The first in a series of posts giving you a sneak peak of work by our final year students in the run up to their degree show. Not necessarily their final exhibition work, just what we’ve papped on their desks while they were out getting lunch! First up: screen prints by Barney Mumby-Price. http://cargocollective.com/gomeda
This month we were proud to collaborate with the Filmhouse again on a new poster design project. Also working with the Italian Cultural Institute, 16 students from the Illustration department designed and exhibited posters for the entire oeuvre of Italian master Luchino Vusconti.
Renowned in the mid 20th century as one of Italy’s most challenging and talented directors, Visconti made films that were powerful, visceral, and tinged with a bittersweet nostalgia. Often directing tales of Italian history and social class, Visconti made films with opulent subject matter and an expressive visual flair.
The exhibition, ‘The Art of Decadence’, opened at the Filmhouse CafeBar 1st March, when two winning poster designs were announced: Margaret Gillespie’s design for Visconti’s first film ‘Ossessione’, and Scott Davies’ design the Albert Camus-adapted ‘Lo Straniero’ The exhibition runs until Sunday 2oth March.
Last Wednesday we had the first part of a two day ceramics workshop in the Illustration department, led by two of our artists in residence, Rebecca Brown and Sarah Bissell. Working with stoneware clay, everyone handbuilt whatever they fancied – whether it was inspired by a larger project, a functional piece or by playing with different ideas in order to get used to a new material.
By the end of the class we had created a collection of pieces that included mugs, wall hangings, spoons, dogs, cauldrons and cacti, among a variety of other bits and pieces.
The pieces will be fired this week and on the 23rd the second part of the workshop will take place, which will involve painting and glazing the work before it’s fired for a second time.
Recently Artists in Residence Andrea Popyordanova and Sarah Bissel have been working with our first years to make a book to sell at the Fruitmarket book fair and Bookmarks which is happening at the ECA soon.
Students were presented with a page from Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities and asked to create an illustration within a week representing the City of Zobeide from the book.
The images created were great and varied, showing the different perspectives students have chosen to represent. Andrea and Sarah then took to arranging them for screen printing and then binding them, with the first years help.
The final outcomes look great and they were received very well at the Fruitmarket last week. Come see them at Bookmarks on the 24th of March where they’ll be on sale.
What is a song?
What constitutes a musical piece?
Third year students were recently asked to consider these questions in an experimental project brief named ‘Sly Mongoose’. Covering narrative and abstract drawing/printmaking, as well as an element of design and production, this brief asked students to select five thematically linked songs and create a package or collection of artefacts and images to accompany them.
Just as in prose and poetry, songs are written about events, politics, emotions and narratives, and students were asked to explore how the form and content of their chosen songs might inform their image making decisions.
Have a look at some of the results below!
Last month our first year illustration and graphic design students set off to visit the Scottish Poetry Library. Staff at the library introduced us all to a range of poems dealing with many different themes. These included homelessness, war, migration and poverty. The students are now busy working together to create images, installations and objects in response to these poems.
For the first stage of this project we were lucky to be visited by the very talented artist Brigid Collins, who gave a fantastic workshop on making 3D art objects from a variety of materials. Students embraced the challenge and spent the first session making some beautiful work, before going on to photograph their work the following week. This latter stage provided the groups with the opportunity to display their objects in new ways, and through this collaborative process they achieved interesting, communicative and thought provoking images.
During the past eight years we have run the Drawing Book projects with various primary schools in Edinburgh, as well as in Orkney. This has involved tackling a variety of themes in collaboration between art students and school pupils. Animal Characteristics, Feelings, Olympics, Sea Monsters, Opposites and School Meals are but a few of these, and now we have Superheroes.
All of this has been made possible by Vivian French, who has guided us through Drawing Book collaborations, far and wide, with great skill, wisdom and good humour.
Our visits to Wardie Primary School have been a totally inspiring and creative experience for everyone. The children are natural, spontaneous, wise, and good humoured.
To make a connection between art college students and children at the very start of their education and causes us to consider the fundamental values of drawing, thinking, telling stories and picturing things.
The Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh City Council Literacy Department, and the University of Edinburgh have given their support to Drawing Book.
What powers would one wish to have, and how might these be used towards the greater good of mankind? This is the question. We learned the answers and much more besides from the Wardie Superheroes project.
First year illustration students recently exhibited new hand printed work at the National Library of Scotland.
The artist books on display here were inspired by a visit to the Library where students viewed a number of original items being prepared for the Book Beautiful treasures display. This experience was important, the opportunity to touch, smell and to feel the weight of the original book has a completely different effect to using a facsimile or to seeing the artefact reproduced on a screen.
The students made notes and used drawings to reflect on details of the Book Beautiful treasures, such as the materials used, the composition of the page and the way narratives are presented
After their visit to the Library, the students returned to the ECA print workshop where they explored the medium of relief printing used to create the original illustrations in these artist books.
The students were encouraged to be playful with the process, combining a variety of marks and surfaces to form creative results. They were asked to respond to the artefacts they had seen by designing their own printed book illustrating one of Chaucer’s famous narratives, ‘The Canterbury Tales’.
Each print was set up in a way so that it could be folded to produce a simple book form from a single sheet of paper. The students were encouraged to consider the original items that they viewed in terms of their use of text, borders, pattern, use of composition and figures. They were not asked to replicate the style, but instead to consider its relevance.
