workshop pics

Some pictures taken at the workshop I ran at Leeds City Art Gallery last month...

Fastest hands in the (north) west, look at them go :) And there's nothing like a table full of concertinas to make me happy...

There were more photos (kindly sent to me by one of the participants in the workshop, thanks Karen!) but I'm looking far too silly on them, (oh, vanity!) I never knew I pulled such faces when I make things, all I can think is I must be concentrating very hard! 

phew

I started my new job this week, and I feel like my feet haven't touched the ground. It's great, and a massive learning curve, and I feel like there's a real purpose to it. I think I'm a bit overwhelmed actually, I think perhaps it hasn't sunk in yet that it's actually real, but the days are flying by and (although my feet hurt) I think it's going to be good.  

And they got me a teflon bone folder as a welcome present. I think I'm going to like it there...

an observation

A pair of lifts take me each day to my office on the 8th floor (sometimes I walk, but I must admit it's not often, 8 floors seems like nothing at the bottom but by the 5th you're thinking 'three more floors? three more floors!' So I tend to take the lazy option, rubbish I know.)


Anyway... today I realised that one lift is a girl and the other a boy! So I went in some other lifts in the university and it's the same there too!

Is this a world wide phenomenon?

back

Back to work. Back to the city, back to noise and dirt and rush. Back to people everywhere.


Back to the bus stop, and traffic, and worring if the pigeons will one day get run over right before my eyes.


Back to not saying hello in the street.


Anyway...

I've started reading a new book. I'm only a bit of the way in but am really enjoying it, some of the language is really beautiful, and really striking. This morning, on the bus, I was reading to distract myself from the fact I was off to work once more, and this phrase struck me...

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. "Read" she'd say, "and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out,'I can do that too!'"

This just rings so true to me, not about writing but about drawing and making. I sometimes forget I like to do these things, maybe I don't quite have the time, and after a while loose confidence and I don't know where to start. I Forget. But as soon as I look at what others have done, see pictures in a magazine or book, my voice shouts out "I could do that!" "I must try to do that!" I think maybe this is what I mean when I talk about wanting to miss it. I want that creative urge to jump out at me. It's so funny that feeling, that feeling of compulsion to make, to actually get up of my bum and go and get out my stuff and make something. And it's so frustrating to feel that urge rise, then feel it slip away again as the working week goes by.

It felt so wrong today to be sat at that desk today. So against the grain, perhaps it's because it was sunny outside. I felt so trapped. When I think what I could've been doing instead, this time last week I was walking in fresh air, miles away from anyone. I know I'm being melodramatic. I know everone must feel like this when they come back from a holiday. I mean that's why it's a holiday, because its NOT real life. But I just get the feeling that my life could be a little more like that. I don't want to settle for this feeling only 25 days a year. There must be more to it.

At what point do you settle?