What Next?

I'm currently finessing the essay, for last tutorial on 17th Sept, hand-in 19th Sept, Viva 11 November.

I have 3 ideas for what next:

1. See whether my local gravel quarry will let me be artist-in-residence, to work with the skills of manual workers, who drive the quarry lorries.  Possibly an exhibition at Braintree library/musuem to celebrate local unsung manual workers.

2. Learn to do more poetry.  I like the way poetry can say a lot with a few words.  I know I am reacting against the discursive style of my thesis - I just find a lot of it verbose.  I want to say stuff in a powerful way - but with comparatively few words.

3. Art class is doing a term on sketchbooks for the Brooklyn sketchbook library project.  I'm really looking forward to this.  There are various themes - but Time Trapped appeals to me.   Yesterday I dug out an old sketchbook with blackwork embroidery stitched from a drawing of the gesture of cross stitch.  I'd like to do some work with blackwork and Jacobean embroidery, and drawing the different gestures of stitches - which vary across time.  Elizabethan gestures are different to Mary Thomas' Dictionary of Embroidery stitches from the 1930s.  This could be really exciting, and I love blackwork embroidery.  I can visualise making fabric pages to fit the paper pages.  And I'm planning how to secure the textile page edges in different ways - Elizabethan buttonhole, or 1930s hemming.  Get some even weave linen on the frame, mark out the page sizes and off I could go - using leftover thread from my degree projects.  But I need to do the artwork first!