Hi, I'm an artist too!

Hello, I'm in Aix-en-Provence now, can you keep track of me?  I certainly can't...  I left Mariem's the other day, and now I'm staying with Fy (a future flatmate) over in Aix, which is a VERY nice town!  If Marseille's like East London then this is the really smart bits of West London...  Dead posh!  I went out to explore this morning, and it's all fancy shops selling macaroons and jewellry and things, and loads of cafés and (probably) organic fruit & veg markets...  And I'll be here until we can move into the lovely appartment we've got in central Marseille, hopefully on monday or tuesday.  The sooner the better - Nina and I went to school yesterday on public transport and it took TWO HOURS - grim!

Anyway, blah blah blah, now I'm emotionally stable again I should stop talking about how I feel about things, right?  What do you think?  Do you want to hear about the art school?  It's very nice, in the middle of the countryside with loads of trees and mountains and things, and it's loads of separate buildings all spread out and connected by covered walkways and stuff.  And the course is Fine Art, but there are several different studios for different disciplines and the like, such as sculpture, photography, sound, mental conceptual heads etc...  And you choose a studio to be in for the year, and there are different tutors for each one.  So I'm going for a painting studio.  There are two, one for painters who paint, and one for painters who think about painting but do other things.  I could spend forever making the decision and deciding what I'm going to profit from the most, but I think it's smartest to just jump in with the painters who paint.  That's what I like at Camberwell, and I do want to learn to PAINT above all things.  So that's that.  This is one sixth of my degree, I don't want it to go wrong!

Apparently it'll take about a fortnight to find a studio space though, which is pretty uncool - what am I supposed to do in the meantime?  If I work at home then I'm not in school but if I go to school then I can't work???  I dunno, I'm Fantastic Mr Fox, I'll sort it out.  On monday morning school starts officially for the Erasmus students, I have to take in my portfolio and sketchbooks and all that to wow the masses... (har har)  Then hopefully I can get some info on things like student travel cards and where to buy paper and canvas and stuff.  I've already found some fabric shops in the town centre - and they're really horrific like the ones in Goldhawk Road, so I'm very excited!

As for the work I'm going to make, I really want to carry on with intergalactic textile collage...  It's just too new and too good to drop right now.  I'd like it to be a bit figurative as well, as I really enjoyed making the portrait of Brian Eno in paisley and velvet and lamé stuff...  And because I haven't made a really good picture of a person for all of a few months and now it feels like time!  As well I want to do some more drawing - apparently I can go to life class at school, which I will totally exploit of course.

I've had a lot of ideas for stuff whilst I've been floating around these past few days.  First of all being how I could make a shrine to Johnny Halliday, because he is basically a demi god to the French...  Although I'm not sure, as unless I get really really interested in him (which could happen, but probably won't) then I'll get bored and won't finish it.  I'd be better off making one for Iggy Pop, I reckon.

I think the collages are going to have more text in them this time round, which is down to the fact I'm in a country where they speak a different language and I'm not fully able to get across what I want to say, so I'll have to really, really express myself through art.  How romantic, eh?  Oh yeah, and I must make sure I get to Paris next month...

I guess I'm just going to keep doing what I always do, which is making stuff and making it spectacular, but it'll be different because there's different stuff around me to influence the way I'm thinking...  But of course there's still Glam!  Music, threads, and a total lack of platform shoes (they wouldn't fit in my case) to contend with.  Oh, and art nouveau, yum yum!  Also, art deco and Egon Schiele, and Pierrick Allemand and Chris Ofili...  And countless new French artists for me to discover.  And I can read the Doors of Perception and think about the universe, and I can read Simone de Beauvoir and think about making boys look good...  I can borrow loads of French films from the Alcazar library and get better at the language and in doing so learn loads more about my own language (cheers Oscar)...

I'm just desperate to start doing stuff!  As soon as I'm in a room I can call my own I can finally let my cases explode everywhere and find my camera, paints, pencils, sewing kit, sketchbooks, fabric, peanut butter and glitter and start doing STUFF!  And maybe come back to London cultured enough that Debz won't laugh at me anymore.  Ahh, but the weather is so much better here!

Anyway, I've got a mosquito bite on my face(!) so I'm going to go now and try my best not to scratch it and make myself look weird...

CIAO, TSCHUS, SAYONARA!