After a 6.30am start and a 3 hour journey we arrived at the NEC in Birmingham for the start of an eventful day. We separated into groups and hit the clothes show, money at the ready. Once inside the arena we spent an hour running from stall to stall before realising the enormity of the show! After discovering another 3 halls packed with cosmetics, clothes, food and several small catwalks we saw at the end of one of the halls the clothes show theatre. We had tickets to enter the theatre at 1.45 and this year the show’s theme was ‘At the Movies’. When the time came around to enter the show we were shown to our seats which were quite high up but directly in front of the stage.

The show kicked off with music from two boy bands, Inju5tice and Vice. The show then launched into a visual extravaganza with scenes linked to James Bond, Science Fiction, Western, Haunted, Dirty Dancing, High School Musical and finally finishing with Fairy Tale. The backdrops to the shows were brilliant and the clothes helped depict the scenes. The music that accompanied each theme was modern and well known which added to the overall atmosphere which meant the show ended to ear splitting applause. The models left and we filed out of the Theatre and straight back into the halls, to get in some last minute shopping and to check out the colleges that were displaying work. Lots of the themes throughout the college work is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” and all to do with saving our planet. Several of the designs link in with our current schemes of work, there are pictures below.

An excellent day was had by all. And we will most definitely be going next year, just need more money and bigger bags…

Michael Craig-Martin’s style of art is different, simple and at first underestimated. He produces minimal paintings that include common everyday objects, reworked masterpieces or simply the typography of letters with basic lines and bright contrasting colours.

Pupil Example: Isabella 2009

Passion and Obsession: Becoming Cheryl

Student Video: Joanne 2010

We are showcasing the photographs of Liz a Year 10 BTEC Art and Design student. Liz’s work was awarded a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Photography prize for her submission on the theme of Science and Engineering.

More images are available from Departmentart Flickr page .

Whilst visiting the Radical Nature exhibition at the Barbican centre, I noticed an interesting, igloo type hut, constructed out of layered wooden planks. The hut had an intriguing exterior, which links to my current project – Surfaces. This detailed structure influenced by textile response, layering cuttings of fabric into rows and stitching them onto a base material. The artist Eilean Agar uses a similar response with her ‘Hat and Gloves’, by layering wooden style chippings. My piece creates a sense of movement and uneven texture.

Eilean Agar

When visiting East London, I came across an indoor market, finding an old, worn, patterned chair. I wanted to recreate its pattern into textiles, so chose to weave the design with strips of fabric. I managed to find a similar weaving design which replicated the pattern, called Twill. I alternated the Twill weave up and down to create a similar zig-zag effect to the chair’s pattern. The contrast between the two colour strips concentrates on the intricate interlacing of the materials.

Whilst on the lookout for interesting surfaces to inspire me for my textiles project, a bamboo and wooden looking woven plant pot caught my eye.

I wanted to give my own textiles response to this surface, finding materials in different shades of brown to cut into strips and weave simply. This idea was very successful and reflected the original plant pot pattern very well. The pattern could also act as a parallel to the intertwining of plant branches.

At The Barbican, surrounding the actual building is a presentation of peaceful nature such as unusual plants and water features. As my brief is titled Surfaces, I found a spikey, long grass type plant, sprawled everywhere in an attractive way.

This influenced me to create a similar type of grass produced as a textiles response. After using a piece of green fabric as a base for my grass, I then machine stitched folded up snippets of woolen string onto this. This managed to create a randomized, spikey and realistic looking grass from textiles. The contrast between different shades of coloured woolen string helps to represent the tones and highlights of natural grass.

At my local train station, located inside was a silver public telephone point. At closer inspection I noticed the metal had an interesting patterned surface which I really liked the look of.

I was inspired by this to create a smocking piece which would hold much influence from the telephone point’s pattern. I tried to find a smocking style which most represented the surface, and I found the Honeycomb smock suited it well.

The intricate details of my smocking – the pleats and the embroidery, could even reflect the imagery of a mass of phone wires all connected in some way.

The idea of using stains as a theme for the surfaces project came accidentally when I lifted up my cup to see a ring stain left on a piece of cloth. I started to create and develop stains investigating how they reacted with different materials and surfaces e.g. paper, large wooded areas and fabric.

To extend the stains experiments further I introduced photographic chemicals and the Photogram/Raygram process inspired by Man Ray introducing a series of drips and exploring the positive and negative space.

I was very pleased with how the ring stains on the photogram turned out and decided to experiment with these pictures using ICT, scanning them onto photoshop and manipulating the colours.

From there I moved into 3D and relief casting as I wanted to explore the outcome of lifting the stains looking at the height and depth while using the same colour scheme from my ICT experiments.

Recently I have been experimenting with ‘accidental’ stains e.g where a cup of tea was thrown at a white dress, whilst maintaining the colour scheme from previous works.  I’ve  stitched around the stains to enhance them which is influenced by Nava Lubelski who stitches around stains on table cloths, canvas, paper and sheets to expose the beautiful, colourful abstract movement of the stain.

Nava Lubelski