Thursday, 15 October 2009

Origin - 15th October

Went to Origin again, but at least this time I had company. :) Yey. Becky Fraser got the same trains as me so I spent all day with her. I looked what was on other than Origin the night before as I figured whilst we were there we may as well make the most of it. Anyway, the second set of artists were as brilliant as the first but there was a hell of a lot of jewellers and ceramicists this week.
These are the artists I particularly liked:

Adele Brereton
Daniele Geargeoura
Anna Lewis
Michelle McKinney
Sabrina Meyns
Moon
Will Odell

After Origin, and randomly bumping into an old friend, me and Becky decided to go to a gallery I'd managed to find online. As Becky decided on doing teapots for her competition brief, I found a little gallery with an interesting exhibition on.
http://www.sdcgallery.org/ This exhibition was quite interesting and we had a chat with the gallery owner and, even though she blabbed on for a very long time she said some helpful stuff.

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

First competition Tutorial

I had my first tutorial today and I'd only just managed to pick my theme from the trend pack by the time I had to see her. I only had the summer one and needed the winter one, which I couldn't find ANYWHERE. Luckily I got my hands on one just before my tutorial. I chose "Craft Classic".
I was given some quite good advice, and some useful websites and cutlery companies. I had never thought of looking up the history of cutlery, but it may be helpful, or will at least give me a better understanding of the product in question.
I had a look at the WMF website (http://www.wmf.com/wmf-for-at-home/cutlery_82510986.html?sid={A59E51E4-B0B2-4FB5-A5A3-FE3005C85703}) and there is some quite interesting stuff on there and I also printed off the "Style eras of cutlery" as part of my research. Plus there is some quite interesting work on there.
I also had a gander at the Villeroy and Boch website, (http://www.villeroy-boch.com/en/us/home/products/tischkultur/cutlery.html) and there was also some interesting stuff on there, including several designers names. I looked them up and unfortunately, the only stuff they seem to design was already on the website... But hey ho. At least I can get all the pics and info off the website.
I also looked up some mass production processes as I figured if I need to know how to produce cost effective pieces of cutlery so looked up the different processes. Also looked up powder coating as this is the only cost effective way of applying colour to metals.

Saturday, 10 October 2009

Origin - 10th October

Last year when we went to Origin we only went for the one week and didn't get to see both sets of craftspeople/artists, so me, Anna, Hannah and Jenny decided to go both weeks this year so we can see both sets. Even though it did cost me £60 just in train fares for both weeks!
We decided to go on the Saturday and then go with the rest of uni on Thursday the 15th. Annoyingly, Anna and Hannah stayed at hers in Bucks and Jenny went home for the weekend to go from hers. Leaving me to go on my own... very nice.
Anyway I got there WAY before everyone else so I look around. There was some amazing stuff...and I will list below all the artists who I particularly liked. There was a big basketry section which I was quite impressed by. Would love to learn how to do it, not that it would help me much with my course, but would be a nice skill to have! M
aybe something to learn over summer :P

Abigail Brown


Will Evans Jeweller (http://www.willevansjeweller.com)
Rikke Lunnemann
Heather O'Connor

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

Competition Briefing, 6th October

After the worst CCS lecture EVER, as I was feeling quite horrendously ill, I had to go straight to our competition briefing. If I hadn't have been feeling VERY ill, it would have been really interesting.
Daisy gave us all our briefs and explained about them. I was quite impressed at getting a direct brief from Sainsburys when they've never took on a student project before. Nice to know we're the first! I chose the second brief as the site specific one wasn't really giving me much inspiration and I'd have much rather done something to do with crafts more so than a one-off piece of work. Plus, I thought it was a really good opportunity to make some tableware or home accessory to the standard required for the real industry. Quite excited to be doing a live brief with a real life company. It all of a sudden becomes very real. Not so protected and not so molly coddled in university.
After reading through the brief through thoroughly, I decided on doing the tableware section and to produce cutlery. I thought it would be good, if I want to specialise in metal, to do something that is specifically in that field and you don't see much cutlery not made of metal!
Just not sure where to start!!

Tuesday, 1 September 2009

Moving Back to Leicester, 1st Semptember

Not really much to state here apart from coming to Leicester for second year. Scary prospect but hey ho! At least I get to see everyone again and Rich is coming back the same day so I get to see him WHENEVER I want :D <3 YEY!

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Llandudno, 23rd August 2009

Me, mum and dad went to Llandudno just for the day. We originally went to go for a walk and to this craft shop that mum is OBSESSED with! (Something to do with boxes being 10 for a £1 or something... god knows!). Anyhoo, by the time we'd got there and by the looks of the rain clouds it wasn't worth going for a walk so we just had an explore of Llandudno. I forgot how pretty it was. I forgot my camera, because I'm stupid so annoyingly I couldn't take any photos, but I took some rubbish ones on my phone. I may upload them at a later date, I dunno.
But yes, we went to this craft shop for mum which was actually quite amazing... got loads of papers, and craft knives and double sided tape, all paid for by the parents which is even better! Then afterwards we went for a walk round town.
We also went down to the waterfront. I forgot that Llandudno had a pebble beach instead of sand. Brought back so many memories from my childhood. When I was little, me and dad would go onto these kinds of pebble beaches and find nice stones and rocks and bring them home. Not that anything would ever happen to them but you know, we brought them home anyway. That's possibly where my passion for geology came about... hey ho. Anyway, we had a dig around and found some lovely stones which me and mum are thinking of polishing up. Granted, I only have like 5 days to do that in so doubtful I'll do it at home. I'll do it at uni if anywhere!!
But it was a really lovely day. We had lunch/early tea in this lovely restaurant/bar and as we left we saw a little art gallery on in the building opposite. so we went across to have a bit of a gander. It wasn't much but there was some lovely work in there. There was some amazing drawings and paintings that looked almost like photos, and then there were some watercolour/acrylic paintings that had been sewed over the top of using a sewing machine and they were really nice. I wanted to take a photo but lack of camera didn't really help me in that situation. But they were being sold for like £100!!
Anyway, a lovely day on the whole!

Wednesday, 19 August 2009

Liverpool, Tuesday 19th August

During Rich's stay at mine, we had a trip into Liverpool and my Dad had recommended going into the Bluecoat and the Tate. I wasn't really that bothered at first but thought it would come in quite handy and, you never know, there might be some interesting stuff there!
So, as I was walking Rich down through town and towards the dock we nipped into the Bluecoat. It' such an amazing building and doesn't look like its open to the public; a little intimidating really. But hey, I belted up and went in. The building itself is really beautiful, with a courtyard in the middle, with a little garden and benches. Very pretty, as was the front of the building with another little courtyard with a few little shops on either side as you walk up to the entrance.
Anyway, I found my way into the gallery section of the building as there was an exhibition on called 'Slow Magic'. It wasn't really my kind of thing, and a lot of it was contemporary and didn't seem to have taken much effort, although I am sure that there was a lot of thought and meaning behind it. But I did like one piece of work in particular, Andrew Bick, and I have put an image below of a similar piece of work to the one that I liked. Even thought it is still all simple lines and a bit contemporary, I liked the distinction between the images and colours behind the perspex and the images on top and the frosty kind of distinctio
n between the two.


In my journal, I will document this with the leaflet I got given at the entrance and another leaflet I picked up about the history of the building, as it is a truly remarkable building! I will also talk more about the work in that!!We left the Bluecoat and headed down to the docks, passing the old Quiggins building on the way... sad times. Anyway, we got down to the docks to see what was on at the Tate and it didn't look TOO contemporary, so we went in and had a look around. I wrote down some names of artists and the name of that particular piece of work because some things in there were totally inspirational! We didn't bother looking on the top floor, which was the paid exhibition, which was named "Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to today". I wasn't quite sure what that would entail and whether it would be worth paying for, so we passed the chance on that one. It's on until the 13th of September, so if I change my mind, I can always go back! But anyway, I found some AMAZING artists there!!!
Like this:

This is Eva Rothshcild, and the piece of work is called "knock knock". It is amazing! Took me a while to figure out how it was standing because it blatantly wasn't hanging from anything! The leather work surrounding the steel frame was also very well done and done to such a high standard.
This was another brilliant example;


This is "The Passing Winter" by Yayoi Kusama. It's brilliant. In the Tate where we saw it, the walls of the room where painted bright pink, so all of the holes shown here where bright pink and it looked brilliant. So impressive, and so simple!
I just looked up some of her other work whilst looking for the above picture and found another piece of work she's done that I love;


I'm unsure as to what this is made of, but it is beautiful. I love the depth of field/depth perception here and the correlation and the way the light hits it. It's lovely. Definitely an artist worth looking into!!
There were a few other artists, but I will mention them in further detail in my journal along with the leaflet from the gallery. But in general, I was impressed with the work and found some of it really inspirational!
Well worth the visit!