Cardiff School of Art & Design Magazine - issue 4

magazine Summer 2013 Edition 4

CSAD MAGAZINE

Contents CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Feature

CSAD Staff

Richard Morris

Kandinsky and the sea

“I've been Head of Undergraduate Studies for the last two years and Director of Enterprise since September 2012,” he explains. “I’m on the CSAD Project Group, working with the architects, Austin-Smith:Lord, the University’s Estates Department and a team of specialists, creating the brand new Llandaff Campus location for the whole of Cardiff School of Art & Design.”

“Gaynor Kavanagh, Dean of CSAD, Martin Williams, CSAD’s Resources Manager and I are all on the Project Group and we bring together the specialist conversations and some of the quirky things that are naturally not within the remits of the architects and the facilities and estates departments,” he explains. “As a School of Art & Design, we need vast open spaces, where students can create work that is not dictated by scale or materiality. We need spaces where they can let their creative imaginations run riot. My research background in design and higher education has been about that. My interest in learning space and spaces for creativity is something that is a natural fit for this project.”

“I'm Chris Short. I teach Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art & Design,” he says. “Principally in photo-media, but I teach across the board in Fine Art.”

and as flexible as we can make them. We are creating spaces that will work for our students, because they can be reconfigured and adjusted with multiple variables. For example, every year, six or seven weeks before the date of the graduating summer show, we have to collapse everything we do to get spaces ready," he continues. “We've tried to think about how best to use furniture and spaces to meet all kinds of needs and eventualities, including the radical transition to the summer show.”

With the School of Art & Design's plans for moving to the new accommodation on the Llandaff Campus well underway, Richard Morris, whose background is in furniture design, is the perfect person to explain what's happening at this stage in the build.

Building an art and design school requires a dizzying amount of detailed planning. It's not just the bricks and mortar that go into the structure that matters. What's also needed is a heap of thinking, plus a bunch of great ideas, about how students will best use the new facilities.

There's no ignoring the fact that many generations of artists have spent some of the best years of their lives in the Cardiff School of Art & Design campus at Howard Gardens.

It's natural that there's an emotional attachment to it, but fortunately, Morris is someone who understands that attachment.

A really interesting and, indeed key part of the planning is the idea that you can design spaces that inspire work and promote different ways of thinking.

It was as far back as his undergraduate degree when Chris Short first realised he was balancing many different interests and practices.

Caption to go here.

One of the ideas that the architects at AustinSmith:Lord proposed, in order to try to reduce the amount of disruption that the School experiences when it needs to stop work and clean up for the summer exhibition, takes the form of 'disposable' wall linings.

“All of the spaces are having special linings, so that if the wall is damaged or we cut a hole for a monitor, we can just replace it for the beginning of the new academic year. We're just preaching the obvious: we don't need to make the spaces look like office spaces," Morris explains. “What students should be concerned about is not the space they're working in, but the work that they're making.

It's adaptable, flexible and more than anything, a space that is not treated in an overly precious manner. That means we don't dictate the scale of student work.”

“We're building a school that is three large floors of studio spaces over a ground floor of workshop facilities. The studios are as open

CSAD’s new building plans.

“What we wanted to work out is how to take and transplant the feeling of Cardiff School of Art & Design onto the Llandaff Campus.

When you walk through Howard Gardens, you can smell and sense the activity going on in each zone: screen printing, oil based pigments, casting facilities, things burning, wax, the wood shop. Is it possible to transplant that into a new build? You can't bottle it and take it with you, but you can make a space that is truly flexible so that students can create work from the word go.”

“One of the key parts of the brief to the architects at the beginning was 'How do you create a building that still says from the outside: Cardiff School of Art & Design?'

I think they've done that with the saw-tooth roof with the north facing roof lights flooding the top floor through some small atrium voids.

There's natural light and ventilation. It's a really good design that says School of Art &

Design,” he explains. While he's keen to ensure that the new building is instantly recognisable as a School of Art & Design, Morris is also aware that it would be very easy to play to the stereotypes of an art school when choosing furnishings for the new space.

“It's easy to get carried away and specify Le Corbusier sofas for the reception area or Charles + Ray Eames chairs for the tutorial rooms. That would be lovely… in a perfect world that’s the correct fit for what we do!

But, we're realists. Part of my remit is to offer ideas for the way that we want to use spaces,” he says. “There's a space in the centre of the new building called the Heart Space. That allows everyone in the School to come together, interact socially, as well as work together. It will be a space where there will be performances, lectures and film showings, so we have put in a stage area. We're

Chris Short laughs when asked “For my interview tape, who are you and what do you do?” He's just got back from dropping his children off at school and is having trouble switching back into academic mode, but that's very much Chris Short's character.

currently looking at how people should be seated in that area. It's very easy to get carried away with a project like this, but you are reined back by the purpose of the space.

We want it to look good and inviting and attractive, but at the same time it must be highly serviceable and comfortable."

It's evident from talking to Morris that the team behind the design decisions that go into the new building at Llandaff are intimately aware of the problems they must overcome in order to make the new building as good as possible. It's also easy to see that it's not just existing problems to which they can offer solutions, but that they are also thinking ahead, trying to make the building as future proof as possible and that's exciting.

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“My first degree was in teaching, after which I taught for a couple of years. I then did an MA in art history at the University of Essex. My supervisor was Peter Virgo who is the leading figure in Kandinsky studies. Under him, I achieved well (a distinction) and then had a British Academy studentship for three years which paid for my PhD,” he explains. “I had gone back to do an MA, thinking that at the end of it I would be a better artist. Then with a PhD, I ended up on track to teach art history.

All along the way, I kept making art and I'm finally back to where I should have been 20 years ago.”

This path led Short onto two tracks: academic research about the work of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky and a practice that explores the relationship between people and nature.

“In the studio, I'm working on a series of 'image and text' pieces that relate to my research on Kandinsky. My work grows from an interest in natural forces and their effects on the world around us. Increasingly, I've come to recognise a connectedness between things, as well as between things and me.”

Short explains the way that the work of Kandinsky affects his practice. “It's hard to portray this sense but that's what I'm trying to do. A photograph is a fairly static thing even with a long exposure. I do a lot of long exposure shots, but what I'm now working on is sequences of images and text in relation to these. This is based on one aspect of Kandinsky's work in which he'd bring disparate things together and try to suggest formal and structural connections.”

His work frequently portrays the force of nature with a particular interest in the sea, where Short, a keen surfer, spends a large amount of his time. This complements his near obsession with the ideas of Kandinsky: “Kandinsky is just what I got into as an undergrad, when I did a dissertation on Mondrian and Kandinsky. The sea comes from the amount of time I spend in the sea surfing. The idea of the movement and rhythm of the tides and the connection between the sea, moon and wind,” he says, when asked why both his academic and artistic work is based around these topics.

“There's the simple activity of going to the beach and surfing - and then there's a connection of things, which is interesting to pursue through the work of art. I sometimes feel like I've written enough and then I try to do everything visually, but then I realise I haven't written enough. There's a conflict between the two, but for the first time they're starting to work together.”

Despite being well-known for his writing on the artist, having written several books and contributed to many others on the subject, Short is concerned about his reputation as a practicing artist.

“A big difference, which I'm working on in the next 12 months, is - whereas the Kandinsky stuff generates research all the time and I have a significant profile in this area - in the realm of my artistic practice, I'm yet to generate that profile,” he explains. “People don't come to me for an exhibition often. My plan is to get some significant exhibitions and some critical responses in my work. In art history, I'm an established researcher, in my practice I'm an emergent researcher. I've got to get the visual up to the same speed as the historical stuff.”

Despite his worries about being more well known for his writing than his artistic practice, Short isn't afraid to try new things in his work, including reviving his interest in ceramics.

“One of the difficulties is the expectation that your work always has a clear focus, style or brand - and that's not always obvious as you look across the different forms my work takes.

I want things to connect. I don't want things to be totally fragmented. What I find is that when I throw on the wheel, I think: 'Is this totally irrelevant to what I'm doing with my writing or with my camera?’” he says.

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“I think that on one level, it probably is. It's so different from it, yet, at the same time, I feel like somehow as a creative person, that shifting from one thing to another informs part of what I do. But I can't yet describe how this connectedness works. It's something to do with going back to the most fundamental aspects of things, and building from there that's true of my photographic works and the texts I produce in relation to them, just as it is of the ceramic works I've just started working on again recently.”

In finishing, Short distils the essence of what he feels about the question 'Who are you and what do you do?' into a well-crafted mantra: “I'm interested in maintaining those aspects of what I do and the possibility of those things becoming valued.”

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Current Student

CSAD Feature

Olivia Kotsifa

Stephen Madoc Pierce “It's weird. I started off by doing maths, chemistry, physics and biology at A-Level.

I think I was a bit too spontaneous to do something like that. It didn't work out,” he explains.

“I did an Art Foundation at Coleg Menai and that pushed me in the right direction. I was sort of rebelling against my family thing: dad was an artist and my sister got a distinction in her MA Illustration. I always said to myself, I'm not going to do that! I thought I would stick to the academic stuff, but then all of a sudden I'm here and I love it!”

Pierce's path to becoming an illustrator was, he says, the result of a series of happy accidents.

“I didn't have a clue when I finished my A-levels. I thought I would just do an Art Foundation to see how it worked out. My work just fell into illustration straight away,” he explains. “It's not very illustrative in the narrative sense, but my work contains a lot of narrative in one image. The images don't illustrate a story, it's the other way around.

I use the underlying topics that the images have in them, rather than the image illustrating a narrative.”

What's interesting about Pierce's illustration is that despite his bright, bubbly character, his work paints a very dark and disturbing picture.

A hu Lanyon

Cardiff Project

Illustration (2010 - Present)

Stephen Madoc Pierce is from Porthmadog, a very small town in North Wales. Not a lot happens on Porthmadog's main high street, which is set at the feet of the Snowdonia Mountains and surrounded by marsh land on one side. Growing up in a sleepy town probably goes a long way to explain the dynamic, energetic personality of this young illustrator.

Amy Bu age

Chris Short

Reception desk.

Furnishing the future

“When you see my work you notice a dark undertone even though the images are quite happy. It was a bad thing when I started out because when I was given projects in Foundation, I would always give this uncanny feeling,” he explains. “Now, I'm trying to embrace that feeling. I want to take the disturbing things away from an image, but also leave the feeling behind.”

What Pierce is trying to do is to portray the Freudian idea of the uncanny: something is not quite right, but it's unclear what is awry.

“I am trying to create a disturbing image that is not disturbing. I want to create something that sticks in people's minds,” he explains.

“I don't want it to be something that you look at and forget, but something that you look at and the feeling of the image hangs around and inside you. Either an unsettling feeling or one that throws you off.”

This is a notion that has been theorised for almost a century. Its relevance is now augmented by a technological era in which it's possible to be watched without proximity being an issue.

“I did one image and there's a girl sitting in a picnic scene and in the background there's an image of a paedophile/predator. It's a really simple image - I think it only took me a minute to make it. The idea is about the power of social media and how you can find someone's location easily,” he says.

“I like topics like that and I pick up stuff about the internet and online world. I'm interested in awareness of boundaries in the digital world: you find yourself doing things on Facebook and you're being sort of stalkerish.

If you apply that to the real world, I'm interested in what's right in an online world and what can be applied in the real world.”

Despite his scepticism about the intrusion of social media into the everyday lives of all of his peers, Pierce freely admits the hypocrisy that's lying just behind his work, “I contradicted myself. I wrote an essay on how much Facebook is taking over our lives and how much we're broadcasting: but equally, I use Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr,” he says. “I have so many arguments against it, but it's about getting a balance. You could portray yourself as anyone you like.”

Although it's hard to see any of Pierce's work without also noticing the ideas of psychoanalysis that go into the work itself, he is reluctant to blindly accept the ideas that he is interested in.

“I can't say I believe in all of the Freudian theories, but they are fun to play with. At the end of the day, we are all animals and we'll do what we need to do. Playing with preconceptions of what we are is interesting for me,” he laughs. “A lot of our theories today are based on feminism, so it's quite fun to get a reaction from people who think that the ideas in my work are wrong. I'm a big fan of mixed reviews. Creating things that unsettle me is the best thing.”

Originally from Greece, Olivia Kotsifa got her first taste of British life when she studied architecture at Oxford Brookes.

Interestingly, the (normally) unpleasant feeling of coming across something uncanny is the thing against which Pierce measures the quality of his work.

“That's the most important thing for me - and most of the time it's a dark one. I like the feeling of creating something and getting the uncanny feeling myself,” he says. “I know that I've created something good then. It's sort of scary because you start psychoanalysing yourself.”

Asked where he might like to take his practice next, Pierce answers almost straight away.

“I want to move into video. I've always said that an image can capture so much that you don't need video. Images can do it all!“ he says. “But I also like proving myself wrong, so I'm going to try and move into film and see where it takes me. I might lose the uncanny because it gets lost in everything else, but I'm keeping my options open.”

“I spent all my time in that beautiful place, playing volleyball, meeting people from all over the world and learning languages. Then after my six-years studying architecture, I did a Master’s degree in Energy Efficient Building.”

“I left Greece when I was 18 and I liked being abroad, so when I went back home, it wasn't the same," she explains. "I worked in Greece for a few years as a freelance architect, I had my own office and worked with friends, doing quite well, but I missed being cosmopolitan. So, I looked for a job in Italy or France because I speak the languages; but I couldn't find one there, as the times were a bit difficult for the construction industry.

So one day, I packed my bag and went to Barcelona. I spent two years there and I worked in the office of my dreams!"

Before too long, Kotsifa - who after living in so many different countries, speaks five languages - found herself in the middle of the economic downturn which hit Spain particularly hard and needed to move again to find new work.

Pierce's world-view is incredibly interesting.

It is rare to meet someone who takes pleasure in uncanny experiences and enjoys translating them into their work. Good art is rarely produced by people holding middle of the road world-views.

“I was living in a sunny place - a paradise for architects - and that changed my design thinking. Architecture in Spain is different from what architecture is in the UK, I guess.

There are still regulations, but somehow, in Spain, it's not that strict. Or maybe they're more creative, playful or colourful in that place. I just wanted to share this with the world,” she continues.

“I happened to be in the right place at the right time because my partner found a job here in the UK. I came and was going to look for a job in an architects’ office, but then this

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opportunity to become a lecturer here came up. I hadn't even considered that as a career.

It was low on my list of possible things I could do. Working in a café was higher than being a lecturer. I hadn't thought about it.”

Kotsifa, who has now been at the School for just over three and a half years, says that there isn't anyone at the School who she wouldn't want to work with or share an office with.

“I started as an hourly paid lecturer but then more opportunities came up. I was teaching architectural design and technology and was there, as a lecturer, for a year. Then, my contract was renewed for two years and now I'm being made permanent,” she recalls.

“I get to do different things every year. I also learn a lot of things that I wouldn't get to learn working in an architects’ office. I might not do as much creative work anymore, but I try to keep it up on the weekends. I miss it.”

One of Kotsifa's biggest projects at the School of Art & Design is her role directing and co-ordinating the Cardiff Project, which is a first-year 40 credit module, called the Field.

“I call it the field of opportunities and experiences. The field module is undertaken by all the different disciplines in the School.

Each year, they undertake a different brief.

This year we've taken the Cardiff Project, which has been inspired by Cardiff&Co. It involves all first-years developing and presenting ideas and creative responses to the city of Cardiff,” she says. “They are asked to go out and explore and observe and see and smell. They come back with a wealth of

ideas and perspectives. Then, from their points of view, being professionals in their individual fields, as artists, designers and makers, they give us their response to the city.”

“What's especially good about the field project is that in the first year, we have the world of collaboration and creative practice.

As a part of the project, we asked students to get into interdisciplinary groups and come up with collaborative research or work about the city.”

This started with students in groups of seven making a film about any part of the city they chose. The student feedback was good.

Their comments suggest they enjoyed the possibilities as it opened up their practice through learning to collaborate with one another: “[It was a] great way to interact with other groups or people from other subjects… learning new technology and methods,” said one student.

“The whole experience was thrilling. Everyone had such a positive mind set, as everyone had a say,” said another participant.

“Students researched the city centre using four different themes, for example migration.

They could explore the migration of people, ideas etc.,” says Kotsifa. “There was also the ideas of materiality and fabric so you could look at a site from a materiality point of view.

Then there was power: political, religious, energy, ability, technology. Students chose one particular site to work with and researched it, responding to that specific thing.”

The challenge for the staff of CSAD was how to exhibit 260 students' work in a way that truly captured their inventiveness and the experience of the project. They have elected to create a digital exhibition, which will be available to the public online, but also through the city itself.

“I hope that we'll be able to locate QR codes in the different parts of the city where the students worked. Using these codes, people will be able to scan and get all the students’ response to that specific site. We really wanted to encourage collaboration with people in Cardiff.”

“Matt Leighfield, Chris Dennis and I are working on a website where one photo or one document or one visual project from each student will be uploaded. We're pointing out the 25 specific sites in Cardiff that students had been given. We'll have 260 results to show hopefully. Those will all go onto the website,” she says.

Kotsifa has led students to carry out a really remarkable project. There is no doubting that the students’ energy and creativity has been both tested and enabled by the project and the School looks forward to sharing all they have achieved with the City itself.

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Meet our Administration Team

Meet our Administration Team

Louise Padfield

CSAD Feature

Michelle Brown

Who are you?

David Fitzjohn

Who are you?

And é S

Drawing for a sculpture, 'eyn koteret' by David Evans.

Fine art prizes and sponsors

‘Was it your mind or your body that prevented you, Carrie?’ by Lydia Meehan.

Simon Brooker.

What’s a typical day at CSAD like for you?

My day can be extremely varied, for example I can either be out at meetings all day, giving training or working on a project. I also tend to spend a lot of time sorting out problems or trying to find out the best way to make things work.

Senior Administrator: Finance and Resources.

What is your favourite piece of art/design/making/architecture?

My favourite piece is the bomb on my safe (not a real one, it is a student installation). It is always quite amusing when people coming into the office notice it for the first time!

Five records for a desert island?

This is really difficult as my favourite music changes all the time. If I had to choose anything it would have to include something bouncy like MSI, Florence and the Machine (can't choose a song), my long running favourite band Soundgarden and Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water (reminds me of my happy childhood).

Name one of your heroes and tell us why?

I really admire my Mum's old teacher.

She was one of the first woman university lecturers and did so many amazing things with her life. She is currently a vicar and an archivist but has been a teacher and an author, but was also involved in the war.

The stories she told about being dropped behind enemy lines in France were hair-raising!

Name one of your villains and tell us why?

I don't really believe in villains.

What’s the best thing about working for CSAD? The people and the variety. I never get bored working here!

What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever been given?

Life is what you make it.

What’s a typical day at CSAD like for you?

There are no typical days in CSAD! I work closely with the Dean and my work very much depends on the type of work she is currently involved in. However, a typical week would involve answering emails, typing up minutes, answering, sometimes quite random queries from staff, students and the public, scheduling meetings and receiving calls from people wanting Podiatry! I’m also involved in the design of the office spaces in the new building, which is extremely exciting!

What is your favourite piece of art/design/making/architecture?

My new favourite piece of sculpture is Verity

by Damien Hirst. Verity is mounted on the pier at Ilfracombe Harbour and has caused quite a stir amongst the locals! The statue features peeled back skin which reveals muscles and an unborn baby. The amount of detail is incredible. When seen from the right angle with the light behind her, her silhouette appears magical. Oh, and I love her feet!

Is there a book/film/album/artwork that has had an impact on your life in some way?

There isn’t a specific book that has had an impact on my life, but my all-time favourite book is Bird Song by Sebastian Faulks. It follows an English soldier, fighting in the trenches during World War I and his forbidden love for a French woman. I’ve read Bird Song several times, and fresh aspects of the story are revealed with each read. I recently saw the stage play and it was truly moving.

David Fitzjohn's office is on the fourth floor of Howard Gardens and when he opens the door, blazing sunshine bursts out from inside it. The view onto Newport Road has rarely looked as good as it did that day, through the huge windows in the Subject Leader for Fine Art's office.

Five records for a desert island?

My favourite records change every minute!

My list of records changed several times whilst writing this!

Chicken Payback - The Bees One Day Like This - Elbow Drive - Incubus Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers Mr Blue Sky - ELO By the time you read this I will have changed my mind again!

What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever been given?

Best bit of advice from my Dad: “life is not a dress rehearsal.”

Name one of your heroes and tell us why?

A very dear family friend, Lynne Price, is my hero. She suffered with cancer, on and off, for 20 years and I never heard her complain.

She lived life to the full and was always happy.

She was an inspiration and I admired her for her bravery and courage.

Senior School Administrator.

Name one your villains and tell us why?

I don’t have any time for people who take advantage of the vulnerable. Just because someone isn’t strong enough to stand up for themselves, it doesn’t give someone the right to shatter their dreams or cause them harm.

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Feature

Lauren Nicholas

The second prize is the Evan and Felicity Charlton Travel Award that is made in memory of Evan Charlton, Head of Cardiff School of Art between 1938 and 1945, as well as his wife Felicity Charlton who was also an artist. Both Evan and Felicity were widely respected, with Evan particularly well known as one of Britain's first Surrealists. The Charlton Award has been established through the generosity of Isabel Hitchman.

Isabel, who was a friend of the Charltons, worked for the Arts Council of Wales for over thirty years and continues to write on painting in Wales.

To reflect Helen Gregory's own love of travelling a set of travel awards are made each year by the Trust. These are open to second year Fine Art students, who can apply for sponsorship to travel for self-defined projects that will promote their development as artists. Each year, between three and five awards are made, with the successful applicants reporting back to the trustees on their journeys and the artwork that resulted from them.

In addition, the Helen Gregory Trust funds a purchase prize. “We have a collection of works from 1989 because of that,” Fitzjohn says. “Last year it was won by Sarah Walker from the photo visual area. The trustees or

The Dulcie Mayne Stephens Trust Award was set up in 1998 by Nicola Mortimer and Henry Stephens in memory of their mother, Dulcie an accomplished artist, who studied at Cardiff Art School in the 1920s. The Dulcie Mayne Stephens Art Trust provides travel scholarships every year to assist several talented Fine Art students to fulfil their artistic potential.

According to Fitzjohn, these awards are invaluable to the Fine Art students. Last year, it funded a total of 11 students to travel abroad and two sold work because of the prizes.

Will Preston.

“A lot of people go on holiday and I ask them what they did while away. ‘You went to New York? Did you happen to go to MOMA?’ ‘Oh, no, no! I went shopping and saw my friends…’

These awards bring back the idea that you can engage with a different culture and achieve a very different perspective,” he says of the importance of these prizes. “There's a really good reason to go to St Petersburg (or elsewhere), other than it just being a good city. There's a chance to look to the Rembrandts and the Velásquezes. I think that's what the prizes do. The students who get these awards tend to be high achievers.

They are still forming their identities as young artists and the opportunity to travel broadens their perspectives on art and stimulates their creative practice in important ways.

Fine Art in the School has been very fortunate to have been supported so generously over the years. Because of them, talented second year students have explored art collections from Madrid to New York, have been able to interview and work with contemporary artists from all over the world and have engaged in bold creative projects that have stretched their imagination and vision. It sounds like a remarkably good deal.

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Then I started using the objects and trying to make animations out of them. At the time I was trying to help my Granddad experience my work because he is blind. It needed to be interactive.”

Nicholas has long had an interest in illustration, but she traces it back to the beginning of her degree in the School of Art & Design.

“It was lucky because in our third year the lecturers told us to enter every competition that we could. I had started making a piece about disability and about my Granddad,” she says of the prize-winning work. “I entered it into the Shape Open Awards competition and they were really nice. I went up to see the exhibition and there were quite a few people from Cardiff, which was good, because it was in London. I got to know a lot of people through that. And I won! They showed the work on a big screen. It was very exciting to see my work up there.”

Professor Rich Park is Vice President of SADI (Samsung Art and Design Institute) which is linked with the Cardiff School of Art and Design in the delivery of an MDes in Experience Design.

In fact, it was this train of thought and the resulting work that lead Nicholas to be awarded First Prize at the Shape Open Awards in 2012 for her piece An Ageing Thing which deals with the daily life of her Granddad.

For Nicholas, illustration could be anything that relates a feeling or idea to a person in a way that they can easily understand.

“I think that's why it's so hard to get a straightforward job. Illustration isn't really one thing. It's sort of tapped into everything.

I think there's a wide range of possibilities for illustration. I don't like the thought of it being only decorative. It's important. I think what I want my work to do is to look at a big picture and tell personal stories from it. I want people to look at something and feel personally connected to it,” she explains. “Illustration is

about telling a story that is relevant. If you saw a news story about elderly abuse in care homes, you might think it was awful, but then if your Grandma got hit in a home, you'd feel a lot more outraged. You can relate to it.”

Asked if she might eventually like to move to London to continue client work, she replies: “Hopefully, not eventually! Hopefully, pretty soon! The absolute dream would be to get a studio and start a collective, illustrating for charities. The reality is that I'll probably be working in McDonalds,” she laughs. “I was offered a job yesterday decorating biscuits

part-time - I don't think I'd like to end-up decorating biscuits. A friend and I have been talking about setting up an events business.

That's option B if illustration doesn't work out.

I'd also like to try floristry.”

Nicholas looks to have a promising future by using her skills to illustrate problems that the most vulnerable parts of our society face regularly. She believes this is important and that illustration has a big role to play in that.

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“I told him that, 'I wanted to study architecture but that it takes too long to see the fruit of that.” He continues, “So I found that in industrial design, you can make many products in less time and share it with many people.”

Since this interview was originally published, Nicholas has been voted 'Highly Regarded'

by The Guardian for her entry into the newspaper's If film competition. She is also currently working on a commission for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

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“I went before I finished my engineering degree. I worked with my father for a couple of months and then became independent. I don't know whether it was a good choice or not now, but I decided to join the US Army. I was in Frankfurt, Germany, for two years and then in Colorado Springs for one year,” he says laughing at his decision to become independent. “That gave me the money to go to the Philadelphia College of Art in 1984 to study painting. I didn't know of the existence of design at that time. Then, after one semester, I studied graphic design and then industrial design, graduating in 1987.”

Park undertook the industrial design programme in order that he could make a living whilst supporting his passion for painting. When asked by his tutor why he didn't pursue his other passion, architecture, Park replied:

Nicholas in closing says, “Make the most of university, especially your final year, make as many contacts as you can, talk to everybody, be creative and have fun. Use it as a platform and make the most of every opportunity because you really miss it when it is over.”

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Park now lives in South Korea, in the capital Seoul, but his path to living in the country where he was born is a winding one, full of changes and interesting choices, beginning with his family's decision to emigrate to America in 1977 while he was still a student of engineering in Korea.

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Pushing the frontiers of design innovation

“I've just finished a YMCA commission which was great. I did some work with them while I was at Uni and then afterwards they asked me to make them a short video for children about recycling,” she says. “At the moment I'm just doing some work for a woman who's opening a new art café and I'm giving her some ideas. Other than that, I'm doing work experience at Hattie and Flora. They're an events company and they make everything themselves. Hopefully they'll employ me soon, but they haven't yet.”

Nicholas' work is a warm mixture of illustration and stop motion animation, which frequently deals with topics such as old age and ecological ideas.

As well as his own practice, Fitzjohn is partially responsible for the administration of a number of endowed sponsorships and prizes that have been generously established at the School of Art & Design over the years.

“These were gifted to the School before my time and I am the inheritor of them. There are three main awards,” he explains. “The Helen Gregory Memorial Trust is the first one. She was a student at the school, who was tragically killed the year after she graduated.

Many of the fine art students and people from the school went to her memorial service and on the strength of that and Helen’s love of art, the family set up a trust in her memory.”

Rich Park

BA Illustration (2009 - 2012)

“I started trying to make my own animations nearer to the end of my degree, but I'm not great at it technically. I just enjoy it,” she says when asked about how she came upon finding this particular style of illustration. “I think it's because my dissertation was about objects and how things are attached to them.

their representatives come to the Summer Show exhibition and choose. Traditionally, the selection panel includes, Neil Gregory who is Helen’s brother and now the main trustee.”

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CSAD Graduate

“I think my interest really began when I chose to do illustration after foundation. I went to Cardiff School of Art & Design and my lecturer Amelia Johnstone really encouraged me and I got on with her well,” she recalls.

“That helped a lot because when someone understands where you're coming from, it gives you motivation. Probably not until last year did I really start enjoying it completely.”

of art-making processes, there's so much room for correction and revision that the idea of the intensity and having to do it first time gets lost sometimes. I've been interested in that idea for a long time.”

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Lauren Nicholas is an illustrator from Southampton.

She graduated from Cardiff School of Art & Design last year with a BA Illustration under her belt.

Although he had been teaching since he was an MA student at the Royal College of Art London, he says that he hadn't ever really looked for opportunities to teach.

“I really enjoyed teaching though. I moved to Wales about 10 years ago and I started working in Carmarthen and the West Wales School of the Arts. I was part-time and really enjoyed being in Wales. The art scene in Wales is much more accessible than the one in London and my work was developing quite nicely in Wales. Then a fixed-term post for a painting tutor came up at Cardiff and I was lucky enough to get it. During that time, changes in the course were being made and I was subsequently asked to take on the role of Subject Leader and I said 'yes.'”

Fitzjohn's recent practice has centred on paper cutting and has led to large works entitled Fimbulwinter. “I am interested in defining something by the space around it.

That evolved from painting the negative space around a figure continuously,” he explains of the origin of Fimbulwinter.

“The idea was that you have a big sheet of paper and you draw on it with a knife. It's about precision and decision-making and understanding what it is going to be. In a lot

What’s the best thing about working for CSAD? I feel proud to be working with such creative, passionate and talented people, both staff and students. Watching the students blossom over their time with CSAD and seeing their parents explode with pride at graduation - you wouldn’t get that anywhere else.

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“I was in the right place at the right time. I had worked mostly as a freelancer and I hadn't worked in education too much. I worked in the film industry and I designed sets and painted backdrops and stuff like that,” he recalls. “I would usually work for six months and then have six months in the studio. But 15 years ago, I got a bit tired of that work, as I found it quite taxing.”

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After graduating, Park worked as an industrial designer in New Jersey with Innovation Development Incorporated and then later in a more managerial role at the world-famous Donald Deskey Associates.

“Then I was offered a job at the Faculty of Product Design at Parsons School of Design.

That was 1991-1994. In 1993, the Dean called me and said, 'You're the only Korean faculty member working in our School. The daughter of the Chairman of Samsung is in the Fashion Design school and her parents want to start a design school in Seoul.' They asked me to be President of SADI and I said no because I didn't want to be an administrator. I also wasn't ready to emigrate back to Korea,” he explains. “Eventually, I decided I was working too hard and became unhappy at work - my first offer of work as an administrator wasn't too enticing, but he called again a few months later and offered me a teaching post. I went back to Korea and started up the SADI foundation programme and had to recruit 11 faculty members.”

Over the course of the past ten years, SADI has grown to incorporate more programmes and now houses Communication Design, Fashion Design and Product Design departments, as well as a link with the Cardiff School of Art & Design offering an exchange scheme and a validated MDes programme.

“That started because Gareth Barham, a senior lecturer in the Cardiff School of Art & Design, visited the University of Korea. One of the professors there - a good friend of mine mentioned SADI and that there might be something interesting that we might be able to do together. At SADI, we needed to modernise the curriculum because Samsung believed that the Korean universities’ liberal design education was not up-to-date; that had a lot to do with the MDes programme starting. We discussed it with CSAD for a few months in Summer 2009. After six months, we opened the programme.” The first cohort started in the autumn of 2010.

In recognition of his international significance in the field of product design, Park has been awarded an honorary professorship at Cardiff Metropolitan University. His official title is still to be decided but it will be focused on the idea of design innovation and advocacy particularly, how designers can be better at business.

“After coming back to Korea, I studied an MBA out of boredom! There was a lot of talk at that time about designers and business. I thought to myself, if I don't know about business, how can I talk to my students about it? I know engineering and have practiced

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design over many years, but not business,” he explains of the origin of his interest in design innovation. “So I decided to take the MBA. I followed on from the MBA with a PhD. I now have a PhD in business management.”

Samsung is one of the best-known design firms in the world. But still, Park had noticed that it was quite difficult to see into the firm from the outside because of how secretive they are.

“I wanted to do a PhD dissertation on their innovation processes. I interviewed a lot of engineers, managers and founders. The practice of design in hi-tech companies is very different from that in small companies. I wanted to learn about the in-house design process and how it involves so many different people,” he explains.

“I documented the different perspectives and theoretic positions involved in the process, because I wanted to teach my students what designers should be doing to be successful.

Particularly, I wanted to know much about the process of integrating the management of designers, engineers and marketeers, especially as many of the critical decisions are made by business people without designers.

My ultimate goal is to give a better voice to

designers and engineers by understanding business managers and marketeers. I want to develop the design process, so that it empowers designers to communicate effectively.”

In closing, Park has some interesting things to say about the designers of the future.

“Samsung is now in a position to be the 'first mover.' They're putting more emphasis on design, but they should spend more money!

Their stock has increased over 50 times and the number of designers too, over the last 10 years; yet their understanding and trust of design is not enough,” he explains. “They need the designers to prove how and why a concept works and why they should choose a particular design. That's sad. Lots of decisions are made on emotional factors. I want to help designers develop their creativity, but also their ability to convince and persuade others of the importance of design.”

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CSAD Current Student

an Cu ve hou e

Justine Arnaud-Guerin

Jeff ey Jone

BA Textiles (2011 - Present)

“I come from France, originally Toulouse.

I studied there and did my A-Levels there in art,” she says in the Textiles space on the Llandaff Campus. “Before that I studied economics. In Paris, I went to a school of art called Ecolé Duperré. I did more weaving than textiles.”

Justine Arnaud-Guerin started her time in Cardiff as an Erasmus student in 2011. She came on the Erasmus (the European Union's educational exchange) programme from her home institution in Paris.

Arnaud-Guerin joined the thousands of students who make the exciting move to study abroad each year through the Erasmus programme.

Her school of art in France offered her an Erasmus placement at either Cardiff or Leeds.

She says, ‘I didn't know really, but I thought maybe Wales would be different to England and that I would try it. I'm really glad that I did.”

“Cardiff is really nice. I like small cities and it's the perfect size. There are lots of students,” she says. “It's pretty much the same size as Toulouse.”

However, unlike the majority of students (who are nearly always sad to leave their Erasmus placements), Justine decided not to return to Ecolé Duperré, but to stay at Cardiff School of Art & Design. She explains, “In Wales, there's a lot of help for students, because the government is really good.

I managed to get a grant to stay this year, but if I was in England it would be impossible.”

“My Erasmus year was really amazing. You meet a lot of people from around the world.

It's not just English-speaking people, but there are also people from Spain etc.,” she says of her experience. “I think that I was frustrated by the thought of going back to France. I wanted to continue to improve my English and decided that I needed to stay.”

It worked. Arnaud-Guerin’s English is now very good and she has a group of friends both French (two more Erasmus students have come from her home institution, since she did) and English-speaking in Cardiff, which she now calls her home.

“I will finish my degree here this year and then after that I'm going to see where I can find a job. I've got a placement in a card company in Caerphilly,” she says. “I've also got another placement in Toulouse which will take place after the degree. That's with a wallpaper design company. I won't focus on staying in any one country - I'll go where there's a job.”

Arnaud-Guerin’s undergraduate dissertation was completed in January 2013 and looks at the way that public spaces can be designed to encourage communication between people.

“I was focusing on a means of interactive design, where people can come and draw on the walls of a space, for example. That way, they can begin to have a discussion around and about a space,” she says. She is continuing the idea that she developed in her dissertation as her final project.

“I was really inspired by the dissertation because now I'm looking at a game similar to Consequences. I'm taking Simon and Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence' and will begin by illustrating the song. I did a lot of tests with the song. For example, I cut all of the words out and mixed them up in order to make a new song,” she continues. “Also, if you pass the song through different languages by translating, when you bring it back into the English language, the song has changed totally. I did that and created

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Talking to Culverhouse, it's easy to see that he is what you might call a people person: he thrives on relationships above screens, meetings above redrafts.

another new song with all of that stuff. I encouraged people to replace words in the song too.”

Her interest in communication and language is fitting, given her background and status as an international student.

“I really like it when you create something or when you look at a piece of work - for example, a designer who hangs pens on a tree and then makes a drawing with the wind,” Arnaud-Guerin explains. “Also, when I first arrived here and wanted to say something, I would go to translate the French expression directly and people would tell me that what I had said meant nothing. It's a mix of those ideas.”

Her final piece of work relates to these ideas by taking the songs which she has created from her 'consequences' exercise, illustrating them and creating a textiles collection based around them.

“For the first piece, I'm illustrating 'Sounds of Silence' and that brings out lots of shades of white for me, with maybe some stitched white,” she says, excitedly. “For the second one, I might add some more colour (because the song is more playful) and some images too. I'll illustrate things like that and put patterns onto fabrics.”

“I like being able to identify things where people's lives could be made easier or better.

Product design is a conduit for expressing those needs. It sounds cheesy, but it's just doing a bit of g

“I think what I can say about Wales is that there was a lot of funny stuff that I had to learn. Sometimes I don't understand what people are saying or people don't understand me,” she says. “A lot of French expressions don't translate exactly: ‘I'm going to turn into a goat’ (I'm going to go crazy) or ‘I had a white night’ (I didn't sleep last night).

Learning about the difference between those things was fun. That's why I want to be in the UK.”

Arnaud-Guerin is a great example for people who wish to come to CSAD to study on a year abroad of their own.

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Robe

“I like engaging with people and learning about different things and finding out more about a subject that I don't know too much about. That fits very well. I'm always interviewing people, engaging with people that I otherwise wouldn't meet. It's far better than just looking at a screen all day,” he says excitedly of his new job. “When I joined Kinneir Dufort three months ago, within the first two weeks they had sent me off to the US for a week to run the research over there.

I was leading the project and I visited Boston and San Francisco. The job gives you opportunities to do stuff like that too. For me, that's attractive.”

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CSAD to open Wales’ first official MIT Fab Lab CSAD’s new building will house Wales’ first Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) accredited Fab Lab. We will be full members of the global Fab Lab network and this will be the first official UK Fab Lab attached to a university. It represents the fourth such provision in the UK, after Belfast, Londonderry/Derry and Manchester.

The term ‘Fab Lab’ is shorthand for fabrication laboratory. Fab Labs are a global network of local labs, linked through video conferencing technology, operating to an ethos and specification established and maintained by MIT. The network has been developed to promote invention and innovation through easy access to specialised tools for digital fabrication, prototyping and manufacture, stimulated by discussion and cross-global initiatives.

MIT Fab Labs have been designed to link industry, inventors, business, schools and research facilities across the globe. From our Fab Lab in Cardiff, we will be linking with people doing remarkable things in Fab Labs from Boston to Lima, from Oslo to Ahmedabad, and from Jalalabad to Montreal.

The Cardiff Fab Lab will carry the same range of equipment as Fab Lab centres around the world. Olivia Kotsifa, Lecturer, is currently undertaking the required MIT training to run and develop CSAD’s Fab Lab within the network. Other members of staff are also being scheduled for the training.

The Cardiff Fab Lab will extend the School’s existing digital prototyping facilities and will offer computer controlled circuit board manufacture, a large CNC router capable of dealing with 2.4 metre x 1.2 metre sheets of diverse materials, a large and powerful laser cutter, as well as numerous CNC machines, various 3D printers, large format digital printers, a CNC vinyl cutter, 3D scanners and much else.

It will be run to meet the needs of designers and manufacturers in the development and

prototyping of products and design solutions.

In this, the Fab Lab can boost the strength of design in Wales and make a contribution to its reputation as a clever country. CSAD will be running short courses for designers, deploying Fab Lab facilities, through its new development, Cardiff Open Design School.

In tandem with its deployment for industry, the Fab Lab will be available for use by schools and, through this, will inspire the next generation of designers and problem solvers. They will be able to join with schools across the network on design and manufacturing projects, fully enabled by the kind of equipment to which access may not be possible in any other way.

Flexible provision for industry and schools will ensure that our students also have access to world-class facilities. It will be used, for example, for the study of robotics and musical instrument design. It will also be deployed for research at research degree level, not least in computer-embedded product prototyping.

The Cardiff Fab Lab represents yet another opportunity for CSAD to fuse its commitment to research, enterprise and learning. Like the new building on the Llandaff Campus, in which it will be housed, it marks yet another turning point in the life of the School and promises much for the future. Both the Fab Lab and Cardiff Open Design School will be formally launched at the end of September 2014.

Professor Gaynor Kavanagh DPhil MPhil FMA Dean, Cardiff School of Art & Design Cardiff School of Art & Design 1

CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Feature

Richard Morris

Reception desk.

Furnishing the future

With the School of Art & Design's plans for moving to the new accommodation on the Llandaff Campus well underway, Richard Morris, whose background is in furniture design, is the perfect person to explain what's happening at this stage in the build.

Building an art and design school requires a dizzying amount of detailed planning. It's not just the bricks and mortar that go into the structure that matters. What's also needed is a heap of thinking, plus a bunch of great ideas, about how students will best use the new facilities.

“I've been Head of Undergraduate Studies for the last two years and Director of Enterprise since September 2012,” he explains. “I’m on the CSAD Project Group, working with the architects, Austin-Smith:Lord, the University’s Estates Department and a team of specialists, creating the brand new Llandaff Campus location for the whole of Cardiff School of Art & Design.”

“Gaynor Kavanagh, Dean of CSAD, Martin Williams, CSAD’s Resources Manager and I are all on the Project Group and we bring together the specialist conversations and some of the quirky things that are naturally not within the remits of the architects and the facilities and estates departments,” he explains. “As a School of Art & Design, we need vast open spaces, where students can create work that is not dictated by scale or materiality. We need spaces where they can let their creative imaginations run riot. My research background in design and higher education has been about that. My interest in learning space and spaces for creativity is something that is a natural fit for this project.”

A really interesting and, indeed key part of the planning is the idea that you can design spaces that inspire work and promote different ways of thinking.

“We're building a school that is three large floors of studio spaces over a ground floor of workshop facilities. The studios are as open

2 Cardiff School of Art & Design

and as flexible as we can make them. We are creating spaces that will work for our students, because they can be reconfigured and adjusted with multiple variables. For example, every year, six or seven weeks before the date of the graduating summer show, we have to collapse everything we do to get spaces ready," he continues. “We've tried to think about how best to use furniture and spaces to meet all kinds of needs and eventualities, including the radical transition to the summer show.”

One of the ideas that the architects at AustinSmith:Lord proposed, in order to try to reduce the amount of disruption that the School experiences when it needs to stop work and clean up for the summer exhibition, takes the form of 'disposable' wall linings.

“All of the spaces are having special linings, so that if the wall is damaged or we cut a hole for a monitor, we can just replace it for the beginning of the new academic year. We're just preaching the obvious: we don't need to make the spaces look like office spaces," Morris explains. “What students should be concerned about is not the space they're working in, but the work that they're making.

It's adaptable, flexible and more than anything, a space that is not treated in an overly precious manner. That means we don't dictate the scale of student work.”

There's no ignoring the fact that many generations of artists have spent some of the best years of their lives in the Cardiff School of Art & Design campus at Howard Gardens.

It's natural that there's an emotional attachment to it, but fortunately, Morris is someone who understands that attachment.

Caption to go here.

CSAD’s new building plans.

“What we wanted to work out is how to take and transplant the feeling of Cardiff School of Art & Design onto the Llandaff Campus.

When you walk through Howard Gardens, you can smell and sense the activity going on in each zone: screen printing, oil based pigments, casting facilities, things burning, wax, the wood shop. Is it possible to transplant that into a new build? You can't bottle it and take it with you, but you can make a space that is truly flexible so that students can create work from the word go.”

“One of the key parts of the brief to the architects at the beginning was 'How do you create a building that still says from the outside: Cardiff School of Art & Design?'

I think they've done that with the saw-tooth roof with the north facing roof lights flooding the top floor through some small atrium voids.

There's natural light and ventilation. It's a really good design that says School of Art &

Design,” he explains. While he's keen to ensure that the new building is instantly recognisable as a School of Art & Design, Morris is also aware that it would be very easy to play to the stereotypes of an art school when choosing furnishings for the new space.

“It's easy to get carried away and specify Le Corbusier sofas for the reception area or Charles + Ray Eames chairs for the tutorial rooms. That would be lovely… in a perfect world that’s the correct fit for what we do!

But, we're realists. Part of my remit is to offer ideas for the way that we want to use spaces,” he says. “There's a space in the centre of the new building called the Heart Space. That allows everyone in the School to come together, interact socially, as well as work together. It will be a space where there will be performances, lectures and film showings, so we have put in a stage area. We're

currently looking at how people should be seated in that area. It's very easy to get carried away with a project like this, but you are reined back by the purpose of the space.

We want it to look good and inviting and attractive, but at the same time it must be highly serviceable and comfortable."

It's evident from talking to Morris that the team behind the design decisions that go into the new building at Llandaff are intimately aware of the problems they must overcome in order to make the new building as good as possible. It's also easy to see that it's not just existing problems to which they can offer solutions, but that they are also thinking ahead, trying to make the building as future proof as possible and that's exciting.

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Staff

Chris Short Kandinsky and the sea “I'm Chris Short. I teach Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art & Design,” he says. “Principally in photo-media, but I teach across the board in Fine Art.” It was as far back as his undergraduate degree when Chris Short first realised he was balancing many different interests and practices.

Chris Short laughs when asked “For my interview tape, who are you and what do you do?” He's just got back from dropping his children off at school and is having trouble switching back into academic mode, but that's very much Chris Short's character.

“My first degree was in teaching, after which I taught for a couple of years. I then did an MA in art history at the University of Essex. My supervisor was Peter Virgo who is the leading figure in Kandinsky studies. Under him, I achieved well (a distinction) and then had a British Academy studentship for three years which paid for my PhD,” he explains. “I had gone back to do an MA, thinking that at the end of it I would be a better artist. Then with a PhD, I ended up on track to teach art history.

All along the way, I kept making art and I'm finally back to where I should have been 20 years ago.”

This path led Short onto two tracks: academic research about the work of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky and a practice that explores the relationship between people and nature.

“In the studio, I'm working on a series of 'image and text' pieces that relate to my research on Kandinsky. My work grows from an interest in natural forces and their effects on the world around us. Increasingly, I've come to recognise a connectedness between things, as well as between things and me.”

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Short explains the way that the work of Kandinsky affects his practice. “It's hard to portray this sense but that's what I'm trying to do. A photograph is a fairly static thing even with a long exposure. I do a lot of long exposure shots, but what I'm now working on is sequences of images and text in relation to these. This is based on one aspect of Kandinsky's work in which he'd bring disparate things together and try to suggest formal and structural connections.”

His work frequently portrays the force of nature with a particular interest in the sea, where Short, a keen surfer, spends a large amount of his time. This complements his near obsession with the ideas of Kandinsky: “Kandinsky is just what I got into as an undergrad, when I did a dissertation on Mondrian and Kandinsky. The sea comes from the amount of time I spend in the sea surfing. The idea of the movement and rhythm of the tides and the connection between the sea, moon and wind,” he says, when asked why both his academic and artistic work is based around these topics.

“There's the simple activity of going to the beach and surfing - and then there's a connection of things, which is interesting to pursue through the work of art. I sometimes feel like I've written enough and then I try to do everything visually, but then I realise I haven't written enough. There's a conflict between the two, but for the first time they're starting to work together.”

Despite being well-known for his writing on the artist, having written several books and contributed to many others on the subject, Short is concerned about his reputation as a practicing artist.

“A big difference, which I'm working on in the next 12 months, is - whereas the Kandinsky stuff generates research all the time and I have a significant profile in this area - in the realm of my artistic practice, I'm yet to generate that profile,” he explains. “People don't come to me for an exhibition often. My plan is to get some significant exhibitions and some critical responses in my work. In art history, I'm an established researcher, in my practice I'm an emergent researcher. I've got to get the visual up to the same speed as the historical stuff.”

Despite his worries about being more well known for his writing than his artistic practice, Short isn't afraid to try new things in his work, including reviving his interest in ceramics.

“One of the difficulties is the expectation that your work always has a clear focus, style or brand - and that's not always obvious as you look across the different forms my work takes.

I want things to connect. I don't want things to be totally fragmented. What I find is that when I throw on the wheel, I think: 'Is this totally irrelevant to what I'm doing with my writing or with my camera?’” he says.

“I think that on one level, it probably is. It's so different from it, yet, at the same time, I feel like somehow as a creative person, that shifting from one thing to another informs part of what I do. But I can't yet describe how this connectedness works. It's something to do with going back to the most fundamental aspects of things, and building from there that's true of my photographic works and the texts I produce in relation to them, just as it is of the ceramic works I've just started working on again recently.”

In finishing, Short distils the essence of what he feels about the question 'Who are you and what do you do?' into a well-crafted mantra: “I'm interested in maintaining those aspects of what I do and the possibility of those things becoming valued.”

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Current Student

Amy Burrage BSc Architectural Design and Technology (2009 - Present)

Originally from Whitchurch in Cardiff, Burrage became a single mother at the age of 21. She took a break from studying and began to work part-time.

“I trained to become a secretary after I left school. I did an administration and secretarial skills course at Coleg Glan Hafren,” she explains. “There’s only so far you can go in administrative office work.”

Following a period at Coleg Morgannwg and the University of Glamorgan her health deteriorated. Burrage took time out to reassess.

Amy Burrage is quite a remarkable person.

She’s a mature student who has battled her way through recurring bouts of ME and still manages to be a mother, fiancée, housewife and work part-time.

6 Cardiff School of Art & Design

“I did some research and found the BSc Course in Architectural Design and Technology at Cardiff School of Art & Design and thought that covered both aspects of what I wanted to be doing: technology and design. That was three years ago! Here I am now in my final year.”

She is now busy writing her dissertation on a little known architect from South Wales by the name of John Coates Carter.

“Carter is responsible for a lot of key pieces around the South Wales area which people don’t recognise as being as significant as they are. The Arts and Crafts movement is what has influenced Carter’s work and there is continued interest in Arts and Crafts ideas and techniques,” she explains. “It’s having a renaissance. I’ve taken photos of the buildings, cheekily knocked on the door of the Red House in Penarth, which Carter designed, and had a chat with the current owner who has lived there for ten years.”

Carter, an English architect who lived the majority of his life in South Wales, up until his death in 1927, proved to be an elusive character and an intriguing subject for Burrage’s dissertation.

“I found a book on Herbert Luck North, who was from North Wales and wanted to do a comparison of his work and South Walian architecture. I typed South Wales Architects into Google and his name popped up. There aren’t many South Wales architects who were renowned for working in this area,” she says of the origins of her interest.

“The Herbert Luck North book had obviously already been written and I didn’t just want to reiterate everything that was written in the book. There was only very little information on John Coates Carter and my tutor just encouraged me to find out what I could.”

One of the things that interests her about the life and work of John Coates Carter is that his work is all around us, but so unnoticed, in South Wales.

“John Coates Carter designed The Paget Rooms in Penarth, All Saints Church Hall just down the road from that and numerous dwellings in Penarth as well as his most famous piece, Caldey Island Monastery, just off the coast of Tenby,” she says listing some of his achievements. “Also, there’s All Saints Church in Adamsdown which has been converted into flats, St Paul’s Church in Grangetown which is currently up for sale and St Luke’s in Abercarn, which is derelict, with applications sought to knock it down.

With him being so unrecognised there is a danger that his work will continue to be unprotected and undervalued.”

As well as being incredibly busy with writing her dissertation, Burrage is finishing off her assignments for her course.

“I am doing a project for a design on the Waterfront in Newport. There’s a car park that will be replaced with a multi-purpose building. Our specification was to design something multi-purpose for this site,” she explains of her most recent project. “I did it to the extreme. I went for a café and deli on the ground floor, a gymnasium on the fourth floor, two floors of car parking, an alternative therapy/health centre and three floors of luxury residential apartments which will encourage arty people and creatives to move in.”

But it’s not just huge multi-purpose buildings that Amy is excited by. For almost two years she has also been working part-time for a small architecture firm called BMac Design and Development Ltd in Whitchurch.

“I’ve worked there now for 18 months and the owner is very supportive and allows me to work very flexibly. Over the summer, I worked full-time and then last year I did parttime. It depends on the university workload,” she explains. “We work mainly on the space utilisation of existing dwellings and do a lot of planning applications and drawings for loft conversions and extensions. That’s our niche.

Hopefully, when I leave university I’ll work with him to get a bit more experience, but who knows what’s in store for the long term.”

“I have no idea! With great difficulty at times.

I honestly don’t know the answer. There are times when I think, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it,’ and there are other times when I think, ‘I’m so close to the end of my course now, I’ve just got to finish.’ The motivation that pushes me is the achievement of a vocational degree and that the end is now in sight. I have a massive amount of support from my family and friends - even if their support is to sometimes just leave me alone to study in peace!”

One of the most remarkable things about Burrage though is that she has struggled with ME for many years. Asked how she manages to do all the things that she has on her plate at the moment, she answers,

Burrage is a great role model for people who suffer from ME and want to study.

“The disability team at the University have been amazing this year and have put everything in place to provide support should I need it,” she says. “At the moment, I haven’t needed to call on an amanuensis. I haven’t had to do it, but if I do need it it’s there! You should do it! Battle through. It’s one of those difficult, challenging illnesses, but if you’ve got the motivation then carry on, it is definitely worth it in the end.”

Cardiff School of Art & Design 7

CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Current Student

Stephen Madoc Pierce Illustration (2010 - Present)

“It's weird. I started off by doing maths, chemistry, physics and biology at A-Level.

I think I was a bit too spontaneous to do something like that. It didn't work out,” he explains.

“I did an Art Foundation at Coleg Menai and that pushed me in the right direction. I was sort of rebelling against my family thing: dad was an artist and my sister got a distinction in her MA Illustration. I always said to myself, I'm not going to do that! I thought I would stick to the academic stuff, but then all of a sudden I'm here and I love it!”

Stephen Madoc Pierce is from Porthmadog, a very small town in North Wales. Not a lot happens on Porthmadog's main high street, which is set at the feet of the Snowdonia Mountains and surrounded by marsh land on one side. Growing up in a sleepy town probably goes a long way to explain the dynamic, energetic personality of this young illustrator.

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Pierce's path to becoming an illustrator was, he says, the result of a series of happy accidents.

“I didn't have a clue when I finished my A-levels. I thought I would just do an Art Foundation to see how it worked out. My work just fell into illustration straight away,” he explains. “It's not very illustrative in the narrative sense, but my work contains a lot of narrative in one image. The images don't illustrate a story, it's the other way around.

I use the underlying topics that the images have in them, rather than the image illustrating a narrative.”

What's interesting about Pierce's illustration is that despite his bright, bubbly character, his work paints a very dark and disturbing picture.

“When you see my work you notice a dark undertone even though the images are quite happy. It was a bad thing when I started out because when I was given projects in Foundation, I would always give this uncanny feeling,” he explains. “Now, I'm trying to embrace that feeling. I want to take the disturbing things away from an image, but also leave the feeling behind.”

What Pierce is trying to do is to portray the Freudian idea of the uncanny: something is not quite right, but it's unclear what is awry.

“I am trying to create a disturbing image that is not disturbing. I want to create something that sticks in people's minds,” he explains.

“I don't want it to be something that you look at and forget, but something that you look at and the feeling of the image hangs around and inside you. Either an unsettling feeling or one that throws you off.”

This is a notion that has been theorised for almost a century. Its relevance is now augmented by a technological era in which it's possible to be watched without proximity being an issue.

“I did one image and there's a girl sitting in a picnic scene and in the background there's an image of a paedophile/predator. It's a really simple image - I think it only took me a minute to make it. The idea is about the power of social media and how you can find someone's location easily,” he says.

“I like topics like that and I pick up stuff about the internet and online world. I'm interested in awareness of boundaries in the digital world: you find yourself doing things on Facebook and you're being sort of stalkerish.

If you apply that to the real world, I'm interested in what's right in an online world and what can be applied in the real world.”

Despite his scepticism about the intrusion of social media into the everyday lives of all of his peers, Pierce freely admits the hypocrisy that's lying just behind his work, “I contradicted myself. I wrote an essay on how much Facebook is taking over our lives and how much we're broadcasting: but equally, I use Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr,” he says. “I have so many arguments against it, but it's about getting a balance. You could portray yourself as anyone you like.”

Although it's hard to see any of Pierce's work without also noticing the ideas of psychoanalysis that go into the work itself, he is reluctant to blindly accept the ideas that he is interested in.

“I can't say I believe in all of the Freudian theories, but they are fun to play with. At the end of the day, we are all animals and we'll do what we need to do. Playing with preconceptions of what we are is interesting for me,” he laughs. “A lot of our theories today are based on feminism, so it's quite fun to get a reaction from people who think that the ideas in my work are wrong. I'm a big fan of mixed reviews. Creating things that unsettle me is the best thing.”

Interestingly, the (normally) unpleasant feeling of coming across something uncanny is the thing against which Pierce measures the quality of his work.

“That's the most important thing for me - and most of the time it's a dark one. I like the feeling of creating something and getting the uncanny feeling myself,” he says. “I know that I've created something good then. It's sort of scary because you start psychoanalysing yourself.”

Asked where he might like to take his practice next, Pierce answers almost straight away.

“I want to move into video. I've always said that an image can capture so much that you don't need video. Images can do it all!“ he says. “But I also like proving myself wrong, so I'm going to try and move into film and see where it takes me. I might lose the uncanny because it gets lost in everything else, but I'm keeping my options open.”

Pierce's world-view is incredibly interesting.

It is rare to meet someone who takes pleasure in uncanny experiences and enjoys translating them into their work. Good art is rarely produced by people holding middle of the road world-views.

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Feature

Olivia Kotsifa Cardiff Project Originally from Greece, Olivia Kotsifa got her first taste of British life when she studied architecture at Oxford Brookes.

“I spent all my time in that beautiful place, playing volleyball, meeting people from all over the world and learning languages. Then after my six-years studying architecture, I did a Master’s degree in Energy Efficient Building.”

“I left Greece when I was 18 and I liked being abroad, so when I went back home, it wasn't the same," she explains. "I worked in Greece for a few years as a freelance architect, I had my own office and worked with friends, doing quite well, but I missed being cosmopolitan. So, I looked for a job in Italy or France because I speak the languages; but I couldn't find one there, as the times were a bit difficult for the construction industry.

So one day, I packed my bag and went to Barcelona. I spent two years there and I worked in the office of my dreams!"

Before too long, Kotsifa - who after living in so many different countries, speaks five languages - found herself in the middle of the economic downturn which hit Spain particularly hard and needed to move again to find new work.

“I was living in a sunny place - a paradise for architects - and that changed my design thinking. Architecture in Spain is different from what architecture is in the UK, I guess.

There are still regulations, but somehow, in Spain, it's not that strict. Or maybe they're more creative, playful or colourful in that place. I just wanted to share this with the world,” she continues.

“I happened to be in the right place at the right time because my partner found a job here in the UK. I came and was going to look for a job in an architects’ office, but then this

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opportunity to become a lecturer here came up. I hadn't even considered that as a career.

It was low on my list of possible things I could do. Working in a café was higher than being a lecturer. I hadn't thought about it.”

Kotsifa, who has now been at the School for just over three and a half years, says that there isn't anyone at the School who she wouldn't want to work with or share an office with.

“I started as an hourly paid lecturer but then more opportunities came up. I was teaching architectural design and technology and was there, as a lecturer, for a year. Then, my contract was renewed for two years and now I'm being made permanent,” she recalls.

“I get to do different things every year. I also learn a lot of things that I wouldn't get to learn working in an architects’ office. I might not do as much creative work anymore, but I try to keep it up on the weekends. I miss it.”

One of Kotsifa's biggest projects at the School of Art & Design is her role directing and co-ordinating the Cardiff Project, which is a first-year 40 credit module, called the Field.

“I call it the field of opportunities and experiences. The field module is undertaken by all the different disciplines in the School.

Each year, they undertake a different brief.

This year we've taken the Cardiff Project, which has been inspired by Cardiff&Co. It involves all first-years developing and presenting ideas and creative responses to the city of Cardiff,” she says. “They are asked to go out and explore and observe and see and smell. They come back with a wealth of

ideas and perspectives. Then, from their points of view, being professionals in their individual fields, as artists, designers and makers, they give us their response to the city.”

“What's especially good about the field project is that in the first year, we have the world of collaboration and creative practice.

As a part of the project, we asked students to get into interdisciplinary groups and come up with collaborative research or work about the city.”

This started with students in groups of seven making a film about any part of the city they chose. The student feedback was good.

Their comments suggest they enjoyed the possibilities as it opened up their practice through learning to collaborate with one another: “[It was a] great way to interact with other groups or people from other subjects… learning new technology and methods,” said one student.

“The whole experience was thrilling. Everyone had such a positive mind set, as everyone had a say,” said another participant.

“Students researched the city centre using four different themes, for example migration.

They could explore the migration of people, ideas etc.,” says Kotsifa. “There was also the ideas of materiality and fabric so you could look at a site from a materiality point of view.

Then there was power: political, religious, energy, ability, technology. Students chose one particular site to work with and researched it, responding to that specific thing.”

The challenge for the staff of CSAD was how to exhibit 260 students' work in a way that truly captured their inventiveness and the experience of the project. They have elected to create a digital exhibition, which will be available to the public online, but also through the city itself.

“I hope that we'll be able to locate QR codes in the different parts of the city where the students worked. Using these codes, people will be able to scan and get all the students’ response to that specific site. We really wanted to encourage collaboration with people in Cardiff.”

“Matt Leighfield, Chris Dennis and I are working on a website where one photo or one document or one visual project from each student will be uploaded. We're pointing out the 25 specific sites in Cardiff that students had been given. We'll have 260 results to show hopefully. Those will all go onto the website,” she says.

Kotsifa has led students to carry out a really remarkable project. There is no doubting that the students’ energy and creativity has been both tested and enabled by the project and the School looks forward to sharing all they have achieved with the City itself.

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Graduate

Arthur Lanyon BA Fine Art (2005 - 2008)

Arthur Lanyon, a fine artist who now lives in Penzance, grew up around painting.

Son of renowned artist Matthew Lanyon and grandson of Peter Lanyon, Arthur comes from a dynasty of painters.

“I guess it must have had an impact. I was always drawing and painting when I was little,” he says. “That's got to have something to do with it. If your brain is being wired in that way then it's only natural that you'll carry on in that way. There's quite a few of us in the family. My Dad's brother is an artist as well.”

“When I was little, I watched my dad and my cousin and they were able to just make things because they were older than me. I could never make an object or something in the way that they could because I was so little,” he recalls. “There's something I love about the buzz that you get from just making something, that makes me happy.”

Arthur's path to becoming a painter was a fairly straight forward one.

“I started off with a foundation diploma in Falmouth, a BA in Cardiff School of Art & Design for three years - that was good - and then moved to Bristol for a bit. Now I'm down in Penzance, Cornwall,” he explains. “I was away in India for six months last year. When I got back, I got a new studio in Marazion. It's a lovely place. Right out my window, I can see the north eastern side of Saint Michael's Mount. It's great. I really enjoy it down here.”

Lanyon's career took off very soon after leaving the School of Art & Design in 2008 having received a first in BA Fine Art. The same year that he graduated, he appeared in a group show at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

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“It was a really good experience and very exciting too. That was a competition. There are a lot of competitions now and it feels like there are more than there ever were,” he laughs.

This early success was followed by exhibitions at the Saatchi and Edgar Modern (Bath) in 2009, View Art Gallery (Bristol) in 2010, Bay Art (Cardiff) in 2011 and on the Saatchi website in 2012. This year, Lanyon will have another exhibition in Plymouth which will give a first airing to his new work.

“I'm working on some monochromatic pieces one colour - as a way to deal with the formal and structural issues of painting rather than getting bogged down with colour balance and everything," he says. "I've kept it stark and simple. I've made loads of these monochromatic yellow pieces over the past few weeks. It's great because when you cut out the colour balance, you can just concentrate on the structure really quickly and easily in the decision making process of what to do next. I'm just priming up canvases and staying on the same patch for a little while.”

Given Lanyon's reputation for producing powerful, high impact pieces using colour to a maximum, this move towards using a single colour and concentrating on structure, rather than colour balance, seems radical. “[All of the new paintings] are quite hard edged and I'm trying to think about opposites.

Opposites attract and embellish one another's potency formally,” he explains of his new work. “I want to get more than just one hard edged powerful structure. Line and

structure then come together. It seems to be working with these ones. It's slightly different for me.”

The work is partly influenced by Lanyon's recent trip to India.

“The trip was a bit of everything really. A change of scene. I did a lot of drawing there and that was quite overwhelming: the subjects, the sources of imagery. We did a lot of drawing and travelled all around,” he says.

“I think that influenced what I'm doing now.

We went right out into the desert, on camels, on boats with flying fish. There were good and bad points and I'm just giving you the glossy version.”

“I prefer to let the work to the talking. I'm constantly figuring out in my head and trying to verbalise my work,” he says and then laughing continues: “Someone came into the studio the other day and saw a painting called Mining for Lemons and they said that it looked like a still from a sort of postapocalyptic cartoon animation. That's not what I was going for, but that's what they seemed to think of it.”

Lanyon is sure to have a long career in fine art and hopefully continue the dynasty of great painting that has come from his family line.

Despite his strong style, Lanyon is reluctant to describe his work in any kind of verbal terms.

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CSAD MAGAZINE

Meet our Administration Team

Louise Padfield Who are you?

What’s a typical day at CSAD like for you?

My day can be extremely varied, for example I can either be out at meetings all day, giving training or working on a project. I also tend to spend a lot of time sorting out problems or trying to find out the best way to make things work.

Senior Administrator: Finance and Resources.

What is your favourite piece of art/design/making/architecture?

My favourite piece is the bomb on my safe (not a real one, it is a student installation). It is always quite amusing when people coming into the office notice it for the first time!

Five records for a desert island?

This is really difficult as my favourite music changes all the time. If I had to choose anything it would have to include something bouncy like MSI, Florence and the Machine (can't choose a song), my long running favourite band Soundgarden and Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water (reminds me of my happy childhood).

What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever been given?

Life is what you make it.

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Name one of your heroes and tell us why?

I really admire my Mum's old teacher.

She was one of the first woman university lecturers and did so many amazing things with her life. She is currently a vicar and an archivist but has been a teacher and an author, but was also involved in the war.

The stories she told about being dropped behind enemy lines in France were hair-raising!

Name one of your villains and tell us why?

I don't really believe in villains.

What’s the best thing about working for CSAD? The people and the variety. I never get bored working here!

Meet our Administration Team

Michelle Brown Who are you?

What’s a typical day at CSAD like for you?

There are no typical days in CSAD! I work closely with the Dean and my work very much depends on the type of work she is currently involved in. However, a typical week would involve answering emails, typing up minutes, answering, sometimes quite random queries from staff, students and the public, scheduling meetings and receiving calls from people wanting Podiatry! I’m also involved in the design of the office spaces in the new building, which is extremely exciting!

What is your favourite piece of art/design/making/architecture?

My new favourite piece of sculpture is Verity

by Damien Hirst. Verity is mounted on the pier at Ilfracombe Harbour and has caused quite a stir amongst the locals! The statue features peeled back skin which reveals muscles and an unborn baby. The amount of detail is incredible. When seen from the right angle with the light behind her, her silhouette appears magical. Oh, and I love her feet!

Is there a book/film/album/artwork that has had an impact on your life in some way?

There isn’t a specific book that has had an impact on my life, but my all-time favourite book is Bird Song by Sebastian Faulks. It follows an English soldier, fighting in the trenches during World War I and his forbidden love for a French woman. I’ve read Bird Song several times, and fresh aspects of the story are revealed with each read. I recently saw the stage play and it was truly moving.

Five records for a desert island?

My favourite records change every minute!

My list of records changed several times whilst writing this!

Chicken Payback - The Bees One Day Like This - Elbow Drive - Incubus Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers Mr Blue Sky - ELO By the time you read this I will have changed my mind again!

What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever been given?

Best bit of advice from my Dad: “life is not a dress rehearsal.”

Name one of your heroes and tell us why?

A very dear family friend, Lynne Price, is my hero. She suffered with cancer, on and off, for 20 years and I never heard her complain.

She lived life to the full and was always happy.

She was an inspiration and I admired her for her bravery and courage.

Senior School Administrator.

Name one your villains and tell us why?

I don’t have any time for people who take advantage of the vulnerable. Just because someone isn’t strong enough to stand up for themselves, it doesn’t give someone the right to shatter their dreams or cause them harm.

What’s the best thing about working for CSAD? I feel proud to be working with such creative, passionate and talented people, both staff and students. Watching the students blossom over their time with CSAD and seeing their parents explode with pride at graduation - you wouldn’t get that anywhere else.

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Feature

David Fitzjohn Fine art prizes and sponsors David Fitzjohn's office is on the fourth floor of Howard Gardens and when he opens the door, blazing sunshine bursts out from inside it. The view onto Newport Road has rarely looked as good as it did that day, through the huge windows in the Subject Leader for Fine Art's office.

“I was in the right place at the right time. I had worked mostly as a freelancer and I hadn't worked in education too much. I worked in the film industry and I designed sets and painted backdrops and stuff like that,” he recalls. “I would usually work for six months and then have six months in the studio. But 15 years ago, I got a bit tired of that work, as I found it quite taxing.”

Although he had been teaching since he was an MA student at the Royal College of Art London, he says that he hadn't ever really looked for opportunities to teach.

“I really enjoyed teaching though. I moved to Wales about 10 years ago and I started working in Carmarthen and the West Wales School of the Arts. I was part-time and really enjoyed being in Wales. The art scene in Wales is much more accessible than the one in London and my work was developing quite nicely in Wales. Then a fixed-term post for a painting tutor came up at Cardiff and I was lucky enough to get it. During that time, changes in the course were being made and I was subsequently asked to take on the role of Subject Leader and I said 'yes.'”

Fitzjohn's recent practice has centred on paper cutting and has led to large works entitled Fimbulwinter. “I am interested in defining something by the space around it.

That evolved from painting the negative space around a figure continuously,” he explains of the origin of Fimbulwinter.

“The idea was that you have a big sheet of paper and you draw on it with a knife. It's about precision and decision-making and understanding what it is going to be. In a lot

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‘Was it your mind or your body that prevented you, Carrie?’ by Lydia Meehan.

of art-making processes, there's so much room for correction and revision that the idea of the intensity and having to do it first time gets lost sometimes. I've been interested in that idea for a long time.”

As well as his own practice, Fitzjohn is partially responsible for the administration of a number of endowed sponsorships and prizes that have been generously established at the School of Art & Design over the years.

“These were gifted to the School before my time and I am the inheritor of them. There are three main awards,” he explains. “The Helen Gregory Memorial Trust is the first one. She was a student at the school, who was tragically killed the year after she graduated.

Many of the fine art students and people from the school went to her memorial service and on the strength of that and Helen’s love of art, the family set up a trust in her memory.”

To reflect Helen Gregory's own love of travelling a set of travel awards are made each year by the Trust. These are open to second year Fine Art students, who can apply for sponsorship to travel for self-defined projects that will promote their development as artists. Each year, between three and five awards are made, with the successful applicants reporting back to the trustees on their journeys and the artwork that resulted from them.

In addition, the Helen Gregory Trust funds a purchase prize. “We have a collection of works from 1989 because of that,” Fitzjohn says. “Last year it was won by Sarah Walker from the photo visual area. The trustees or

Drawing for a sculpture, 'eyn koteret' by David Evans.

Simon Brooker.

their representatives come to the Summer Show exhibition and choose. Traditionally, the selection panel includes, Neil Gregory who is Helen’s brother and now the main trustee.”

The second prize is the Evan and Felicity Charlton Travel Award that is made in memory of Evan Charlton, Head of Cardiff School of Art between 1938 and 1945, as well as his wife Felicity Charlton who was also an artist. Both Evan and Felicity were widely respected, with Evan particularly well known as one of Britain's first Surrealists. The Charlton Award has been established through the generosity of Isabel Hitchman.

Isabel, who was a friend of the Charltons, worked for the Arts Council of Wales for over thirty years and continues to write on painting in Wales.

The Dulcie Mayne Stephens Trust Award was set up in 1998 by Nicola Mortimer and Henry Stephens in memory of their mother, Dulcie an accomplished artist, who studied at Cardiff Art School in the 1920s. The Dulcie Mayne Stephens Art Trust provides travel scholarships every year to assist several talented Fine Art students to fulfil their artistic potential.

According to Fitzjohn, these awards are invaluable to the Fine Art students. Last year, it funded a total of 11 students to travel abroad and two sold work because of the prizes.

Will Preston.

“A lot of people go on holiday and I ask them what they did while away. ‘You went to New York? Did you happen to go to MOMA?’ ‘Oh, no, no! I went shopping and saw my friends…’

These awards bring back the idea that you can engage with a different culture and achieve a very different perspective,” he says of the importance of these prizes. “There's a really good reason to go to St Petersburg (or elsewhere), other than it just being a good city. There's a chance to look to the Rembrandts and the Velásquezes. I think that's what the prizes do. The students who get these awards tend to be high achievers.

They are still forming their identities as young artists and the opportunity to travel broadens their perspectives on art and stimulates their creative practice in important ways.

Fine Art in the School has been very fortunate to have been supported so generously over the years. Because of them, talented second year students have explored art collections from Madrid to New York, have been able to interview and work with contemporary artists from all over the world and have engaged in bold creative projects that have stretched their imagination and vision. It sounds like a remarkably good deal.

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CSAD MAGAZINE

CSAD Staff

André Stitt Inside the land, not walking upon it Dotted around André Stitt's room in Howard Gardens are prints, postcards, photographs and other works with various political messages.

Some are pieces of exhibitions in which he participated - including one early one featuring a much younger Stitt.

“I left Belfast Art College in 1980 because of the situation I was living in. I grew up in a period of extreme conflict and civil war really,” he says of his earliest years. “I pretty much had to leave Belfast and so I moved to London and established my performance art practice. You could call that an alternative lifestyle, with squatting and doing things in clubs and organising events with other artists.”

Stitt, born in Belfast, a performance artist in practice and a Professor of performance and interdisciplinary art by trade, has so far had a career that has taken him to all continents and corners of the world.

“I spent the 1980s travelling all over the place and doing performance festivals and gallery shows. I did all sorts of interesting and exciting projects. Then increasingly through the 1990s I went global: Japan, Australia, Far East, south-east Asia and all over Europe and Eastern Europe,” he recalls. “I covered a lot of territory. I was very well connected in terms of making my own art work and I gained a reputation for what I did, which was pretty much socially engaged and politically active performance. It was confrontational in dealing with those issues. That was related to Northern Ireland of course.”

In 1999, Stitt was head-hunted to take over the timebased work of the Fine Art programme at CSAD.

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“That was performance, video installation and experimental interdisciplinary art. I ran that for a number of years. Pretty much by the fourth year I was here (2004), I was made Professor,” he explains. “I've been Professor since and I've always had a very strong practice. It was predicated on research, without me really realising that it was research. I would have seen it as information gathering and discursive investigation. Many of the performance projects must have that kind of authoritative research in them. When I started teaching in the School of Art & Design, I was pretty much able to locate what was coming out my practice as research.”

Stitt's reputation precedes him wherever he goes. In many circles, he remarks, there's a nervous gasp when his name crops up.

Asked how he feels about this 'bad boy' image, he laughs deeply and warmly.

“I've just turned 55, so am I still the bad boy of performance art? It's interesting because last weekend I was in Belfast organising a performance. It's very much a performance project that looks at performance history in relation to Northern Ireland and it's interesting that people still treat me like that,” he chuckles. “I'm quite playful about it. I think there was a point in the 1980s where I saw myself as the Iggy Pop of performance art, but not anymore. My practice has changed considerably since then. I find it amusing.”

His age is important here because in recent years, his work has been remarkably calmer.

“There wasn't much of a challenge about anything I was involved in. Many of the invitations that I was getting were to all sorts of countries and situations and organisations but there didn't seem to be room for me to develop as a human being,” Stitt says, explaining why his work has been more reserved in recent years. “At that point, something had to change. I think like most things, it was quite intuitive and probably had something to do with coming up to middle age. I had quite a lot of injuries and there were quite a lot of health issues involved.

So I had to think differently about how I used my body. My performance art was quite physical.”

Wary of the increasing prevalence of performance in popular culture, Stitt's view of the field has changed somewhat.

“The thing with performance is that people might look at it as being something alternative and outside of convention,” he says. “It's been subsumed into dominant culture to a large extent: you see it all over YouTube, advertising etc. so there's really nothing very radical about it anymore.”

But it's not just the work that has become subdued with age, it's also Stitt as an individual.

“It actually felt more radical for me to walk back into painting again, with all the experiences I have as a performance artist.

It's very visceral, painting. It has a lot of relationship to the body. Thinking about the substance of the body in paint - I suppose in some way it has something to do with being middle aged and considering death and the meaning of everything,” he explains laughing very hard. “So, you know, it's been a way to engage with things in a way that I haven't before.”

Stitt is married to Eddie Ladd, the famous Welsh dancer. His recent work In The West has focused around reflections on place and was based on his experiences of his wife's family farm in Maesglas (near Cardigan).

“I was brought into this Welsh community and I had access to that, which absolutely fascinated me. The way that I was accepted, although I was an outsider, I feel very close to that culture,” he explains. “Also, because of going out to Maesglas farm, we would often go for very long walks up the coast and that's something I've always done. My father was a big hiker, my mother and father met in Scotland hiking in the 1950s. It's pretty much in the blood: walking and being in the land.

I've always felt like I'm inside the land and not walking upon it.”

“My father-in-law Sam was alive when I started thinking about this. I got some Arts Council of Wales money to create the project and over that year, Sam had been taken to hospital and spent most of his time in hospital.

There was a decline in terms of his physical being and presence. Although he was in the hospital, his presence would be felt throughout the farm, of course,” he recalls.

“You could argue that it was just us projecting emotionally into that space, but he was such a big presence on the farm. When I went there and we went out for trips, we hung out together. We had a very close relationship.

This is happening at a time of my life when I'm thinking about what it means, when you have to come to terms with death and suddenly friends around me are dying - three close friends of mine died in the last two years. In a way, that contemplation was actually quite comforting.”

Woven throughout Stitt's work is the landscape of a man coming to grips with his own mortality and spirituality. He has a wonderful way of telling the story of his connection to the world around him. It leaves us all wondering how the next act in his grand play will work out.

Stitt's painting takes the form of wonderful abstract expressionist landscapes. Those landscapes were ones he painted during a year in which his father-in-law Sam was in hospital. Sam's death also played a large part in In The West.

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CSAD Graduate

Lauren Nicholas BA Illustration (2009 - 2012)

Lauren Nicholas is an illustrator from Southampton.

She graduated from Cardiff School of Art & Design last year with a BA Illustration under her belt.

“I've just finished a YMCA commission which was great. I did some work with them while I was at Uni and then afterwards they asked me to make them a short video for children about recycling,” she says. “At the moment I'm just doing some work for a woman who's opening a new art café and I'm giving her some ideas. Other than that, I'm doing work experience at Hattie and Flora. They're an events company and they make everything themselves. Hopefully they'll employ me soon, but they haven't yet.”

Then I started using the objects and trying to make animations out of them. At the time I was trying to help my Granddad experience my work because he is blind. It needed to be interactive.”

Nicholas has long had an interest in illustration, but she traces it back to the beginning of her degree in the School of Art & Design.

“It was lucky because in our third year the lecturers told us to enter every competition that we could. I had started making a piece about disability and about my Granddad,” she says of the prize-winning work. “I entered it into the Shape Open Awards competition and they were really nice. I went up to see the exhibition and there were quite a few people from Cardiff, which was good, because it was in London. I got to know a lot of people through that. And I won! They showed the work on a big screen. It was very exciting to see my work up there.”

“I think my interest really began when I chose to do illustration after foundation. I went to Cardiff School of Art & Design and my lecturer Amelia Johnstone really encouraged me and I got on with her well,” she recalls.

“That helped a lot because when someone understands where you're coming from, it gives you motivation. Probably not until last year did I really start enjoying it completely.”

Nicholas' work is a warm mixture of illustration and stop motion animation, which frequently deals with topics such as old age and ecological ideas.

“I started trying to make my own animations nearer to the end of my degree, but I'm not great at it technically. I just enjoy it,” she says when asked about how she came upon finding this particular style of illustration. “I think it's because my dissertation was about objects and how things are attached to them.

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In fact, it was this train of thought and the resulting work that lead Nicholas to be awarded First Prize at the Shape Open Awards in 2012 for her piece An Ageing Thing which deals with the daily life of her Granddad.

For Nicholas, illustration could be anything that relates a feeling or idea to a person in a way that they can easily understand.

“I think that's why it's so hard to get a straightforward job. Illustration isn't really one thing. It's sort of tapped into everything.

I think there's a wide range of possibilities for illustration. I don't like the thought of it being only decorative. It's important. I think what I want my work to do is to look at a big picture and tell personal stories from it. I want people to look at something and feel personally connected to it,” she explains. “Illustration is

about telling a story that is relevant. If you saw a news story about elderly abuse in care homes, you might think it was awful, but then if your Grandma got hit in a home, you'd feel a lot more outraged. You can relate to it.”

Asked if she might eventually like to move to London to continue client work, she replies: “Hopefully, not eventually! Hopefully, pretty soon! The absolute dream would be to get a studio and start a collective, illustrating for charities. The reality is that I'll probably be working in McDonalds,” she laughs. “I was offered a job yesterday decorating biscuits

part-time - I don't think I'd like to end-up decorating biscuits. A friend and I have been talking about setting up an events business.

That's option B if illustration doesn't work out.

I'd also like to try floristry.”

Nicholas looks to have a promising future by using her skills to illustrate problems that the most vulnerable parts of our society face regularly. She believes this is important and that illustration has a big role to play in that.

Nicholas in closing says, “Make the most of university, especially your final year, make as many contacts as you can, talk to everybody, be creative and have fun. Use it as a platform and make the most of every opportunity because you really miss it when it is over.”

Since this interview was originally published, Nicholas has been voted 'Highly Regarded'

by The Guardian for her entry into the newspaper's If film competition. She is also currently working on a commission for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

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CSAD Feature

Rich Park Pushing the frontiers of design innovation Professor Rich Park is Vice President of SADI (Samsung Art and Design Institute) which is linked with the Cardiff School of Art and Design in the delivery of an MDes in Experience Design.

Park now lives in South Korea, in the capital Seoul, but his path to living in the country where he was born is a winding one, full of changes and interesting choices, beginning with his family's decision to emigrate to America in 1977 while he was still a student of engineering in Korea.

“I went before I finished my engineering degree. I worked with my father for a couple of months and then became independent. I don't know whether it was a good choice or not now, but I decided to join the US Army. I was in Frankfurt, Germany, for two years and then in Colorado Springs for one year,” he says laughing at his decision to become independent. “That gave me the money to go to the Philadelphia College of Art in 1984 to study painting. I didn't know of the existence of design at that time. Then, after one semester, I studied graphic design and then industrial design, graduating in 1987.”

Park undertook the industrial design programme in order that he could make a living whilst supporting his passion for painting. When asked by his tutor why he didn't pursue his other passion, architecture, Park replied: “I told him that, 'I wanted to study architecture but that it takes too long to see the fruit of that.” He continues, “So I found that in industrial design, you can make many products in less time and share it with many people.”

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After graduating, Park worked as an industrial designer in New Jersey with Innovation Development Incorporated and then later in a more managerial role at the world-famous Donald Deskey Associates.

“Then I was offered a job at the Faculty of Product Design at Parsons School of Design.

That was 1991-1994. In 1993, the Dean called me and said, 'You're the only Korean faculty member working in our School. The daughter of the Chairman of Samsung is in the Fashion Design school and her parents want to start a design school in Seoul.' They asked me to be President of SADI and I said no because I didn't want to be an administrator. I also wasn't ready to emigrate back to Korea,” he explains. “Eventually, I decided I was working too hard and became unhappy at work - my first offer of work as an administrator wasn't too enticing, but he called again a few months later and offered me a teaching post. I went back to Korea and started up the SADI foundation programme and had to recruit 11 faculty members.”

Over the course of the past ten years, SADI has grown to incorporate more programmes and now houses Communication Design, Fashion Design and Product Design departments, as well as a link with the Cardiff School of Art & Design offering an exchange scheme and a validated MDes programme.

“That started because Gareth Barham, a senior lecturer in the Cardiff School of Art & Design, visited the University of Korea. One of the professors there - a good friend of mine mentioned SADI and that there might be something interesting that we might be able to do together. At SADI, we needed to modernise the curriculum because Samsung believed that the Korean universities’ liberal design education was not up-to-date; that had a lot to do with the MDes programme starting. We discussed it with CSAD for a few months in Summer 2009. After six months, we opened the programme.” The first cohort started in the autumn of 2010.

In recognition of his international significance in the field of product design, Park has been awarded an honorary professorship at Cardiff Metropolitan University. His official title is still to be decided but it will be focused on the idea of design innovation and advocacy particularly, how designers can be better at business.

“After coming back to Korea, I studied an MBA out of boredom! There was a lot of talk at that time about designers and business. I thought to myself, if I don't know about business, how can I talk to my students about it? I know engineering and have practiced

design over many years, but not business,” he explains of the origin of his interest in design innovation. “So I decided to take the MBA. I followed on from the MBA with a PhD. I now have a PhD in business management.”

Samsung is one of the best-known design firms in the world. But still, Park had noticed that it was quite difficult to see into the firm from the outside because of how secretive they are.

“I wanted to do a PhD dissertation on their innovation processes. I interviewed a lot of engineers, managers and founders. The practice of design in hi-tech companies is very different from that in small companies. I wanted to learn about the in-house design process and how it involves so many different people,” he explains.

“I documented the different perspectives and theoretic positions involved in the process, because I wanted to teach my students what designers should be doing to be successful.

Particularly, I wanted to know much about the process of integrating the management of designers, engineers and marketeers, especially as many of the critical decisions are made by business people without designers.

My ultimate goal is to give a better voice to

designers and engineers by understanding business managers and marketeers. I want to develop the design process, so that it empowers designers to communicate effectively.”

In closing, Park has some interesting things to say about the designers of the future.

“Samsung is now in a position to be the 'first mover.' They're putting more emphasis on design, but they should spend more money!

Their stock has increased over 50 times and the number of designers too, over the last 10 years; yet their understanding and trust of design is not enough,” he explains. “They need the designers to prove how and why a concept works and why they should choose a particular design. That's sad. Lots of decisions are made on emotional factors. I want to help designers develop their creativity, but also their ability to convince and persuade others of the importance of design.”

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CSAD Staff

Chris Glynn Subject Leader Illustration

“I'm Subject Leader for Illustration at Cardiff School of Art & Design. We set up the course in 2007, so it’s been developing for 6 years,” he says. “I'm an illustrator first, then a musician. It's interesting this idea of being an illustrator or being a teacher. It’s not something to get hung-up on, easier to say ‘I illustrate, I teach, I notice things’, activities rather than identities.”

Glynn's interest in illustration began early on, with his father bringing home drafting paper from the engineering firm where he worked.

‘Interesting’ does not feel like enough of an adjective to describe Chris Glynn.

“I once asked Philippa Lawrence [principal lecturer in CSAD], who wrapped trees near the A48 as one of her commissions, what she was doing when she was seven years old and she said that she was climbing trees! It's very interesting,” muses Glynn. “You often find the essence of your interest by examining what you were doing when you were seven.

I used to fill these massive sheets with elaborate battlescapes; I was always doodling at school and drawing in the margins. I’d get told off for gazing out of the window, yet that helped me to listen and filter out other ‘visual noise.’ Drawing was the thing that was always there.”

Glynn’s family is a musical one - he has a piano in his office which he uses to thrash out ideas - but his secondary school prevented him from studying both music and art: ‘soft’ subjects. He followed the musical path at college and then went into teacher training.

“At 14 - that time when you start editing your choices - I discovered that I really wanted to act and as soon as I got to Aberystwyth University, I switched to joint honours music

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and drama. I then did a couple of years of arts administration in a box office, music direction in fringe theatre, and small illustration projects: it was a real cocktail of stuff. The PGCE at Goldsmiths was really challenging.” he recalls. “But it was the passport to working anywhere. I secured a job in Caerleon teaching music, but two years in found myself in assembly, playing hymns in my Vneck jumper, thinking that this wasn't really the plan. I knew what I wanted to do was to draw and I thought to myself that I was quite a good music teacher, but the unique thing I had was the drawing.”

Glynn left teaching temporarily and took an entry-level animation job in Cardiff.

“Perhaps it was easier then to get in with a small portfolio. Through the 90s, much of the time-consuming work went to the Far East and Eastern Europe. Entry-level positions are still there, but not in such quantity. They said it would take five years to become a good animator and I thought ‘I've got to make some money’ because I’d left a full-time teaching job,” he explains. “I enjoyed the fact that every day was different and perhaps because I was a bit nosy they gave me preproduction work: storyboard, character designs and layouts. None of this was planned, but in a funny kind of way I've always been in the right place to make the shift. Then I went ‘freelance’ because in 1992 there was a recession and everyone went ‘freelance.’ That led to working for a range of animation producers including Cosgrove Hall, Telemagination and TVCartoons, plus studios in France and Germany.”

Glynn's teaching career graduated from secondary to tertiary education through a series of opportunities that presented themselves to teach animation and drawing, alongside his freelance work.

“Working in animation led to working in an idyllic studio in the south of France for a year.

There was a guy working next to me and he was teaching in Denmark and he said that he couldn't make one of the sessions and asked if I could cover for him. I went to Denmark and kept being invited back,” Glynn continues. “In the freelancer’s world you're always setting up the next gig from the one you're working on. You do a good job and hope people recommend you. The teaching in Denmark led to a conversation with a French-Canadian man. He got in touch with me six months later and asked me to do an animation course in Reunion Island, in the medium of French. It was quite a challenge because I'd never taught in French before.

Later I covered for someone who was teaching animation in graphics here at CSAD and that led to someone saying that I should go for a job in the new course that they were setting up. So I applied for it and got the job.”

Music continues to play a part in his career as do the many strings to his illustrative bow: new projects, freelancing and teaching.

Glynn’s work has also included visual input for numerous interdisciplinary arts education projects.

“I recently revisited this ‘portfolio strand’ through a project with London Symphony Orchestra Discovery Team, helping adults with learning difficulties create visuals for a musical story, which they performed in the Barbican foyer as part of film composer John

Williams’ birthday celebrations,” he says before moving on to his current interests.

“With CSAD Illustration Lecturer Amelia Johnstone and colleagues at Manchester Met, the Universities of Westminster, Solent and UAL Camberwell, we set up the journal Illustration Research as a catalyst for research and practice-led initiatives. To date we've run three international symposia, on alchemy (in Cardiff), writing (in Manchester) and folk (in Krakow). We currently have a Call for Papers out for our fourth edition: Science, Imagination and the Illustration of Knowledge, in partnership with the Oxford University Museums (7 - 8 Nov 2013).

“We’re now extending our field of engagement outwards to psychology, pharmacology, medicine, theatre, maths, etc.

It’s a big discipline and its contexts reach beyond pure artistic and design purposes: people who may not think of themselves as illustrators are illustrating within their own disciplines, as clients, sometimes as authors, finding ways of putting ideas into images.

When words fail, people look to images (also music, ritual and theatre), and that’s where we come in.”

Glynn's practice often sees him organising collaborations between groups of people and putting illustration within the context of their interactions.

I’ve never really settled to sitting alone in the studio 8+ hours a day. I have done it, but gregariousness takes over.”

Glynn's closing remarks say a lot about the kind of person he is. He is forever coming up with ideas and trying to make collaboration happen.

“What we're doing is mapping opportunities.

I'd like to do a symposium about illustration and music,” he says and continues to talk about future plans with names that sound like documentary films. Look out for ‘Walking with Illustrators’ and ‘Academics on a Train.’

We aim to pilot things, get them going then hand them on. In that sense, I'm more of a hunter-gatherer than a farmer.”

As if to further cement his closing statements, after the dictaphone has been switched off, Glynn pulls out a notepad and says, “Let's talk business. What are you working on at the moment?”

“We talk about the serendipity of the career and how expertise leads others to direct opportunities your way. Sometimes those conversations can be fostered. Gaynor has brought together the CSAD and the Cardiff University School of Medicine, and we're illustrating those dialogues which in turn lead to commissions and collaborations.

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CSAD Current Student

Justine Arnaud-Guerin BA Textiles (2011 - 2013)

“I come from France, originally Toulouse.

I studied there and did my A-Levels there in art,” she says in the Textiles space on the Llandaff Campus. “Before that I studied economics. In Paris, I went to a school of art called Ecolé Duperré. I did more weaving than textiles.”

Justine Arnaud-Guerin started her time in Cardiff as an Erasmus student in 2011. She came on the Erasmus (the European Union's educational exchange) programme from her home institution in Paris.

Arnaud-Guerin joined the thousands of students who make the exciting move to study abroad each year through the Erasmus programme. Her school of art in France offered her an Erasmus placement at either Cardiff or Leeds. She says, ‘I didn't know really, but I thought maybe Wales would be different to England and that I would try it.

I'm really glad that I did.”

“Cardiff is really nice. I like small cities and it's the perfect size. There are lots of students,” she says. “It's pretty much the same size as Toulouse.”

However, unlike the majority of students (who are nearly always sad to leave their Erasmus placements), Justine decided not to return to Ecolé Duperré, but to stay at Cardiff School of Art & Design. She explains, “In Wales, there's a lot of help for students, because the government is really good.

I managed to get a grant to stay this year, but if I was in England it would be impossible.”

“My Erasmus year was really amazing. You meet a lot of people from around the world.

It's not just English-speaking people, but there are also people from Spain etc.,” she says of her experience. “I think that I was frustrated by the thought of going back to France. I wanted to continue to improve my English and decided that I needed to stay.”

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It worked. Arnaud-Guerin’s English is now very good and she has a group of friends both French (two more Erasmus students have come from her home institution, since she did) and English-speaking in Cardiff, which she now calls her home.

“I will finish my degree here this year and then after that I'm going to see where I can find a job. I've got a placement in a card company in Caerphilly,” she says. “I've also got another placement in Toulouse which will take place after the degree. That's with a wallpaper design company. I won't focus on staying in any one country - I'll go where there's a job.”

Arnaud-Guerin’s undergraduate dissertation was completed in January 2013 and looks at the way that public spaces can be designed to encourage communication between people.

“I was focusing on a means of interactive design, where people can come and draw on the walls of a space, for example. That way, they can begin to have a discussion around and about a space,” she says. She is continuing the idea that she developed in her dissertation as her final project.

“I was really inspired by the dissertation because now I'm looking at a game similar to Consequences. I'm taking Simon and Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence' and will begin by illustrating the song. I did a lot of tests with the song. For example, I cut all of the words out and mixed them up in order to make a new song,” she continues. “Also, if you pass the song through different languages by translating, when you bring it back into the English language, the song has changed totally. I did that and created

another new song with all of that stuff.

I encouraged people to replace words in the song too.”

Her interest in communication and language is fitting, given her background and status as an international student.

“I really like it when you create something or when you look at a piece of work - for example, a designer who hangs pens on a tree and then makes a drawing with the wind,” Arnaud-Guerin explains. “Also, when I first arrived here and wanted to say something, I would go to translate the French expression directly and people would tell me that what I had said meant nothing. It's a mix of those ideas.”

Her final piece of work relates to these ideas by taking the songs which she has created from her 'consequences' exercise, illustrating them and creating a textiles collection based around them.

“For the first piece, I'm illustrating 'Sounds of Silence' and that brings out lots of shades of white for me, with maybe some stitched white,” she says, excitedly. “For the second one, I might add some more colour (because the song is more playful) and some images too. I'll illustrate things like that and put patterns onto fabrics.”

“I think what I can say about Wales is that there was a lot of funny stuff that I had to learn. Sometimes I don't understand what people are saying or people don't understand me,” she says. “A lot of French expressions don't translate exactly: ‘I'm going to turn into a goat’ (I'm going to go crazy) or ‘I had a white night’ (I didn't sleep last night).

Learning about the difference between those things was fun. That's why I want to be in the UK.”

Arnaud-Guerin is a great example for people who wish to come to CSAD to study on a year abroad of their own.

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CSAD Graduate

Ian Culverhouse MSC Advanced Product Design (2006 - 2007) CSAD PhD Product Design (2007 - 2012) PDR

“I grew up in Bodmin. I moved to Cardiff at 18 to study product design at UWIC. That was 10 years ago,” he explains. “I graduated with a BSc Product Design in 2006, MSc Advanced Product Design in 2007 and then I was lucky enough to get a scholarship for a PhD at Cardiff Met too.”

Now, a Senior Design Researcher at Kinneir Dufort, a design and innovation company based in Bristol and running since 1977, Culverhouse has worked his way into a role of which many product designers would be envious.

Ian Culverhouse is a people person who realised at an early stage that he had developed a great skill-set that employers wanted.

“During my Master’s, the last module I did was an industrial placement, where graduates are positioned in industry to give them exposure to what it's like,” he explains of his path to that fortunate position. “My placement was within PDR (The National Centre for Product Design & Development Research) to transfer my knowledge of interactive prototyping to projects in PDR. I did three months of that and it went really well. Afterwards, they said they wanted me to carry on in that area. They found some PhD funding that I could apply for, if interested.”

It was the expertise in interactive prototyping that he gained and the skills which he honed while at Cardiff School of Art & Design and more specifically, PDR, which helped him to make the leap from research to practice.

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“Interactive prototyping is developing techniques and tools to allow people to engage with digital products at an early stage in the process. Traditionally if you design a chair, it's easy to go to a workshop and carve out a chair. If it was comfy, you'd be fine and could carry on with it, but if it was uncomfortable you could just sculpt another one,” he explains. “Interactive prototyping is about finding ways to engage with a digital product, without needing to get the finished product at the end.”

However, knowledge without strategy is worth little. Fortunately for Culverhouse, he worked out his strategy in parallel with his work on interactive prototyping.

“My PhD focused on how that could be integrated early on in the process. From that point forward, I recognised that there were certain industries for which this type of knowledge and expertise was more interesting and more applicable,” he explains.

“Typically, something like medical and healthcare sectors have more rigour, regulatory demands and bigger R&D budgets, so they really engage with this sort of thing more.”

It was this realisation that helped him to understand that he could make the leap to industry and just before Christmas 2012, Culverhouse took his first Senior Design Researcher job at Kinneir Dufort.

“I like engaging with people and learning about different things and finding out more about a subject that I don't know too much about. That fits very well. I'm always interviewing people, engaging with people that I otherwise wouldn't meet. It's far better than just looking at a screen all day,” he says excitedly of his new job. “When I joined Kinneir Dufort three months ago, within the first two weeks they had sent me off to the US for a week to run the research over there.

I was leading the project and I visited Boston and San Francisco. The job gives you opportunities to do stuff like that too. For me, that's attractive.”

Talking to Culverhouse, it's easy to see that he is what you might call a people person: he thrives on relationships above screens, meetings above redrafts.

“I like being able to identify things where people's lives could be made easier or better.

Product design is a conduit for expressing those needs. It sounds cheesy, but it's just doing a bit of good somewhere.” he explains humbly. “In terms of product design, I knew I wasn't the world's greatest product stylist or engineer. I enjoyed the design process and the part of things where people can get a feel for how it might work. That's where the prototyping comes in.”

“I'd like to be involved in design still. I enjoy the hands-on, so I'd like to be Head of Department or Lead on a group and really trying to push the capabilities of the people below me,” Culverhouse says. “That's where I aim to be. Twenty years is a long way ahead, but if I look back 10 years ago, I didn't think I'd be where I am today.”

Finally, Culverhouse brings everything back to the essence of his success: realising his potential right at the beginning of his career.

“A lot of what I am now is down to the path that I took when I was at CSAD. There were definitely opportunities that I wasn't aware of before I was told about them by the staff,” he continues. “They opened a pathway forward that I could carve a career out of and helped me develop a pretty unique skill-set, which is a valuable asset. I like doing my job because it's making people's lives a bit better.”

When someone is as happy in his job as Culverhouse, it seems silly to ask him, “What's next in your career?” However, Culverhouse is more than willing to indulge the thought of where he will be in 20 years time.

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CSAD Staff

Jeffrey Jones Exploring ceramics and sculpture

Jeffrey Jones is sitting in his office on the second floor of Cardiff School of Art & Design's Howard Gardens Campus.

In front of him is a meticulously arranged stack of paper.

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“I did a degree in Fine Art a long time ago.

That was in Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham.

Afterwards I did a teacher training course and then did various things. I ended up working in the Health Service as an Art Therapist in mental health for nearly 20 years,” he says in an incredibly soft Bridgend accent. “Towards the end of that time I took a year out and came here to CSAD to do an MA Ceramics. I went back to the job at the Health Service part-time and started to do a PhD. That was on the history of 20th Century studio ceramics. I did that in Aberystwyth University.

As I was finishing my PhD, a post came up here as a Research Fellow. That was in 1998. I was in the fortunate position of changing career at a late stage in my life. It's worked out fine for me.”

Research has formed the majority of Jones' recent work within the School. That means that he hasn't practiced as an artist for a long time.

“I originally trained as a fine artist in sculpture.

When I did my MA, it was in ceramics and studio practice. My background is in making, but my PhD was an entirely theoretical piece of work,” he says. “One of the things that happened when I came to CSAD to do my MA was that I discovered I like writing. That was quite a surprise to me. Ever since, my research has been written rather than practical. Perhaps in my retirement years, practice as an artist might be something that I return to.”

Jones' research for the last few years has been about the relationship between ceramics and sculpture. This interest stems from the research that went into Jones' book Studio Pottery in Britain 1900-2005, which was published in 2007 and revealed that during the 105 years discussed, the interests of potters and sculptors in Britain has overlapped on several occasions.

“I was fortunate to be awarded a visiting research fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, which is an institute for the study of sculpture. They are very interested in exploring how sculpture relates to other visual arts disciplines; so they are interested in, for example, the relationship between sculpture and architecture,” he explains. “It appealed to them that I wanted to look at the relationship between ceramics and sculpture.”

The interest in the relationship between ceramicists and sculptors centres around the idea that ceramicists often struggle to become part of the world of sculpture, despite their disciplines being convergent to a large degree.

“There are lots of examples of potters and ceramists who make work they consider to be sculpture. They find it difficult to be accepted and place it in those galleries and exhibitions where sculpture is normally shown,” Jones says. “I'm interested in the reasons why that's the case. It's partly to do with the suspicion of the material. It's a strange thing to say, but clay as a material isn't always accepted as an authentic material for sculpture. Or if it is, it's transformed into something else: made in clay, cast in bronze.”

You would be forgiven for not understanding the difference between sculpture and ceramics. In fact, it's a question that many people have.

“The main difference is that ceramics is defined according to the material. Ceramics means things made out of clay. There is a huge range of things that ceramicists make: some will make traditional vessel forms, some will make work that can be legitimately described as sculpture, but it all comes under the umbrella term of ceramics,” he says.

“There are societies and foundations, journals and magazines that all support ceramics. It's quite a thriving discipline. Whereas when you think about sculpture, it's not defined by its material. A long time ago it might have been expected that sculptors carve stone, but that's not the case now. The term sculpture covers so much and it's not limited in any sense. Ceramics is defined because it has to be made in a particular material, whereas sculpture has no such requirement.”

This question of material will also form the basis for the future of Jones' research in ceramics.

“I want to look much closer at the attitudes towards the use of clay. Going back to the 1920s and 1930s, I want to look at the kinds of ways that people were using clay and the attitudes that critics and commentators had towards the use of clay,” he says. “I want to try and trace a history of that through to the present day and see what's happened there.

My focus is much more on the material itself.

That's the way it's going.”

“We're the last in the UK really, in terms of strength and depth and in terms of it being a single subject. There are lots of places where you can study ceramics as a broader degree course. This is the last significant place in the UK where you can study ceramics intensively, as a single subject, and I think that gives a wonderful working experience to the students who come here,” he says.

“The subject area of ceramics is a great strength within the School. It's a real credit to the staff that it's survived and a credit also to CSAD who have continued to support it at a time when other ceramics courses in the UK have disappeared or struggled.”

Given his post at the School of Art & Design, it's only natural that ceramics is a subject close to Jones' heart. He's full of praise for the University's continued support for the ceramics courses.

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CSAD Student

Robert Stockley Consciousness becomes concrete BA Ceramics (2010 - Present)

Robert Stockley has spent his life looking after people with serious and often fatal diseases.

Now he is turning his attention towards ceramics and following a long held desire to make his work something permanent.

“I was a hospital specialist in leukaemia, working as a consultant haematologist. I have worked in London, Bristol and for a short time in Seattle. I was a haematologist in Worcester for 17 years. I stopped about five years ago, through illness, and during my convalescence joined a local potter who taught me the fundamentals of throwing.

I decided to try and pursue more of an arts career,” he says. “So I went to Stroud College of Art and undertook an Access course.

When I was there, I had a choice of pursuing a degree in ceramics or photography - I've had a dark room since I was 10. In the end, I decided I wanted to do ceramics and when it came to the choices of where to go, I decided that I wanted to come to Cardiff.”

Stockley, originally from London, has spent his life in medicine. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Royal College of Pathologists too - both of which have complex entry procedures and command a high level of professional respect.

So why did he give it all up to start an entrylevel career in ceramics?

“I made the leap [to ceramics] because I got ill.

I had to have a big operation and debilitating further treatment and couldn't go back to work. I was 56. I had always wanted to make things that were permanent. I play the violin and am in an amateur orchestra,” he explains, “but the problem with music is that it's very ephemeral: you make it and then it's gone.

So I like the idea of making objects. Ceramics is about as permanent as you get. Even when it's broken, it still lasts thousands of years.”

Stockley places himself into the category of ceramicists who make objects that are neither

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narrative nor functional, but instead are created for their aesthetic value.

“Everyone in my year group has sort of grouped themselves around the various words we thought appropriate to the way we saw ceramics. There are 35 in the year and some are narrative (ceramics which tell a story), others are decorative, others are functional (jugs and casseroles) and then there's the formal group. We like to make objects that are valued for their shape, colour and texture,” he explains of his practice.

“I make objects on the wheel - so they start symmetrical. At the moment, they are pretty strictly bottle shaped and there are also cylindrical jar shapes. I place them together in colours and textures in formal groups.”

“I try to make objects that respond to the structure and metaphors of music. In my mind, I will have specific chords or rhythms or discords that I am trying to turn from being ephemeral into something solid and permanent,” he says. “It's very difficult to do it and I'm trying with a combination of forms and material and colour. I tend not to work much with glazes, but more with slips and colour.”

This idea may sound very ephemeral in itself, but there's logic behind Stockley's choice and his thinking on the subject of music is very interesting.

“This is done with difficulty, but there are some forms that will be consonant and go together well. There will be others that react with each other and also the repetition,” he says. “When two bottles are placed next to one another, they create negative space

which in itself can cause repetition or even silences. It's just the beginning of the quest to do this, but that's what is informing the forms that I make.”

The Western musical scale is based partly upon mathematics, but also partly on the idea that there are certain notes which sound pleasing to the ears. Asked whether this is reflected in the form of ceramics, Stockley needs little time to respond.

“I think it is. In ceramics, there are body forms.

In some way, the ceramics that mimic the human body are intrinsically pleasing,” he says. “You speak of bottles, jars and jugs as having necks, bodies and feet. It's a similar question to why humans see faces and recognise attributes.”

The idea of using musical ideas to inform artistic practice is not an entirely new one.

“I suppose my main inspiration is Kandinsky.

Some may think that it's listening to music and copying somehow. That's not what I'm saying. In order to structure what I'm making, I may start with musical architecture. But even in an octave scale only the octaves and the 4th and 5th of the scale are actually mathematically precise notes,” he explains.

“That's why a piano is described as well tempered - it is a compromise. In the same way, the other thing I like is the performance issue. Each time you're playing, it's going to be different. Each time you throw a pot, it's going to be different. Each one is a performance. Each one is different.”

For the moment, Stockley's concentrating on his degree show work. When he graduates, he would like to pursue the possibility of teaching - which was a major part of his role as a physician. Regardless of what he does next, there's one thing that is clear for Stockley - his thinking on ceramics is illuminating: “What astonished me during my Access course was that we'd be ten in the room all given the same kernel of an idea and we'd come back a few days later having all made a staggering variety of stuff. Consciousness had become concrete. The invisible become visible.”

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CSAD Graduate

Tom Palmer Graphic Communication (1999 - 2002)

Tom Palmer's a busy man.

He's currently planning a series of huge automotive shows for car manufacturer Ford.

“When I left the CSAD Graphic Communication course, I got my first job in one of the top three agencies in Bristol at the time, converting their work from medium format slides to digital,” he recalls. “This is old tech! They were just moving over to digitising everything and needed someone to scan them and create a digital library from it.

It was basically donkey work.”

Whilst studying for his degree in Graphic Communication at Cardiff School of Art & Design, he worked for BBM Carlson.

“The great thing about it was that it was in a studio, working with other people. I tried to involve myself with the creative work that the studio was doing. Over the course of the summer, I became more and more involved and by the end of the summer, I became more part of the studio,” he explains.

“Every summer, when there was a break in the course, I went back there as a dogsbody and designer and when I left the course at CSAD, I went back and became a junior designer.”

After several years at BBM Carlson, Palmer decided that he was in a good place to start a freelance career. His wife is a secondary school teacher and so they were free to move wherever there was work for him.

“Although the scene up around Cardiff, Bristol, Bath and the South West generally is reasonably good, if you go in with one of the relatively respected agencies, the people who work in them tend to move around within them and until eventually they'd work for them all. It’s a bit incestuous” he says of his decision to move to South West London in order to freelance.

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“I thought that I could probably go freelance in London, with a good portfolio and good clients. I wanted variety and insight and experience into how different agencies work.”

But it was not just variety and new people that Palmer was looking for when he made the decision to go freelance.

“I also thought that the idea of freelance was a very healthy way to do business. You're wanted by an agency and you want to work with them. If that changes you or they can change it, it's no big deal,” he explains. “You don't get caught in office politics or that kind of thing because you're basically immune to it.

Also, the money's great and you can take time off whenever.”

The majority of Palmer's clients employ him to work on long contracts of around six months. He enjoys working like this and is currently in the middle of a big contract at Imagination, an agency based in London.

“I'm doing 6 - 8 months at Imagination in London who have automotive clients. I'm Digital Creative Director of one of Ford's auto shows in Geneva. We use every possible kind of digital deployment that you can imagine. We have massive LED walls that are 6x40m, apps, projection mapping,” he says of his work. “It's really just creating a digital world that's fully interactive and social.

Within that six-month timeframe, I'll do 3 - 4 shows. We just did Detroit which was a really big one and then NYC and Shanghai.”

Palmer describes his work as conceptual.

He values the ability to participate in the early stages of a project and to help define the ideas for the project before others contribute to it.

“I work conceptually and develop sort of worlds around how things look and feel and how you feel when using them. Back when I was on the course, digital was really just emerging. It was interesting for everyone I think. The good thing about the Graphic Communication course is that it didn't seek to make you specialist in one particular area.

From early secondary school, I knew I was destined to do graphic design in one form or another. Art direction is a little bit more the birth of an idea and a project,” he explains.

“The kind of thing I do at the moment is made special by the people that make the stuff (programmers, film makers, 3D and post production etc.) I'm before that stage. I'll come up with the concepts and decide how they should look and then guide those guys though to the end result, so it's not traditional graphic design. It's more conceptual.”

Palmer seems to be one of the rare people who is perfectly happy freelancing, despite all of the uncertainty and twists and turns that the lifestyle brings with it. In closing, he explains why he's so happy to continue like that.

“Maybe the good thing about being freelance is that I am able to be very senior in one place and then not very senior in another place, which means I have access to a wide range of levels in an agency. In the current agency, I am digital creative director of a department.

In terms of Imagination, they're massively heavyweight. I could equally say that I want to take a senior design role, in which case I could go to a boutique agency and do some lovely little digital microsite experiences,” he says. “You can pick and choose your level of involvement and balance your working life between having the good bits of being senior and then get back to some straightforward, clean art direction. That's really nice.”

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IN BRIEF CSAD is host to a wide variety of exciting research & enterprise activities. The School strives to build links and share its expertise, creativity and innovation with academic, industry and community partners.

Research

 Creative Wales success Congratulations to Paul Granjon, Senior Lecturer, Associate Tutor Davida Hewlett and CSAD graduates Matt Cook and Rebecca Spooner, who are all recipients of the 2012/13 Creative Wales Awards. Paul will use his award to explore arts and creative technology initiatives for alternative futures and experiment with electronic circuits and rapid prototyping methods with a view to including commonly found electronic parts in installations, workshop projects and sustainable energy systems. Davida will use her award to learn new skills and evaluate and integrate new working methods into her practice.  School of Medicine meeting The School was delighted to welcome staff from the Cardiff School of Medicine to an evening event on the 21 March 2013 at Howard Gardens Gallery. The event encouraged staff from both institutions to share research interests, identify synergies and potential collaborations over a glass of wine and crudités. The unique setting also allowed researchers from CSAD to showcase some of their outputs in the form of a mini exhibition of artworks and posters. This visual display offered insights into our projects and a variety of art and design research practices. CSAD is excited by the opportunity to engage with our medical partners and predict there will be many interactive events, projects and products to come.

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 New Professorships Congratulations to Jeffrey Jones, who has recently become the School’s first Professor of Ceramics. Prof. Jones’s research focuses on historical and contemporary developments in ceramics, with a specific interest in the shared concerns of British post-war studio ceramicists and sculptors, most notably developed through a Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute and conference convened with Andrew Renton (National Museum Cardiff). Other new Professorial appointments for the School include on Honorary Professorship made to Prof. Richard Park (Samsung Art and Design Institute), and a Visiting Professorship to Prof. Alan Dix as a Visiting Professor of Human Computer Interaction. Prof. Dix contributed to Cardiff Met’s Professorial Lecture series in April with his presentation Treading Out Technology: Exploring The Edges During a Thousand Mile Walk Round Wales.  Dr Cathy Treadaway Fellowship at the Royal Society of the Arts Dr. Cathy Treadaway, Reader in Creative Practice, has been awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. The citation for her nomination as Fellow was for her ‘invaluable contribution to Higher Education.’ The RSA is an enlightenment organisation committed to finding innovative practical solutions to today’s social challenges.

Claire Curneen, Blue Study, 2008.

 André in the West and Pigs & Rabbits Professor André Stitt exhibited new paintings and drawings in a number of locations during 2013. The work was a culmination of a site-specific research project concerning post-colonial identity, migration, community, location and belonging. Based on a residency at Maesglas Farm in West Wales during 2011-2012, the work evolved from a series of walks and journeys through Welsh speaking communities in coastal and rural locations between Cardigan and Machynlleth. The work went on show at Oriel Myrddin Gallery, Carmarthen and Maesglas Farm, Cardigan during January and February 2013 and was opened by Professor Mike Pearson (Aberystwyth University). The exhibition then moved to Leeds College of Art Gallery.

André also presented ‘Murmur’, a painting performance, and two further site-specific works at other locations in Northern Poland as part of January’s Pigs & Rabbits, an international performance event being held at Sopot National Museum in Poland.  Claire Curneen New Blue and White Claire Curneen exhibited her work ‘Blue Study’ as part of New Blue and White at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston from 20 February – 14 July 2013. Blue and white means, at its simplest, cobalt pigment applied to white clay. Curated by Emily Zilber, the exhibition takes its inspiration

from global blue-and-white traditions, and invited 37 international artists to examine the ways in which contemporary makers have explored this rich body of material culture.  Sally presents her research on Ossie Clark Sally Grant, Senior Lecturer in Textiles Design presented a paper on the influence of ethnic clothes and the counter culture (1968 – 1977) at Creative Cut, the first International Conference on the subject of creative pattern cutting in fashion. Hosted by the University of Huddersfield in February 2013, the conference aimed to provide a platform for pattern cutters, fashion designers, students, and educators to explore the impact and direction for creative pattern cutting. Sally’s participation at the conference was supported by a Higher Education Academy Travel Fund and a CSAD Research Small Award.  Open Heart Research Assistant appointed Congratulations to Leah McLaughlin who was recently appointed as the Research Assistant for the Centre for Applied Research in Inclusive Arts and Design (CARIAD). Leah’s role will be to combine the use of video ethnographic methods with exploratory film-making to capture creativity and innovate inclusive design outputs. The post is funded by a Cardiff Metropolitan University Research

Innovation Award (RIA) and will form the basis of the Open Heart project.  Dr Cathy Treadaway update Dr Cathy Treadaway has been awarded CEWN funding for the research project she is leading called i-Magine, to scope development of an interactive environment for the new Paediatric Unit at Morriston Hospital. Cathy is working with Prue Thimbleby, Arts in Health coordinator for Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board, Karen Yunqiu Li from Swansea University and Richard Crandon from On Par Productions Ltd. Cathy has also been awarded Cardiff Met Seed Funding to host two events associated with this project.

In addition, Cathy has been working with Gwalia Cyf Housing Association on a SIP placement. She has been visiting residential care homes for the elderly to scope further research on playfulness in later life and meeting with managers and care workers involved with care for elderly residents with dementia in Gwalia’s homes in the Swansea area.  CARIAD Nominated The Centre for Applied Research in Inclusive Arts and Design (CARIAD) has been nominated to represent Cardiff Met in the Queens Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education. The Trust currently works to promote world-class excellence in UK universities and colleges Cardiff School of Art & Design 37

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Salts Roof Space and Salts Mill.

and this biennial prize is the UK’s most prestigious form of national recognition open to a UK academic or vocational institution.  Research Seminars CSAD’s programme of Research Seminars has continued in the spring term with an interesting line-up of speakers. Open to all staff and students, the seminars took place on Wednesday evenings at Howard Garden’s Tommy’s Bar. Speakers included Professor Clive Cazeaux on metaphor, Product Design research students Clara Watkins and Claire Andrews, Professor Gaynor Kavanagh on memory, ceramicists Dr Natasha Mayo and Leah McLaughlin, followed by Paul Granjon on hand-made machines.  Live Notation Professor André Stitt is continuing to develop links with the ‘Live Notation’ research group. The group is a collaboration between the Department of Fine Art & C3RI, Sheffield Hallam University, live digital coders at the Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, and an invited group of practitioners from both fields.

The group’s aim is to take a novel approach to the fields of performance, live art and live coding.

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 Cloth and Memory Philippa Lawrence is starting site-specific research for a new commission as part of the Cloth and Memory 2 exhibition, to be held at Salts Mill, Yorkshire in 2013. She was invited to submit a proposal by curators June Hill, Jennifer Hallam and Professor Lesley Millar. The new work will extend links with British industry by drawing on expertise from William Halstead, Bradford-based weavers of luxury suiting fabrics for many of the top fashion houses. The project is supported

by Cardiff Met Seed funding.  Dr Canavan Presents Dr Keireine Canavan presented her research at the Endangered Textile Tradition Symposium & Exhibition.

Organised by WEFT (World Eco Fibre & Textiles), the symposium took place at Brunei Gallery SOAS, London in January and brought together international textile artists and scholars. Keireine’s paper, ‘Al Sadu Textiles from Kuwait: lost meanings and future prospects’, focused on her research into traditional weaving techniques and symbolism in Al Sadu Textiles.

 André’s Back catalogue An interview with André Stitt has been featured on Girona University’s European Live Art Archive (ELAA) website, which aims to share knowledge, experience and documentation of live art throughout the European Union. André’s work has also been featured in the recent issue of Scope: Contemporary Research Topics, which focused on the documentation of and responses to the 2011 ‘AAA’ residency at Dunedin School of Art, New Zealand.

Finally, through spoken word, text, sound and projected image André Stitt reflected on the place of performance art in his life during May’s Hitparaden - the best of live art which was held at Pumpehuset, Copenhagen, Denmark. From his childhood, and the civil conflict in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to a life spent travelling and making art around the world, André considered how memory and recall, allegory, communal narrative, conflict, codes and myth inform the present.

Pip Walter - Illustration.

Student News  Success for Jan Bennett Congratulations to Jan Bennett, who has successfully completed her PhD. Jan’s thesis Visions of Human Enhancement: Art, Popular Science Imagery, and Public Opinion was praised by the viva panel and described as a ‘ground-breaking piece of work’ and unique in its approach which ‘thoughtfully engages with the visual elements of science communication, while attending to understanding how audiences react to imagery, taking into account the potential for artists to occupy a more critical space in the milieu of scientific, public engagement’.  Painting the town yellow Third year Illustration student Pip Walter recently painted a mural on the windows of local creative hub, Milgi Lounge, Cardiff. Pip chose for her design to create a warm, happy and comfortable atmosphere and was delighted when two weeks after she had completed her mural that the café then painted the outside yellow, perfectly setting off her work.

Second year Illustration students Elle Barnard and Florence Jackson have also recently illustrated a knockout window for Milgi in City Road as has third year Illustration student Aimee Watling.

 Illustration is getting it out there George Moreton (Illustration Year 3) was featured in Plastik Magazine talking about the inspiration behind his work, including the pieces that he’s preparing for a forthcoming exhibition at Urban Outfitters in Cardiff city centre on the theme of Alzheimer’s. George met Plastik Magazine’s editor Marc Thomas at the Content: Magazine in a Day event that Marc organised in October as a part of Cardiff Design Festival. Lindsey Gibbs (Illustration Year 3) recently came second in the Barbican’s Where the Wild Things Are drawing competition and Anna Lisa Bissett (Illustration Year 3) exhibited a piece as a part of The Sylvanian Families A Study in Art at The Strand Gallery. All the work exhibited was available to buy via a silent auction. First year illustration students presented The Snow Goose, a shadow puppet show based on the story

by Paul Gallico in Tommy’s Bar.  Textiles shows Level Six Makers exhibited at Washington Gallery, Penarth, during the early part of the spring term. The exhibition included work by Rachel Davies, Sophia Griffiths, Bethy Helliwell, Jennifer Kirkham, Julie Morse, Natasha O'Connor, Julie Rees and Fiona Trumper.

Textiles students showed work at Milkwood Gallery, Cardiff, during January.

Melin Tregwynt, woolen mill and manufacturer, also exhibited work by eight students during the autumn term.

Also in January, Becca Tudor Price saw her textile hangings exhibited at the Harrogate Gift Fair as part of the trade stand for Festive Productions Ltd. Becca’s work was selected by Jonathan Hughes, Production Manager for Festive Productions Ltd from work produced as part of a collaborative consultancy project in the autumn term. Louise Webber also had a series of laser cut wood designs selected for use by the company.  Textiles News Third year Textile students recently welcomed University of Glamorgan’s Fashion students to CSAD when they took part in a very successful joint project. The event was part of a collaborative element of the CSAD Textiles ‘Consultancy’ Module. The programme also hosted a day dedicated to looking at sustainability in the Textiles Industry in Wales. Speaking about the event, Senior Lecturer Sally Grant said, “We have worked with CYLCH [the Wales Community Recycling Network] to bring together different aspects of this fascinating area of Textiles of the future. Speakers from Vintage Vision came offering placements and talks to our students, and two design companies held up-cycling workshops using donated woollen goods. The day ended with a ‘swishing’ event, where students exchanged clothes through a tariff system where no money changed hands, to promote the idea of reloving clothes.”

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CSAD students working on a large scale painting for the artist Jeremy Deller.

 Product Design student raises money for Ty^ Hafan children’s hospice Gethin Ceidiog Hughes and headlining DJ Mikey-Ro, recruited a host of DJs for a drum’n’bass night in aid of Tŷ Hafan children’s hospice. Gethin, a Product Design student at CSAD, said: “A children’s hospice certainly puts everything else into perspective - we really don’t know how lucky we are.” The event, Pitch Presents Mikey-Ro took place at the Moon Club in Womanby Street.  Three 2nd year Fine Art students work with Jeremy Deller Helen Bur, Gabrielle Moore and Ruth Hitchens spent a week working on a large scale painting for the artist Jeremy Deller.

The painting is part of an installation by Deller called 'So many ways to hurt you, the life and times of Adrian Street'.

The work tells the story of Adrian Street, the son of a coal miner who became a pro wrestler. The piece was shown in the Tramshed, Grangetown, Cardiff as part of the Diffusion Festival an international festival of photography that took place throughout May.  Group show ‘Seven’ A group of Illustration students has recently had a show ‘Seven’ about Alzheimer’s disease at Urban Outfitters in Cardiff city centre.

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Professor Andre Stitt’s The Little Summer of St. Michael coaster collection.

Enterprise

School News

 Coasting to success André Stitt’s painting The Little Summer of St. Michael was on view as part of the prestigious John Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool until 6 January. André’s painting has also been immortalised in the form of a coaster set and as a set of greetings cards, souvenirs to accompany the show.

 Professor Perivoliotis visits CSAD Professor Margaret Perivoliotis, Professor with Tenure from the Faculty of Fine Art and Design of the Technological Educational Institution (TEI) of Athens, Greece, recently visited the Cardiff School of Art & Design for a four day Erasmus TS Mobility visit. Dr Perivoliotis was hosted by the Textile Department at Llandaff Campus and visited Fine Arts at Howard Gardens Campus. The meeting secured a bilateral agreement between the two institutions, and concluded with Professor Perivoliotis delivering a lecture about Hellenic Textiles to final year students.

 The social potentials of creative thinking Senior Lecturer Natasha Mayo has recently undertaken a placement with Valley and Vale Community Arts as part of the HEFCW funded Strategic Insight Programme Project. The purpose of the placement was to determine shared approaches between the ways in which community arts based projects facilitate exploration of thought and creativity by using methods identified by the Making the Creative Process Visible research project, which seeks to identify patterns and tendencies in creative thinking.  Spectrum exhibition Cardiff Open Art School (COAS) student Julie Parker, inspired by taking part in the Developing your Portfolio and the Life Drawing courses, has organised the Spectrum exhibition with her daughter Natasha, which ran in the spring at Rumney Library in Cardiff.

 Annie exhibits at the European Parliament Annie Giles Hobbs’s work has been on show at the Welsh Office in Brussels as part of an invited exhibition. The work then moved to the European Parliament.  CSAD students help create a giant version of Charles Byrd’s Cardiff Castle CSAD Fine Art and Illustration students volunteered to help with the BBC’s Big Canvas Day at Cardiff Central Library to help the public create a giant version of Charles Byrd’s painting of Cardiff Castle in Autumn. The day was organised by the BBC to publicise the launch of the Your Painting’s website. The giant painting was displayed at The Cardiff Story throughout March.

David Fitzjohn, Fimbulwinter.

 Howard Gardens Gallery Two exhibitions were on display during the spring in the Howard Gardens Gallery.

Portfolio brought together staff from the CSAD with staff and students from Montclair State University’s (New Jersey) MFA Printmaking Department. The exhibition explored several different and contrasting approaches to work on paper, including printmaking, collage, drawing, papermaking and artists’ books. CSAD team members taking part included Chris Glynn, Sue Hunt and Tom Martin.

Light Over the Horizon, an exhibition of work by Avtarjeet Dhabjal, took place from 15 February until 14 March.

Avtarjeet has a long and distinguished history of working in the public art sector in the UK and internationally since the 1970s. He has completed numerous commissions working in mixed media including stone carving, drawing, photography and light installation.  Fimbulwinter David Fitzjohn’s work Fimbulwinter was selected as part of a call for artists responding to the idea of Tall Tales.

Curated by Rachel McManus, the exhibition was shown at Oriel Davies Gallery, in Newtown, in April. In this piece, David references lost ideas whilst imagining an uncertain future. The exhibition formed part of the gallery’s TestBed programme, which supports new and experimental work by artists based in Wales and the Borders.

 Chris Glynn at Children’s Literature Festival In the run-up to the inaugural Cardiff Children’s Literature Festival, Chris Glynn ran a workshop on author-illustrator collaboration with Ruth Morgan, with whom he has just published a new book, The Gardening Pirates. The workshop took place as part of a conference on writing for children at Glamorgan’s Treforest Campus in February. The conference included an hour’s speed dating for illustrators and authors, and Chris documented some of the other talks. CSAD Illustration students were also involved as audience and illustrators-inresidence.

 Project Cardiff February saw part two of Project Cardiff, an exhibition that gave recognition to some of the 50 most influential movers and shakers in the Cardiff creative community as nominated by their peers, on show at Milkwood Gallery, Cardiff. The initiative was organised jointly by CSAD’s Chris Dennis and photographer Lann Niziblian and the exhibition included photographic portraits of Cardiff residents involved in art, design, photography and performing arts, highlighting the many people behind Cardiff’s thriving creative scene including CSAD’s own Olwen Moseley and Angie Dutton.

 Duncan Ayscough: Guest Maker showcase Between 8 March and 28 April 2013 CSAD staff member and ceramicist Duncan Ayscough was featured as Guest Maker at an exhibition at Cardiff’s Craft in the Bay gallery.

 Chris Dennis and Pack of Wolves The artists’ collective, the Pack of Wolves, exhibited at Milkwood Gallery, Cardiff, during February and March. Once Upon Again included work by Chris Dennis, Amelia Johnstone and Illustration student Layla Holzer amongst others.

 Fab Lab Plans for Fab Lab’s initial activities are also being planned as project leader Olivia Kotsifa completes her training. It is anticipated that the first courses will be launched in autumn 2013.

Chris also exhibited at Hemmed In (Contemporary Embroidery), MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, December 2012 - January 2013 and Stitchgasm (Contemporary Embroidery), Hive Gallery in February 2013.

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Lydia Spurrier-Dawes jumpers.

Dan Peterson illustration.

Graduate news  Mothers of Africa - Zumbathon, jumpers and OBE Angharad Jones and Vikki Jenkins’ Zumbathon raised £1,065 for Mothers of Africa. Around 40 participants from CSAD and Cardiff University took part.

Second year Fine Art student Lydia Spurrier-Dawes has been busy knitting jumpers for Mothers of Africa, which were taken out by the team from Cardiff School of Medicine to the projects they are working on in Zambia.

The School was also delighted to learn that Professor Judith Hall, founder of Mothers of Africa, was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.  Print International 2013 Invitation Professor David Ferry RE was invited to be the sole selector for the 2013 Print International. Working with the Arts Manager of the Wrexham International, David was instrumental in establishing the structure and concept of the exhibition.

We are delighted that CSAD students and staff Amanda Agyei, Bill Chambers, James Green, Florence Walkey and recent MA Ian Wilkins are among the featured exhibitors. David also wrote the catalogue essay and will showcase some of his own prints in the exhibition, which will tour around the UK after the initial Wrexham dates.

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 The Cat Who Wore A Hat Illustration graduate Lucy Freegard has published The Cat Who Wore a Hat, a children’s eBook, in conjunction with author Rob Horlock. The book is the second in the Creature Teachers series of books aimed at children aged 18 months to 6 years. Both books are available to download from Amazon.  Colossal feature Work by Illustration graduate Ed Fairburn has been recently featured in the press, both on the popular art and design blog Colossal and in the Daily Mail. Ed works with a patchwork of patterns made by the features on the map to create large scale portraits that emerge from the topographical features.  A talk at the castle 2012 graduate Dan Peterson gave a talk on his experiences as the War Artist of 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards in Afghanistan at Cardiff Castle in November. As well as studying with CSAD and having worked as an illustrator and graphic designer for over twenty five years, Dan was also a member of the armed forces for nearly 14 years. He recorded his experiences using pens, paints, sketches and his camera to create a visual diary of day-to-day life on the front line. In January, Dan also exhibited his portraits of former Welsh Prime Minister Lloyd George and leading British political contemporaries at the National Assembly for Wales' Senedd building.

 Fine Art graduates commissioned for hospital artwork Three CSAD graduates are working on a pioneering art therapy project to treat mental illness in South Wales.

Commissioned by The Gwanwyn Arts Festival from Age Cymru, and the Cardiff and the Vale University Health Board, Adam McGee-Abe, Joseph Simon Murray and Elizabeth Alison are producing a piece of tactile artwork for Llandough Hospital. Philip Thomas of the Gwanwyn Festival explained: “We came up with the idea of asking some up-and-coming talent to contribute their ideas to help make this project a reality, and so we approached the Cardiff School of Art and Design.

There were a lot of really good and imaginative submissions and it wasn’t an easy decision for us when it came to awarding the commission, but we finally chose Adam, Joseph and Elizabeth’s idea of producing four, three-dimensional and tactile wall panels on the theme of the four seasons.” The artwork will be installed at the new mental health facilities being developed at Llandough Hospital which will open this year.  Waddesdon Manor Placement Congratulations to 2012 BA Textiles graduate Stephanie Bastin, who recently undertook a two-week placement at the prestigious National Trust and Rothschild’s property, Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. The placement was organised by Textiles Lecturer Philippa Lawrence.

David Ferry.

Darning the Land: Sewn at Waddesdon Manor.

Staff news  David Ferry: Desirable Ridge Intrusions Professor David Ferry’s latest exhibition Desirable Ridge Intrusions was on show at the Gallery Petit, London this spring.

The exhibition, curated by Sandra Higgins in association with the National Print Gallery, included ten new montages of mountain idylls. The landscapes are more ‘Sound of Music’ than classic landscapes and Ferry explained, “we could be looking at an act of post-apocalyptic restructure of a pastoral scene that no longer exists.”  OPAN Treadaway Dr Cathy Treadaway has recently been awarded funding from the Older People and Ageing research and development Network (OPAN Cymru) to support a Research Development Group to investigate the ways in which ludic devices (toys for older adults) can support wellbeing in later life. OPAN is funded by the National Institute of Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR) in Wales, which, in part, aims to increase Wales’ capacity for ageing research and stroke research. Cathy will use this funding to build on previous Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research to examine traditional handcrafting activities such as knitting, crochet, sketching etc., and use this data to inform the development of playful digital craft tools/interfaces that have the potential to bridge the gap between making by hand and digital technology.

 Welsh Crucible Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos has been selected as one of 30 researchers to join the Welsh Crucible. Alexandros will join participants from across the Higher Education sector and Industry in Wales on a programme of training and networking opportunities for talented early- to midcareer researchers. The Welsh Crucible is designed to aid personal, professional and leadership development for research leaders of the future, and this year, three applications were received for every place. Applicants were chosen for their excellence in the field of research and commitment to interdisciplinary work.  European Art Science and Technology Network (EASTN) Congratulations to Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos and Olivia Kotsifa, who are part of a new European network awarded 200,000€ by the EU’s Culture Programme to promote the use of science and technology in the arts. After scoring 100/100 for their successful application, the project partners aim to increase accessibility to digital creativity by promoting awareness of current artistic trends and technologies. The funding will be used to support artistic creation and dissemination at a trans-national level by fostering the development and exchange of knowledge, experimenting with tangible artefacts and promoting European artistic digital innovations to a wider audience.

Led by the Association pour la Création et la Recherche sur les Outils d’Expression in France, the other project partners are; Fab Lab Barcelona in Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Spain; Department of Audio and Visual Arts in Ionian University in Greece; and Institut für Musik und Akustik in Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Germany.  Pip Lawrence Waddesdon Manor update Philippa Lawrence will be presenting a public talk on Darning the Land: Sewn at Waddesdon Manor in July 2013. The talk will focus on the results of her SIP project with the Manor, which resulted in sitespecific installations inspired by study of unseen aspects of the textile collections.

An extended flowerbed has been sown with a wildflower mix that includes Californian Poppy, African Daisy, Golden Tickseed, Corn Marigold and Blue Cornflower, which is designed to produce a stunning display until November, starting with blues before turning a golden hue in the late summer and autumn. Also blooming from June, the summer carpet bedding on the Parterre will also reflect a feminine collection, Baroness Edmond de Rothschild’s 17thand 18th-century lace, with the planting following the patterns made by the threads.

Cardiff School of Art & Design 43

CSAD MAGAZINE

Chris Glynn.

 CSAD staff running drawing workshop at V&A CSAD staff Dr Natasha Mayo and Chris Glynn will soon be running a drawing workshop at the Sackler Centre at the Victoria and Albert Museum for Art & Design staff. Mapping Conversations will extend Glynn and Mayo’s respective research by exploring ways in which drawing can be employed as a communal or conversational activity by visualising thoughts, enabling the sharing of ideas and building new knowledge.  As Seen: Modern British Painting and Visual Experience Held at the National Museum Cardiff, the symposium explored the contribution made by British artists to our understanding of visual perception. In particular, the participants considered whether there is something unique about the way modern British artists have approached the task of recording visual experience. Taking as a starting point the extraordinary late work of the Wales born painter Evan Walters, the symposium presented the results of a collaborative study undertaken between staff at Cardiff School of Art & Design, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, Swansea Metropolitan, and Bristol University. Symposium contributors included Emma Chambers (Curator for Modern British Art, Tate), David Ferry (Professor of Printmaking and Book Arts, CSAD), Dr Robert Pepperell (Professor of

Fine Art, CSAD), James Green (PhD Candidate) and Dr Nick Wade (Emeritus Professor, University of Dundee).

A group of CSAD staff and students went to do some plenary doodles at Cardiff University. Jorge Cham (creator of PhD Comics) packed the house with a talk to graduate students on the Art of Procrastination.  NHS Chris Glynn has undertaken his first Illustrated University day for the NHS with an event organised by the new Centre for Work Based Learning.  Model making Paul Wilgeroth lead a project to make a model of a camper van for Fizz Creations which will be turned into a toaster.

Paul is also working on initial plans for a spin out project following his students having undertaken some market research as a live project in preparation for it.  Microworld : Arcadia CSAD staff including Wendy Keay-Bright organised Microworld : Arcadia in Cardiff in May, a big experiment in interactive art.

Paul Granjon showed some robots and Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos exhibited an interactive performance sound piece.

Credits: Journalism: Marc Thomas (@iammarcthomas) Design: Sarah Garwood, Creative Services, Cardiff Metropolitan University Images: Mal Bennett, CSAD, Cardiff Metropolitan University Proofreading: Red Ribbon Communications

44 Cardiff School of Art & Design

Did you know?

COAS has attracted 126 students this term, breaking records for summer term attendance. A number of new courses are being launched this term including a short Make a Documentary on Your iPad class and a portrait painting and drawing class.

Plans to launch Cardiff Open Design School are being developed with the first courses due to take place this autumn.

Cardiff Open Art School It doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced artist, are preparing a portfolio to apply for an art, design, architecture or creative industries course or if you’ve never picked up a pencil or paintbrush before, we’ve got something to offer you. What all our staff and students have in common is their passion for art and design so here’s what we’ve got planned for spring and summer 2013 - it would be great if you could join us.

Summer Holidays 2013 All the courses are run at our Howard Gardens Campus and unless otherwise stated run for ten evening sessions.

Full course details, profiles of our tutors and lots of images of student work can be found at

bit.ly/csad-coas You can simply book and pay over the phone on 029 2041 6628 or send in a cheque made payable to Cardiff Metropolitan University with the enrolment form available on the website to Cardiff Open Art School, Cardiff School of Art & Design, Howard Gardens Campus, Howard Gardens, Cardiff, CF24 0SP. Follow COAS on Twitter at @CardiffCOAS or join our Facebook group Cardiff Open Art School at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Screen printing masterclass with Chris Lloyd To be announced Snake Mountain Publishing: Learn How to Make Your Own Comics with James Green Painting in oil or acrylic with Chris Holloway 3, 2, 1… DRAW! A Three Day Summer Drawing Course with James Green

22 July

22 to 23 July

23 July to 25 July

Life Drawing with Chris Holloway

24 to 25 July

Learn to use the Potter's Wheel and Decorate your Pots with Morgen Hall 27 July for five Saturdays Letterpress Printmaking Workshop with Laura Lilley Exploring Drawing with Chris Holloway

27 July

29 to 30 July

CSAD MAGAZINE

www.cardiffmet.ac.uk/csad www.cardiffmet.ac.uk/studywithus

Cardiff School of Art & Design, Howard Gardens Campus, Cardiff, CF24 0SP Tel: +44 (0)29 2041 6154 Fax: +44 (0)29 2041 6944 email: csad@cardiffmet.ac.uk Cardiff School of Art & Design, Llandaff Campus, Western Avenue, Cardiff, CF5 2YB Tel: +44 (0)29 2041 6070 Fax: +44 (0)29 2041 6640 email: csad@cardiffmet.ac.uk

Foundation

Undergraduate

Taught Postgraduate

• Cardiff Diploma in Foundation Studies (Art & Design) (Bridgend) allied programme only

• HNC Building Technology and Management (Ystrad Mynach)

• Postgraduate Certificate in Professional & Research Skills: Art & Design • Master of Fine Art (MFA) • Master of Design (MDes) • Master of Design (MDes) SADI • MA (Cardiff School of Art & Design) • Fine Art • Communication • Illustration • Artist Designer Maker • Product Design • Textiles • Photographic Practice • Art & Science • Philosophy • Ecologies • MA Ceramics • MSc Advanced Product Design • MSc Environmental Change and Practice

• Foundation Degree in Applied Art & Design (Bridgend) • Foundation Degree in Ceramics (Cardiff and The Vale College) • Foundation Degree in Contemporary Textiles Practice (Cardiff and The Vale College) • Foundation Degree in Graphic Communication (Cardiff and The Vale College) • Foundation Degree in Sustainable Building Practice (Bridgend, Pembrokeshire, Llandrillo College, & Coleg Powys)

• HND Architectural Design & Technology • BSc (Hons) Architectural Design & Technology • BA (Hons) Artist Designer: Maker • BA (Hons) Fine Art • BA (Hons) Ceramics • BA (Hons) Textiles • BA (Hons) Graphic Communication • BA (Hons) Illustration • BA (Hons) Product Design • BSc (Hons) Product Design • BA (Hons) Photographic Practice (Bridgend)

Research Degrees • • • • •

MPhil PhD Professional Doctorate in Art Professional Doctorate in Design Professional Doctorate in Ecological Building Practices