8.15 am. I responded to urgent emails before visiting the School to switch on the exhibition equipment and, hopefully, and once and for all, shutting off the TVs’ auto-shutdown ‘feature’. A few QR codes that didn’t refer to the works above them needed adjusting.
9.40 am. En route: an exceedingly small-headed child appears to have lost their headphones:
10.00 am. Third year painting tutorials at Old College (deferred from last Thursday). It’s not perishingly-cold in the West Classroom this week. A mercy. Some observations and principles:
- There’s a temptation to over design the final exhibition. While it’s helpful at this stage to have a vision for the whole, one ought not (in most cases) to have a blueprint. Rather, better attend to the paintings at hand, and let them determine their successors and, thus, the overall outcome. Better, too, to make more pictures than necessary, and to choose the exhibition from among them.
- There’s a temptation to succumb to the desire to ‘do something different’, rather than stick to the straight and narrow road that one began to walk upon at the close of semester 1. Do not deviate!
- Q: ‘When shall I begin making my final work?’ A: Last week!
- ‘More sound advice can hardly be packed into one sentence than there is there’ (J G Bennett):
1.00 pm. Lunch in the Quad. Mr Monaghan dropped by at 1.30 pm. He’ll be addressing the Vocational Practice class tomorrow morning on the topic of life as an artist, post-MA.
What students consume and produce are not so far apart:
3.00 pm. Back at the School, I make an assault on the ‘unread’ emails in my inbox: the ones that I’ve been dreading; the ones that require either action or commitment. 4.00 pm. A tutorial with a student from Scenography about a sound project that she’s engaged with. She’s asking a great deal of herself. 5.00 pm. Into the inbox, again.
6.20 pm. Practise session 1. 7.30 pm. I worked my way to the bottom of my inbox, updated my websites to include the latest publications and activities, and wrote research admin letters. Just because projects are in the public domain doesn’t mean that anyone is noticing them. The propaganda machine must still turn over. 9.40 pm. Practise session 2.