I finally found my photos that I lost...on my own laptop! So here is my brooch from 1st semester! Enjoy!

Assessment....

I am pleased to announce that after the assessment of all my first semester work in January and my 2nd and 3rd semester work in May-June that I have passed my practical side of the course! A 2-2 in my casting project and a 2-1 in my Creative Project :) which I'm pleased about!

Essay....

I decided to write my 2nd essay of the year on something I was passionate about but also something I was intrigued to learn about (as I found the first essay not quite titillating enough for me) and so I decided to look into hair jewellery, its context and what it says about us as human beings. Also I looked into whether it could be considered sublime or not! I took inspiration, as expected, fromt he origins of hair jewellery in Victorian times:

also from the work of Francis Willemstijn:

'Haar'

Mona Hatoum:

and Melanie Bilenker:

Hopefully, my arguments that I put forward and my reasoning for them as well as my research into theoretical  back up will be sufficient. More news on this soon as I receive the grade on 18th June 2012.

On to final project...

The final project of the year finally came around where we had free reign to design in either ceramics or jewellery or both. I decided on jewellery as I have more ideas and my thought process is deeper with jewellery design. However, I decided to incorporate ceramics into my design because of reasons related to the theme. My theme was landscape and memory and childhood memories are a big part of me, whether I think about them or they're at the back of my memory and pushed aside. I was brought up in a small rural community in the village of Ystradgynlais called Cwmgiedd. It's a close knit community and everybody knows each other there. Its very rural and natural landscapes are everywhere to be found.

This village has given me some of the happiest memories of my life and I wanted to find a way to immortalize that so I created a head-piece and a neck-piece incorporating elements that represented (for me) my childhood and what Cwmgiedd was to me.

The sketchbook is always a starting point as well as designing through making and I lost count of the amount of times I drew then re-drew designs in my book until I finally found a way of working that I was happy with and that suited me and my personality. (It's taken me a year to realise and find this)

sketchbook pages

designing through making

I finally came up with 2 compositions I was happy with and that looked right together where all the elements just fitted like a puzzle. Here is the final result.

Head-piece

Neck-piece

The final pieces incorporated metal leaves, feathers, chain and porcelain discs that had childhood memories written on them.

Casting project - part 2....

Within the casting project, we also had to have a jewellery outcome as with most of our projects (you'll see why I say most later). A number of different metal casting techniques were offered to us: plaster (as with ceramics), silicone and cuttlefish. I chose to work with silicone becuase of the 3D outcome and the detail you can gain when casting in this material. I cast old china doll's heads and had the idea of finding a way to attach them onto the cast ceramic bottles I had already made. Corks seemed to be the way forward. However, I also had to make a cuttlefish mould (smelly stuff that it is!) and so I made flat backed doll's heads to make necklaces out of.

(final pictures to come)

first assessment been and gone....

So we all passed the first semester with flying colours and now it was on to MORE work! Next project was a casting project. Learning how to make plaster moulds in Ceramics was a nightmare. So many spillages and can safely say it's not my favourite thing to do. However, I do like the pouring part (the easiest part I suppose!).

Next came the thinking process and decorating with glazes etc. I decided on a turquoise blue 'drip' to reference the water bottle the cast originally came from. The results were a series of bottles, large cup and small cups all of a similar shape with blue dripping down them and decals with the words 'water' and 'dwr' (the welsh word for water) fired on.

London - December 2011

A visit to London in December proved inspiring and a time to relax and have fun with some friends. Also with a chance to see 'Grayson Perry-Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman' in the British Museum it was a trip not to be missed for me personally. I always said that I would love to go and see one of his exhibitions and that became a reality for me on this trip. It was awe-inspiring and ever so inspirational. Anyway, I also had a great time exploring other galleries such as the V&A, Saatchi and smaller galleries around London.

The group

 

British Museum

V&A

Saatchi

All work and no play though, makes Jill a dull girl so a few of us decided to head to Covent Garden one night for some relaxing retail therapy and stopped for a bit of lunch in Carluccio's (which happened to be the BEST Italian food I have ever eaten in my life.)

And just to top it all off, whilst waiting for our taxi we happened to be standing outside STRINGFELLOWS of all bloody places and had a good old giggle while listening to Julie trying to tell the cab driver where we were and avoiding that part particularly!