Review - Manchester School of Art Degree Show 2014

I attended the degree show at The Manchester school of Art, I particularly wanted to go this year as I will be heading into my final year in september and its important to have a look at work thats already out there and students who have been through something that you're about to start. There were many amazing pieces of Art that amazed me not only from the textiles section but photography, fine art, graphics and many more! Keeping in with textiles there were so many beautiful pieces to choose from I've tried to narrow it down to two specific artists that work in a similar way to I do.

Claire Florey-Hitchcox

Claires work immediately caught my eye, I was beautifully intricate and every pattern and shape was hand carved into a wood block by her. This type of concentration, dedication and patience amazes me. He beautiful wallpapers were stunning but I feel the woodblocks them selves were show stopping they were beautiful. In her artist statement Claire talks about the fast moving technology of today and how she's embracing old techniques and fashions. This is also something that inspires me keeping hold of old age traditions that are to special to let go.

http://degreeshow.mmu.ac.uk/2014/ClaireFloreyHitchcox/

Hannh Laughland

Another artist that caught my eye is Hannh Laughland her beautiful embroidery work was extremely delicate and intricate and her colour palette was beautifully subtle. The main thing that attracted me to her work was her artist statement and how her connections with her family and inspiration from he grandparents drove her work. This is what also drives my work I always make my work personal similarly to the way Laughland does, so naturally this stood out to me her work also portrays her journey which is something I hope my work in the coming year will also do.

http://degreeshow.mmu.ac.uk/2014/HannahLaughland/

KEY BLOG POST 3: Reflection by the submission deadline

I have learnt many things over this unit which have opened my eyes to the hard work and dedication that it takes to be a teacher. One of my favourite and main new discovery has to be the lesson planning stage although I enjoyed this I felt it was a very tense and stressful part. I learnt having to over plan and make sure everything planned to the minute was very important and saves from having problems in the workshop and how vital it is to have every stage planned out properly and appropriately. This unit has also eloped me fight my fears and help me to speak to different people and produce workshops for my peers. I have always been frightened of speaking in front of people and talking about my work and by doing a micro teaching session with my peers it has taught me confidence and the positive feedback has helped me develop a liking for speaking and interacting with people. The collaboration of different people has also been interesting for me as its not something I've done before. although sometimes it has been a little difficult managing a large group of people working on one lesson plan I feel everyone played a part and pulled through when the needed to.

I feel there could have been more research going into lesson planning and perhaps a few more days at a high school work shadowing would be good experience and give more insight into what it would be like in a real life setting. Overall I think more preparation time before the two workshops could have been more helpful as they would have given us the chance to produce a better and more efficient lesson plan as we did have a few time issues on both workshops. The high school workshop especially needed longer time planning as it wasn't as straight forward and easy as the primary one. I feel this workshop would have benefited more if we had longer time as we would have been able to plan something that flowed more easier and had more efficient timing.

We did have two other opportunities to work with the stockport festival which was later cancelled and also another workshop which was cancelled also which has been a little disappointing. This unit over all has been very enjoyable although there have been moments when I haven't been sure about where we were supposed to be and where we had a specific area for us to go and work as we had a few problems with our new stockport studios. There were a few minor timetable problems that confused me a little but the unit was mostly straight forward and a lot of fun to do.

By choosing to do College One this has further confirmed my ambitions to become a teacher as I enjoyed working at a high school much more than I expected. The work shadowing was extremely helpful and interesting as it gave me insight into classroom life and also gave me the chance to speak to students and also teachers. I was able to give students advice and help them with their art projects which was something I felt was rewarding as I could help them do better using my ideas and my own experience to aid them. It has also helped me decide what kind of teaching I would like to do after doing some research into both art and design technology I have decided that design technology is something I would be more interested in as Textile design is my specialty and I feel that is something I am confident in teaching.

Micro teaching

Today was the micro teaching day. I was extremely nervous to begin with I don't like speaking in front of lots of people, my nerves get the better of me. I was pleasantly surprised by myself after the result of my session.

I did a mini printing technique for my group to try out. I used quick print foam which you carve and then cover in paint and print with. I thought this was a simple and quick task which would last between 7-10 mins. I started the task off by spending a good few minutes talking about my own work and discussing how I have used this technique before. I am extremely happy with how my session went as I finished exactly on time.

My feedback was mostly good from my group my tutor had said I had a good strong organised plan and a good workshop that was able to fit in a short amount of time. They also liked my introduction especially as I had shown my work and explained what you could do with these prints afterwards.

I also good some constructive feedback on how to improve my workshop if I was to do it again. I was told I should think about a conclusion rather than letting it just Finnish which looking back I wish I would have stopped everyone a minute or two before 10mins and made them talk about their final pieces. Another point made was it could have made the workshop into a mini card making one or some product at the end that could be used. I have taken all this feedback on board and it has helped me broaden my knowledge on what makes a good workshop.

 

 

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Work-shadowing

Today we paid a visit to Abraham Moss high school's art department. It was a great experience for me as I got to witness first hand what it is like to work with high school students in their environment. I thoroughly enjoyed it! I enjoyed talking to them about their work and looking through all their work and their final pieces especially the year 10s that we worked with. It was truest inspiring. They were all very talented and all produced extremely beautiful work. This particular year 10 group were working in natural form, every single student had produced something different and personal. It was inspiring to see such talent. We were able to walk around and interact with the students and talk about why they'd chosen art this also gave them the opportunity to speak to me and how I got to this point in life it was rewarding giving them advice on how to get to this point in life and also tips and tricks for their own work.
Working with year 8's was different to year 10's as they were a little more challenging. They were working on a honey bee project where they had to find facts about them and then present them in their sketchbook appropriately. In this lesson I was able to speak to their teacher who was very kind and told me about her degree and her path she had taken to become a teacher.

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Stockport Art festival Proposal

For this brief we worked as a group and came up with the following:

We decided we would have an already made stencil on the wall which would then be decorated by the community and people who are visiting the Art festival using their memories of Stockport.

• Quick and easy few minutes task
• People can decorate more than one brick
• Brings together the community
• Adds ownership to the final product
• Adds identity to stockport 
• Each brick is different and personal
• Good for all ages even young children for drawings

Tutorial

Today I had a tutorial the tutor was half an hour late which wasn't her fault it was a time table problem we've had a few of them recently but all is well now. It was a good chance to get some advice on my micro teaching session which is something I'm terrified of doing I lack in confidence when it comes specifically to speaking in front of people. My tutor told me to start of with a mind map in techniques that I use in print and then use it as a beginning. This advice was pretty vague and didn't really help me but I gave it a go anyway and decided to just stick to a mini project starting technique that I always use and know well.

She also gave us some things we should look out for whilst work shadowing:

• How the teacher observes class
• How the class engages & interacts
• How the teacher uses learning objectives
• How the experience makes you feel 
• How the teacher manages behaviour

Back after the easter break

Today was our first day in the new Stockport studios.  it was nice to finally be able to get into our space and be able to get back into work its just annoying that we only have a few weeks left in uni and won't really be spending much time there. as soon as we got there we got straight into uni mode and got told about our new tasks over the next few weeks which included planning a workshop for the Stockport Art festival, a micro teaching workshop (10mins long) and finally a work shadowing session at a high school that I am most definitely looking forward to.

We were told we had to base our Workshop on stockport and use it as inspiration this was a little difficult for me as I don't really know a lot about stockport and haven't been their before apart from the town hall. luckily for me I was in a group with two girls who knew about the area and were from there. Straight away they came up with the idea using the Stockport Viaduct as inspiration although we did discuss other ideas. we decided to use the Viaduct as a mural for the community to add bricks onto that have been decorated by them and then also have facts about the Viaduct dotted around on it. some of the facts that we learnt were:

• Built in 1939- 1940
• Largest brick structure in western Europe 
• Victorian engineering
• Cost £70,000
• 33.85 metres high
• 111.1 foot tall
• 11,000,000 bricks
• Designer/engineer- George Buck 

We also got the chance to walk around the town and take pictures.

Viaduct