Chelsea Frew

This is the work of Chelsea Frew from Glasgow School of Art's Degree show last week.
Chelsea has graduated in communication design and her work explored Glasgow's transitions and transformations during the last 100 years, particularly the cities spread into new satellite towns.
Chelsea's show had a very large installation (top image) allowing you to walk into her illustration and experience the city's bustling streets, while her sketchbooks 'Here, There and Everywhere' are a complete treat, a visual feast, celebrating the city of Glasgow and its people.

Ruth Crothers

A wonderful page from the sketch book of Ruth Crowthers produced on a visit to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
Ruth has just graduated in textile design from Glasgow School of Art with a collection of printed textiles for fashion inspired by cabinets of curiosities and trips to Edinburgh and Glasgow museums, her work is full of humour and wonderful observation.

David Stobart

David Stobart's degree show featured painted words on plastic covered stretcher frames which gave them a uniquely oily surface and a very different feel.
David Stobart works frequently with text, often using lyrics as his main source material.
The words appear as recognisable marks of language but are abstracted from reading material as very few complete words are legible.

“I produce visual art objects that encompass components of performance; song and painting in conjunction with ideas of a song-writing practice. The outcomes of my practice are paintings, photographs, sound installation, video, books and live events. Within the music spectrum I occupy the role of the writer of lyrics and singer of words. Consequently a practitioner of semantic satiation, and the loss of meaning to a word, encountered through repetition. Equally, this is true of the painting style I developed as my primary and now secondary outfit for this vein of work. Exploring a lyrics function and recognized letterform within a song. Focusing on the words similar visual performance on canvas to the audible harmony of a word when sung, in both instances seduction of an audience is prioritized.” David Stobart

Rachel Blair

It has been a very long time since I featured any jewellry on this blog but I was especially touched by the fragility and beauty of the work of Orkadian Rachel Blair at Glasgow School of Art last week. Raches work reminds me of burnt love letters, of loss and damage but it is also stunningly in its subtle hues and its patina.

"My pieces are mainly constructed from silver and gold wire frames with tension set wound papers. These papers are all hand dyed and wound individually to create intricate patterns incorporating the flaws and ripples. I uses papers to create pieces that have a sense of preciousness, papers that are usually worthless, but when manipulated and set in a precious setting have a much greater meaning. By using paper, my pieces have a limited lifetime. It is the wearing away of the precious papers within a materially precious band that is the interest. The piece is always under tension and stress, but aesthetically complete." Rachel Blair

Jacqui Casher

Jacqui Casher collects raindrops . . . she is a 'raindropologist' and these are some of the raindrops that she has gathered from a variety of sites across Scotland including 'The Bothy Project' at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. These bottled and named raindrops are part of her degree show for Glasgow School of Art.

". . .  I therefore draw attention to the small things I notice. By noticing I imagine other possibilities through encounters, conversations which inform and complete the work. Using contrasts between materials and other non-humans helps me into different ways of thinking and knowing about everyday phenomena"  Jacqui Casher

Daisy McManaman

Daisy McManaman's graduate show at glasgow School of Art beguiled, pulling you in with it's beautiful carousel horse and a glitter coated floor. Once into Daisy's space you had the treat of tiny embroideries of legs and black heels, elongated with the finished floss hanging down.
Daisy is inspired by burlesque and the art of seduction.

Bryony Rose

Bryony Rose was born in Chicago and has just graduated from Glasgow School of Art in Painting and Printmaking. I loved her show, which was fantastically flimsy and  kinetic, full of fragile magic and naive wonder.

With the discovery of the New World came the notion that plants originating from the Garden of Eden, instead of being corrupted, had in fact been fragmented and scattered across the world. By creating gardens that brought together all these plant elements, Renaissance scholars hoped to re-create something of this lost paradise. The moving elements of my piece were inspired by accounts of ancient gardens where statues were animated using hydraulics, and, in the case of the revolving sheep piece, the Irish immram tale of St. Brendan and his encounter with ‘The Island of Conforming Sheep’. Bryony Rose