It got better as the day progressed - my lovely daughter Olivia took me to lunch (I had hake which was yummy!). When we arrived at the restaurant we were shown to our table and I excused myself for a few minutes, I was a bit desperate by this time as there were the usual long queues for the ladies at the ceremony! When I came back to the table a large beautiful carrier bag was sitting there!
A card with messages from my family and friends
then the box inside was opened and this was inside!
Yes a white 32gb WiFi ipad - I can't tell you how shocked I was - a wonderful shock of course but so unexpected! Those of you who have been reading my posts for the last few years will know how much I've dreamed of having one! And just as I'd discounted it as being financially impossible (for the time being anyway!) I have one! Wow - my daughter said it's the first time she's seen me speechless (and in tears!). What fun I'm going to have! A very big, heartfelt thank you to you all and to the universe - I feel so blessed!
So what now? Well I've made my decision so..................
HELLO M.A. CONTEMPORARY ART PRACTICE - HERE I COME!!!
Others were of poor quality, out of focus and with little regard for composition or distance. In fact they were so bad they were wonderful material for an artist! I selected 20 to work with, all of lone figures which seemed to predominate in the archive and continued to fragment them even more.
I felt that the materiality of these objects connected with the fragmented memories I held of my parents, both dead for several years now. I wanted to delve deeper and somehow extract their essence.
At the same time to explore the tensions between the abstract and the concrete. I began by playing with mirrors and projection, using an old suitcase as a focal point, placing the projector within the suitcase and projecting the slides on to fragments of mirror which reflected back a fragment of the image. How to present this turned out to be a major problem and I felt so frustrated by the process that I shelved the idea. The next step I took was to digitalise the slides. These I then printed out on to acetate in various scales. I preceded to inflict minor violence to them in order to extract their secrets, cutting them up, replicating details, continuing to fragment the image, working with the materiality of each slide to render them empty of and separate from their histories. At the same time I have tried to link them to my own personal memories of a coat, a colour, a particular way of standing or sitting,
my mother’s handbag…. 
Memories that show them as something of myself and as something that could be anybody’s, anywhere; that connects with a universal memory. As Susan Hiller so aptly said of her work ‘ which seemed to carry an aura of memory and to hint at the meaning of something’ (Hiller 2000, Afterword) By putting them through a series of processes that threatened to further damage or alter them physically I felt that I was trying to force their secret out of them, only to find that the memory stayed where it was and that I had constructed a new set of objects (in this case new slide transparencies) which in turn contain a fragment or memory of the originals that I supposed to hold memories of the past.
I made the decision to present these slides as they would have originally been seen, on slide projectors rather than digital. The slides were spaced in order to emphasis the gap, between the object and me, the work and the viewer; spaces where meaning can be found.
And of course they were much larger - each image about 3 ft width and very grainy!
At this point I must mention what a terrible photographer my father was, figures so far in the distance they are hard to make out or so close up only part of the person is in the picture, mostly out of focus too! They really are so bad they are quite wonderful! 