I Feel Ya, Jack

Perhaps it is the bleach fumes pared with the unbearably stuffy dorm room that is leading my mind to wander, but I find myself staring at my new sketchbook and wondering if Jack the Ripper was perhaps a Central St Martins student driven to murder by piles of homework and lack of free time on beautiful sunny days like this one...

A Random Day with Absolutely No Homework

In the unexpected heat yesterday, I found myself at a fascinating talk at the Architectural Association about the future of cities and architecture. I only caught the last three speakers, but it gave me lots of food for thought for my own design.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the talk was organized by the writer of one of my favorite blogs, BLDGBLOG. If you have any interest in architecture, urban spaces, or the history of cities, keep an eye out for the BLDGBLOG book that is being released in a few weeks in the UK. This man is utterly brilliant. I approached him at the end of the talk and said his work was fantastic. I think I might have creeped him out a little. Sorry!

I went to see my friend Warren Ellis speak, but I was most intrigued by the speaker right before him- Francois Roche (sorry Warren, you know I still care). The way he approaches the design of a new building makes each of his structures feel like a story is being written. His focus is always on the process of creation, the cycle of death and life. Good stuff! I will follow his work from now on, and you should too.

That would be me, far right.


At the end of the talk, which was being live streamed, I gave Warren a congratulatory hug. Apparently the live stream was still going and Warren immediately began getting emails asking who I was. Shortly thereafter I got about 30 new followers on Twitter. Funny, that. If only I was an artist with a body of work I could be using this publicity for!

Warren and I then proceeded to a nearby pub and, forgetting that neither of us had eaten since that morning, got each other very drunk very quickly. I stumbled home and he hopped on a train and I ended my day curled up in a warm bed after a sympathetic room mate made this drunken redhead pasta.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled program: homework homework homework.

Oh god, I need sleep.

Retrieval

I just shuffled zombie-like to the school to hand in my retrieval project. Apparently they want us to come back at 3pm today to pick them up. Which means that they will probably flip through each one very quickly and grade it without a second look.

Scares me to think that my future at this school is dependent upon a 5 minute glance at my work...

So Bad, So Good

The Bad: Today I blew up at some of my friends for trying to help me in ways that weren't helpful. I felt so bad afterward, and made it all better. No hard feelings.

The Good: Designer Mentor girl asked me to style a photo shoot in her stead with one of my favorite photographers next month while she's away on business.

I Got It

Well, it seems I now have one good thing going for me- I got a kickass internship with an up and coming designer. Yes you read that right! The girl who fails every project has been picked up by someone fabulous who will teach her the ropes.

First of all, let me say that this designer's work is amazing. You will probably hear of her in a few months if you haven't already. She is also connected with some INCREDIBLE designers, performers, and artists. These are the sort of people I want to work with. I feel so lucky that she wanted me to be a part of her work.

And she is going to teach me so much. I am already helping her make things for a few notable celebrities (I'll keep you posted). I am thrilled! I am dying to work with her again as soon as possible, even if my own work doesn't get as much of my attention as it should.

I feel much better working for someone of this caliber than someone like, say, McQueen. He is an amazing designer, but the word on the street is that he's an absolutely bitch to work for. And when you intern with a big name like that, you are a nobody. So with someone like the designer I met yesterday, I feel that she is someone who will go places and be huge, but right now she is still approachable. That is the right place for me to be.

So now, school can go to hell. I will work, but I can't be bothered to kill myself anymore. I have other, and possibly better options.

Take that CSM. I don't suck after all.

Love + Distance + Confusion = Shitty Shitty Situations

The boy and I are both ridiculously busy and so I am not going to get to see him this term.

After term ends I need to stay in London for a while because I have to see what happens with moving on to 2nd year and my potential internship and all that stuff. I don't think the school will tell me about my position there until late June or early July, and I believe I have to be present at a meeting at that time.

Whatever the outcome of that meeting, I have to then sit down and decide what I'm going to do next. Here is where the situation gets shitty. If school does in fact want me gone, then I have to make my own way in the fashion world. At some point I would like to go back to San Francisco, but I think that when I am starting out it would be wise to stay in London where there are far more opportunities to do that.

But that means that I am now choosing my career over my boyfriend. And I can no longer point to school and say, "I have to stay here because of that." If I have to leave school then I must make the decision every single day to stay in London and not be with my boyfriend, because there won't be anything but my own choices keeping me away from him. And that's a shitty thing to have to deal with.

Every single time I have to decide something about my life in London, I am going to be having to decide between whatever my options are here, and my boyfriend. Good opportunities will feel like heartbreak. And how shitty would it be to feel that all the good things that happen to me are bad for my relationship?

My boyfriend thinks I should stay here and sort things out. But he is a much stronger person I am. He can't move here with me, and so I have to choose to be here alone but focused on my future, or with him in San Francisco. If I want to be in fashion and make my own way, I need to be somewhere where I can get opportunities. And there are far more of those available to me here in London.

On the other hand, maybe staying here is just plain stupid. Maybe it's just my ego talking. Maybe it's simply that I don't want to go home and admit defeat by CSM. Maybe I should just give this up and go back to SF. But if I did that, I probably wouldn't ever have the sort of chances I'd have here. And I don't know if I would ever forgive myself for giving up so fast.

Fuck, this is so confusing.

On Dealing With These Next Few Months

I have found a strange place of calm about my rather impossible situation with the school. I am realizing that no amount of work is going to save me at this point, and no one inside the school system is going to help me. I think it comes down to the fact that they don't actually want me to succeed.

There is something political and money-related going on behind the scenes at CSM. We are all aware of it, but of course no one in the school is going to talk about it. They let too many people in to our program, and then put someone who is the head of a much bigger program and hates what we do as the head tutor for first year. A lot of students in my program feel that we have been forgotten, like we're an afterthought. It should be noted that almost a third of the class is failing. CSM has also sold their amazing arty buildings and will be moving to a new complex in King's Cross area in two years. In this new building the fashion programs will lose almost 25% of their space (a bad move for a school that is known for its fashion, don't you think?). So it makes sense that any student who is a little behind on the learning curve is immediately being failed out. They are trying to slim down the student body. The won't admit to it of course, because accepting students into the school only to kick them out a year later isn't legal. There is something going on, but the administration is talking around it.

So I've come to a place of calm resignation. I can only do what I can do. I will do the projects to the best of my ability, but I have no plans on redoing everything in the portfolio. Evil Tutor will hate it no matter what I do so I might as well focus on the more important projects like the retrieval project and our current assignment. I figure I'm screwed either way so there's no harm in making sure I get lots of sleep and watch the occasional movie. I can't be bothered to push myself past a certain point. That is not to say I am not working very hard on my projects, but some of the feeling of panic is gone (for the time being), and resignation has taken its place.

I can't be bothered to work harder than I want to right now. I am well aware that the school wants me out, and unless a miracle occurs, no amount of work will change that. So I'm going to work today, watch some battlestar galactica before bed, and then go to my internship interview tomorrow and see if that doesn't help clarify my future some.

I've never been one to go about things the normal way, so maybe this is just another chance for me to carve my own path. Doing things your own way is never easy, and I will probably bitch and complain about it every step of the way, but maybe someday I'll look back and think, "wow, CSM was such a mistake. But it got me to move to Europe and it helped me think outside the box. And here I am with my own fashion line, and everything is going well."

Who knows, right?

Oops

Right so apparently I managed to give the designer I want to intern with an incorrect phone number. The past two days I was in a state, sure that she took a look at my work and ran the other way, but in fact she had been trying to call me.

She just emailed me to ask if my phone had been turned off, and told me she'd like me to come in on Monday.

I spoke with her on the phone just now and we scheduled a time for me to come in and meet not only her, but the latex designer she shares a studio space with. Oddly enough, I found this latex designer on another website and she contacted me about modeling for her. Small world.

So on Monday, I'm going to hop on a bus and head up to a fashion studio in Bow and meet two fabulous designers and see about interning for one or both of them.

Could be worse. ;)

Thinking in Fabric

I hurt my back today doing godknowswhat so I've been sitting perfectly still, and not working for the last five or six hours.

Since I can't work on my current projects (all six or seven of them), I will share some experimental draping I did during the shirt project. I just threw some fabric on the stand and had my way with it, sketching each shape until I eventually came to the final idea that would become my shirt a few days later.

So, here are some thoughts of mine, expressed via fabric and pins one dreary afternoon in London:

All of which finally culminated in:



And finally in: