A walk

We've been having some wonderful spring weather here in the UK and yesterday I took a rest from FAILURE and took myself out in the fresh air to blow away the cobwebs!!! I took the bus to Wembury where there is a rather nice National Trust cafe - I treated myself to a coffee and read the Saturday morning paper - I bought one of their delicious Devon pasties (they are slightly different to the famous Cornish pasty and if you find yourself in Devon then woe betide you if you don't call it by it's proper name - a Devon pasty!) They kindly wrapped it in foil to keep it warm - and off I set to walk back to Plymouth along the South West Coastal footpath - around 7 miles. I rambled along and ate my pasty on a pretty beach watching a hazy sea. Then a little bit of failure happened!! I failed to see the footpath sign veering off to the right to avoid the military zone and ended up at Fort Bovisand - it was a lucky failure as I took these photographs of the windows in the fort.

There was also some wonderful rust and weathered wood!

Thank goodness I'd taken my camera but in any case I will make another visit during the summer months. I had thought that the Fort was part of the 2nd World War defense as this coastline is scattered with them but it turns out it was built in the 1800's as a defense against a French invasion! I arrived home tired and took a long soak in a hot bath - It had been a good day and I felt very refreshed and alive!
Today the sun is still shining and I have some pottering jobs to do - tomorrow it's back in the print room to finish my Failure cover for the book I'm making.

FAILURE

I'm spending my time at the moment on the dissertation part of my degree course as the deadline of 4 May suddenly feels not far away given that the University's resources are closed for a month during the Easter holidays - we have 3 choices in this module, a thesis, a critical commentary or a praxis project - I have elected to do the Praxis Project - this is less words than the thesis (3000-5000) but must include a practical piece of work that is separate but linked to your main practice -I am doing an Artist's book about artistic failure called ' A catalogue of Failures' - and have approached it as a mail art project and invited 30 artists to submit one piece of work on the topic of FAILURE all work will be included in the catalogue - there will be no selection as I feel that is part of the failure process - there will be no exhibition as that is one aspect of the failure (I have failed to get a venue for the exhibition) -so the catalogue will exist in it's own right. I now have 23 artists taking part and feel honoured that they have trusted me with their images and words. I feel the weight of responsibility and don't want to FAIL!! Today I have been experimenting with the cover of the book and YES there have been FAILURES but I now know what I want the cover to be like -I have been trying the blind embossing technique on black card - soaking the card did not work and so I have used a dry emboss - here are some images of today....

this is the beautiful old press that I'm using at the University

I feel very fortunate that Lisa Le Feuvre, curator of the British Art Show 2011 and writer of several articles on the topic of FAiLURE agree to give me an interview for the catalogue. Thank you Lisa.
I feel excited about the project and will post more about the work to be included in the book - I'd love to hear about your own views of artistic failure too!