Saturday, 7 May 2011

Starting college

I have found the Contemporary Applied Art course at Herts to be a joy from day one.  I have had the opportunity to explore basic elements of ceramics, glass, textiles, papermaking, jewellery, and crochet amongst others.  I have spent the last 25 years exploring art and textiles - mostly embroidery and patchwork, but over the last year I have discovered print.  I love colour and have studied a lot of colour theory related to stitch and patchwork, but overprinting layers of colour brings a whole new aspect to consider. 

Also, going back to college after .... years (!), meant I was back to academic study.  This has been an eye-opener, and I have so enjoyed it.  I have always enjoyed following a syllabus, and working in the classroom environment, usually with practical subjects.  But the opportunity to learn new things that I would probably not have chosen myself, has been enlightening.  Our first theory module was PostModernism - definitely not one I would have chosen.  But having listened and read, I now see Post Modernism in all sorts of things.  For example, driving to college in my first year, I was listening to Joseph & the Technicoloured Dreamcoat on the CD in the car.  I listened to the song sung by the Pharoah - played by an Elvis character, poking fun at the lack of understanding of the plagues, which are subsequently explained by Joseph.  Postmodernism may use humour to make its point - as ably demonstrated by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

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