Macrame Madness. A2 Exam Outcome. Photos With Technical Support From Dave Merritt. Thanks X

Cultural Appropriation brief exploring Native Americans and Indian artefacts to inspire decorative cloth and screen printing on fabrics.

Ideas are also being developed for possible poster designs. Using the cut out hands as a motif to link with theatre, shadow puppets and the theme of LOVE for Romeo & Juliet perhaps, in simplistic formats, that hope to communicate this to younger audiences or a visual references to entice people to the theatre. 

Fabrication brief.

Student were asked to donate 5 items of old clothing to explore this communal response to the fashion industry and sustainability. This activity asked them to wrap and layer their garments as a parcel to collate as a collaborative wall installation. The first image shows a focused drawing of one talented students response to this task. A beautifully observed watercolour study.

Fun and satire with our new Level 3 Art students.

Let’s tell Boris what we really think 🤔 Get involved. Art is Power! 

#postcardforboris #getpolitical #artispower

Mark making. Playing with inks, bleach, water, scratching, layers…..

New favourite beach. Wonderful rock formations and so many beautiful pebbles, each one so unique and inspiring. Jurassic and Triassic. Very photogenic and lots of ideas forming. Making drawing tools and using them to capture the scale and drama of the place.

Collecting and combining found materials.

Order imposed.

Colour explored.

Enjoying the dialogue between the different objects. Man made and natural, circular forms, threaded, unravelled, holes repurposed, joining, combining. 

A playful conversation..... 

Fifty Bees #4 exhibition at Frome’s wonderful Black Swan gallery. 

This is my response to the habitat and lifestyle of the Lobe Spurred furrow bee.

I enjoy using found and repurposed materials in my own arts practice, so this is created entirely from fabric washed up the beach at Charmouth and fishing line, horsehair and natural fibres to stitch with. This bee was virtually extinct in the 1980′s but then made a dramatic come back, to now becoming a species with no risk to its population. My quest to discover the reasoning behind this encouraged a journey of discovery and research to try and understand its story.

I travelled around to visit habitats of known sightings, scrubland, agricultural sites, beach cliff locations but did not find my bee. I did discover though,  that the prevalence of Oilseed Rape planted on a mass scale across the UK in the 80′s had a detrimental impact on many indigenous insect species particularly bees. The nicotinoid pesticides used in agriculture was the culprit but fortunately for the lobe spurred furrow bee, it thrived on the blooms of rape and where others perished it increased in number.

My piece uses loopy stitching and intense surface coverage to signify the bees activity. The yellow plant dyed colour references the rape blooms and the undulating surface is linked to the patch of land investigated on site.

Plastic fantastic! Crazy, melted, recycled plastics embellished to eye-popping brilliance by FAD student. Love ‘em!

Happy days....experimenting with mixed media and textiles.

Today...lace dipped in porcelain with stitched wire....fired!