Art Foundation Final Exhibition (FMP #4)

So it's all over. One year (or 9 months if you want to get technical) of blood, sweat, tears, sweat, stress, hard work, sweat and late nights. Before I started my art foundation, I was something of a lost confused soul, watching all of my friends go off to uni but having little idea of which path in art and design I wanted to take myself. Twelve months on, I can now whole heartedly say that a foundation course was the best thing I could have possibly done for myself and my future. I have never worked so hard and created so much work in such a short space of time, or developed my creative capabilities in such a profound way. 

With the end of the year comes the final exhibition. This is the culmination of everything from the year, but in particular the ten week final major project. I've done a few posts on my FMP previously which I will link here, here and here. The foundation exhibition goes up alongside all of the degree shows at Manchester School of Art and is ultimately a big part of the final grade. 

On the surface, my FMP has stayed consistent to my original subject as experimenting with letterforms has been central throughout the ten weeks. However, discovering textiles was a defining turning point for me and what I initially intended to be a short research test turned into a change of direction. From that point onwards, the craft, process and materials became key. I taught myself how to knit and crochet and my focus changed from illustrating phrases with typography onto testing, exploring and developing the potential of traditional textiles crafts in the context of graphic design and typography.

After weeks of testing, developing, refining and many balls of wool later, I have created one piece to showcase what I have been working on in my FMP. I will insert a few photographs but as a general outline, my final show is a wall piece in which I have recreated the definition of 'TYPOGRAPHY' with crochet and knitted letters, replicating the links, fonts and punctuation of online dictionaries...

I am really genuinely happy with how my exhibition has turned out. As a huge perfectionist it was difficult to let go of the fact that this is a handmade piece of graphic design, and so imperfections are necessary to its character. The 'homemade' element is, I hope, a part of the charm. It's been a labour of love to bring this exhibition to life and I feel at a bit of a loss now that its all over!

On Monday I handed in all of my supporting work from the year, my portfolio, sketchbooks and artist research for marking over the next couple of weeks. After this time the Manchester School of Art degree show will open to the public (which I will do a little post on with more details), so essentially I am finished for the summer now. I have loved every single minute of being in a creative environment this year, I have met such amazingly talented friends and tutors and I truly wish I could do it all over again.

Now though, it's time for some chill time...

FMP #3

Before I start this post I want to apologise for my less than consistent attempts at blogging over the last few weeks. Hopefully this post will go some way to explaining that but the short version is that I've been crazily running around trying to get my final exhibition together for the foundation/degree show at Manchester School of Art. My final deadline is Monday 1st June so I'm really looking forward to having more time to dedicate to blogging soon. For now though, since my life is revolving around my final major project and completing my exhibition, I thought it'd be good to do a little update. If you haven't seen my previous two FMP posts I will link them here and here so you can take a look at 'the story so far'. 

The final countdown for my FMP is well and truly in full swing now. This week I've been getting my hands dirty preparing my exhibition space, getting it cleaned, sanded and repainted as well as measuring everything out to within an inch of my life. I'll tell you now, if measuring burnt significant calories, I'd be a very skinny girl by now! It's no secret to people that know me that I'm a huge perfectionist and so everything's taking a fair bit of time to get right, but I'm really happy with how it has gone so far *touches every item of wood in sight*. I have been allocated a wall space in a corner so I've had quite a few obstacles to overcome including a big red fire alarm which has played havoc with my need for clean white surfaces! Preparing the exhibition space has been a fun experience though and it's been lovely to make some last memories and spend time with some really great friends I've made on the course. 

To a certain extent I thought it would be nice to keep my actual exhibition as a bit of a surprise for when it's fully complete, so I won't be sharing too many photos of it today. I will say that I'm still continuing with the theme of experimental typography which has evolved into using techniques such as crochet and knitting to make letterforms. Over the last 2 weeks I've been locked away creating what must be hundreds of little wooly letters - but I don't want to give too much away! All will be revealed very soon and I'm working my fingers to the bone to get it finished by next week. 

I realise this has been a very quick insight into what I've been doing with myself these past few weeks but I hope you all understand! There isn't too much completed new work to share but I still want to document the process of this project and I think the exhibition preparation is a big part of that. I can't wait to share the finished results of the show as well as photographs from the private view later on in June. One last final push!

*Sneaky preview!*