Imagine a snow dome that someone has shaken up. Each snowflake is a thought or idea relating to your work. They whirl around and sometimes settle in groups or create intricate patterns caused by storms of thought. Some melt away into nothing while others form crystalline shapes and structures that later  you work into sculptural forms. You show these to other people and this opens up a forum for discussion and debate… The snow dome has been turned again.

This is what it is like to be doing an art phd, one which is based on research through making things and being a practicing artist, rather than one based  on historical  or theoretical research. I’m not a sculptor, but this is the only way I can describe the process… and there are days, like today when the snowdome is such a flurry of inspiration and ideas I don’t know where to start when writing about them. Instead I have to go and make, for words are too slow and can't yet articulate what is going on in my head – I have to go and shape my snowflakes into forms that enable me to communicate with others.

The tagging workshop below has really been a source of ideas, and then yesterday we had “Who’s Afraid of Artistic Research” which was a student led symposium done through the Visual Research Centre located in Dundee Contemporary Arts and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. I had a very minor role in helping get it organised, but most of the credit really goes to Lindsay Brown and Cornelia Solfrank. The discourse that came out of it was really thought provoking and when the snowflakes have settled in the snowdome I shall write a little more about it.