pence per hour?

Hours worked Wednesday 6th January 2010, 5.5

Pay received for work, £ nil

Expenditure, £ nil

Total Hours worked in 2010, 33

Total Pay Received, £ nil

Total Expenditure, £42.75

sub zero

BRRRRRR!  I'm afraid going to the studio is still out of the question, I would get brain and finger freeze before you could say 'icicle'.  It was -13.5 degrees C in Carlisle last night, -9 at 8am this morning and the weather girl said that the best we can hope for today is -3 degrees C.  As my studio was originally built as a slaughterhouse, warmth was not a top design priority, and although a false ceiling has been put in and insulated with kingspan foam board it is impossible to heat effectively.  The concrete floor pulls any body heat straight down through your feet, and as my snow boots died towards the end of last year and haven't been replaced with anything as effective yet it would be silly to try and work. 

The pretty ice patterns from Ed's studio windows that I posted a couple of days ago were on the inside of the kitchen and bathroom window this morning.  When I opened the shutters in the living room to let some light in this morning I received an icy blast of air and promptly shut them again.  Although it will be a little gloomy in there today, I would rather retain the heat in the house than let it fly out of our old single glazed sash windows.

I spent most of yesterday writing a series of art and craft courses for the local borough council.  Hopefully I will be delivering them to groups of adults from March.  These courses are provided free to anyone who cares for a child under 5 years of age, but I suspect that this isn't widely known as it seems to be a regular group of twenty something ladies who come along.  I have proposed courses in ceramic bead, button and broach making, yo-yo patchwork, glass etching and sandblasting, glass fusing, mixed media collage, personal visual diary making, printing and mosaic.  As Children's Services budget has been cut by £140k this year I hope that I will be able to find most of the materials I need from Free For All the arts and crafts scrap store that I help to run.  I will have to buy some clay, but by concentrating on making small items, one bag should go a long way.  I will encourage participants to bring along scrap fabrics and glass items to supplement the ones I can provide from my stash, and I know that I can find tile grouts and fixatives in the Community Re-paint scheme.  I will just have to wait and see which courses are selected to go ahead now.  I am also going to contact the local adult education centre and Spinning Yarns, an art group for isolated older people with the list and see if they are interested in taking any of them up. 

I'm going to plod on with my website today, and also finish off my article for the CGS magazine.  I have to condense it into 300 words, which is always a struggle for me.  Need to get all the computer work finished by 4pm when the sun goes down as that is when my fingers get too icy cold to type.

pence per hour?

Hours worked Tuesday 5th January 2010, 5.5  (took half day off for in lieu of Sunday)

Pay received for work, £ nil

Expenditure, £ nil

Total Hours worked in 2010, 27.5

Total Pay Received, £ nil

Total Expenditure, £42.75

more snow and cold, but potential for warmth!

We awoke to another covering of snow this morning on top of the compacted ice that has been hanging around since Christmas.  It looked pretty so I tottered outside first thing and took this picture before it had been disturbed.  It doesn't look much, but it was rather pretty, and eerily quiet at that hour.  In lieu of Sunday working Ed and I had planned a half day off today, and were aiming for a walk in the snow, and as he had stuff to do on the computer this morning I went into town to talk to the accountants office where I going to 'curate' a window of art and craft this year.  It didn't take me long as it is only around the corner, the white building you can see in the background of the photo!  I had planned to set up the first exhibit of the year this morning, but as I needed to get the plinths from the studio to the accountants in our van, which is dodgy in the snow and ice I have put it off until better weather.  The window is 10ft wide, 2.5ft deep and taller than me (I'm 5ft 5)  so it is an intersting space.  The only problem is that the window gets full sun all day long so we need to make sure that any work that goes on display is not going to get sun damaged, so that means that we are unlikely to show textiles, which is a bit of a shame.  Hopefully we will be able to take over the front window on the high street too which doesn't get any sun, although instead of being a full plate glass window it is made up of panes about 1ft square, however, I have a cunning plan for that if we can find some funding.  After lunch we got a call to say our log delivery had finally arrived, but the man couldn't drop the logs on the drive because of the snow and ice, so he was dropping the pallet on the pavement.   That put paid to our afternoon walk, but we got plenty of excercise carrying the logs through to the yard and stacking them.  I must admit it was very therapeutic, and most satisfying to see the stack grow and the pallet empty.  It was pretty good timing as we only had enough logs left for a few hours in the log burner tonight.  We have now turned the heating off again to conserve what oil we have left in the tank to heat the water and we are back to being reliant on long johns, vests, fingerless gloves, plug in USB feet warmers when working on the computer and a good old electric blanket!  Talking of which, I'd better go and switch it on!

pence per hour?

Hours worked Monday 4th January 2010, 4  (took half day off for in lieu of Sunday)

Pay received for work, £ nil

Expenditure, £ nil

Total Hours worked in 2010, 22

Total Pay Received, £ nil

Total Expenditure, £42.75

natural inspirations

The cold weather just doesn't seem to let up and the oil and logs are running out, but when you see these beautiful patterns created by nature it makes it all worthwhile. Not sure that Ed thinks so though, these were on his studio windows this morning and his heater had packed up so cold metal tools, cold metal lathe, cold plaster.....cold fingers!

pence per hour?

Hours worked Sunday 3rd January 2010, 8

Pay received for work, £ nil

Expenditure, £ nil

Total Hours worked in 2010, 18

Total Pay Received, £ nil

Total Expenditure, £42.75

that time of the year..

Considering Sunday is supposed to be my day off I haven't done very well.  I sat in front of the computer at 0945, stopped for lunch for an hour at midday and am just grinding to a halt now.  However, today I have achieved a bit more on my website, although having a problem with retrieving my images and had to enlist the help of my I.T. Director (sister), still failed, so started trawling through the pc looking for the originals.  As I had to start sharing the pc with my husband after my mac died earlier this year things aren't filed particularly well, so I got side-tracked sorting out a new filing system for the new year.  We have been left with a lovely clear desktop, files for each of us and our joint business, and all the pictures in one place.  At least the first stage is complete!  I'm going to change the desktop image now as I'm sick of looking at the Microsoft Teletubbies hillock, found some lovely sunset pictures over the harbour in Calpe that I took in the summer, perhaps that will keep me going until our next trip in March.  Ed has been working today as well, modelling and mould making for our friends Charlie and Phillip at Branksome China, making a new lid for their tableware range.  He has just brought me a glass of bubbly to keep up my new years resolution and given me a ten minute warning for dinner. We will have to decide what day we are having off work in the week to compensate for Sunday working.  My neck and shoulders are stiff and sore, I think it is about time we invested in a decent desk and chair for the office or I'll be back at the acupuncturist before January is out.

pence per hour?

Hours worked Saturday 2nd January 2010, 10

Pay received for work, £ nil

Expenditure

89 miles @ 40 p/p/m  £35.60

coffee and lunch  £7.15

the end of a decade, reflecting on the past and planning for the future

So here I am at the begining of 2010 setting goals for the year ahead.  It is obvious that one thing I can no longer ignore is online networking, or that rather ugly term 'viral marketing'.  Networking in the real world has never been a problem for me, (the term verbal diarrhoea always springs to mind thanks to a comment by my sister when I was a nipper), but there are limitations as to how many people you can meet face to face whilst still getting some actual work done.  Despite my technical limitations I have challenged myself to make sure that in this decade I don't get left behind as more and more people tweet, blog, myspace and facebook their way to a successful career. 

At the beginning of the last decade I took a leap of faith, left my comfortable career and jumped into life as an art student.  That was one of the scariest things that I have ever done in my life, but ultimately one of the most vital and life giving experiences.  It was a hard slog, but came with some really life affirming rewards.  After four years at University I was assured that it would take me a minimum of five years to build a reputation and start earning my living through my new creative career.  I am glad that I  took that advice seriously and planned for it by earning money to live off utilising other skills, otherwise I would have become disheartened and given up the dream like so many of my contemporaries.  Six years on I can finally say that all those years of networking, writing relentless letters, proposals, begging for opportunities and doing creative work for little or no financial reward are finally starting to pay off.  Now my phone rings with offers, commissions and requests for my input and I believe that in the next decade life will get easier, the non-creative work more sporadic and my time in the studio more frequent. 

So, my plan for 2010....

• lots more online conversations with both like-minded and incongruent people
• revamp my website www.judestoll.com
• get one good retail outlet for my 'New Identity Glass' recycled glass giftware range in each county in the UK
• develop international exhibiting opportunities for the art side of my practice
  
• curate a space showing quality art and craft in my 'town that culture forgot'
• do an architectural glass commission, even if it is for free, to help to build a reputation
• continue to develop Free For All Community Recycling Ltd www.freeforallwigton.com

and then there is the non business stuff to keep things balanced

•  take one day off work each week to spend with my husband
  
• drink a glass of champagne every day
• explore more of the UK in our campervan
• do more gardening
• walk further and more often
  
• smell the roses
• make the most of my appearance (in other words, just because you are working it doesn't mean you have to look like a tramp)

so I suppose that should be it for my first post, I do have a tendancy to ramble on, and on, and on, and on....(remember the verbal diarrhoea comment?), how will I ever know when to stop?

And so I will say, goodbye, I'm off to write an article for the CGS about the Catching the Light contemporary glass exhibition that I saw today at Blackwell Arts and Crafts House in Windermere, Cumbria.  Beautiful location, some inspiring work and some that left me cold, but that is a tale for another day.