I have been struggling in the mire with my design work. Yesterday I was at class, for a group review, and felt so downhearted about it all that I could easily have walked away from the course for ever. I have been trying to work up repeat designs with my pomegranates for several weeks now, and all I have produced is naff, pedestrian designs. I am not sure whether I have had enough of the pomegranates, whether I am simply a poor designer, or are completely lacking in talent. But one of the MA students, Vanda, who is a part time tutor to the first years, was kind and supportive to me and told me to stick with it.
I went swimming this morning, and while flogging up and down the pool, came to some conclusions about my work. I know I don't like a regular repeat pattern. I like drawing objects. I like the way I draw - somewhat inaccurate and naive, showing it is a drawing, not a photograph. I like brighter colours. I like layered pattern. I like actually handling the materials. I don't like twee little embroidered panels to put on the wall. I like textured fabrics and with hand/machine embroidery combined.
So as I flogged up and down the pool, I started thinking about the last project with which I was satisfied with my work. This was a project on hand drawn screen printed camping cups, worked up into an appliqued, embroidered panel (which I so dread). But I can see that I have created a textured background that I liked, behind the hand drawn cup, which I also like. And if digital print is good at detailed colour variation, it might reproduce the hand dyed silk noil fabric quite well. So if I scan this hand worked panel into photoshop, manipulate it into an irregular repeat, then use that to create a repeat design, I might be a lot happier with it. Then the cup becomes a motif, used within a design. And the motif could be anything - pomegranates, fruit, veg, any other domestic hand drawn object.
While I was floundering with the design over the last few weeks, I started an aran throw, thinking I might back it with my own fabric design as part of my exploration of how to use fabric. When I had my tutorial with Sara, she said to focus on the design work, not do the knitting. Although it is apt to spend my limited time resources on the designing, I have found it incredibly frustrating to be producing such NAFF work, and have felt very isolated working at home, snowed in, becoming very depressed and upset. As the only part-timer on my course, I have no working time with anyone else on my course and I don't have any studio space because I am part time. I have very little contact with other students, and only get half an hour every fortnight with my tutor. From my degree essay, I remembered when I was writing about the link between the hand and the brain, getting into "flow" by repetitive, intuitive movement, where a heightened state of thought process is acquired by the feeling given by many hours of accumulated experience. And when I picked up the knitting again, some of the feelings of despair and frustration assuaged. Likewise with the swimming.
Another factor that has considerably frustrated me is the allocation of Employability & Enterprise module. I feel I have had very little input from tutors since I returned from Australia. I know the UK teaching style is self-directed learning, and because I know I won't get any taught modules in my final 2 part-time years, I have started a Wednesday afternoon class at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London because I want to learn more about the domestic interior. I had only been told about the Degree Planning module for this semester. Last week I was told E&E is a compulsory module for me, and it is conducted on a Wednesday morning. The email told me the first class would start with "feedback", which puzzled me as I was unclear what the feedback would be about. E&E is a two semester class, and the "feedback" was about results from semester 1. I have missed the first semester completely, because (I suspect) I was forgotton about and was not allocated this "compulsory module". I had two modules in the first semester already allocated (Degree Planning and Degree Essay). E&E remains a compulsory module even though I have missed the first semester(!) In order to do both E&E at Herts and my V&A class in London, I have a triangular journey, some of which can only be conducted by car, and some of which can only be done by train. This is where I am very fortunate to have a supportive husband. So on a Wednesday, Jim will drive me (1 hour 10 mins) from Braintree to University of Herts, wait 2 hours for me while I have the E&E class, then drive me to Hatfield station, so I can get to the V&A for 2pm. Jim drives home from Hatfield. I get the train back from London to Braintree after my class.
I was also more than a little hacked off when I was told that as a mature student, the module would not be much work for me, as I probably already knew a lot of it. So I have to pay the full fees, for a class where I appear to have missed the first semester, and won't have to work much in the second, in order to "tick a compulsory box". As a fee paying customer of the university, it does not give me a positive customer experience.
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