Fundraising

Anyone in Sunderland should come and visit us in the beautiful Ashburn art building which is about to be abandoned by the University of Sunderland for somewhere with air conditioning, heating and other practial but dull things. So this might be your last chance, come along, eat a cookie, buy some awesome awesome ceramics and glass.
TL

Missing things

I'm in the library and never have I sniffed more in a quieter place. I have my first cold of the winter, and it's probably just about the right time to have it. I'm busier than I can remember ever being. So much so that on Tuesday, I bought a diary. And a-wooosh, I'm full of feeling organised and amazing.

Only trouble is, I keep missing things. More precisely, phone calls. My phone is on its last legs and I need a new one, I admit it, I bow to defeat. So far, I've missed calls for a job interview and to get a table at Tynemouth market, so all my feelings of having everything in control are ebbing away, slowly and sadly.

So far I've been in every phone shop I can think of and have grown the cajones to ask idiotic questions like 'what's 3G?' and other things I'm sure you'd hear 80 year old luddites ask a tech savvy young man in a phone store. Problem is, I'm a potter. I know that the idea that we all live in wooden huts and bake our own bread is outdated, but not by much. I still have a cheat sheet to programme a kiln and lets face it, this blog isn't as pretty as it should be, it should be champagne and instead, it's Lambrini.

But my phone is a necessity, I text about a million times a day, mostly to my team of glass and ceramics fundraisers about things I need to do/have forgotten to do/need them to do pretty please. And it's difficult to organise things just via email, because grown ups are in charge of things, and some grown ups would rather do things voice to voice rather than email to email. This means I have to continue to brave terrifying jargon (what's a mega pixel, and how many do I want?) in order to have my megalomaniacal feelings placated.

Mini-deadline tomorrow, must dash. But lets all celebrate the joy that is a flow chart for one moment.

From the brilliant 344 questions that anyone can feel free to buy me.

The List

Have you seen the irritating advert for the new irritating Sarah Jessica Parker film? She mentions that at 2 am she goes through 'the list' in her head? It's irritating because it's such a generic thing that everyone does that it's barely even observational. But here I am, with the list rolling through my head.

I wrote a massive list whilst I was in a lecture the other day (I'm committed, I just love lists too much) and now I've lost the damn thing. And I don't think I did it accidentally. I think I did it in the same way I sometimes 'accidentally' sleep late or 'accidentally' forget I'm on a diet. If I really wanted too, I could find it. But I don't want to look at it, it's too huge and scary.

We went through the brief for our final major project the other day. It's a map of what the next 8-9 months look like. When it was over someone said 'Ooh, Lily, you've got some greys' I'm 22 people! And I'm pretty sure I didn't have grey hair at the beginning of that lecture, but knowing how much work I'm going to have to churn out hurts. Physically, hurts.

More than that, I like to do well. I'm not a perfectionist, but I'm an only child and I used to be in amateur dramatics, I like praise. And knowing how much work there is made me have a minor panic attack. I just felt like I couldn't do it. I cracked a whole bunch of jokes to try and hide it but denying that I'm freaking out about writing a dissertation whilst getting technical notes done and organising a degree show and trip to New Designers, well, the air began to feel like treacle and the lecturers started to look at me like I was turning blue.

Then I made my list. Because order can spring unexpectedly from chaos, mountains can turn to mole hills at the swipe of a pen and I felt better. University is tough, and I'd forgotten. I have a blast with all the amazing people who inspire me so it's easy to miss that there's often huge piles of work that keep you awake at night.

I'm talking to a bunch of second years on monday about being second years and organising their exhibition. I hope I can help them feel as empowered as the 3rd years made me feel and that they have a blast. I started back at uni on Monday and I'm already feeling nervous and sad about leaving. I may not always have felt comfortable or happy there and I certainly haven't always done the right thing but the last two years have been so amazing I just have to remember to keep going forwards. I should put that on the list...

I spy a potter!

Yup, it's not often you see a potter in an advert, so here I am sharing it, the joy, the love, the soup and the pots.

To watch the Heinz advert (which I'm sure includes a potter simply to get itself seen on the blogosphere) have a clicky here.

This mysterious image

Is what I'm working on now, looks a bit grubby now, but lets wait and see, eh?

In Brief

I just got an outline of what my life is going to be for the next 9 months. Not pregnant, just starting my last year at university, so what with a dissertation I doubt is any good, a degree show we have to raise millions for and a final project that made me shiver, I won't have a lot of time on my hands. If I did I'd be watching this;

HANDMADE IN BRITAIN
Ceramics – A Fragile History Ep 1/3

Monday 10 October
9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR
Ceramics are some of the most beautiful and treasured objects with pride of place in British palaces, churches, stately houses and even family homes. Whether it's for celebrating birth, marriage and death, eating and drinking, or showing one's social status to the world, ceramics contain more than just tea or coffee – they contain something of people's lives and reveal a lot about Britain's taste and habits as a nation. They become, in effect, snapshots in clay.

Ceramics – A Fragile History is part of an ambitious year-long BBC Four partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum called Handmade In Britain – the most wide-ranging and ambitious exploration of decorative arts ever on British television. The first programme in this opening series looks at the history of domestic pottery in Britain from the Tudor period onwards, tracing the evolution of the different techniques and styles involved in the art of pottery and examining what British pots can reveal in intimate detail about how preceding generations lived and saw themselves.

Examining key figures, including 17th-century potters John Dwight and Thomas Toft as well as contemporary traditional potters such as Mary Wondrausch, and drawing on the expertise and comments of contributors including Sir David Attenborough, Edmund de Waal and Grayson Perry, this programme celebrates one of our oldest and most fundamental art forms.

If I'm honest- I'll still be watching it, I'll just have to write my dissertation at the same time.

Scandi charm

Totally forgot that one of the things I've been indulging in in order to not do my dissertation is the stunning The Killing it's beautiful. I've been watching the American version on 4od and the Danish version on iPlayer and enjoying both. It's unusual for me to enjoy modern crime dramas, the forensic shows never really got me and the others didn't stand up to Marple so here are my reasons for enjoying this loveliness.

Check out that jumper. Seriously, it makes all the broody-ness even better. That's the Danish version, this, is the just as hardcore machine knit detective Linden.

But seriously, the whole project is handled with so much more kindness than regular crime dramas that don’t care enough about the victim. The Killing deals with all the trauma and grief that loosing someone creates and makes the whole debacle of the investigation feel awkward and desperate in it’s wake. It’s not about who killed Rosie Larsen, it’s about the fact that someone did and how hideous that is.
Don't get me wrong, I want to find out who did it, but that's what's so interesting, I don't want to find out if I'm right, I'm not curious, but I want to know. I'm sure there'll be a box set but I'd get in while it's still online.

Watching the Detectives

I'm writing my dissertation. Supposedly. I keep getting stuck and throwing in the towel, which, seems to be working quite well. I give up, start looking up what qualifications I'd need to become a builder or air hostess and suddenly solutions come to me. Here, are some of the things I've been doing while the towel is firmly thrown in.

1. Reading
Somehow, when one reads the utter garbage that some art historians pump out (or worse yet, artists, they shouldn't be allowed near a pen) one finds renewed pleasure in reading real literature. I've got a copy of Darwyn Cooke's The Hunter which Stace Whittle be-loaned to me, lully lully grimey stuff. A copy of Rachel Johnson's A diary of The Lady her memoir of her first year as editor, gosh it's nice to read about busy people. Makes me feel virtuous. And Michelle Ogundehin's new blog is keeping me chirpy too.

2. Running
Yup, I started running earlier this year but my trainers stopped being classified as shoes and more as concepts so I had to bow out till I could get some decent running shoes. I'm now the proud owner of a hideous pair of shoes that look like they were designed by a five year old with a penchant for rockets and my little pony with easy access to lots of netting. I'm knackered but it's neccessarry.

3. Worrying
I'm going back to my final year, soon this blog will be filled with deadline anxiety and concern over whether what I'm doing is the right direction for me etc etc. My nerves frazzle at the thought. I'm going to be fundraising for our degree show and trip to New Designers and I'm gonna be keeping a record of it here, so I can look back and (hopefully) say it was worth it/easier than I thought it would be/fun. Gulp.

In the meantime, here's a plate I enamelled for budy o' mine Abi Haynes 6 month babe, Charlie Georgie Kal-El (yes, like Superman) Haynes. Glad it fit on the plate.

TL