Tuesday, 21 February 2017

2nd semester + reflection


My visit back home was wonderful but strange, and has helped to realise how far I much I have progressed in terms of my work ethic and other personal attributes. As i mentioned in an earlier post, being a step back from everyone here due to the language barrier, it has in fact benefitted, and not solely hindered my experience on the course here, and i’m hoping that with my new found determination to go above and beyond to achieve, I will succeed even further at Coventry when I return. This year out has also offered great inspiration concerning my dissertation - which i plan to begin researching in the summer when I return home - and also has broadened my desire to work in other mediums and experiment with new processes. I want to make full use of all facilities that are available back in Coventry, as sometimes I am restricted from doing so here due to the communication difficulty.

My studio here is excellent, as it’s so close I often spend full days there, and wish that I had spent more time at the studio I had last year. I’ll certainly be spending plenty of time there next year, and I plan to try and get the same space which was given to me last year. Because of the fact that I’ve been learning french here, it has tempted me to possibly choose it for my addvantage class as its seems like a bit of a waste to not continue, but I am still leaning towards my original choice of Creative Networking Skills.

Right now I’m also enjoying creating my work a lot more, again despite being limited sometimes as to what materials i can/cannot afford. For this next semester I’m shifting away from the topic of language and instead focusing on a narrative of objects and photos that I have found and created in my time here, and combining old and new matter together.

Saturday, 18 February 2017

3 week holiday!

My week at home in wales went by in a flash. Apart from the nice 6 hour delay I had in Geneva waiting for the flight. I had to take a trip down to Coventry for the day to secure the booking of a house to live in for my final year, which was pretty nostalgic. When I flew back a week later, my mum came along with me and stayed in the Hotel Casino in Sierre for a few days. We crammed in a few places - Biel/Bienne, Zermatt, and Lucerne. She hadn’t ventured out of the UK in a good 30+ years, and I think Switzerland was a nice place to begin for her. 

The mountain peak poking through the clouds is that of the famous Matterhorn! 


The day after she left, I was off to Grindelwald for the weekend, a dazzlingly beautiful place (literally i was blinded by the snow) on Saturday me and Chelsea went up to the Jungfraujoch ‘The top of Europe’, which held a viewing point looking across the glaciers and mountains all around. On the Sunday we took a cable car up to the First mountain, at a discount, courtesy of our hotels/hostels for giving us a voucher. Up there we found a cliff walk with a horrifyingly high drop. One part even had a glass floor, if you are prone to vertigo this is not the place to visit



After being back in Sierre for all of two seconds I was then flying to Madrid to visit Ash. I was doing that thing where you fill your free time with countless activities and then when it comes to going back to normality you feel completely exhausted. Although, living here, what really is considered ‘normality’ now? Luckily Ash was quite happy to lounge about so the time there was pretty chill. We did make some time to visit some art however! A trip to the Palacio de Velázquez.


Arriving back on Friday, I am now spending the weekend resting and preparing for the start of classes on Monday.