Year One (of the Pandemic)

Well folks, it’s been 365 days since the W.H.O. declared the Covid-19/Coronavirus a Pandemic.

How are you doing? I survived a probable case of it (sick for three months last Spring/Summer) with no noticeable lasting effects that we know of – other than taking months to get my energy back and lose the aches and pains; saw some specialists with no discoveries of anything new. So that’s all good.

Now I’m just waiting to be able to get the vaccine. Hopefully soon as I have plans!

Last week I received an email from the Arts University of Bournemouth, who had offered me a spot in their MA Fine Arts course, informing me that they had awarded me a £5,000 Global Bursary! Very, very cool.

I am thinking about possibly deferring my offers for school this Fall though. I’m worried about the pandemic and the variants, and as I have absolutely zero interest in doing any further education online or in hybrid models, I think it might be the best option to just put it on hold for now. While I am getting the grades I want, I am not enjoying it. Art is a hands-on activity for me, not digital, and I am so, so tired of being on the computer day-in and day-out. This is supposed to be fun and it really isn’t.

Here are a few of my latest smaller paintings for my Threatened Species thesis project. That is ticking along well now that I’ve been able to get back in the studio. These are still in progress, but I’m getting there! We prepped the wall in the studio so I can start arranging everything – 8’x4′ is a heck of a lot more space than I was seeing in my mind’s eye! But I’ll use it.

These are 5×7″, 4×12″ and 6×6″. I’ll be starting on 8×10″ canvases next – I’ve got ten prepared with the backgrounds. Also, I was given four more smaller canvases so I’ll be adding them into the collection too. We’ve only got six more weeks until the end of the semester!

I’m getting a bit confused about our year end shows but I think the Thesis show for graduating students will be in June, and the annual all-student juried show is actually before the end of semester – I believe we were told we have to submit for April 1st. Semester isn’t over until April 16th. We haven’t received the information in writing so that’s why I am confused. usually these all happen after the end of semester. We also don’t know for sure if they are live AND virtual OR all virtual.

As we did not have the annual all-student juried show last year, due to lock-down, we all have completed work to submit for it without rushing to get things finished from this semester.

I’m having a hard time with accepting that in only 36 days I will be finished my program here, and have graduated. Wow. Doesn’t seem that much time has passed. But… it has been a very weird past year.

Day 355 (of the Pandemic)

We are coming up on the one year anniversary of the official Pandemic on March 11th. I don’t know how it has felt to you, but I feel like I have been living in this one room for about 20 years now.

The vaccine roll-out here is a mess with the slowdown in delivery of the vaccine, and general provincial government screwing around. Initially, I was in the group scheduled for April. Wednesday the government announced a new rollout plan and my group will be able to make appointments starting July 1 as long as the supply “stays steady.” Also it was announced that the local vaccination centre will be right across the street from me – that’s very convenient.

My plans were to be leaving the country for school at the end of August – but I think/assume that I will be required to be vaccinated and still require a negative test 72 hours prior, etc. Hopefully I’ll be able to have all required doses of the vaccine before then. Thing is that booking flights, giving notice on my unit, etc. all need to be done in advance. Hopefully things will have stabilized and I can do that and still be where I need to be when school starts.

Since my last blog post, I’ve received an offer for the MA Fine Art program at a University in the UK now, as well as the offer for a BA (Hons) in Ireland. I still haven’t heard anything from the school I had the interview with for their MA program in January. I received a package from the Irish school for the Government of Ireland – International Education Scholarships which I am going to be applying for. It is for non-EU international students and the government gives out sixty 10,000 Euro scholarships which the Irish schools match! So, pretty much ends up a full-ride scholarship. Definitely worth the work to apply for!

As of February 16th we were able to get back to the studio on-campus for one class. There are only two of us actually going in as everyone else is choosing to work at home, which works great. I managed to get quite a lot done. We also got permission to go in on another day as well – the two of us have to work in the studio and need to catch up.

Mid-term marks were posted on Tuesday and I’m happy: 91%, 97%, 98%, 100%, & 100%. The 91% was for Rapid Prototyping/3D Printing which I was terrified of… but I got a 95% on the assignment to create a hybrid creature. I struggled, cried, suffered painfully and had to take painkillers prophylactically just to manage a couple of hours at it at a time, but I did it. Here are the final results:

I can’t wait until this semester is over so I never, ever, have to do this again. We used SculptGL for this assignment – the prof had to use a program we could all access remotely due to lockdown, so something free and web-based was it.

And, also school related, I was notified by email that I am the recipient of a 2020 In-Course Scholarship for Academic Excellence for Fine Arts – Advanced! I’m very happy with that!

I’ve been working on updating my Facebook pages. I had two, but wanted to combine them. Facebook has a merge option for business pages and I’ve been trying, for a YEAR, to get them merged. You have to be the admin on both – check; they have to be the same location – check; they have to represent the same thing – this I worked on in order to get them aligned as one was initially for my make-up business and the other was fine art – but over the months I synchronized them, even changing the names so they matched and all details were identical. I repeatedly tried to merge and Facebook kept refusing, and as typical, there is no way to question or request a review or explanation from them. I deleted the one I didn’t want yesterday – I now get 14 days to change my mind Facebook tells me, then they will ask again if I want it gone forever.

I’ve methodically been adding content to the keeper page, on the one I deleted I’d been posting and encouraging my followers to like/follow the other page (many already did). I also had to go through all my social media, links, etc. to make sure all links and references were to the page that is still active. That’s a whole lotta work!

The goal is to streamline my online presence to make it easier for me to maintain and for people to find me. My Facebook page is now solely https://www.facebook.com/ShannonFennellArtist It is also on the side bar.