I'm a year old 23rd July

It's a year since I made my first post on this blog, and i'm mildly surprised i'm still posting here pretty regularly, and with some people actually reading this too. As I said when I started this blog, I want this place to show a slightly more grown up and professional side to me. I wanted to show some of my own work, as well as the shows I was curating. I had no idea when I started last July that I would soon be facing one of my biggest challenges so far, that of dealing with the death of my good good friend Miss Jen. Looking back at the entries I wrote at that time I see just how much I was trying to keep my 'real' life separate from my 'blog' life. Of course there are mentions of Jen and of her funeral, but I can't get over the fact that the post immediately after the one where I announced her death was a call for submissions for an exhibition. I filled the last few months of 2006 with being busy busy busy, organising shows and not thinking about the space left in my life.

In early 2007 I formally resigned from the co-op that runs here shop and gallery. I had been involved with the gallery right from the start- being one of the people who took over the space to show work during Ladyfest Bristol in 2003, so letting go of my role as co-founder and sometime director of the gallery was something I wrestled with for a long time before it actually happened. I probably spent at least a year trying to decide if I was going to be able to take a break from the gallery, so i've been surprised at how easily I have adapted to life without 'here'. In November of this year I am due to curate a show featuring work by Cindy Jaswal, and I have been asked to take part in the December show at the gallery, so my links with 'here' are as strong as ever really.

I'm sure i'll be back on the co-op soon enough, but for now the main thing that i'm looking forward to is starting my new Foundation Degree in Applied Arts. I gained a degree in Art and English in 1997 and in some ways it may seem strange that I am about to start on a second degree in the same subject area, but I know that this time round I am going to get so much more from the course than I did back when I was 21.

So thankyou for reading and I hope that over the next year I keep up the posting and maybe start to show a little more of my own work on here. I'm still terribly shy at showing my work, and find it a million times easier to promote someone else (as seen in the ABC of art) than myself. To start things off I should mention now that i'm going to have projects published in a new book in November, will be taking part in the Paper Quilt project , also in November, and have been taking part in the Periodic Table Print Project, which hopefully will end up published somewhere.