Fun And Satire With Our New Level 3 Art Students.

Inspiration everywhere. Look up, look down, keep your eyes open and SEE what’s around. Love the layered road markings, grates, drain covers, yellow lines and markings on our roads and pavements.

Gestural marks, fluid and expressive. Enjoying overlaying inks and acrylics with potential to print scaled up marks?

Moving forward to cropping and playing around with compositional decision making next. I am drawn to a square format and trying to maintain the expressive, gestural marks when deciding what works as a balanced piece.

 I may add further detail, maybe stitch or I might paint out detail and simplify the image. This is the fun part but something I am challenged by as really my default setting is the playful, experimental stage where I can be free and can work loosely enjoying the edges of one colour next to another and delight in the subtlety of a mark or appreciate the layering of a broad brush stroke next to a lightweight spontaneous drip or dribble. Endless possibilities that I do not want to end.

END OF YEAR SHOWCASE -Class of 2020

Congratulations to Ellen Kinder, A level fashion designer, styling her final project based around a contemporary collection, heavily inspired by the ethos of Punk. DIY fashion, repurposing denim and strong Basquiat influences, with the experimental use of text and symbols. Ellen developed her own bespoke printed fabrics to make up into boiler-suits and garments as part of her collection.

Rock & Roll! We wish Ellen all the best for her degree in Fashion at London MET.

Excellent models and expert technical guidance with alumni Catherine Hyde in charge of photography. @catherinehydephotography 

This is what we call creative collaboration.

Macrame madness. A2 exam outcome. Photos with technical support from Dave Merritt. Thanks x

END OF YEAR SHOWCASE- CLASS OF 2020

Congratulations Tallulah Stringer!

Amazing, conceptual Textiles project exploring Veganism and the meat industry, showcased as a powerful installation by Tallulah. She has experimented with knit, crochet, use of latex, printing and dissolvable stitched forms in her sculptural approach. A passionate and disturbingly beautiful outcome.

Well done, such a pity this couldn’t be exhibited publicly this year!

Tallulah is continuing her creative development at Strode specialising in Photography and also in contrast she is also very good at Maths.

Excellent model and expert technical guidance and photography from @catherinehydephotography and also T. Stringer.

This Textiles superstar, completed A level and Art FAD with us at Strode College and is about to graduate from Bath Spa Textiles design. All the best for a creative future to all our alumni. Keep in touch!

Shadows can be very inspiring for further development as prints perhaps.

Such beautiful sunshine out there as we are in lockdown and isolation, thinking what I can use these for. Getting my machine out, happy creative isolation!

Just re-found these toys that my daughter and I made when she was small. We started with her childhood drawings of animals and imagined creatures, then I made simple templates from them to cut out heads and bodies etc from old clothing. Then we stitched them up and stuffed them. Each one had a narrative, they had names and quirky habits, likes and dislikes- kind of profiles. Some more recognisable than others. Penguin, frog, dog, rabbit but what about the pink one! The frog was only ever a head.

They remind me of happy times on rainy days indoors getting creative and having a laugh together.

MA stuff