Community Clothing Blog - Art Lab

Edition 001 - Art Lab

COMMUNITY CLOTHING

Join us to explore the freedom of creativity and the community within the UCLan Art Lab.

Hidden within the UCLan Victoria Building lives a studio space that allows individuals to be as creative as they wish, painting, printing, and drawing. The opportunities are endless.

Past the doors is a beautiful space that allows these artists and designers to create to their heart’s content, with the Intaglio studio housing an 1856 Columbian press which is, perhaps, the studio’s feature. Not only this, there is a range of presses and resources to choose from to create lithographs, relief prints, and intaglio prints among others.

If visiting the studio, among the regular artists who come and go throughout the day is Kathryn. She is a technician for the studio who will assist in any way she can, it may be refreshing your memory or teaching something new, Kathryn is always there to help. You may even find her creating her own artwork in which she explores natural forms and includes lots of Catholic ritual imagery alongside observational drawing.

Through a small corridor, you will find the washout booth, accompanied by tens of screens flooded with various artists’ designs. Continuing through, you may stumble upon screenprinting technician Nick. He finds inspiration everywhere, but mainly from nature. For twenty years, he’s been creating music merchandise alongside helping students daily.

There are five large screenprinting tables which, more often than not, you will find set up with beautiful imagery ready to be made into prints or printed onto textiles.

The printing room holds multitudes of artists’ work, many screens not yet washed, displaying work that graduates may have created and printed with but left. The room is full of creativity with virtually no bounds- creatives can explore, create and learn to the fullest, a safe space where those within this community consistently uplift each other.

At Community Clothing, we want to build up communities and encourage them to do whatever they do best!

We care about real people within real communities from all walks of life. These are the stories we want to tell. Being authentic is at the heart of our brand, and sharing the heritage of communities is a joy to deliver.

Keeping the British Textile Industry running is our passion, and through helping this community, amongst others, we have engaged with so many others, learning stories and making friends.

We are Community Clothing. www.communityclothing.co.uk