Chesterfield College/Winding Wheel - Fashion Show Essay

On Tuesday 21^st June, I visited the Fashion Show at the Winding Wheel. This show was designed to show the work of students on the Fashion, Hair and Beauty, Textiles and Art and Design courses. Because of the nature of the show, I didn’t get to see any development work, and it was very hard to speak to the designers and artists who created the work.

This show was quite restricted in terms of the specialisms it could display. Creatives worked with fabric or hair, and usually to a theme, with not much room for expansion. There was some variation in the pieces, but they all recognisably ran on the same theme. The show was divided into projects that would be shown, so the audience could easily relate the work back to the theme it was based on, though sometimes this was quite obvious because of the work on show, or the accompanying music (‘Get Me To The Church on Time’ played during the wedding segment). 

In terms of layout, the show was very different from the other two. Where the others were free roaming shows where visitors were free to walk where they pleased and spend as long as they liked looking at (and photographing) the work they loved, the fashion show was much more structured, and work was only on display for a few minutes at a time, so photographers had to be vigilant.
The show was arranged as a catwalk down the centre of the room, with seating around, and a dressing room away from the main stage, that lead onto a red carpet up to the catwalk itself. I liked this layout considerably more than the previous shows, because this left no room for us to miss any of the work on display. I did find, though, that the bright stage lights used to light the models was very interfering and washed out my photos considerably, making the work I chose to photograph very hard to make out in places.

Because of the nature of the show, it was hard to select pieces relevant to my usual specialist subject interests, so instead I have chosen to review the pieces that interested me the most.

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These were the two hairdressing sections, created by Level 3 Hairdressing. The first one, ‘Peek-a-boo’ wasn’t so exciting to me. On the programme it was described as “A range of precision cuts and contemporary colours inspired by the 1980s”

(own photograph)

My only problem with this section was that the pieces all seemed very similar. The cuts were all in a simple bob style and the colours were equally simple browns, blacks and bright platinum blondes. There’s no doubt these cuts were very well done, and I can’t deny that I can’t cut hair that precisely, but I found there wasn’t much diversity in these pieces, which was my disagreement with it.
I also think that the way the hair was presented was very distracting. The models were made up with huge lips and did a modern style dance that involved tilting the head and walking in rhythm in quite a military way. There was also a part of the dance where the models stood in a line, which obscured some of the styles, depending on where you were seated. I felt personally that this was very irrelevant to the hair on display, and made it hard to focus on the styles themselves.

The second hairdressing section was titled ‘Multi dimensional’. These pieces, according to the programme, were inspired by Vidal Sassoon, who “revolutionised the hairdressing industry in the 1960s”.

(own photograph)

 Compared to Vidal Sassoon’s work, these hairstyles were absolutely insane, but I understand their concept. The Hairdressing students were looking to recreate Vidal’s style of geometric shapes in the hair, but the students have truly taken it to the extreme to create a truly inspiring display.

 

(own photograph)

This was my favourite piece from this section. The sheer patience and attention to detail it must have taken to create all of these sticks of hair is outstanding. Once again, in comparison to Sassoon’s work, I can see the geometric influence.

http://musie.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/vidal-sassoon.jpg

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The next piece I have chosen is from the Individual Final Collections by National Diploma Fashion Year 2. These two pieces are by Charlotte Burton, and are titled ‘Structured Flow’.

These pieces are titled ‘Structured Flow’, which suggests a controlled way of letting the fabric flow, which can be seen by the frills on both dresses, which flow as they walk, but within the conforms of the dress itself. However, the model on the left could barely keep up with the other model, as her dress was tailored so tightly at her ankles that she could only shuffle down the catwalk very carefully. This, in my opinion, didn’t allow the frills of the dress to ‘flow’ as well as the frills on the other dress. However, the way of holding back how quickly one can walk in a dress could easily be another way of structuring the flow of the fabric, which relates nicely back to the collection’s name.

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The last piece I have chosen to review is ‘Milk and Cream’ – the wedding collection on display at the show. I have always been a fan of wedding dress design and styling, and the diversity that is on offer for anyone looking for a unique dress for a special occasion. These particular dresses were created by A2 and AS Textiles and were “inspired by their investigation of social class”.

In this collection, the diversity created by the investigation into social class was quite visible. Some dresses had a Victorian feel, with longer sleeves and a long skirt, while others were more modern, with a much shorter ‘party dress’ feel – lots of frills and a lot more skin on display. In one case, the skirt part of the dress had been tailored into trousers, which would easily suit the less feminine brides. I enjoyed this section the most for its display of diversity using such similar fabrics and purpose.

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Overall, I found the fashion show very enjoyable. It was interesting to see how these students responded to their briefs, and I could easily see how the product related back to the theme, without having to see any development work. Though Fashion and Hair have never really been subjects I have much interest in, the fashion show gave me the inspiration to experiment with textiles more in my own work in future.

Chesterfield College - Arts Festival Essay

On Tuesday 21^st June, we visited the Arts Festival at Chesterfield College. This show was displaying the work of the second years in Art and Design, Fashion, Graphic Design and Interactive Media. Much like the previous show, this featured accompanying sketchbooks and development work, but there were no artists accompanying their work.

Within the Art and Design course especially, there were a variety of specialisms shown. Some pieces were made with textiles, some painted. Some were more photographic or otherwise digitally created. In addition to this, some pieces were very transparent and sought to illustrate or advertise, where others had more emotional significance. In the Graphic Design and Interactive Media area, there were also a variety of specialisms – some work was heavily digital, some using more lens based media, and others taking a more traditional approach. All of these things further demonstrate how broad a creative course can be.

This show was split into rooms like the Manchester show, with an upstairs and downstairs and adjoining rooms for different courses. Work was displayed in the dome area, and on the walls surrounding it on both floors. My main problem with the Art and Design display on the bottom floor was the lack of flow it had. The layout seemed more like a maze, with a small corner shape allocated to each piece of work. It was sometimes very easy to miss work out because of this. This was not the case with the outer walls and the work in the upstairs rooms, which was laid out much more easily. However, in the Graphics/Interactive room, a lot of work was grouped together on the wall to save space, with sketchbooks in the middle, and a lot of the name labels were placed together, which made it hard to see who owned which work and book. For this reason, I have mostly featured work from the Art and Design area, as it was frustrating to have a limited choice for the Graphics area.

Interestingly, a lot of pieces outside of my usual comfort zone of photography and illustration caught my eye this time. I found some of the photographs to be not very well thought out and candid. While some of the pieces I am looking at have illustrative qualities, I was not so impressed by a lot of the illustrations I saw at the Arts Festival.

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I am reviewing three pieces by Emma Scott, who is studying a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. She created four pieces about body image, which I found really captivating when they caught my eye. All of these pieces, when hung on the wall like they were, were equally striking, and each one conveys the same message, but with a uniquely different delivery.
All three of these pieces are executed in very cold blues, whites and greys, which all give off a feeling of sadness and loneliness, which is often associated with body image issues. 

(own photograph)

This is the first piece in the series, and is easily the subtlest. No type is used in this piece. In terms of materials, this piece looks like it was made with inks and collage on some kind of board. The scratchy effect around the figure and in the collage that was made by the wood grain gives a strong message of desperation, like the artist is scratching desperately, trying to get out of this feeling of worthlessness that comes with low self-esteem. The way the scratches seem to frame the figure is reminiscent of a halo, which could symbolise how society glorifies the slim, beautiful people. The face that the model’s face is cut off could symbolise this further – that the artist has been forced to believe that nothing else matters beyond being beautiful and slim.

I could easily see how this piece could’ve stemmed from a life drawing class, with the focus on the body, as well as the skull that’s been drawn over the figure.

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(own photograph)

 This is the second piece I have chosen from Emma’s work. This piece is much more type based, and follows the colour scheme of the previous piece very well. This piece looks almost entirely painted, based on the hurried brush stroke feel of the background. Over the top is the deeply emotional monologue of someone struck by terribly low self-esteem. What I like most of all about this is that the monologue isn’t solely focused on the feelings of one person, but it also focuses on the general opinions people have on body image – “The world would be a lot easier if people accepted people who look different”.

Behind the text, the portraits of people seem distorted in the strokes of paint and obscured by the text. This could be on purpose, to illustrate the idea of looking into the mirror and seeing a distorted image of yourself because of how you feel inside. 

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(own photograph)

This is the last piece I have chosen to review. When I was walking through the Arts Festival, this piece was the one that caught my attention before the others. At first I wasn’t too sold on the inverted effect on the photograph, but I grew to like it more, as I noticed how much easier it was to read the type, and how it fits the cool colour scheme really well.

The eyes of the model easily emphasize how cold and desperate these emotions are, and their pure white colour makes them hard to avoid, forcing the audience to face up to the reality of this problem. Her hair also helps draw the eye into the face, as it’s a basic white colour almost all over. As for the writing on her face, I think this is especially interesting, and could easily be influential to anyone who has felt this way before, or is still dealing with these issues.

I also like the ‘focus’ shots around the photo, which highlight phrases from the face. The bottom one – “What Makes You Different Makes You Beautiful” – is my favourite. The shot is put together very well, and the eye is drawn to the text first. The choice to crop this down to just the nose and mouth gives the impression that the model could be anyone, which makes the message even more accessible to the audience.

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Overall, I found the Arts Festival to be very interesting and inspirational. Some work wasn’t as exciting as it could be, but other pieces were immediately eye catching and stayed with me long after I left the festival. I really look forward to creating work at this standard or higher myself in my second year, and I know that the Arts Festival has given me the motivation and insight to competently compete with students like these when it comes to applications for jobs and universities. 

Manchester Metropolitan University – Degree Show Essay

On Monday 20^th June I visited the Manchester Metropolitan University with my college. At the university, we visited a degree show that showcased the work of degree students studying a variety of design and art based courses, including Fine Art, Illustration and Animation, Interior Design and Graphic Design. Along with the pieces I will talk about were development sketchbooks and artists to speak to, to give more depth to the work.

A variety of specialisms were showcased to show the variety available within the courses. Within the Textiles course, for example, were some very illustrative pieces, as well as more print based work. Some work featured type also. These pieces are just examples of how broad the work can be through any of the courses, which was something I was very happy to see and very interested in.

The show was arranged by course, with labels on most of the doors to denote which course was being exhibited where. There was a map included with this to make finding the work most relevant to you easier. However, I found this very confusing. On the map, I had chosen to look for Illustration and Animation, as illustration is something I am interested in, but when I headed up to the floor, I found that a lot of what I was looking at was not what I had expected to find. I do appreciate that a lot of work on these courses is a broad mix of techniques and subjects, but it was very difficult to find what I was really looking for at first.

I also found that the labelling for the images was slightly confusing. In one particular area of work, supposedly showcasing Art and Design students, the title under one of the artist’s names read ‘BA (Hons) Religion and Ethics’, which

As my interests lie quite strongly with both photography and illustration, these were the areas I took most interest in, while I did still look at and appreciate other areas of the exhibition. I was also very surprised at how much of the Textiles show I was interested in, as a lot of the pieces featured designs I was really inspired by.

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The first piece I am looking at is by Alan Ryan, studying a degree in Textile Design. His work was interesting to me because of the focus on anatomy he uses. This photograph of the postcard I picked up of his work doesn’t do it much justice, but his work features lots of calm neutral colours and anatomical references.

(own photograph)

I looked to Alan’s blog for some insight into where his ideas had come from, but sadly it’s almost totally empty. However, I could find more of his work in the form of designs and drawings, both focused on anatomy. I can see where Alan’s first ideas could have come from very easily – from life drawing with focus on muscles and from possibly looking at Da Vinci.

 http://ajrryan.blogspot.com/

This seems to be the piece Alan used to develop into his final design that was printed on the postcards. In his work, I can see a lot of similarity to the anatomy drawings Leonardo Da Vinci created. Da Vinci’s work features the same outlined muscles in conjunction to the drawing of the figure. The colours used, the cool neutrals, are also something that Alan has used in his work.

http://www.leonardo-da-vinci-biography.com/leonardo-da-vinci-anatomy.html

Also, the chain used in place of the spine in Alan’s drawing is very intriguing to me. It could easily be a statement on human life in many ways. It could be a symbol of how human beings are just machines to do tasks of others (bosses, Gods, etc). It could be a statement on how the body functions like clockwork until one thing goes wrong like a spanner in the works. The possibilities for multiple interpretations are endless and this is a feature I love in any artwork.

Alan’s work combines the simplistic style of composition (he has not added anything to the drawing that doesn’t need to be there) with the extremely complex and precise art of drawing the body and that is something I admire greatly.

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The next artist I am looking at is Catherine Parsonage. Her work on display, ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ was easily the piece I loved the most in the whole exhibition.

http://mmuartshow2011.com

In the exhibit, this was a series of 3 or 4 pieces, all of which featured something very clinical (one was in what appeared to be a hospital, for example, while the above one features a hospital bed). While this is a painting, I find it interesting for its illustrative quality – the style, the colour scheme and the line quality, as well as the symbolism and the emotions behind the work.

There was no development work on show along with these pieces, and Catherine was not there to speak to me. She also lacks a blog to show her influences, but I have emailed her asking about the paintings I have looked at, and she was happy to give me an insight into her thoughts in creating this piece. All the paintings in her ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ series are about mortality and medicine, and our experiences of it. The pieces illustrate medicine’s ability to support and restrain – medication and treatment easily has side effects that can be just as devastating as illness itself, along with the miracles modern medicine creates. Catherine has used the background of her pieces to illustrate a psychological space that, combined with the recognisable hospital equipment, is made to create a personal emotional response with the viewer. Catherine claims her ultimate goal is to illustrate how we as people view the clinical environment in so many different ways, and her work depicts the hospital environment in an unpredictable world that is like an alternate reality that we can never visit.

If you search the title of these works in a search engine, you will come across a book with the same name. The story is a simple one about some friends sitting around a table discussing what true love really is, but with some very sombre themes. The one particular piece that stands out is a story told in the book about an old couple who are in a car accident and end up in hospital together, both in full-body plaster so they can’t move. The man and woman are unable to even look at each other in the casts, which breaks their hearts. This could be the significance in the hospital bed seen above, as it seems to be on a cliff side, symbolising both the sheer distance they are feeling between each other, and the fact that in their eyes, one of them could easily vanish (fall off a cliff) and the other would be none the wiser in their inability to move.

I absolutely adore this work. I feel that it is very easily relatable, and brings about an emotional response in me that is entirely my own. While the piece is done in oil paint, I could easily see it translated into watercolour with as much ease.

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The last artist I am reviewing is Zoe Boston, a photographer from the exhibit. Her photo ‘An Unwanted Gift’ was very interesting to me.

http://mmuartshow2011.com

Zoe does not have a blog, or any development work along with this, so instead I researched the drug she has photographed. Methotrexate is the drug, and is used to treat psoriasis, arthritis and some cancers. It is considered highly dangerous, to the point where the patient is not allowed to take one tablet per day for fear of death. There are lots of risk factors and reasons to check before taking it, in a way that can make it extremely terrifying.

This piece made me think in a stop-and-stare way, where I was unable to take my eyes off of this photograph. I don’t know the artist personally, so I have no idea if she suffers from a condition and takes this medication, but I feel like there’s a deep connection between artist and subject. The black liquid (which looks a lot link ink) could symbolise the negative view the artist has on the medication, hidden behind the veil of the information given (the text on the photograph). The way the tablets are bagged to contain all of the liquid and the tablet container could be a way of symbolising how the health system protects such a dangerous medicine. If this medicine was for a relative of the artist, the bag could symbolise her inability to stop the relative taking it – medicines are kept away from children.

I really love this work for the emotional feeling it gives me – one of sadness and fear, coupled with clinical sombreness. I think it is a very interesting and well made piece, and the monotone colour scheme, punctuated by the single bright red colour of the tablet container immediately draws the eye where it’s needed.

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Overall, I found the exhibition both interesting and frustrating in equal measure. I found that a lot of the colour schemes were very influential to me – I took many photographs and will probably try out some of the colours in my future works. However, the layout of the exhibit was off-putting and made it harder to enjoy the works.
Some of the work was really inspiring, using techniques, colours and subjects that really interested me. In the case of Catherine Parsonage, I felt the need to speak to her about her work and fully understand it, as I found it extremely interesting to look at, and found the emotional response I had was very profound.
However, there was a lot of work I was left not so inspired by. This is probably because I lacked the understanding to fully appreciate it, and there was no insight in some areas to assist me (some of the work I found the hardest to understand was alone with no sketchbooks or artists nearby).
I can still appreciate the time and effort that has gone into the work featured in the show, even if it doesn’t cater to my own personal taste.

Ben Nicholson, Techniques and Processes

Ben Nicholson is an abstract painter who uses collage in muted colours and shapes. His work features a variety of textures and colours, which give different feels. He uses oil paint, along with materials like gesso (a primer-like substance that gives paper and canvas a more strengthened feel, and adds texture) and pencil, with collage to create his work.
I looked at Ben's art for inspiration when creating my final collage in life drawing. i used the following pieces mainly as a reference for colour, texture and shapes:

I created my collages with glue, tissue paper, brown paper, black paper, pastels and blue ink. I used the tissue to imitate the textures Ben creates with gesso, oils and the layers of collage he uses. I followed his colour scheme with brown, black and blue. To imitate the first image better, I could have used newspaper, but I was wary of adding too much to my collage and making it too busy. To imitate the second image, I left some white space and added my geometric-style lines in blue and black to highlight parts of the body. I also tried to lay my black and brown paper at angles to achieve this effect.

Life Drawing - 4

Today in life drawing, I created collage pieces based on my drawings.

At first we began with gesture drawings to warm up, and then we did a half-hour drawing and collage. 

I am really happy with this collage. I love the way the lines frame and accentuate the curves and shapes in the body, and I like the accents the brown paper gives. I used pastel for my outlines and I think this gave a nice movement to the piece.

Finally, I created this college. I tried to put my own spin on the style of Ben Nicholson, with my accents of colour and my use of tissue paper and pastel for texture. I once again used my lines to frame the body, but I feel that this was not so successful this time.