helloruby - archived

The bride who becomes frightened when she sees life opened

last week was really fun, we got briefed on the colour project, a very loose basically a ~do whatever you want and link it to colour in someway~ project, i’m finding it quite hard, it’s quite a long project of two and a half weeks and I normally work with a concept and think about colour at some point afterwards. Trying to work it out the other way is interesting but i’m spending a lot of time procrastinating, and feeling like i’m constantly hitting a wall? The project started with a silk dying workshop and a colour walk to start thinking about colour. Walking aimlessly through hyde park on a crisp morning was wonderful, focusing on the tiny specks of colour within a plant, the variations of autumnal leaves and how people around me interact with colour, by wearing it / curating it on their bodies. I picked a deep purple and it was especially interesting to see how people wore it with other colours, it was definitely an exercise in looking and really focusing on the landscape. I’ve been obsessed with colour perception and the idea that everyone sees colour differently, thinking about my friends from home who have a colour deficiency to browns / reds / greens and how they’d ask me to pass them a certain colour because they wanted to use it within their work. Without actually knowing what the colour looked like or what it was against the other colours they chose.

I also got to go with Viv, Hannah and Chris to the Opius exhibition at the V&A and it was endlessly inspiring and really interesting. This is an amazing cope from the exhibition.

interesting + heartbreaking articles i’ve been reading: - Why was he killed? Brutal death of Italian student in Egypt confounds experts - More savage than Caravaggio: the woman who took revenge in oil

some lil paintings i’ve done recently

follow the star to the thumb mountain from holes with a collection of nik naks

The first picture is of my lovely new space at the royal college! i quickly took this picture so I wouldn’t forget but i’ve just dumped all my stuff on my desk pre-crit for my summer project. i have an amazing view of the Albert Hall and as our studio is on the 7th floor theres a vast London skyline.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this tweet by Jen Richards “ I rarely meet men in real life as extraordinary as ones on film, and rarely see women on film as extraordinary as ones I know in real life”. I feel that no truer words have been spoken, It is frustrating that the women that I see on television are most often written by men, and all feel very familiar.  I overheard a conversation at work a few weeks ago where a man was telling the head of the company, also a man that he is finding it hard writing a female character for childrens tv show recently commissioned because he keeps making her seem like a bitch. I felt disappointed watching a recording of an event at comicon back in 2013 where a member of the audience asked Gillian Anderson- “how much of long lasting impact do you think having a strong female character on a sci fi show has influenced the genre”, the conversation passed to Chris Carter the writer of Scully and he states the key aspects of her personality before saying how she is really just his fantasy woman??  to limit her to just being a product of his own fantasy is so demeaning. I love the show but I am so desperate for more women to write shows about women, (AND that aren’t Lena Dunham). 

theres just under two weeks until the first day at the royal college, i’m so nervous! i’ve had two stress dreams! back to frantically doing my project into the early hours. this is a quick post about how i’m having a revamp of my blog and will be posting research + work in progress + general diary rambles. I want to do some podcasts but i’m still unsure what I have to contribute and really i want to make up some great jingles.

it’s been a weird couple of months since graduating, the summer feels wasted on me and my pre-masters nerves. i’ve been ill for the last week and flat bound starting my new summer project, kind of? relearning a lot of hand knitting techniques and experimenting with patterns and colours, it’s a bit daunting as it’s leading to a presentation infront of my new teachers and class and they put a lot of weight on the fact it should show my ambitions and passion? i’m feeling quite flat from my BA and desperately trying to claw inspiration back. If you are feeling this way too a good place to start (i found) was getting a blank piece of paper and dividing it into 4, inspirational artists, places, topics and other (other is mostly for notes/colours). Its good to get everything together in one place that isn’t my muddled brain, I guess at the moment i’m interested in, knock offs/ bootleg, obsession/fandom and global warming. I’ve been reading This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein which is heavily influencing a lot of my thoughts whilst also filling me with dread and anxiety.  I am working on a really badly knitted piece (see image) about how henry ford bought in the 5 day 40 hour work week which scrapped that 16hr work days, paying his workers the same wage but allowing them more time off to, ~CONSUME~ basically people just spent more and consumer culture was born. But I also watched this interesting video about mental health and politics and it really resonated with me,

Things I am annoyed about (I tried writing this not in bullet points but whatever) - the tory party have used immagrants as a scape goat their entire time in power, cuts to the nhs? immagrants! cuts to schools? immagrants! annoyed there are no jobs? immagrants! they have used it time again and it has been perpetuated by the right wing media which have fed this hatred. Now that the EU ref was voted with a majority leave it has empowered racists and xenophobes to assult people in public and it’s disgusting, it makes me feel so sick that people feel unsafe in their homes and communities. With the leave campaign not commenting on this it makes it seem like they condone it. My neighbour commented on my post on facebook with “At least we have OUR country back” ? back from who? - Although the feeling was of loss and anger, Glastonbury was the best place I could of been during this time. I attended talks on the EU at Leftfield and got to hear Josie Long and Robin Ince express their anger on the topic. I felt a sense of unity and strength. Clive Lewis talking about how we need to have conversations with people about this especially people who voted leave, and how politics have to be about love and compassion really resonated with me. It is easy to assume that all of the people who voted leave are racists but a lot of people only read the paper and watch tv and don’t actively engage with politics and its important to have these discussions. The daily mail posted an actual informative post on the EU ref after the count and many people wish they hadn’t of voted leave because they were ill informed? The leave campaign used the EU as a scape goat for why the NHS is underfunded, leading up to the election my next door neighbour (the same one) liked a photo on facebook that said, “stop junior doctors protesting, vote leave and the £350 mil we give to the EU every week will go to the NHS”, I thought it was obvious that in a state of austerity with the tory party that a promise like that would never happen, but they used the EU as the source of all our problems passing the blame once more. Farage went back on the statement an hour after the results were in and then the campaign stated “Nobody said that they'd spend the £350million a week on the NHS” with buses plastered with the statement. The leave campaign has no plan on what to do next. - Boris Johnson, head of the leave campaign explains what he wants for the UK post leaving the EU, which is affectively  an EU membership - these were put through the homes of people in Huntington

And I’m scared: