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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