Leaning Stones

This week I came across this photo of the Rolling Stones. On top of being a gorgeous photo with great quality colours and clothes that should be worn today, it sums up how I wanted the people to look in the "Foreigners" installation of my "leaning things of Pisa" series.

One Year Left

Today the third-years got their final results. It steels me to to knuckle down and work as hard as I can next year... but sometimes my high ambitions don't let me loosen up, and I keep trying to rival all of art history (and achieving nothing).

Should I be calculating and try to please as many as possible of the tutors who will assess my work? Should I make the most of the facilities while I have them? Should I try to make myself a professional?

I've seen other students end up bitter about the tutors - perhaps because, after three years, they feel that they now know who they are as artists.

It will be a heavy year; I wish everyone on the course the best of winds.

The Leaning X Of Pisa

Here are four concertina-books that I've made in the past few days.
It all started when I doodled the Leaning Tower Of Pisa as a döner kebab, and then as a pea pod (because it's where the peas are) and then as corn-on-the-cob.

Naturally, food was the theme of the first booklet. You can see the semi-archaic blurb on the front cover - and there's more inside, advertising the rest of the series and tying me down to the following list:

• Foodstuffs
• Musical Instruments
• Modes Of Transport
• Foreigners

The frame of each page is a linocut, hand-printed without a press; the text is all stencils cut from acetate.

All this effort has gained me one of each, but it was fun to throw myself into it and I spent a lot of time researching some of the pages. Here are four out of each set of fourteen.