Nothing Happens By Chance

“There is nothing which happens by chance; we may not see the guiding hand, discern the greater plan but it is there and it is not there by chance.”   Alfred Browne

“There is no shame in being yourself and doing what you want to do.”  MacGregor MacDonald

 GETTING STARTED (Deuparth gwaith ei ddechrau)

I have been muttering about doing a course in Textile Art for ages. And ages. And ages.  I’ve scoured university websites, been to lectures and booked myself on open days.  All half heartedly because I couldn’t make up my mind what, exactly, I wanted to do, where I wanted to do it and where I wanted it to take me.  I only made up my mind because I spent some time house/dog sitting for a friend with no distractions to hand apart from a sketchbook and pencil, Betty Edwards’ book, ‘Drawing on the Artist Within’ and my Ipad.

So firstly, if you are even slightly interested in why some people are naturally creative and others have to work at it, Betty’s book makes good reading and some of the exercises were so thought provoking that after Chapter 3, I had abandoned thinking about my creativity and got a plan in place to do something about improving it.

Cue the Ipad and a not very long search to find details of the MA in Contemporary Crafts course at Hereford College of Arts . It took me less than 5 minutes of reading to know that this was the course for me; by the next day I had printed out and filled in the application form, got a reference sorted and arranged to visit the MA exhibition at the college.  You can see the work of the current cohort of  students and read about the vision of the course designers here.  I took a portfolio including most of the work from ‘Etifeddiaeth’ which spent last summer on exhibition at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama Library.

Lucky I did  because after seeing the amazing workshop areas and spending time with incredibly talented and inspirational Holland Otik,  I was offered an interview (and then a place on the MA course) by ceramicist/artist blacksmith/garden gnome collector/course designer Delyth Done .

Mae’n wir taw yn dechrau unrhyw dasg yw’r peth anoddaf ond unwaith rydych chi’n dechrau, mae’r ffordd yn agor o’ch blaen.  Ewch ymlaen!

So what, you’re probably wondering has all this got to do with what Alfred had to say about chance?  Well , it’s this: the reason that I abandoned drawing with Betty Edwards was that the lap – squatter – aka Mac the dog – got himself into such a position that balancing the sketchbook was impossible.

The only recourse left to me was to keep googling until I found something interesting.  Which I certainly did! Edrychaf ymlaen at Fis Hydref!