Creative Residency 2011

I've been away all week teaching screen-printing to a wonderful group of fifth year students in Oban. The picture above is just to give you an idea of how beautiful and sedate the area is that I was lucky enough to find myself working in. (it has to be said that all things sedate pretty much ended there...but what great fun was to be had)!

The group of students I had produced some amazing work throughout the week, pictures of which you can see above and below. My first year of leading a course during the Creative Residency was last year, where I had a fantastic week and thought it couldn't be beaten. However when I was asked to run the course again this year, I couldn't have said YES fast enough and I had just as much fun, if not alittle more sprikled on top.

The first couple of days the weather was rather pitiful and meant we were cooped up inside trying our best not to spill dyes onto the beautiful clean floors or burst any screens by accidently standing on them. By the third day the sun came out...whoop...and we moved outside sharpish where we could make as much mess and chaos as we wanted. Check out the screen-printing taking place above. (and the t-shirt being worn by my assistant, designed by me for the event. If you have a look in the blog archives you can see the one I did for last year too).

Here is one of the students painting onto a screen to be printed later. If you check out the washing line picture above you can see some of the finished t-shirts and fabrics that the students printed. A selection of the work is presented at a wonderful exhibition which will be taking place in early 2012, which I'm really looking forward to seeing and also the opportunity to catch up with my wonderful group.

Here's a sketchbook being created, on day one/two we headed down to the harbour where the students had an opportunity to do some first hand drawing. It was important to get the students out of their comfort zone, they didn't have months to make finished pieces of work, they had days (which happens all the time in Industry and at University). The 'days' aspect was the first hurdle to get over, we started them off doing some pretty unusual ways of drawing making sure we collated as much interesting and unusual information as possible and hopefully instilling in them possibilities and ways of working for the future.

Here is a finished sketchbook page, it was great to watch the students 'get it' as the week went on and produce some superb work. I hope to lay my fingers on some images of the finished pieces of work and hopefully let you all have a look sometime soon. I'm now back home and have spent much of the weekend recovering from a full on week, I had such a wonderful time and look forward to maybe going back next year!

Craft Residency Masterclass

Back at the end of June I headed off to Oban to teach screen-printing techniques to a group of pupils from schools across North Lanarkshire. As a follow up they came over to Heriot-Watt University in Galashiels to do a two day masterclass within the fantastic facilities there with two wonderful technicians and me (of course)!

The students got the chance to print images they had created while in Oban, including textures created from seaweed and slate picked up from the beach and images inspired by the shoreline and terrain around our base in Oban. The fabrics created will be cut into pattern pieces and made into shirts to be showcased at an event in November alongside a range of shirts from Heriot-Watt's campus in Dubai.

They got the chance to use a whole range of printing inks, dyes and adhesives including devoré (which burns away fibre), foils, hand-painting, pigments, opagues and puff binder. There were some amazing colours and patterns created which will go onto to make the coolest skirts.

And if you pop back to my original post on the Craft Residency back in June you'll see a picture of this artwork of boats (above) being drawn, which the student turned into the prettiest hand painted silk scarf.

Craft and Art Residency, Kilbowie 2010

I'm just home after a great week with some fantastic students from around North Lanarkshire, who all took part in a week of intensive art and design training. I was focussed on the screen-printing and what an amazing selection of work we had by the end of it, everyone really got stuck in and got their hands dirty (quite literally)! Check out the heat changing t-shirts we managed to squish in between some more serious work.

The beautiful sunset on the longest day of the year.

Managed to get the students painting onto the screen, as well as the opportunity to draw down by the harbour and collect objects on the first couple of days. Everyone worked from the early hours till late at night and really got a lot of the experience, teacher and student alike I reckon.

I really liked going exploring when I had a couple of minutes to spare, I just love the sea!

There wasn't just screen-printing either, other opportunities included jewellery with Suilven Plazalska which looked absolutely amazing in the next room as well as Music, Digital Imagery, Fine Art and Film/Documentery Making.

Kilbowie 2010

I've just been asked to run a series of workshops over on the west coast of Scotland towards the end of this month at an event for school-leavers wanting to head into the art and design field at College or Uni. Very excited about taking part and in a part of Scotland I haven't had a chance to visit yet, so double excitement!

T-shirt to your left is one I whipped up yesterday while organising what I would need for such an adventure with the fantastic Tony. I had a great time showing it off to all and sundry yesterday afternoon and now it's even been fixed so I can wear it out in the rain...whooo! (lets hope for none of that while I'm on the west coast)

Hopefully I'll have some more exciting photos to show from the actual event in a couple of weeks time.