Feeling very excited but also extremely stressed out about the invitation to participate in The Good Rice Gallery exhibition opening in two days as well as being selected by The Bomb Factory Art Foundation to exhibit as part of Window Wonderland in Marylebone. This however comes with the sinking feeling of not being able to finish everything on time as well as a lot of technical issues I didn’t think about when I applied for Window Wonderland. I submitted a massive 2 x 2m fridge door paintings collage with some pregnant/postpartum torso lamp installation, without thinking ahead how I would put the fridges together. So now really worried about the “magnet” idea, which my husband came up with not being good enough. We did a test yesterday and it requred attaching two times more magnets to the fridge door than we initially planned. So also spending a lot on money to get these additional magnets. Plust the fear that they won’t hold and everything will fall in the floor. Lesson: plan the technical side of things before applying not after.
The positive: while playing around with AI making the final image proposal for Window Wonderland I came up with pregnant/postpartum bellies versioin of my initially round paper lamp. I thought about how I could make that. I decided to find a mannequin from my fashion times buried deeply in the attic, attach a “belly” using two small pillows and wrap the entire thing in cling foil to keep the whole shape together so that the wet drying technical wouldn’t stick to them. I then placed the wet paper on the mannequin and squeezed and squashed and folded it while also pinning it in various places to make sure it dried keeping the desired shape. I was also very happy with the improvement I made from previous lamp experience: I stitched two papers with each other beforehand so could manouvre them much easier together when attaching to form as one giant piece of paper. Also, I love the effect of the stitching in the CFR of the form, it reminds me of caesarian section stitches after giving birth to my son and another stitching experience from the time I was giving birth to my two daughter. Overall quite happy with the final result and the use of stitching and pins, which really helped. Now worried how to make it hang nicely and how to attach it to cables with lightbulbs
DEC 2025 THE RICE GALLERY invite seemes a bit like complete chaos but in the end I managed to visit it on behalf of our class and discuss how and in which space exactly we will be exhibiting. I also managed to drop off my paper lamp piece and install it with fairy lights and battery included. The space is in the basement and very industrial so it looks really nice contrasted with the “jellyfish” natural colourful form. I also realised they are starving for actual physical pieces as most people these days do digital formats so it was refreshing to see people’s physical work in the space. My few worries are: the nail& hook I inserted are going to fall off and the whole thing will end up on the floor, the cable and ribbons will get tangled up from the rotating mechanism and the whole think will fall on the floor.
