Setting up the Parndon Mill exhibition

On Friday I had a busy day.  I drove to uni, received feedback on my essay, loaded the car with exhibits, drove to Parndon Mill, helped set up the exhibition, drove home, drove to Witham, travelled to London, did my evening class, back to Witham and drove home. 

Essay feedback: Excellent communication skills; intelligent use of secondary sources; paraphrasing clear and precise.  Don't use Oxford English Dictionary for definitions - find better sources. The use of historical sources is well contextualised in a wider debate.  Substanital use of Treadaway's thesis is appropriate and well paraphrased.  Detailed theoretical debate is matched with interesting examples of  contemporary practice.  Greater attention to the benefits Cathy has gleaned from this work would have been useful but otherwise this essay is done to an excellent standard.

I was very pleased with this outcome - by the time I had handed it in, I had looked at it so much, that I was not at all sure whether it was any good or not.  It is as if I completely lose my critical faculty and self awareness by the end of a long piece of research.  This is because I have to work so hard to get the details right, particularly the bibliography, and fiddling about with details makes me exhausted, frustrated and bad tempered!  So this feedback made me delighted.

Setting up the exhibition at Parndon Mill was the usual scramble.  Textile pieces being ironed, cabinets being cleaned, debates about how to display work to best effect.  The students had organised the private view for Friday evening and arranged catering.  Unfortunately I had to leave in the afternoon, as I had an evening class in London. 

My Drawing class was great fun again.  This time we were looking at drawing plants using tonal value.  I focussed on a swiss cheese plant and used heavy and light lines to draw the light and dark areas of outline, then we moved on to working on paper coloured with dilute ink, and drawing tonal areas in charcoal and chalk.  Different people drew in different ways - I use the side of the charcoal a lot, and use a lot of pressure so the charcoal breaks and shatters, as this is the quality of the medium. Other people used the charcoal like a pencil, with delicate fine lining. I liked the bold shapes of the swiss cheese plant leaves, others liked the delicacy and detail of some of the flowers on display.  Very enjoyable.  And I like the classroom environment, where I get to look at other people's work and see how they use the materials.