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