Thus I have decided for Romeo and Juliet – and I’ll take the cultural mixed route. Juliet being from a Muslim family and Romeo being a white British kid. This idea was welcomed by the members of my local Asian community with high interest and a definite willingness to watch a play like this, since they can relate to it. I am now working on the ideas for the items. To get us going and make us research our material our tutor asked us to decorate a mask which should symbolise one of the characters in our play.

This is my Juliet.

A brigade of reindeer taking onto the Christmas night.

http://arihoma.etsy.com

Yeah, my first ever etching!!! I love this technique. It’s done on a zinc plate and printed on sexy Somserset paper. It’s part of a project for Uni. I wish it wasn’t so laborious, but I really love the outcome. The lines are so fine and delicate, I would have never thought that. I will do some more variations with this print and also colour some in with watercolour.

Since it is quite a large number of Foundation students we are all divided into smaller groups of around 30 people. I am in a group called Phoenix. My group members are great, but being almost ten years older than most of them, I’m sometimes not so sure if I fit in. It only makes me regret, that I didn’t chose this path much earlier. These young ones still have the chance to continue on a BA later, whereas I won’t be able to afford it, since I already have BSc and won’t get any funding Anyhow, it is great to be surrounded by so much young energy and enthusiasm and international flair, since we have people from all over the world.

We have various projects for which we have to meet deadlines. They are around 3-4 weeks long and they will be graded and in the end added together. The project briefs are amazing and leave so much scope.
The first one was to create a cabinet of curiosities. We had to design a cabinet and it’s content and present it well. Whatever theme you chose and how you present was totally up to you. Of course we have an experienced tutor who was helping us. I drew on my Psychology experience and wanted the human mind to be my cabinet. The curiosities were symptoms of four different mental disorders in the form of glasses. If you wear the glasses you can sort of get an idea of what someone with that type of disorder has to go through. I wanted to raise awareness and reduce stigma connected to such disorders through direct experience. I got a rather good crit (critique) for this and hope to keep the standard up.

The next project is to create a sensational story and tell it well. That’s very exciting, but also a massive challenge, since there isn’t much time. I am now researching illustrators and narration styles which would suit my story and then I will have to produce it, that’s quite a lot… phew…and there go the weekends

Here is my cabinet project and one I did during Summer School.

Cliche… but well…