THE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN: Good things at the Rag Factory next weekend

After spending all morning intensely hungover in bed, attempting to e-mail every single semi-creative graduate job in Northampton (so, like, two....maybe) and eating sunflower seeds and cranberries and other such shit that came in my free Graze box (don't worry, I'm hating myself a little bit for turning into That Kind of vegan, too), I figured why not make a really half-assed, shameless self-promoting post on my extremely over-trafficked blog?  I'm putting up a few drawings as part of a show at the Rag Factory next weekend.  It'll be better than the one in February for these simple reasons: I have decent enough work to show.  I'll actually commit to buying frames.  There'll be NO. BLU. TAK.  Man, now I look back on it with intense hindsight, February was a hot mess.  Ya live ya learn.  And it's free if you print this flyer out (ignore the big ole £5 on the poster, I'm supposed to collect money from the sales but I'm having a rare moment of human empathy and figured, why not just let people have the dang thing for free?  Appreciate it while it lasts guyz!):

 

 Oh, and there'll be booze.  Lots and lotsa booze.

THIS SHIT SUCKS: Must be the Midlands

So, somehow I managed to graduate on Monday July 18th:

(Awesome quality photograph of the standard hat throwing malarkey stealthily highjacked from a friend's facebook)

However, prior to this commenced the start of the Final Weekend at 117.  Kirsty arrived in da city on Saturday afternoon, around an hour after I decided to take a deep breath and charge down to Camden in the hope of finding a grad outfit before the rain started.  Obviously I found no clothes and a monsoon started on the walk back to the flat.  However, after the imminent arrival of K.Mckee, we headed over to the Vintage Kilo Sale at the Rag Factory to dig through piles of clothes in an attempt to secure some gems.  Kirsty found a sweet white Levi's jacket and I bought a denim skirt that's too small and an olive green shirt that has no buttons.  Swings and roundabouts?

Despite my best attempts at securing some kind of money making deal in London (the vintage market 'job' in Camden did. not. go. well), I am currently sitting in my parent's house in the heart of Northamptonshire (born and bred, yo) in my pyjamas, wondering how the hell it's come to this...'this' quite obviously being the fact that I'm the ripe old age of 22 and living back at home, still sharing a room with my sister and attempting to sign on to the dole for the sixth time in a row.  On the not so shitty side of things, I've  started using InDesign and Illustrator more since coming home (obviously to appeal to employers and be all commercial and shi'), check out the new banner for my super professional website guy:

And so, I guess now would be a good a time as any to bid a final adieu to North of the river: farewell NW5, it's been real.

LONDON I LOVE YOU BUT YOU'RE BRINGIN' ME DOWN: Lacking some serious forward momentum

So around a month ago, right in the middle of setting up for the show, my laptop suddenly decided to become riddled with a million different kind of viruses (viri?), even worse, ones that restart-safe mode-system restore couldn't fix.  This led to me having to close down the entire thing, restore it to factory settings (which in turn wiped EVERYTHING that I've been saving and working on for the past three-ish years) and subsequently throwing myself full-throttle into the pit of despair.  Along with my entire iTunes catalogue and many a drunken Archway era video, I also lost all of my documentation of the previous years work, along with some awesome/creepy/AWESOME serial killer video collage projects I was working on.  Due to this, I have no new or different work to show here, so instead, I come bearing gifts of the 'shit that didn't make it into the degree show' kind, mainly in pen and ink form:

All masterly hotlinked from my way more serious and way less interesting professional website, Rebecca Higgins Art.  These were mainly based around the idea of chemical and physical imbalances, being 'under the microscope', and the link between the body being dissected, and the mind/reasonings behind why we do the things we do being questioned (and lots of other wordy bullshit, too).  Basically, I miss drawing, as in, really crazily miss drawing, and I want to keep at it and not become a grumpus who spends all of her time in bed eating entire boxes of cereal in one sitting whilst watching every episode of the Simpsons ever.  The recent Camberwell Illustration graduate show (fanx Creative Review/luv u CCW), as well as being pretty damn impressive, managed to make me feel inferior and lazy in regards to this, but I guess at least it's giving me the push forward to pick up the old Uniball and quill and attempt to make something halfway decent happen.  Sweet!  These mini/anti-laziness epiphanies seem to be happening like clockwork recently: on my not-so-distant-future list I'm also including the following:

• Move back to the sunny midlands, save up some dollar, move back to London by the end of the summer (and believe me, North West definitely ain't best-South is calling me back again)
• Start up a collaborative project/blog with the wonderful K Higgs and K McKee
• Apply to the Triangle Arts Trust and attempt to live out my insanely unrealistic pipe-dream of working/living in New York for as long as my Visa will allow me
• Learn some more sculpture techniques-tights and stuffing gets mega old, mega fast
• Get out of bed more often/still manage to avoid everyone, the perfect balance still hasn't been settled

MY ART COLLEGE DAYS ARE OVER: Brb, putting off entering the real world forever

So I finished my degree, successfully dragged my awkward, hungover, extremely stressed self through the private view, managed to somehow magically receive an upper second class honours (aka 2.1, awww yeah!) and a fuckin' FIRST in my dissertation, and celebrated this weekend by seeing Conor Oberst reduce grown men to tears at the Royal Albert Hall, and then, on the completely opposite end of the spectrum, drank far too much cheap beer and gin and headed to the Macbeth to dance to Destiny's Child, Nelly, and other such delights.  So some important degree show stuff first of all, I guess:

 

There was a bad experience with some crates and polystyrene bricks were mentioned but in the end I decided to save the last few shreds of my sanity and display my guys on chrome poles.  And now we don't talk about that day because....yeuch.

 A slightly better view of the room.  Giant abacus courtesy of Chris Ilankovan.

 

This guy....

 Reppin' my dad's sweet photography skills.

A few weekends ago, or maybe last weekend but time has lost all meaning, Katie and Kirsty came to stay again and we basically didn't stray too far from our usual plan of doing the 'Roxanne' drinking game and eating all the food ever.  Oh, and being beautiful on the webcam:

 

Me and Kirsty also braved the first bout of intense London heat and bussed it down into central for Slutwalk.  This was my sign, which took all of my remaining art skillz and materials to make. 

I'm pretty hungover and contemplating ignoring the fact that this is probably the most heat we're going to get all summer and getting back into bed.  However, instead I guess today I will mostly be melting in the 30 degree heat of the city, eating junk, and watching copious amounts of Law and Order SVU and Man V Food.  Perfection.

MY ART COLLEGE DAYS ARE (ALMOST) OVER: Degree show panic and the end of art school

Things have been crazy intense recently due to the degree show happening in less than TWO WEEKS, which is terrifying and stressful and exciting and the reason I feel like I wanna be sick constantly.  Yeah!  Everything has been going ok except that mainly I just want to crawl into a hole and not see anyone or do anything or exist, pretty much, until this thing is over.  I've been working on setting up a more 'professional' website to show my back up work, which is now alive over at Rebecca Higgins Art (who spent non-existent ££££'s on a domain name that will probably die out as soon as the show's over? This guy...).  We finish setting up at college on Tuesday, but I still haven't resolved how I'm going to present my guys completely because for some reason I like leaving everything until the very last minute, along with crossing my fingers and 'hoping for the best'.  Wish me luck guyz.

(All of these guys are possibilities for the show.  Gonna have to do some last minute casting to see who fits the bill.)

POOR LITTLE GUY

I've been seriously slacking and putting off doing any kind of real work for the up and coming degree show (watch as I fall in a slow circle and cry in around 3 weeks when the deadline will be pretty much upon us and I'll be in exactly the same place as I am now. Calling it...), so today I decided that, rather than lay around in my pyjamas with Law and Order SVU on repeat and a sketchbook in my lap, merely as a guise to make it feel as though I'm being productive, I'd attempt to finish making another guy out of tights and stuffing.  He's finally getting to the finshing stages, so of course awful pictures, courtesy of my Toshiba's attempt at a Photobooth-esque webcam, had to be taken:

Cuddling up to this beast is as comfortable as curling up on top of a mountain of aeroplane pillows.  See also:  a 'Snuggie' made out of pillows.  Due to these recent findings, I think that it's only fair that I get a First in my degree, as these two things can surely only help to make major changes and advances within society. 

A HAIRY STATE OF THINGS

So here's an older piece of work from the first semester of this year, before I became completely and utterly disillusioned with everything I've ever made at art school/in life....womp womp.  Based on medical samples with a bit of murder clues/keepsakes from a serial killer thrown in.  You know, all that good stuff:

Hair (fake, (un)fortunately, depending on how you feel about it) and tracing paper, all held together beautifully with bright blue blu-tak)

Standard black and white photocopies of the above, which I think I prefer in picture format.  Also, awesome picture quality, right?

I don't know if I want to re-visit these kind of things again now that I'm panic-making a bunch of stuff seeing as the end of my (FINAL EVER) year is coming up.  I can't make decisions ever.  Is fake hair as a gross out tool overdone? 

WILD BEARDS, CARROT FLOWER KINGS, SEMEN STAINING MOUNTAINTOPS: Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Mangum

As promised, the drawings of sometime Neutral Milk Hotel genius Jeff Mangum (opinion? Pure fact).  Enjoy:

(A collaboration with Laura Carter of Elf Power)

And no form of Jeff Mangum appreciation is complete without sneakily force feeding someone the following:

'I Love How You Love Me'

'Two Headed Boy Part 2' (purely for 01:31, "and in my dreams you're alive and you're crying....")

'Oh Sister'

LIKE A CHAMP

Too awkward and weird and socially incompetent to even introduce myself somewhat normally and coherently on the internet, so instead, here's a thing:

Currently working on a little family of these guys; so far I have this dude pictured, standing at around 5ft tall, another one at around 3.5ft tall, and a babby one at just under 2ft.  All made with love and care out of old tights and pillow stuffing and (barely) held together with fishing wire.  Sexy canteen chair, courtesy of Wimbledon College of Art, not included.  Untitled and unresolved as of yet, but I'm looking at making an army of stuffed lumpy freaks out of a range of different materials, at different heights, with different limbs protruding (nice, I know).  There's a possibility that my model above might make an appearance in the degree show in just under 2 months time, although the setting is still in question: science lab, mortuary table, comfy chair, cult gathering, caged and locked away....endless possibilities to work through.  Poor little guys.


On a lighter note/big fat tangent, here's a constant inspiration: drawings by the man and legend himself, Mr Jeff Mangum, a.k.a the love of my life, the one, the only, etc etc etc.  I'm not even going to go there:

He'll get his own sickening post dedicated purely to what an awesome human being he is, don't worry.