This is the first time I have worked with first year Art Therapy students to introduce the Conversation Café method and it’s possibilities for their group practicums. It’s so interesting as I am an illustrator and not an art therapist; art therapists are professionally qualified to MSc level and is a protected term. I would never suggest that I work in a therapeutic capacity, but from my experience of holding engagements inspired by the Conversation Café method in both a teaching and research context, I can see how it can be adapted to suit art therapy, socially engaged illustration, arts and health settings, and teaching. I’m looking forward to writing about this in my thesis.

It’s that time of year! The third years are working their socks off as they’re getting ready for their degree show. Exciting, tiring, scary, but full-filling time of year for the group. Can’t wait to see the results!

It’s the final workshop with the Rainbow Project participants and Belfast City Council this week. In this session, I’ll be presenting the finished artwork to the group. I really don’t think they realise how much work they have actually done! Really looking forward to this session.

I had the pleasure of working with the third year illustration students at Ulster University this week for the first workshop in a 3-week series on working with clay. I started by giving an introduction to my practice using object illustration, and this helped lead into a making session where the students are to either work with narratives I have suggested, or work with an existing project that clay may lend itself nicely to.

By showing the students two different handbuiling techniques and discussing how the material changes during different stages of the process, the students were able to make a vastly varied body of work. The objects will be fired after the weekend, ready for the second session.

I really appreciate Julianna sending over some photos from the private view of Reflexo at Echos Studios, São Paulo, Brazil. Very much looking forward to virtually meeting everyone and hearing the feedback on Sunday 6th November.

I had booked to attend a half-day symposium called What Is Seen and What Is Not: Expressions on Class, Space and Identity with the artist Osman Yousefzada to hear more about his work exploring displacement, migration and climate change. Unfortunately the talk was cancelled but as I had already arrived in London, ceramic artist Sam Lucas let me jump on her plans for the day. We spent some time at the V&A to see the Illustration awards and the ceramics collection while talking about our research. I also tagged along to the James Freeman gallery to see the Eden exhibition that includes mind-blowing work by Janpeter Muilwijk, Claire Curneen,
Sikelela Owen, Carolein Smit, Olivia Kemp. Dark and beautifully intriguing 👌

Very grateful to Sam and I am fascinated and excited by her PhD research exploring ceramics and ADHD women’s body image.

I’m over the moon to have received an email today informing me that my abstract has been accepted to be a delegate at the International Symposuim on Autoethnography and Narrive 2023.

My presentation now needs to be ready for recording in November. I am still calling this a presentation rather than a paper as I am considering how to privilege the practice through my delivery. I am creating object illustrations to consider the difference between close engagement with an object compared to audiences engaging with an illustration on the page or screen. ‘Presenting’ my work online transfers the 3D to 2D… very interesting problems to work through.

I really appreciate having the opportunity to present illustration practice as autoethnography to those outside of the discipline.

International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative '23

I have found it so useful editing my website. It’s funny how so much changes as you’re ploughing through your work. I haven’t had the time to stop and think about how the work has evolved, or even how I have evolved as an illustrator. I mentioned before on a recent Instagram post that I haven’t made as much as I should have, or wanted to. I get so taken with the reading and research that goes on in the background; I hear in my mind the words of Rachel Gannon and Mireille Fauchon “Everything is your practice” (an introduction to the manifesto for illustration pedagogy: a lexicon for contemporary illustration practice, 2018). This is so very true. Despite not creating as much as I would have liked up to this point, I was easily able to chop work from the website knowing that this is not how I practice anymore. Saying that, I think it is important that there is space for WIPs, quick responses, ideation, sketchbooks and material exploration on our websites, it shows how we think and move through our subject matter. I guess it’s a sign of growth and I’m not attached to my old skin. Future illustrator me will be just as brutal to present illustrator me at some point.

What I have enjoyed is stepping back and realising how much I have actually done over the first two years of this research journey. I have heard the second year can feel like trudgin through mud, but as an ADHDer, the lack of structure and slippery timeframe can be difficult. It takes real discipline to keep going towards this this no-end-in-sight goal. For the ‘studio | academia’ section of this website, I started to look up visual evidence of all of the things I had done. Again, as an ADHDer, it’s ingrained in my very being to have to prove myself, prove I can and actually have done something, and it’s the same with forming opinions and knowledge; always looking for the source of what I’m saying. Probably why I get into the reading and researching so much! Finding links to achievements like being awarded the Mary Ann McCracken award gave a real sense of pride. To be the first to be awarded by the foundation, and have my work recognised as aligning with such a revolutionary force for justice and equality is, well, I find it hard to use words that do the feeling justice.

And to have my photo on the same page as Professor David Olusoga OBE… I’m torn between doing a dance and having a lie down. Might do both.

Mary Ann McCracken Foundation