North Glasgow College Jewellery Degree Show 2013

Last but not least - of course, these are my students - in the round of Scottish degree shows is the turn of North Glasgow College. We've only been offering degrees in Jewellery Design and Technology for three years, validated through Leeds University - the last time for Leeds, we have an exciting partnership with Dundee's own Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art starting next academic year - but this is the first year that I've personally felt part of the degree-show circuit, felt as if we now have the gravitas necessary to take part in these august ceremonies. This, of course, is my own shortcoming: the work produced over the three years, as well as the results of some of our graduates - from MA courses to designer at Links of London, from running the jewellery section of Maklabs in Glasgow to hothousing at Vanilla Ink in Dundee - should have assured me that the course was up to standard.

Unlike the art schools - GSA, ECA, DJCAD - we are much more focused on commercial concerns. Our design approach is commerce-led and we have a course which is technology-based. All our students are able to work in CAD/CAM technologies independently, they are able to design in CAD and prepare models for a variety of CAM manufactures such as milling and 3d printing. We also focus on the importance of having transferable skills and of being able to design commercial products. There is far less conceptual study and philosophy and much more on business and manufacture. As such, we slot very comfortably in with the courses already available in other institutions.

As usual, the show was still being set up at five minutes to six, due to open at six.

I was, however, very pleased to see that the chaos that had reigned earlier in the week had been cleared and that the place looked mostly presentable.

After the speeches, the place filled up and the show began in earnest with beaming graduates enthusiastically talking about their work. I was really pleased with the various displays that they had come up with and the whole show looked good in the lovely "Winter Garden" space in the college.

A few of the students have done especially well, having come to us with absolutely no CAD/CAM experience, either from non-jewellery courses or from courses in which CAD/CAM practice was not taught - our own courses have a fair amount of this taught at all levels.

Elizabeth Skea won't mind me pointing out that she is one of the people who had to learn CAD fast, having come from a commercial stained-glass background. In some ways this gave her the double-disadvantage of also having to think primarily "flat". I particularly love her daisy ring, somewhat reminiscent of 1950s cocktail jewels:

Mairi Moyes not only produced some fascinating work but managed to perplex us all by refusing to read her letter which told her the degree she had been awarded, which made it very difficult to speak to her as I - obviously - knew and was itching to congratulate her. I do know that at one point she was convinced that she was going to get a third for forgetting to bring me a cake when she brought one for the other lecturers!

In order to make this work, she explored panelling plugins and scripting for Rhino quite extensively.

Michael McDevitt has produced some of the most obviously commercial work in the show, with a nice variety to his collections which some of the others didn't achieve. I very much like this gilded ring:

Yuk Ching Wong took a variety of approaches to her work, leading to a lack of direction in her collection and a show that while composed of interesting enough items failed to give any sense of what she is capable of achieving:

Sheona Stirling put together a collection of jewellery based on fairy-tales, especially Nordic ones and has created a whole "brand" package, "Folkesagn" to go with it, a highly successful approach. It is interesting that while one immediately thinks of frailty and light when thinking of fairy tales, this collection seems much darker and more earthy:

Shabnum Ali also came to us with very limited CAD/CAM experience and had to learn a lot at the beginning of the course. It is a tribute to her that she completed and pulled her show together - with much support and assistance from her family:

As with Mairi, mentioned above, Jaclyn Bryson worked quite extensively on her own researches into scripting and plugins for Rhino and Gemvision Matrix. She came to us without much CAD/CAM experience and in terms of "distance travelled" - which is sometimes a patronising euphemism for "not very good", but in this case I really mean "distance travelled" - she has achieved a lot, developing a range which is not only exciting but very commercial. She has, indeed, been approached by a company interested in developing her range for production. I especially like this "dragon eye" pendant:

And her ranges of highly textured elements set with stones:

Christina Rose Leon is one of our students from many years ago who had been working as a jeweller and - perhaps surprisingly - travel-writer since she left college. She decided to return and get her degree and brought a great deal of energy, enthusiasm and worldly experience to the group. Her collection is elegant, smart and fresh

Yes, the stones are a continuous strip from the shank to the upper form!

Robyn Cameron will not take kindly to comparisons of her barnacle rings to the work of Gerda Flockinger as that is the first thing all of us said when we saw them! I actually really like them and think that they have a less "calm" feel than Flockinger's work, more dynamic and her colour palette is certainly much bolder.

Somewhat related to these was her collection of pendants based on photomicrographs:

I've done Gillian Grimes a bit of a disservice by only photographing one of her collections because I liked her use of colour in them. She has a wider range of work than this and it is worth looking at her website (see below) for more details and information:

Coming from a product design background and with a very central-European aesthetic, Michael Urbancik brought an interesting dynamic to the group (And, dare I say, thanks to his saucily low-slung jeans, his bum? Yes, I said it!). His work consisted largely of variants on a form of ring and a few related pendants, which he wouldn't let me photograph because they couldn't be taken out of the cases... Still, the rings are worth seeing:

Overall, my colleagues and I are very pleased with the show, the students pleased with their results and the visitors pleased with what they saw and purchased. Another great night!

More work by all the students and links to their own websites can be found here.

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The Scottish degree shows are now over but the interesting jewellery north of the border is not: next up, the very exciting staff and student show of work made at North Glasgow College, City of Glasgow College and Clyde College using new technologies. The only criteria for entry is that a computer has to have been used at some part of the design and/or manufacture, "Handmade By Machines", which is being held at The Lighthouse in Glasgow.

Craftex 2013

So, after all the blogging of the degree shows and other peoples' students' work, it is now the time of my own non-degree students to shine. Every year, the august body, The Trades Hall of Glasgow, a marvellous philanthropic association of people who strive to preserve the craft skills in society, organise a competition between the colleges of Further Education in which the students compete to win substantial cash prizes, certificates, business advice and commissions. It has been running for some years now and we always do rather well, so much so that one of the other colleges huffily and selfishly pulled out this year, denying their students access to the potential benefits they could gain from taking part and having their work seen by a larger audience.

The Trades Hall building is really beautiful and it looks great when it is full of all the craft exhibitions:

Everything is exhibited, from milnery to musical instruments, from fashion to stained-glass. North Glasgow College swept the board this year in fashion and jewellery, I am delighted to say!

The overall prize - the "Deacon Convener's Prize" - as well as the prize for silversmithing went to my student, Inness Thompson for his "Sea Stack" salt-cellar, a remarkable construction which he made entirely by himself; design, construction, polishing and setting. The great thing about this piece, for me, is that the hinges are on a slant, so the lid doesn't lift square to the base...

Helen Whyte, one of my first-year students also won the prize for the non-advanced jewellery with a piece which, as you can see, is fairly advanced!

Other pieces of note were the bangle by Carol Docherty, based on the "Garden of Eden" and the pendant by Wesley Zweip:

I also really liked our non-advanced silverwares entry, Linda Hazlie's little easel showing one of her own miniuature paintings:

I even managed to enter a piece by Ross Menzies, one of my students on the supported learning course!

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My degree students are not forgotten. They are mired in creative mayhem, arranging their degree show. I need say nothing. These pictures are worth a thousand words!

Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2013

The circuit of degree shows rolls on and last night was the turn of the graduates at the Glasgow School of Art  to show their stuff and unlike last year, which - though good - felt a little "flat", this was a show buzzing with ideas and energy, every bit as good as the Dundee and Edinburgh shows over the last few weeks.

The show divided into a couple of broad areas: largely science and concept and not much in between. It seems that this group of makers had been unusually gifted in having parents who worked as molecular scientists, geologists, entomologists and more besides. Well-versed in the practice of chatting to anyone showing a vague interest in their work, I spent from 6pm to about 8.30pm in the show.

I started off by talking to the highly talented and motivated silversmith, Hamish Dobbie. I am really pleased to see that people are still taking to silverwares as a serious practice, rather than as an adjunct to jewellery, which it all-to-regularly seems to have become in the UK.

What makes this work all the more remarkable is that he only started silversmithing last year, having been a jeweller prior to that. He said that he was never comfortable with jewellery, which is rather surprising as he later said that his dad is a silversmith.

My chat to Hamish was briefly interrupted by stopping to talk to Jonathan Boyd, one of the tutors at the GSA who took me off to proudly show me their new "Solidscape" 3-d printer! I must apologise publicly to Jonathan for having called him "James" all night without him correcting me.

Before I go any further, I should explain that the Jewellery and Silversmithing is in a temporary space in the city while new workshops are built. This makes the exhibition space less-than-ideal and the problem is that the lighting is uneven generally and harsh in places and all the work is behind perspex, which makes photographing the exhibits really difficult... what follows is the best this amateur snapper can do.

The next person I spoke to was Mirka Janeckova who uses white, unglazed porcelain as a medium in which to explore her interest in surrealism. I was really taken with her work as I have used unglazed porcelain by my friend and colleague Lisa Stevens in some of my own works. The seeming fragility of this necklet is breathtaking:

I really enjoyed her comment on this, "It doesn't matter if it chips off" because of the raw edges!

Emma Campbell's work draws on the history of a Victorian Hospital, part still in use, part derelict, part converted to housing in Paisley. She has made series of medals, which are interesting but I much preferred her bracelets and pendants created from repeated elements of distressed, enamelled metals which struck me as very exciting:

So we come to the first of the scientists! Emma Stirling's work is based on lichen and she is using enamel to create surfaces which don't even look like metal.

Even her brightly-coloured works in enamel don't seem quite like metal.

Mairi Collins is making fantastically complex works based on molecular biology, using mixed metals, enamel and patination to create works which look "organic" in the regular sense of the word while being based on actually organic motifs from fundamental scientific principles: 

With Karen Christina McShane's work, we return to fungi, this time from the point of view of an enthusiastic fungus-hunter. A vegetarian who doesn't like to eat mushrooms - poor woman! - she collects fungi for the pleasure of seeing their forms and her excitement and enthusiasm for the subject bubble over into her work which is subtle and earthy, as one might expect: 

Ailsa Whittet Ritchie also turns to science and nature - her father was an entomologist - and her show comprised of some very charming pieces based on the forms and colours of beetles. Enamel turns up again - obviously there is a fine enamelling tutor at the school - and, once more, in a pleasingly understated way, almost looking distressed and faded: 

I will not lie... when I glimpsed at Sophie Swinton's work from Ailsa's stand, I thought I was about to get work dealing with breast cancer. Let the photographs explain:

This is silver jewellery "set" with chewed bubble-gum! Sophie, at least, was amused by my thought and so it is safe to tell here. Her work is highly conceptual and is actually dealing with ideas of "preciousness" and repulsion. She also presented an amusing video in which she pastiches a television shopping channel selling jewellery made from chewed bubble-gum.

Probably the most exquisite work in the show was that of Yuru Huang, who analysed a single flower - Cosmos - and the seeds of the flower to create all of her beautiful works:

Emma M.F. Gregory may be interested in crystal lattices and metallurgy, but she is still the queen of the laser-welder, making these remarkable structures in stainless-steel, silver and gold. I especially like the chain made of "crystals" in varying sizes:

Lisa Mollins brings us back to conceptualism again and this time of an environmental nature. I enjoyed her collar made from her degree dissertation, pulped and cast!

Glasgow has always been known for generating a lot of "narrative" work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since the departure of Jack Cunningham a few years ago, this thread has lessened, so in amongst the science and concept, it was nice to discover some very appealing narrative works by Lorna Annette Hay, who's mixed material and found-object pieces convey something of the nostalgia and melancholy of travel:

I'm still not quite sure what to make of Jennifer Glen's pieces based on dolls and her own childhood. Talking to her, they were fun and amusing but now that I am looking at them detached from that narrative element and her good humour, I am finding them somewhat sinister...

Katherine Duincan is obviously a very talented maker. Her work comprised of these resin and silver pieces, beautifully made and clearly thought out:

As well as this remarkable silver object (I am not actually sure what it is, but it is a beautiful piece of work):

Tucked away at the back of the room was the one-woman powerhouse of ideas, Stefanie Cheong. Science again: technology, geology, jewellery and silversmithing! I loved her whisky tumblers which are polished on the inside and have glass bottoms so that they function as kaleidoscopes when drinking out of them:

I was also really taken with her project to "democratise" contemporary jewellery, which you can read about and take part in here:

Then, as if that were not enough, she had her collection on display too, using electroformed and patinated copper to create geological collars, chains and other pieces:

Last - and in this case I can genuinely say - but no means least was Lara Whittaker. I am, I suppose, biassed: Lara was one of my own students some years ago and I am actually proud to see where she has taken the basic skills that I taught her. I am delighted to be able to say that I love her work and it is also really lovely to see how she has developed into a confident woman who is more than able to present and discuss her work with passion and humour. Even if it had not been made by Lara, this would be my favourite piece in the show:

Her work, in brass, resin and concrete, is all based on a meeting she had with an old man who had been a prisoner in Alcatraz: she met him on a visit to the island. I'm still unclear who broke this piece:

Which was apparently twice the size but broke during the hanging. Lara blames tutor, Michael Pell, who (in his dry, witty manner) claims that it was her fault. Whoever is to blame, it still looks great!

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For me, this was not the end of the degree show. Some time ago, I was contacted by one of the students in Communications Design, Callum Rice. He had seen my work and my photography on Flickr and had realised that we both had similar views about the way in which modern society processes the past, about the decline of industry and the fall of philanthropy, about decay, flux and mutability. He asked if he could make a film about me, in which my words would form the narrative as I talk about the influences on my own work. He, too, graduated and his piece premièred last night.

The video work is made from many hundreds of digital images which have been printed by archaic processes  such as cyanotype and which have then been animated together to create a video. The soundtrack is my voice and the ambient sounds of the environments in which he recorded the video and sound. My input to the project was a couple of afternoons. For three minutes' video, Callum spent weeks and weeks in the darkroom and studio. I am very pleased with the end result and hope to use it in my own presentations in future:

Callum discussing the work with a curator.

For more information about the individual makers, see the GSA Degree Show Portal.

More on student works in the next post!