I don’t owe you anything

I realised some important stuff today. I’ve been struggling with the feeling of failure. I have felt like I’ve already failed as a designer. This is a lot to do with feeling like I wasn’t good enough for Goldsmiths, that I haven’t lived up to how I should be doing after the course or precieved expectations. But basically not feeling good enough.

But I realised I don’t have to live up to anything. It was my degree and my learning experience. It is not an oppertunity that I was given where I now have to prove that I deserved to have it in the first place. School is an experience not about learning but achieving, about proving yourself in the grades you recieve. Unfortunately I carried this with me into my degree and my degree grade was a big blow. Understanding that my degree was about the things I learnt and not still proving myself has freed me from feeling rubbish now. I haven’t failed, I can do anything. And thankfully I do owe the people who have taught me alot because I learnt a heck of a lot. I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else, even thought my grade would have been better elsewhere. Instead I was pushed and challenged and shaped. I didn’t fail, I just got things wrong. You don’t learn things getting it right.

Just keep doing stuff…

“Just keep doing stuff” is the advise I remember hearing Sam Hill saying on how to deal with finshing your degree. This is what I’ve tried to do, successfully and unsuccessfully! Today feeling a bit depressed after a busy week of ‘work’ [waitressing and creche for an english language course] without doing any design but visited Ester Kneen today at a crafty type fayre she was doing, bought one of her lovely cards and got a bit inspired! Her advise was BLOG everything so you can see you’ve done stuff! So here goes…

I was thinking about recording things with drawing instead of a camera and made a view finder to focus on what your drawing.

The drawing cam in action…just trying it out at South Bank.

The postcards were very popular so I made an actual one aimed for print…If your interested in some I’ll be getting some printed for sale.

Finally this is a piece I have been knitting for a gentleman. It was started for him by his wife 14years ago but he is now her carer and she is unable to knit. So I’ve been finshing it for them.

The association for the protection of drawing

The association for the protection of drawing is the beginning of something…probably maybe a project. It’s about drawing as a form communication, a record, an explaination of ideas, thinking…not using words and the default action of writing down ideas.

When I was in Ireland visiting family I drew my postcards instead of buying some.

Londontopia Exhibition

Londontopia was included in the exhibition Designmade2009

As I’m off to Eygpt on thursday thought I better get some London Design Festival in. Visited the dock today and saw Its nice that and also some of the girls I meet from New designers from Brighton. Got a copy of the incidental…the peoples say on LDF printed in runs of 5000.

Also visited Dreams on Wheels which was meant to be about london cycling culture…not great but had some nice quotes about riding bikes

Also finally by accident visited Kiosk Kiosk today which is a pop up shop that you could apply to sell in for a day or so…I wish I had now…its there till the 4th of October.

Concluesion of todays adventures…I’m tired but got excited about getting on with some of my own design : )

Londontopia

Londontopia is a project I did in a workshop run by the Mobile Workshop Group. My group’s project was on Leisure in Trafalgar Square and the other group had work in the same space. Our project looked at the leisure activity of people watching in this unique space that is controlled through laws and officals to create a space that is an escape from the bombarbment of outside influences that construct our views when we walk around london…or any urban space. People watching is the innocent activity that we engage in every day as we move around in our daily lives. People watching is the act of watching or seeing the people that we see every day in all the imperfection of real life and mundane activity that is what people actually look like.

The work will be displayed as part of a bigger exhibition at the Korean Culture Centre [just off Traflagar Square] which will be open as part of London Design Week. It is open from Wednesday 23rd of September…if your near by check it out!

Graduation

I have graduated. I liked the robes on other people, they looked good. I like the hoods. Mine just kept falling off. Wearing a dress with buttons doesn’t hold it down. Graduation is fun. I’m glad I went. I wish more people had come. “Never love more than you care.”

I am not a student.

Berlin

On a family holiday to Berlin we visited the Hamburger Bahnhof, a modern art gallery. Inside the galleries they had this machines that recorded the temperature in the gallery which is pretty standard thing but it intrigued me and I was more interested in it than by much of the art. It seems so out of place to be allowed to see it. I’m not entirely sure why it interested me so much but it did.

We also visited the Tacheles which is an old department store taken over by squatting bars and artists. The artist studio’s are upstairs but to visit you have to overcome the nearly overpower smell of urine. I found the space odd alot of it was just part of a tourist attraction not very good art that relied on the the surrounding environment to get sold with lots of no photography signs but then mixed in with some older guys who seemed like the captured the idea of what the place was or had been.

New Designers

While other stands polished and cleaned we looked like freaks putting up OSB and hammered up sketches and notes. In deciding what to do with our space at New Designers 09 we had the option of a more standard approach of displaying our work or something different. There was no decision needed. We designed a space of design and interaction that moved from an input wall to an out put wall. The space displayed the process which happens between this two places. In a great few days and even had a great design debate.

[These images were taken by studiomoth ]

Knitting at Pirate utopias

In my space I displayed images of the event in Trafalgar Square,  book of my research documenting what knitting is to the a wide range of individuals, instructions on how to run a Knit me knitting event, I knit you knit and The knit|Rip.

The Knit|Rip, one piece is the knitting that must be ripped for there to be yarn to knit and hence the piece is never finished, and the other piece allows each person who knits to write their name to communicate that although the piece isn’t growing the number of participants is.