Right now life feels quite odd. Newly graduated with an Art degree and being outside a school system for the first time since I was six years old, feels like being a half-finished painting and my frame just fell off. Every now and then I feel lost and I doubt myself, whether I am choosing the right way to go with life. Other times it feels exciting, like everything is possible because I don’t know where the limits are yet.
Since graduating from RCN I’ve fallen in love with metal. Three years ago I first learned how to weld. Attaching two bits of steel together is one of the most bad-ass things I’ve done so far in my life. It feels like being in complete control when standing in a boiler suit with thick gloves on and a welding mask flicked down. Surrounded by a shower of sparks – it’s like a form of meditation. The times I got welding sparks up my nostril and down my boot are another story. It was slightly less meditative to get hot metal bits out of places where they should not be. But don’t worry, I survived, my nose hair did not.
This new welding knowledge led to the creation of a 2.5 m tall Clydesdale Rocking Horse made completely out of steel rods which I bent to their right shape before welding them together. The Clydesdale horse – a symbol of the Scottish workforce – being made into a rocking horse. Reduced to nothing but a toy. This is to symbolise oppression and capitalist exploitation within Scotland.
While writing this, I’m in my boiler suit again, outside a blue house in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. A few months ago I was accepted to a medal-making course where the aim is to make and cast Art medals out of bronze. The course has taken me from the Art medal archives of the British Museum to this really quite chilly night in Bulgaria. We have spent the last week carving in plaster to prepare what we later will cast. I’m happy to share that many mistakes have been made and lots learned.
Half a year ago I couldn’t have imagined that this was a possibility, so even though Art feels like quite an uncertain route, it feels doable. Thank you Reidun, for setting me on the path of Art: without your support and the art room I probably would have studied law, or become a shoemaker. I was a bit undecided back then.
(Photo by Martin Dobbin)
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