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.

Jury is coming

The word jury just makes it seem like the most daunting assessment deadline ever. I somehow managed to stick to my proposed project and have been continuing with the language exploration, mainly through portraiture, but have been trying to expand into more installation-type pieces, and even tried some glass cutting to make my huge mirror into smaller sizes, which kind of went well.

I have compiled a portfolio of my work for this project here

I also have a couple of exams to take, which is different to Coventry! One is for my Contemporary Art class and the other for my Art History. Feeling slightly anxious about them as most of the papers we have been given to revise on are in French. 

Some experimental pieces from the studio, making use of the old vinyl covers that i’ve collected. 

SNOW

Why oh why hadn’t I done this earlier. We got the bus up to Crans Montana, which is basically Sierre but more wooden and higher above sea level. It was unbelievably picturesque, i must have taken at least 50 photos in the first hour or two, before my phone died. It didn’t end there! Next step was the cable car up to Plaine Morte, the highest point, costing a full 30.- (it was worth it though).

At the top we were greeted by a menu of various fondues, 30.- as well, but we couldn’t decide if that was worth it so the cheese was left for the time being. I think the immensity of the height you’re at in the cable car only really hits you on the way back down. The whole experience was just completely surreal 100000/10

Fête de bienvenue

Just one more photo of Thun because I couldn’t resist. Theres more on my instagram.

A few weeks ago we received invitations to a welcome party/meeting/shindig at the town hall, and as two of our friends in the inn are fairly new too we added them as plus 1′s and brought them along. Boy, the food…. We were introduced to our english translator for the evening and then listened to the mayor’s speech, a local band group, all whilst eyeing up the plates piled with swiss delicacies. The vast majority of people there were families, some I imagine had come here with much more need than us. It was a really good night, on the way home paid a visit to the infamous Les Wagons, a music/social venue, which we sadly found had closed for the remainder of winter.

Film workshop

Despite only being here for just over a month, when I heard the workshop leader’s voice (he was english!!) I felt a bit nostalgic for home. I love the diversity of this place, all variety of accents, but when you suddenly hear someone speaking in an english accent in this little town it can be quite nice.

The aim of the week was to create our own short film in groups, and me and Chelsea were paired with two other girls, Julie and Heloise. We were instructed to choose a text in light of which we would structure our filming and acting around, and somehow we ended up with Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Waiting for Godot’. Some parts of the dialogue were quite humorous and involved only one or two words from each speaker so we thought it would be fun to try reading it out in both french and english.

We were given the recording equipment and sent off to try it. I chose an acting role in the film and surprisingly found it quite fun, although i hate to watch myself back afterwards. Once we had all of our footage we set about editing it on Adobe Premiere, which gave me some handy new tech knowledge

The workshop leader himself, Redmond Entwistle, gave us a presentation of some of his own films at one point during the week, excerpts of which can be found here .

Movimax

This week were were allocated our studio spaces!! We have a key card to check in and out , and lock our individual rooms. I’m sharing with Chels and another girl, it’s a pretty big room and made up of 80% window. The building is called Movimax, there were studios at the school available but we decided to grab this one as it’s pretty close to the inn so we can come here more frequently.

Just before the bridge over the train tracks, is a make-shift little shelter in which you can place unwanted items, or take them… I present to you, the giving box!

It’s main occupants are books and clothing as far as i’ve seen. We took all the leftovers from that scavenging night at the inn and left them there. It’s a great idea and i find it wonderful how no one seems to have sabotaged it (as far as i know) like i would expect with something like this back home

Bonjour

Dying for a walk but the weather is so grim. The way Lora complained about the rain made me hopeful that it’s usually a sunnier place than the one we’ve been greeted with. Everyone seems very ‘to themselves’ here, going about their own things. I’ve learnt that a few of them originate from countries which are currently rather unstable, politically, and so this quiet town hidden away in the mountains is a pretty relaxing place for them. They all seem very wise

The town itself is amazing, the architecture especially, each building is unique to any other and painted beautifully, and so from above i expect the town to look smothered with all sorts of colours. Talking about being “up there” I’ve heard of this ski resort called Crans Montana which is situated somewhere in the surrounding Alps, which I’m desperate to visit, but having to wait until classes start to see what (if any) free time I have. Also need maps. Lots of them. This is turning out to be the sort of place where often you can’t just google where the place is that you want to reach, you have to walk, get lost, keep walking, and so on. The fact that the mountains are visible everywhere you go is dreamlike, like an alien landscape.

Due to some unusual (i promise) forgetfulness I’ve left my art supplies at home, resulting in me hurriedly buying some cheap pencils and fineliners from whatever supermarket i could find. My mum has kindly decided to post me my pencil case though so hopefully my last minute purchases will last through whatever work i do until it gets here.

It’s so tempting to just do everything right away and go everywhere!

p.s We are glued to this language app which is supposed to help us learn french. Will it work? Probably not, but stay tuned. à bientôt!