Opps! Tis already February and I’ve not even written a new year’s post! Well no time for that now! Things have been busy, busy, busy, hence not writing. From last September till the middle of January this year, I have basically been travelling (Turkey, Australia and America) with a total of 6 weeks at home in the UK during that time.  That on top of the phd, TOTeM  (& trying to toilet train a 2 y.o.)  has meant there has been very little time for writing blog posts – too busy living life to write about it.

Highlights since my last post have been spending a good amount of time in La Jolla, San Diego in a house owned by an artist and being inspired by her paintings and fantastic book collection (thanks to a friends’ house-sitting job, while said artist was in Paris for Christmas). It was also great being THERE, so close to La Jolla branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego where we saw the Spencer Finch installation. We also went to the downtown location where I really got an understanding for what American artists of the 1960’s were talking about with the quality of light in the exhibition Phenomenal: California, Art, Light, Space, Surface. I was also mighty impressed with Jennifer Steinkamp’s Marie Curie – it was fantastic being in that space with the installation all around!

Another highlight has been on this side of the Atlantic. I was chosen to be part of EPSRC’s Communities  and culture Network plus. Forty of us met up for a workshop at (yet another!) De Vere’s Country house to nut out some of the important issues around culture and communities in the context of the Digital Economy. It was a really interesting day and I met some really inspiring people, and I’ll be looking forward to more events as part of the network. 

Aside from that I’ve mainly had my nose to the grindstone juggling the needs of my phd with the interesting stuff which I’ve been doing for TOTeM, and raising a toddler in the process. I’m in the write-up stage of my phd and desperately trying to get a first draft done by the end of March, but I have my doubts. Our house has turned into a rather dusty pigsty, my toddler has gone back to nappies and my other half is trying his best to keep us all going, but it is hard to watch him struggling to do everything. I just keep plugging on at it, knowing that soon it will come to an end. Even though this bit is hard and I there are days when I would rather not write, there is a part of me that is enjoying, though it is tricky, the post-rationalising, untangling of what I have done to get the results I now have.