MA Week 18 - Reflection on the past 10 days

A mixed bag of fortunes recently.

 

Week commencing 9^th February was really productive, with the breakthrough reading about heritage as a critical perspective and with the generative wandering. I then went on to finish off the acrylic piece I’d been doing the week before (see this Week 16 post), and also started another acrylic piece on paper which was a visual response to the generative wandering. 

 

Armley, WIP, February 2012

 

I had also managed to get some advice from IT about how to prepare images for the laser cutter (as mentioned in this post under “Laser cutting”) and I had made a different template of my face. I tested this and decided to simplify it even further. The IT guys and the laser technician both thought that I was probably aiming at something too ornate with all the detail in the hair and eyes. 

Then week commencing 15^th February was a disaster. I had Monday afternoon off and used it to prepare the simplified image mentioned above. Then I came home to do some blogging and found my poor partner down with flu. So arty time lost on Monday and Tuesday as I packed him off to get some rest and tried to look after him. On Tuesday I then cut the simplified image from 9mm MDF and it burnt. This wasn’t entirely unexpected but it was still a blow as I’d hoped to build up a stack of these cut images as part of an ongoing idea of being able to “look down” into the image and see what’s inside. I’ll ask further advice, but I think I might be at the point where I have to pause the laser investigations. I’m not getting the results I’d hoped and there are deadlines looming! I have learnt lots about laser cutting notwithstanding.  

Charred remains of grand designs

 

Then even bigger disaster as I went down with the flu myself on Wednesday. So I’ve done next to nothing for a week - I didn't even get to college on Friday. Even my finely honed project management skills (!) can’t pull a week back over three weeks. So I will need a bit of prioritisation and juggling as I move towards the deadline. It’s such a shame after such a breakthrough the previous week, but that’s art, that’s life.