Degree show

As it is coming to the end of my 4 year stint at Glamorgan University I would like to take the time to tell everyone about our end of year exhibition that we have to set up as part of our course. The opening event is happening at Glamorgan university Trefforest, Wales on Friday 30th May 2008 at 6:30. The show will be running there-after on the saturday and sunday. It will be an excellent art show of all mediums and it will be a very emotional evening for us 3rd year students who will be leaving and entering the real world, so please come along and join in our celebrations and enjoy the evening.

Many thanks

Rhys 

Web design De-brief

I cannot believe the day has come when I have finally handed in my final draft essay ! especially as I have been writing it sinse last june! the amount of information I now know about my subject ! I could write a thesis on it haha!
I cant believe its in Im lost without coming home and writing for 3 hours a night. Im knackered and tired after spending 25hours over a 2 day period on it on wednesday and thursday. It is such a relief.

This has been the reason why I have not been able to update my wordpress site or add posts to this site.

IIt is all coming to an end now with webdesign course, essay and statement of intent and not forgetting photographs of work and final piece, If you look over the amount of work that we have had to do in such a small amount of time it is not suprising (and I think I speak for everyone) the we are all desperately in need of a break.
I am mentally and physically drained.

I have had a great time in web design although it did take me until the 5th week to actually understand the difference between posts and pages on wordpress (I knew what they were just didnt grasp the knowledge of them). After playing around initially with tumblr and blogger, wordpress was a real shcok as it was a completely different level of understanding. After completely cocking up wordpress first time around by using posts as pages and then linking the posts to catagories I thought I was on to a winner, urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr wrong, how naive I was, How was I supposed to know that I had been barking up the wrong tree haha! I did a pretty good job at messing up my site and I even carried on doing it as it looked right.
Thanks to a little help and guidance from tonya and the support and hours of help by Mel I finnaly started to understand what I had been doing wrong so I thank you (both) :).
After the initial miss understandings of wordpress I was soon underway with my site and having started to play around with pages and sub pages I began enjoying creating my site. I had even realised some of the flaws of themes and templates etc… I got rid of the catagories and started to look at didferent sections to my site, which have all been updated slowly. I have uploaded images firstly on flickr, however, I found it limiting on how many albums I could create, so I signed up to photobucket and jalbum, which I find the best fro allowing me to add galleries and upload my images with practically unlimited space :).

I will miss the lessons on monday afternoons, I may find myself walking and sitting down at the computers ready for the class over the coming weeks, it certainly will be wierd.
I have really enjoyed the class when I actually understand what everything is, but I seem to work on a need to know bases otherwise my head just gets filled with information that does not make sense.

I have also been able to help other people who have needed help on linking and other computer terms etc… which is good really because it means I did actually learn something and I am able to understand how links and setting up a website works, (the student becomes the pupil - as joey says haha) what he meant to say was the student becomes the teacher and vice verser. I think this has been a massive learning curve for me and I will difinately keep adding things to wordpress, tumblr blogger and ning.
The website will be great to put on my postcard for the final show as it will viewers a chance to see my latest works etcc…..

26th March

This week I have been adding all my dreams to the section Dream diary. I have started to compile a fair few dreams that I have remembered over the last few months. These have consisted of The Parade, The Gathering, A camp predator and many many more. Feel free to look over the dreams and let me know what you think or whether you have had similar dreams etc… As I remember more and more dreams I will be adding them to the collection so click on the page above which says dream diary to check them out. If not I am also adding images and galleries to all my sections so please have a look and let me know what you think.

Regards

surrhysurreal

16th March Blurb

Week blurb

Now that our web design course is basically over, Friday 14th March 2008 was the official last day so now I have been looking at adding new elements to my site.

I got a bit frustrated that I could not add my own image to the title header of the site, as it only allowed me to add one of there’s ! which was ok but it did not seem like my site. Anyway I decided it was time for a change and I started looking for a new theme page! presentation. I looked through what were available and saw a few that I liked although most of which did not either give the option for pages or sub-pages. So straight away I disregarded these themes. In the end I found the theme I have now called Redoable. It allowed me to use pages and subpages and the main factor was to change the title header to include my own image, which it did Woohooo.

I have had to do a few things differently though as this theme differs slightly from my own theme called Regulos. The old theme allowed me to have sub headings and those headings were able to have sub headings. However this new theme does not! which was a bit of a problem although I decided that having too many sub-sub-headings is a bit confusing not just for me but for the viewer. This problem occured in my week by week summary in my web design section. To counteract the problem I decided to have this section as a main page on the main page and then incorporate my weekly7 blurb on each section instaed of in a subheading I pasted them into the bottom of my week by week plan . This uncomplicates thoughts as everything is in one place instead of two. I like the new theme I picked as it is more dream like and I like the set-up of the site.In life every now and again you need a bit of a shake up and this was the time to introduce something new to my site.      I have also been adding a few different sections to my site little by little. Nothing stays the same on my site for long which is a good thing :). 

Latest work

Over the last few weeks I have been developing my art practice ideas through painting on found objects. Ihave been using oil paints as I find these are easier to use than acrylics as they do not dry as quickly and I am able to blend much more easily. The subjects have been taken from two dream scenarios and exist either seperately or as a group. All paintings are taken from different angles so that the paintings are never seen the same. 

My alternative blog 10th of March

I will be using a site called tumblr to document my thought s and ideas for my art practice course in university. It will also be somewhere I can talk generally about myself and how I am feeling from time to time.

please visit site on side bar link and also here

2nd March

I have been adding albums and information slowly to my site.

Theatre info has been updated, so has my first year gallery, take a look at one of my dreams ! with more to follow.

I have had my first spam comments blocked woohoo ! duno though if they be spam or people wanting to talk to me or leaving a comment ,lol

Slowly but surely my site becomes bigger and bigger, but the more knowledge I am getting from this experience the better.

Adjustments 29th Feb

I have been clearing a few subpages recently, this is to clear the clutter from some of my main pages. I have now catagorized each section in my art gallery, so that each individual item for example 3D-Work is now in it’s associated page, which now is within my 3rd year work. This was the case for ceramics pages and also spy-hole theatre set, these are now situated in thier rightful subheading (parent) and given as a list with clickable links to the relevent gallery and a little blurb on what is expected when looking at the images/videos etc.

I have also added a Dream Diary section to my main page headings, which I thought I had already posted but evidently not. In this section you will find sub heading titles of each dream that i have recorded. At the present time I only have one dream on hand, the others will follow shortly.

I have also added an RSS feed from my Tumblr site which is now going to be my blurb site, for any thoughts and ideas I have. My site can be found on the links sidebar. 

Whats happening on Rhys’s Dream world 26th Feb

I have been slowly updating my wonderful site! I have added a few details in my theatre section, which I think has become a good section as I have alot of information to give to all you wonderful people. Sorry though if there is not much at this point, I will be adding more in my free time (which isnt often).

If you would like to see some of my Favourite friends websites you can find them on the side bar along with other links to my Favourite artists at the moment who have helped to inform my art practice work.

The webdesign section will be handy for any of you who want to learn about what goes into setting up a website and some of the key terms that are common place on the internet, but you may not know. If you are finding it a bit overwhelming then just think! thats what I have had to go through. I wouldnt however change this knowledge for the world.

 At the moment you will find a little bit about my work in my gallery sections, this is just taking a quick peek at what work I have been up to and what I am intending doing next, this section will be updated shortly aswell. I have lots of albums ready to be uploaded to my site for you all to see what type of work I produce.

Further blogs will include influencial sites that I have discovered, images and general art talks!

Please leaver a comment if you have any questions or comments or drop me an email, which you will find in the ‘about me’ section.

surrhysurreal 

7th feb -

Over the last week I have been making collages from newspaper and magazines, In the collages I have been creating my own fantasy worlds. I have made them bizarre and have also incorporated my own dreams into them. I have also been looking into Fantasy worlds, especially the one that Terry Pratchett has invented for all of his disc world novels. If you are not familiar with what I am talking about I will explainFlying through space is a giant tortoise, on its shell four elephants stand with their heads out as if in a cross. On the elephants back a large cirular disc balances, it is within this disc that Pratchetts novels take place.Click here for image

This is the concept that I want to produce for my own dreams to materialise. I feel for my own dream paintings and models to exist they need to occupy a realm or world of their own ! that is natural for them to be living within.

I have come up with a few ideas but the idea I have gone with is as follows:

In my bedroom ontop of my Television stands an amethyst crystal, when I sleep this crystal gives off energy that aloows the crystal to glow and create an aurra around itself. It is within this aurra that my world exists, not from within the crystal (my first idea).

I have taken photographs of the crystal see below

Effects on camera give off the right aurra

close up of crystal shining brightly

You can see the aurra from which my world will exist within

I have also created a large painting on my wall in University

When this is complete this will be the image that will be on the front of my postcard for my end of year show.

I still need to draw or paint some reflections of my bedroom into the crystal to give it some earthly delights.