New Designers

Look what Bath Spa University had to say about New Designers this year...
27 Jun 2011
Bath Spa University at New designers 2011

Bath Spa University has quite different stories to tell about the two disciplines exhibiting at New Designers this year but both look at celebrating the success of combining determination, craft skills and creative design talent.

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Sadly, this is the last year for a specialist cohort from the BA Ceramics course due to the devastating drop in the subject student numbers across the sector, a great shame to the discipline and to the Bath School of Art and Design whose Ceramic alumni boasts many highly regarded Ceramicists. Not deterred the School continues to support ceramic practice with the Masters in Ceramics and PhD research strengthening, plus new developments at undergraduate level which include ceramics in combined studies courses and the new specialist course, BA Three Dimensional Design: Idea Material Object.

These final Ceramics graduates exhibit an eclectic range of work from the highly graphic, large bold work to sensitive almost-hidden pieces, decorative and painterly to clean sophisticated forms, the pieces are skilfully made and may even create an impact through the power of illusion. These graduates celebrate their great Ceramic craft.

The School is extremely proud to present it's Textile and Ceramics graduates at New Designers.

Results

Very proud to share that I got a 2:1 for my degree. Well done me. Thankyou so much to all of my family who helped me to get there. x

First year...

second year...

final degree show...

Press Pack

We were decidedly unimpressed with the press packs that tutor Dan left us. Eight unlabelled CDs in their plastic container. He'd worked over and above his paid hours apparently and wasn't going to do any more. So we purchased envelopes, stickers and pens, and got sticking and labelling and stuffing with business cards. We had a visit from the press office to ask for more, so we bought CDs, got more copied and started sticking and stuffing all over again. We thought they had a hint of Sex Pistols. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's Bath Spa...

Bath Spa @ New Designers

Just finished four days exhibiting at New Designers at the Business Design Centre in Islington. Lots of standing and lots of talking. Here is our stand looking tip top.

New Designers

Off to London tomorrow to set up for New Designers. Bath Spa are at stand CG2 Wednesday to Saturday. Meeting my kaleidoscope there. Staying with lovely friend S in Richmond, even though I wouldn't let her stay with me earlier this year because of the busyness going on. Thankyou S!

This pic from the New Designers website featuring ex Bath Spa student Emma Strange.  

Finished

Degree show down and packed up. Shelves cleared. That was that. Uni finished. Tried to be a bit organised with my packing. Some boxes for New Designers. Some work to be sold at Hatfield. Some seconds for the pot sale at university. So a few things in the diary for now. 

Missy Cat

Lovely to find Missy cat quietly working on some porcelain throwing downstairs while the degree show was being set up upstairs.  

Vile Degree Show Poster

Please don't let this be the poster for my degree show. Found it on the a-n website. It's so depressing. What are those things dangling in the air? It looks like Itsy and Bitsy from Paperplay have died. Drowned and died. Here are some Itsy and Bitsy pictures to try and cheer us all up. They were very artistic spiders who helped a lady called Susan make really rubbish things in the late 1970s. Think I'll watch them on you tube and try not to think about the vile poster.

Helpful

This kiln is very helpful and informative. At this point of the firing it was hot.

Cone Drawings

So much to do. So little time. So spent a while photographing drawings of pyrometric cones. There are some great styles here. They're all very different. I'm quite envious of some of them. Mine are a bit rubbish. And I don't get to draw perky ones very often due to all the overfiring.

Perky...

3D...

Wobbly...

Sad...

Quirky...

Droopy...

Neat...

Tired...

Minimalist...

And more...

Triaxial Blend

Here are the results of the triaxial blend Helen Moore did with us. Thanks R for donating cups and getting them glazed.

Professional Name

All year I've been signing the register next to this very odd spelling of my name, and I've become quite attached to it. I understand the addition of the extra R to make me CorbeRtt, but the extra T to make CorbeRttT has always puzzled me. Sometimes I add a few more to see what that looks like. It looks silly...

It's not been a problem recently, as I seem to have disappeared from the register completely. Been adding myself back on. I shall keep turning up unless someone tells me otherwise...

Change is good

Six weeks to go till we clear out our studios and staff changes are in place. Keith has been awarded the Jerwood Makers Open (well done Keith) and needs to work on his exhibition for July. Sometimes Jane is Keith. Sometimes Dan is Keith. Sometimes Keith is Keith. Sometimes there is a big empty space where Keith should be and the ceramics department feels like the Marie Celeste. Malcolm has gone. Aimee is being Malcolm from now on. Aimee is also being Aimee. This week Aimee was Malcolm on Monday and Aimee on Wednesday. I liked both versions. I think Nick is still Nick. He left but comes back sometimes. Tim is still Tim. Tom is still Tom. We missed Daniel this week but he'll be visiting next week. And Phoebe. We've had lots of great visiting lecturers. Change is good! I'll just keep turning up, talking and listening to whoever is in the building and making stuff. Except when I'm at work. Then I'm not there. I'm somewhere else.

Alun Graves

Visit from Alun Graves our external advisor. He is the ceramics curator at the V&A. He saw us in pairs and groups and mostly listened. Told most of us to make decisions and get on with it. I'm paraphrasing.

Helen Moore

Excellent talk and tutorial from Helen Moore, who is currently doing her MA at the RCA. These pieces are from her triaxial glaze tests. She showed us how she does this testing and it took a while but I was with her in the end. I even drew charts. My tutorial was very helpful. I need some mirrors....

The blue one reminded me of something....the mushrooms who spied for Fenella in Chorlton and the Wheelies. Just me? Perhaps I'm overtired...