WHEN an attack of meningococcal meningitis robbed a mature student artist of her sight, hampered her hearing and affected feeling in her hands, few would have predicted a first class degree still lay within her grasp. But just four months after emerging from a coma, Julie Coakley has graduated with a first in Three Dimensional Arts from Farnham's University College for the Creative Arts, set on a career as Britain's first blind glass artist. Last week's graduation ceremony at Guildford Cathedral, before a very proud family, was a triumph in itself. "It was very good, I managed to walk across the stage with the help of my 19-year-old son, although doctors said I would be in a wheelchair," said Julie, whose 43rd birthday was yesterday (Thursday). It was on January 7, near the end of the Christmas break, that she was struck by the illness that left her on life support for 12 days in hospital at Winchester. Emerging from her coma to a completely dark world, Julie immediately began planning how she could resume her studies, even as she lay prone in her hospital bed. "You have a lot of time to think when you are sitting in the dark and can't hear anything and are absolutely bored. "It never occured to me that I couldn't carry on, the question was 'how?' I had spent three-and-a-half years of my life busting a gut and my work was good." Having worked with crafts before, in silver and ceramics and as a pattern-maker, she recalled how she had felt "like a child in a sweetie shop" when she first began working with glass and found it suited her intricate style. "This was my chance to be a real artist." So, after two further weeks in hospital and one week at home, she was back in the college studio. "It was 15 weeks before I had to hand my work in, I had lost a month and could only get a fortnight's extension. It was what made me get out of bed in the mornings." The college, she said, had been "wonderful", providing her with a helper and telling her she is welcome to return to an MA or PhD. The final degree work she produced telling her own story, 'The Blind Trilogy' consisting of three massive architectural panels - Blind Fear, Blind Courage and Blind Love - is on show at New Designers graduate exhibition at the Business Design Centre in Islington until Sunday. There, Julie is being helped by one of her two sons and her "awesome" husband, David, handing out 250 glass patterned business cards. The work's £20,000 price tag reflects between 20 and 30 thousand hand-cut glass pieces within the seven layers of the panels and 75 days in the kiln. The colours within it - the black and reds of 'fear', the blues of 'courage' all come from memory, though in due course she hopes to work with a reader that will 'speak' the colours when held up against them. Her disability has, if anything, improved her work, she has been told. "It has a lot more meaning, it has got a lot more depth and is a lot more complex - very tactile and interactive, "I had to keep trying to remember the feelings that I had and think how I was going to show them. It was a real mission."
