It's been a strange first year at University.
Between the Cube student accommodation fire which rendered several of my peers effectively homeless and without any belongings, to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic shunting teaching online for our last module (which is a pretty tricky feat in an incredibly hands-on course like SFX), it's felt a bit odd.
Nevertheless, I've had an inspiring time at a place I never thought I'd be in my life, doing the stuff I love doing surrounded by people who work on the same wavelength as me. I loved it. I do wonder how it would have been without the significant incidents cropping up to slam on the breaks what felt like every term; but I don't think I would have changed it.
I'm very grateful to our course leader and lecturers for keeping things together and creating an alternative online space to the studio where we've been offered constant support, motivation and encouragement despite challenging circumstances. I feel it's brought us all together just a little bit more than we would have bothered had everything run the way it was intended.
So at the end of this first year, during this time spent at home, not knowing if I'll be offered my job again for the summer and surrounded by much negativity and fear - I wanted to share the progress, creativity and positivity given by my uni experience.
Our last module was a team project based around the whimsical worlds of Brian Froud. The task was to create anything we liked, provided it would fit in and contribute to the overall theme. Originally I wanted to create a maquette of a swampy, witch like creature, half submerged in resin to an eerie effect. After recognising we weren't going to be able to continue in the safe studio environment supervised by our lecturers and instead having to work from home, I came up with new concepts for a leather Fae and green man inspired mask, avoiding the potentially harmful resins.
I love leather and wanted to better understand it to work with it as a material. Creating this mask was the perfect opportunity. I dug out a leather working kit I was gifted many years ago but as yet had never actually used and got familiar with the tools. After research, I dived in, practising on scraps until eventually I was brave enough to dive in and cut out the mask.
Tooling was challenging at first but quickly became enjoyable watching the marks come together to create a bigger picture. Then it became repetitive and tedious, then at the end when I realised I had nowhere left to tinker, I missed it. Wet moulding it onto my face was entertaining... then once it was dry and hardened, it was time to colour. I was terrified of using the dye despite it essentially being like painting. I did several tests and after much procrastination, eventually dived in... And it turned out fine.
The main lesson I took away from this project was to stop being anxious about every tiny step in the process - think less, do more, and maybe, just maybe, I'll get things in on time without the drama near the end.
Might share in-progress pictures in the future, but for now, here's the finished asset.
OZ