Moodswings and Roundabouts.

This week has been characterised by rain, rain, a feeling of listlessness, and more rain. I've been staying home a lot, in an attempt to get uni work ready in time for assessment, and also because the dreary weather isn't particularly calling my name. Or maybe it is?


"Caaaaathryn.... CAAAAATHRYN, you know you looove walking around in wet socks and having your umbrella being blown inside out.... come outsiiiiiiide...."


No, no I don't love that. Which is frustrating because I really am wanting to go outside and enjoy the last few weeks I have here in London, but the weather kind of puts me in a bad mood and then I get all discouraged and instead find myself sitting in my pyjama's all day and debating how acceptable it would be to crack open of bottle of wine at 11am (conclusion: it's not, so I didn't, don't worry).

I'm definitely starting to notice how my mood has dropped in relation to my 'leaving date' approaching. It's a similar feeling I had in December, before I left to come here. It's a slight sinking feeling in my chest, and sense of disease that soon I'll have to pack up and be on the road again. I love travelling, and I feel torn in that I want to see new things/eventually see friends and family, but I don't like leaving this place behind. I've become accustomed to it.

I think my alcohol consumption is generally a pretty good gauge for how I'm feeling: if I'm feeling the need to have a few glasses of wine with dinner, then it's because I'm also feeling a tad despondent. On the flip side, the more I indulge these urges (and drink), the worse I feel. I wake up the next morning and have myself a total pity party because I got drunk instead of do something productive the night before. However, I like to think I'm self-aware enough to not let it become a regular thing - If I have some wine two nights in a row, I generally give myself the next few days off. I don't like the feeling of drinking too much over an extended period of time.

I tried to break this bad-mood streak earlier in the week when, on realising the weather forecast for that day was 'partly cloudy' (as opposed to 'if you're outfit is not entirely waterproof, then don't go outside'), I showered, put some pants on that were not of the pyjama variety and headed out. I did some simple things, like grab some nice vegan food from Camden Town, and then ventured down to White Cube to check out the current exhibition. It was nice, and reaffirming, to just walk along the streets, and be outside and looking around and taking things in. It's important for me to feel as if I am experiencing as much as I can. On the way home I spontaneously jumped off the tube at Hampstead and went for a stroll in Hampstead Heath, which was beautiful. It was all lush, green, and a little muddy thanks to the rain.

My focus for the next week will be to finish my collage, help out with preparing the studio spaces for assessment, and then get assessed myself. I also need to start cleaning my room, and decide what's coming with me to Europe, and what's being sent home. I've also got a list of things I want to see and revisit in London while I'm still here and it's pretty much exclusively a list of places to eat, and places to see art.

I also need to start seriously finishing off all the food I've got in my pantry. I've been trying to only purchase fresh produce for the past week or two, and using more of the staples that I still have. Nevertheless, I still have loads of quinoa, brown rice, and pasta. I love a good grain, but somehow I just don't think I'm going to be able to finish off what I have in time. I might just have to take what I have left with me, and hope that the Germans aren't too strict about smuggling copious amounts of food in your checked baggage. Maybe I'll get a chance at my 15 minutes of fame on 'Border Patrol - Deutschland'.

This next week will be reasonably busy, and it'll be important to remind myself to value the time I have here, and enjoy the things I get to do. It won't last long.

Also, because I can't stand the thought of a blog post without pictures (and because family member won't have seen this photo yet - sorry for the spam, facebook friends), here's one of me at the Harry Potter Studio Tour I did last week:

: )

Work In Progress Wednesday! (again)

Hi everyone! Welcome to my second, and last, WIPW :)

It's my last post about my uni-related work because assessment is next week and after that I'm heading home (via Scotland and continental Europe), so I won't be working on this project until July, when I start my second semester of uni back in Australia. I think I'll try and keep this blog updated during my travels, but once I'm back in Australia for the foreseeable future, I will 'book-end' the blog with a round-up post of sorts and then it'll fade into obscurity in the frothy backwaters of the Internet. And that's good for me because it means I get hipster points by being able to claim ownership over something that not a lot of people know about. Ha!

Anyway, onwards: since I gave a brief introduction to my art project in my last WIPW post (which you can read here), I feel it pointless to rehash it in full again in this one. Instead, here's a bunch of photos of different things I have made/am currently working on, with a few details

The above project is a a bit of a deviation from my main body of work (as it's not strictly printmaking and I'm using the words differently), but nevertheless very important to my own personal preconceptions about how to use and consider text. I picked up a Russian newspaper by accident a few weeks ago on a night out, and it was one of those 'happy mistakes' that happen so often during the creative process. I can recognise that these are words, but because they're in another language that I've never even attempted to learn, I can't understand them. This detachment of understanding then allows me to consider them from a more aesthetic point of view. As I arrange them in this collage, it becomes more about the slant or boldness of the text, not about it's readability. This lens is something I would like to continue to use within the rest of my project.

Screen print + handwriting + cut and rearranged.

I've started trying to be a bit more controlled in my screen printing. With the first prints I made, I didn't really care about where the print ended up on the page. But, as this project is becoming more and more about the aesthetic, I'm now being a bit more decisive about composition. I think I'm starting to see words as more of a 'means to an end', rather than subject matter.

Above is an experiment in layering and transparency. Printed and handwritten words on fabric. I used 3 different fabrics, each with a different density and type of thread, and this is the one I liked the most. This is also an attempt at injecting humour into my work: see how the printed words are 'hand written' and the hand written word is 'printed'? 

At least we know that if this art business falls through, I'll always have a career in comedy to fall back on. ;)

comparing then & now

I've spent a great deal of time in my bedroom over the past 4 months, so just for fun I've decided to compare what it looked like when I first moved in (16th Janurary) to how it looks now.

Early January:

Mid April (most recent):

Since moving here I've felt the need to reconcile what (or perhaps, where) home is for myself, as I have sort of created two. Perth is my true home because that is where (most of) the people that I love also live. However, this hasn't stopped me creating a new sense of home here in London. I feel a fond familiarity with this place, one that I doubt will leave once I do. When I first moved into my London house, I had these dreams where I was walking around outside, and the streets kept flickering back and forth between English looking streets and Australian looking streets, and I was stumbling around trying to figure out what was wrong with my vision. I woke up from one of these dreams once in the dark, completely disoriented, with no idea where I was - all I knew was that I was in a bed, and I mentally had to retrace my steps over the last few weeks to remember that I was now living in London. It's funny how the mind tries to make things familiar and understandable, even if it's nowhere near the truth. My house sits on a corner and one night, as I was falling asleep in bed I heard a car turn the corner, which reminded me of the sound of my mum pulling into the driveway. I thought to myself: 'oh, mum's home', and for a second I truly believed that she was. I think that home is really closer that I think. The memory of Perth, and the places there are still so fresh to me, I don't feel the distance mentally. Sometimes I feel it physically, like when I look at a map of the world, or I really, really want a hug. But time keeps moving on, and I know I'll be home soon - perhaps staring at the little dot marked 'London' on my globe of the world.

In a month I'll be taking down the postcards and letters from my wall and leaving. I'll be sad to go.

Paris!

This is me trying to keep my 'post once or twice a week' goal.

I just spent a week in Paris with Ella. It was an interesting experience: probably the first time I've been to a country and felt the need to speak their language (and therefore not feel like such a dirty tourist) and also the first time I've travelled somewhere without consulting a Lonely Planet guide first. I normally treat Lonely Planet guides like some treat the Bible. I read it over and over before a trip, making notes of what I want to do/visit, following up on recommendations, etc. This time, with Paris, I didn't have a LP guide. I'd decided to go to Paris, not because I really, really wanted to go, but more so because I figured I'd regret it if I don't, not knowing when I'll be back in this part of the world again.

I am really glad I went. I had a kind of... reserved sense of anticipation about going. Paris is such a hyped-up city: City of Light! City of Love! Go there and fall in love with a Frenchman in a beret while eating a croissant in line for the Eiffel Tower... Paris! Baguette!

I was also a nervous about the language barrier. At first I felt very self-conscious about my lingual-ignorance, but in the end I was able to say a few things in French (such as: 'I do not speak French' and 'Do you speak English?', both handy things to know how to say, haha). I learnt French for a few years in high school, and a lot of it came back to me in the few days I was there, so I'm quite motivated now to re-start learning it as a second language. It's funny how, on a journey where what I want to do is experience new and different places, I also want to fit in.

 

One thing that really struck me about Paris (and it's not that this hasn't struck me before, it just came up again) was how what I knew of/imagined Paris to be like measured up with how it actually is. It's like: you have this idea of a place, and that idea is made up of pictures of landmarks, movies you've seen and stories you've heard... and when you finally get there you realise that all these things are actually very small, specific places/things within this big net of a city. When you travel from one 'thing' to another you see the real bits in between, like the way the roads look, the way the people dress, the homeless people on the street, the different types of trees. So it's like connecting the dots. It's a very subjective thing. I've noticed the same thing with this whole exchange experience as well: I had this vague idea of how it would turn out, and it hasn't turned out like that at all.

I'll finish this brief blog with an obligatory picture of the Eiffel Tower :)

expectations and fulfillment, loss and gain.

I can't even remember what my last blog was about, it's been a while. I've been putting off making a new post til now because in my head they're big tasks and should all be well-written with a clear focus and lots of photos and introspective stuff. I think from now on I'm going to TRY and be a little easier on myself as I would prefer to make posts more frequently. Big posts made sporadically kind of miss out the small, specific experiences I have on this trip because I tend to gloss over them and summarise everything. I want this blog to paint a fuller picture of my experience over here, so I'm going to start trying to make smaller posts more often. Goal: 1-2 posts per calender week (thought: are there other kinds of weeks?).

Right now, it's 6 weeks til I leave London for good. I can't believe it's already April. I'm starting to freak out a little bit, but also get excited about the onward journey that will eventually lead me home. I'm starting to feel a bit more enthused by this city I'm living in, because now the end is near. I was feeling a tad homesick last week, but that's subsided. And it's not place-sickness, it's people-sickness. I wanna be with friends and family. Thankcow for Skype (points if you get the reference ;)).

A few weeks ago Ella arrived in London and we headed down to Brighton for Vegfest. We couchsurfed with a lady we found through couchsurfing.com. I really wanna get more into that site, it's a great way to meet people who have a similiar 'FUCK YEAH, LETS EXPERIENCE THE WORLD' mentality. Vegfest was great, I ate lots of food. Brighton is beautiful, I loved it. The kind of place I instantly feel an affinity with.

Still struggling with motivation in regards to uni, but my project is still chugging along - I just don't go into uni unless I need to use the print studio, or perhaps see a lecture. My uni is on Easter break right now and won't go back til 16th April, and then from that point it's about two weeks till my assessment. I'm gonna be honest, I've been down-right lazy on this trip so I definitely need to get my butt into gear in time for assessment. I can do it though, just print, print, print. Create, create, create.

Ella's back in London now too after a few weeks away in Scotland and the last few days have been awesome. Spring is here, I'm LOVING the sunshine. England does springtime well, even if it does get super chilly in the evenings and then you're stuck in a dress with nothing but a light jacket to protect you from the cold. Going out, meeting new people and enjoying the company of strangers has been an enriching experience. I was thinking to myself last night that social interactions don't need longevity to be enriching - I can have open, honest, friendly and interesting conversations with people I've just met, and just because I don't know them well doesn't mean the interaction means any less, or lacks any sincerity. I haven't really made any long-term friends on this trip, which I was kind of dissapointed by but now I'm thinking that I've gotten lots of little awesome moments instead. It's like... a lot of my time here has not turned out like I expected... and I've gotten lots of fulfilling moments, just not in the way I thought.

I lost my phone at a Couchsurfing event last Saturday, which I was really upset about at the time but now I'm ok with it. I left a message on the site asking if anyone picked it up and I'll admit I'm hopeful someone will contact me about it, but that also could just be me being nieve. If it doesn't show up, oh well. I was joking with Ella that since I lost my phone, but had a really awesome weekend anyway, it's like I just traded with the universe, haha!

 Last week I went to Hyde Park by myself and this monument/statue was in the park opposite. If I remember correctly it's the NZ War Mamorial. Very beautiful.

The, uh... *cough* Award Winning Brighton Beach.

I'm heading to Paris on Tuesday night, so I'm think my new blogging goal might not get off to a great start, but we'll see. I'll definitely make a re-cap post when I get back.

Much love to my friends and family back in Perth-town, I'm starting to look forward to getting back.

-Cathryn.