Though we're almost one twelfth of the way through 2014 already, I've been easing gently into the new year with one of my first ventures in a contribution to project two thousand and fourteen. This is an artist led initiative in which each day of the year, a different visual practitioner submits a new 2D outcome based on a main news story for that date. The idea is to finish the year with a visual record of the main issues and events. Having agreed to submit a piece on January the 13th, I chose to respond to the funeral of Ariel Sharon because I felt his death was quite important globally and no one had yet recorded it in the project. It was quite a challenge as I know very little about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and so don't feel informed enough to have a particular opinion on it. The thing that jumped out at me the most about this figure however, was just how divisive he was both in terms of opinion and physicality with the construction of the wall in Gaza, so I have tried to record that instead of leaning towards any political bias.
Seeing this as a good opportunity for some student involvement too, I worked with the project organisers to agree January the 22nd as a date to submit the outcome of a collaborative response from a one day intensive workshop run with second year National Diploma students at Tameside College. The group gelled well on the day and worked hard to generate this outcome based on the Syrian peace talks in Geneva.
One project that has been on a back burner for some time is the cryptically titled Cupcake Karma venture and January 2014 has also seen the first physical realisation of this. As it had been no more than ideas on paper for so long, it seemed the ideal candidate to trial as part of the second CRITgroup collaboration, Crafting by Committee. The collaboration is interested in identifying the contrasts between different artistic practices and so I was required to pursue the project with some specific instructions from my peers in response to an initial proposal. The Cupcake Karma project is especially concerned with the concept of trust and aims to harness the power of cake to facilitate positive interactions between strangers in the city, in this case, the residents of the other apartments on my floor, who I very rarely see, let alone speak to. The instructions I was given by the CRITgroup committee included the constraint that I was not allowed to make verbal contact with my selected recipients and that I had to include sound recording in my documentation of the results. As such, I approached the whole thing in a slightly different way than I might otherwise have done (which is exactly the point!) and produced a video diary to record the outcomes. It’s about fifteen minutes and you can watch it on the main project page. Though the work has been live online for a couple of weeks now, I will present it at the concluding Crafting by Committee session on the 29th as part of my project summary presentation and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the group thinks of it!
Next up on the Glittermouse mission is the exhibition of prints from the Peaceful Places collection, which will be on display from February 17th at The Earth Café in the Manchester Buddhist Centre. These are now printed, mounted and ready to hang so I’m looking forward to getting them out to a new audience!
In other areas, having enjoyed the success of my first ever race raising money for Venture Arts last May in the Bupa Great Manchester Run , I am now in training to complete the ASICS Manchester Marathon in April. As much of my time will be taken up with training, there might not be any huge leaps forward on the arts front for a little while but I will still be raising cash for an arts related cause, asking for donations to Imagine Mental Health who work locally in Salford. One of the benefits of working with such a small charity, as well as being more locally focussed, is that I get to be involved in exactly what happens to the money raised and in this case it will be put towards delivering arts workshops to those using the service. So far, so good, and I managed to run 19 miles out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and back last weekend so I’m sure those last 7.2 will be just a doddle; Not! Better stop rambling out this blog post and get my trainers on! Whoosh..!
In other areas, having enjoyed the success of my first ever race raising money for Venture Arts last May in the Bupa Great Manchester Run , I am now in training to complete the ASICS Manchester Marathon in April. As much of my time will be taken up with training, there might not be any huge leaps forward on the arts front for a little while but I will still be raising cash for an arts related cause, asking for donations to Imagine Mental Health who work locally in Salford. One of the benefits of working with such a small charity, as well as being more locally focussed, is that I get to be involved in exactly what happens to the money raised and in this case it will be put towards delivering arts workshops to those using the service. So far, so good, and I managed to run 19 miles out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and back last weekend so I’m sure those last 7.2 will be just a doddle; Not! Better stop rambling out this blog post and get my trainers on! Whoosh..!
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