Like veryyyyy busy lately.
It`s proving to be hard to get things done once I`ve finished University, I get very tired very easily and there`s a lot of travelling involved with getting too and from University. I leave about 7am and get home around 6pm most nights, and I also stay at Davids flat two nights a week to make it easier for us to see each other.

I haven`t stayed behind properly to get loads of work done, the studios shut at 9pm and I just leave as soon as possible. It`s so tiring sitting in those studios all day working on the same thing, we get like an hours break and a few short ones too so we aren`t locked in there.
Another thing is the work load, along with being in there all day everyday for five days a week, we have to do quite a lot of journal work in our own time and work on our own small things. I`m getting used to that aswell now, and a good amount of completed journals in Carl`s eyes is three... As in we definitely need like three journals in order to get a good pass rate on this first year.

Even though the first year doesn`t actually count towards our degree, you still need to get a good pass grade in order to come back for your second year. It`s all ever so complicated when you read the module handbook, but I`m beginning to try to get my head around that now aswell.

There really isn`t anything that interesting to talk about at the moment, I`ve been trying to work my little butt off this weekend because I had two days off during the week; I`ve been very ill with something that`s called "Freshers flu". Everyone else has had it now, but I`ve had mine for about two weeks now and It`s making me very unwell, I am starting to feel like it`s turned into something else now, either a chest infection or pneumonia because I`ve ticked all of the boxes for both of them now.

Tomorrow I`m going to go and try to see a doctor, but it means another bloody day off of University, and I`m beginning to feel like my course leader, Carl, is going to kill me.








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September, 19th; Yorkshire Sculpture Park!

Meet Lucie (green hair) and Jake!
Also in front of one of the Kaws

Sculptures!

Within our first week of University, we mainly had to get used to the studios and learn more about each other and our modules. The modules and times are pretty confusing though so I won`t bother trying to even go into any detail with that kind of stuff.

We had our welcome day, enrolment day, a day where we got into the studios and sat down with our journals and showed them our work from over the holiday; Then Thursday was a bit of a break from all of that.

On Thursday our course leader had planned a slightly relaxing day out in Yorkshire; to Yorkshire Sculpture Park and then the Barbara Hepworth museum.
The reason I say it was only slightly relaxing is basically because we had to take our journals around with us the whole day, make notes, write down things that could be important for our work and draw things that we liked... I just kind of made odd doodles with scribbly pens.

It was only an hour and a half away from where we met near the university, it was tiring, quite a tiring day.
It started off quite gloomy, when I left Ilkeston there was a thin layer of mist everywhere and it was quite dark, it was even worse when we got into Yorkshire. The whole park was covered in mist and even the tress looked like some weird giant sculptures, it did brighten up throughout the day... When we where on a mile hike to another bloody gallery.

To begin with, we walked around the underground gallery next to the main visitors centre; in there they had the "Not Vital" exhibition. Not Vital is an artist I`ve never heard of before, he`s a Swiss artist and if I remember correctly then this is his first UK Major Exhibition.
I have to say though, he did have a large amount of work to then fill the spaces that he had been given.

His work was scattered all over the Park; it covered the three rooms inside of the Underground Gallery, he had two large Stainless steel (I think) sculptures, one in the main field and one on top of the underground gallery. He also had a range of ceramic head sculptures outside of the gallery, and then had taken up all of the space inside of the Garden Gallery.
The garden Gallery is based above the underground gallery, you have to walk up and over the underground gallery and there`s a small space inside of there for more work.

I wasn`t impressed with some of the work; there was a room with a huge wall that just had dark circles on that was supposed to represent faces, the next room had giant Steel heads (I was impressed with those), The next room had a range of smaller but weirder sculptures. Some of those where on the walls and some where in the middle of the room for you to walk around.
Then there was another room called Bridges, which had a lot of weird stainless steel sculptures inside, some of them where bridge like and others didn`t make any sense. Some of them where rather skilled though, the steel itself had a gorgeous shiny finish and very sharp edges, so it was skillful work.

In the Garden Gallery; they had a range of Not Vital objects and souvenirs that you could buy, they even had a mould of his nose that had been cast in bronze and then altered to look like gold... But you couldn`t buy that, it had been given to the park especially. In there they also had three or four little pocket rooms, in each one they had three images by Not Vital... Unfortunately I wasn`t impressed with them as well. They seemed to be hand made sheets (like made out of fibres) and then they had tiny bits of work on them, that I wasn`t impressed with really. I think if your going to make things out of fibres and work on top of them, then you should really be working with something that compliments the fibres and affects the fibres... Not just a few marks and that`s it! Like painting on top of it so the fibres then come loose, or drawing on top which would leave dents and lines in the fibres but not necessarily the pen (fibres wouldn`t really let the ink settle).

A piece by Henry Moore.

After we had a good look around there, a few of us started to wonder off and begin to look at other things around the park, we knew that we weren`t even going to attempt to visit longside gallery as it was a mile walk and we where planning on going up there later on.
I split up and went off with Lucie, Mel and Evie; however we didn`t actually know if we could walk off yet and go and see other exhibitions so we kind of just wondered around near the pond and the flower buds for a while and then went off on a small hike... the small hike was also a sorry attempt at not getting lost.
If anything, we didn`t quite get lost, we just became somewhat confused with were we where and were we where supposed to go next. We knew that we had to meet up back at a small cafe near where our bus was, but we didn`t know exactly where that was..

Another Henry Moore

On our little hike we actually saw a lot of things that no one else bothered to see, I think there may of been about 3 or 4 other people from our class that we actually saw walking around the area.
The area was just called Country field or something, it was where all of the outside sculptures where based and there was quite a lot of them, but because of the amount of time we had before we had to re-group we didn`t have the chance to get round them all.

First of all, the field is mainly covered in sculptures by the artist Henry Moore, there where a lot more further down the field that we didn`t get to see, but according to one of the information booklets, the majority of the other statues where by Henry Moore.

We got to see Turrells skyspace; an underground brick area, you walk into one of the two doorways, which leads you into a large room underground, in that space there`s seating all around the room and you look up at the sky which has been framed. It`s supposed to be an interactive piece since the art isn`t just there for you to look at, you have to sit and wait for the sky to change and for the clouds to float by... It was rather relaxing, I could of sat in there for a while if I could of but we had to leave quite quickly so we could then re-group.

Before we re-grouped, we went over to the Chapel; there we was supposed to see another artist who had been working on a large scale exhibition... It was locked, even though there was sooo many different schools visiting and the place was packed, the bloody chapel was locked so we never actually got to see his work in the end.

Amongst all of that, we got to see other pieces that where hidden amongst bushes that we didn`t know about and we got to see some gorgeous views. But like I said before, we only saw like 3 or 4 other people head down towards that field, so I`m not really sure as to how many other people got to see some of the same stuff as we did.

After we all met up and finally had something to eat, we began to head up towards the Longside gallery; from the café we where sat at, the gallery was about a miles walk... It had just started to get very warm outside as well so the walk up there wasn`t one of the nicest walks I`ve had.

We walked amongst a number of different sculptures to get up there, one looked like a sexual bunny, there was a row of seated people? or something along the lines of that. A bronze person stood on top of a large tree...
And OBVIOUSLY, one of my favourite sculptures of all time had a large exhibition on. KAWS.
I love his work sooo much, just the way that the sculptures curve and the shine of the wood, it`s just pieced together so perfectly that when you think about it, you do really have to see the pieces in person to appreciate the skill of the piece.
I almost cried when I first saw them, I had no idea that this outdoor exhibition was still on; a few of my friends went to it, but I had no idea that it would still be there when I went up... I`m sure no one saw me almost cry when I first saw them, I know I got really excited and practically ran towards them.

There`s just something about his work that is satisfying but dark to view, the names of the sculptures give a dark undertone to the piece and it`s quite eerie. Something that looks as innocent as a parent protecting a child, can have a name that makes you question as to what the sculptures are really doing, or what scenario they where built to fit into to.

There is no way to describe the work, and you have to see it in front you to then be able to appreciate what it is and how it`s been done.
If you want to see the KAWS outdoor exhibition then it`s at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and ends on the 13th of November.


The walk to the Longside gallery took a veryyyy long amount of time, for starts, me Lucie and Jake fell behind because we wanted to look at all of the KAWS sculptures. The walk was about a mile long and when we got to the field we had to walk up it was ridiculously hot outside, and the field was full of holes and un-cut grass so it was awkward to walk up.
By the time we got the top, three other people where stood underneath a tree trying to cool off, so we stood and joined them before walking a bit more up to the gallery... It didn`t have air con inside.


Then after all of that walking, we got the bus back down and round to the main visitors centre... Now here`s my question, why did we have to walk all of that way up when there was a bus service to take us up and down there anyway? We walked all that way, for a ten minute look around and to then just hop onto the bus and go back down the easier way. In fact, we had walked that far, that when I took one last picture I couldn`t actually see where we had started walking from.

Not a lot of sculptures inside of the Longside Gallery interested me that much, all of these things are objects, prints and sculptures that are made of materials that I know I`ll never be able to use or I`ll never have the chance to use.

I`ll be doing an update on the Barbara Hepworth Museum on another day.
If I ever make long updates with a lot of pictures, the text can go funny and paragraphs move around too much, it`s gotten to the point in this one where I just deleted every picture and had to move them all back around again... The only thing with that is that they are seriously jumpy and never stay still unless I spam some clicks.

Stick around for the Barbara Hepworth update!


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September, 18th; UNIVERSITY LIFE!

SO here`s me thinking that I`ll be able to get all of my blogs back to normal, but unfortunately that seriously didn`t work and thinking about it, it`s going to seem a bit harder than I thought to be able to update at least once a week or just at the weekends.

This was my little set up inside of a small

café at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

That we visited, I`ll do a short update on that

soon!

But I guess, this is a quick catch up...
To begin with, there isn`t the original 30 people on my course now, instead there are 33 of and I`m having some trouble remembering everyone's bloody names at the moment.
This is the part that is stressing me out when I haven`t even started properly yet; our course leader, Carl Robinson, wants us to be in the studios Monday till Friday, 9am Till 5pm everyday... EVERYDAY! He`s even tried to hint at me to quit my job, but I`ve told him that I`m not going too; and I think he`s still a bit iffy about that at the moment, but I`m sure that once I start the course properly and I`ve been at work a few weekends he`ll realize that I can have a job and be a student at the same time.
I used to work when I was at sixth form and I began at 8:45 and finished at 6 for five days a week, I know that being a University student is quite full one, but I`m sure I can still have a job whilst I study. If anything it was quite upsetting how he wanted me to quit my job, I love the residents and all of the staff there feel like my family so I don`t just want to leave because my course leader says so... I need to at least try up until Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I don`t have any half terms or holidays up until the 9th of December, which is when I break up for the Holidays. So it`s pretty full on up until Christmas time, so I am kind of lucky that I`ll only be doing two weekends of work a month.

Even though I`ve only done one week (proper teaching begins tomorrow), I`m extremely tired out and worrying about things already. Like the fact that if I`m ill, I can`t have three days off in a row otherwise I can get kicked off of my course... It`s that easy, it`s really that easy for the course leader to turn around and say that you`re gone.
The days are going to be long, and the last bus back into Ilkeston leaves at 9:10pm, which means that if I want to do a full day... Which is 7:30 till 9:00pm, I`m going to have to stay at Davids flat for the night.
I think I`ve got it planned; Leave my house early on the Monday, stay at Davids that night so I would of been able to have a full day, and then leave early in the morning so I can have almost a full day, like leave to get the bus at 6pm.

Everyone on my course is pretty cool, just the names I`m getting confused with at the moment; I`ve met a few of the second years and third years, and all of my lectures seem really nice.
Today I`m going to right a proper update on two trips we`ve done, but I`ll publish it tomorrow; this way it just makes me feel like I`m catching up again.

See you guys soon!

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1st, September; Insomnia58! The UK`s largest Gaming Event!

I look a lot more like my dad than I do my mum,

we`ve always been very, very close so I seriously enjoyed

our day out at Insomnia.

Last weekend, the UK held one of it`s largest gaming events at the NEC in Birmingham. Luckily, my dad treated me as I successfully got into University!
it was £25 per person for a day ticket and we headed up there on the first day since we figured that it wouldn`t be too busy... we where very, very wrong; people had been queueing up seriously early in the morning so the place was already selling out of Witcher packages and special Xbox buys (can`t remember all of them).

I put this picture on Insta,

and both cosplayers found it...

Awakward.

I`ve heard of Insomnia before, and I`d never actually been over to Birmingham. I had an absolutely incredible day out there and everyone I met was amazing and super friendly... JUST EVERYONE THERE WAS AMAZING.
It`s incredibly hard to describe the feeling you get at one of these events, when you`re completely surrounded by people who love the exact same things as you and people who welcome you with open arms since you`re both completely weebs.

To begin with, me and my dad haven`t really spent a lot of time together recently; I`ve been working full time before University and he`s been busy with his job. Then I`ve been trying to fit in as much time as I can to prepare myself for University and he`s tried to stay out of all of that to give me some time to calm down and take it easy.
My dad was the one who really got me into my video games, he had the old Atari games and Sega Mega Drives; so whenever I went over to my dads house when I was younger, it was either go out on the motorbike or play video games with dad before I go back home. I`ll put it this way, my mum would not go anywhere near an Insomnia event!


We left pretty early, and we also had to go and pick up my Uncle and Cousin before we left off. We actually didn`t have time to have anything to eat so we had to stop off and get a huge trucker breakfast and a coffee. We didn`t get there too late, but when we did get there all if the main car parks where filled up already, the Witcher packs had sold out and, luckily, the queues to get into the main halls had gone down. To say it was the first day it was so packed in there, it just goes to show how big the gaming industry is starting to get.

if you don`t know much about Insomnia, then I`ll stop repeating myself and explain a little bit about it.
It`s held once every year for 4 days at the NEC in Birmingham, they use up the huge halls and invite some of the biggest gaming companies in the world to come and show off their new and exclusive products. For instance; Xbox, PS4, Razor, Sony, RobotWars (or a rip off, I don`t know), they invite loads of youtubers too, Twitch was there this year, World of Warcraft, Game and soooo many more. Along with all of the gaming companies being there, people rent out little stores and sell gaming products, toys and shirts.
Then along with the 4 days of weebing out with your fellow group of nerds, you can camp at the NEC so you really are spending the whole weekend there; also, you can bring along your own game console, so you PC gamers can have an absolute field day playing inside of a hall full of hundreds of people playing the same game as you.

I would love to stay there over the weekend, and next years tickets are on sale now...  So I might book mine and camp for the weekend, but the only problem is that I don`t know who will camp with me.


I was definitely really impressed with the Retro area, it was bigger than I expected as the newest games and VR`s had taken over the majority of the hall.

I didn`t get to play many of the retro games, mainly because every game had someone on it, playing it, and there was people behind them waiting to play the game aswell. I also loved the XBOX area, and I don`t mean the 18+ area that everyone was queuing up to go into, I`m on about the area that was just full of video games that you could play; and if you completed a certain amount of video games then you got a free ice cream, the had an XBOX ice cream van that was bright green. So for every video game you played, someone gave you a sticker for this small sheet and then you took it to the van and got ice cream, yes... I am extremely impressed with the free ice cream.

To get mine, I played; The new Forza, Slime Rancher, Minecraft and Recore. In all fairness, I think I played a few other ones but I`ve forgotten what I actually played; whatever I played, t was extremely fun and I enjoyed that whole section of games... And I enjoyed my free ice cream.

Along with all of the gaming sections, some of the halls had giant shows going on, one of them you needed a special band to get into, I think you got them if you camped over the weekend and that show was about gaming development and designing... I think.
The main stage had the youtubers on in the morning, and in the afternoon we saw the small cosplay show; all of the cosplayers where people who had come to Insomnia in their cosplays, so it wasn`t all professionals dancing around on the stage showing how amazing they are. It was really good to see Amateurs and professionals alike on the stage.

Another show that I saw was D&D, you guessed it, Live Dungeons and Dragons; with Miniladd, and I used to love Miniladd so I was sooo sooo happy that he was there. We didn`t stay watching that stage for too long, since the Live Twitch stream of the finale of Rainbow Siege was about to start. Then we left halfway through that stream to go and watch all of the cosplayers.
So as you could probably tell, there was a lot going on just on that one day, and it was hard to get around everything, we got to see quite a bit and it was just such a good day.

Along with all of this, the youtubers had a meet and greet section where you could also buy their merchandise and have a picture taken with them; I was going to get in line whilst my dad and Uncle went off, but I asked someone how long they had been sat there for and they said almost 2 hours, then when we walked off and looked around a bit more, came back an hour later, the same people where now sat on the floor looking extremely tired and quite bored... I`m sooooo bummed out that I didn`t get to meet Vanoss Gaming, I used to watch him all of the time aswell and he used to play quite a bit with miniladd.
HOWEVER!
I almost got to meet Syndicate, the exhibition hall was closing and they needed to meet up before the people with evening tickets began to arrive; so they shooed everyone away.... But before they did, I managed to get a creepy picture of him when I was standing in line... see creepy fan girl got a quick picture of Syndicate, he he heee.

Another big thing I became a fan off quite quickly, was the small cosplay area where you got to met some professional cosplayers and see some of their work. They also had a small 3D printer that was making tiny little props and characters for one of the guys on one of those stalls.
One of my favourite cosplayers there was a pokemon trainer, who I then found on facebook; her page is called HELEN ALICE COSPLAY, once again that`s Helen Alice Cosplay. She was super, super friendly and let me take a quick picture of her.

There is no way in hell that I could describe how amazing everyone was; the whole atmosphere, the people, the crew members, the volunteers, the youtubers where really friendly and even some of the younger kids who where asking me about my Harry Potter shirt... Start them off from a young age!

If you have any events going on near you that are like Insomnia, and you don`t know if it`s worth the money; grab a friend and buy some tickets, even if it`s only a tiny event... Because, and I can assure you, you`ll meet some amazing people and you`ll have an amazing day out.
You`ll also probably buy some adorable goodies, I was just moments away from buying a fat little Totoro plushie.

There`s no way Ic an out the feelings I had, and the atmosphere of the place into words.
Just amazing really.


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