Katie and her hair jewellery

Del and I are always talking about practice in the HE centre, we discuss the notion the we are all trying to communicate something and the materials and processes act as a vehicle for communication.

If we accept this, we can acknowledge that our choice of material is the only thing that defines us.

An example of work that demonstrates that the maker is not defined by their medium is the range of jewellery that is being developed by our third year blacksmith, Katie Wright.

She is using 3mm stock which is manipulated out at the Holm Lacey Forge. Katie will be forging some elements in sterling silver.

Just goes to show that the tradition doesn't define a discipline. A jeweller and a blacksmith! Who would have thought!

Mhairi and her book stand

Within our blacksmithing cohort there is always a huge range of responses to problems, ideas and making. Scale is always a hot topic and always needs to be considered carefully for the job at hand.

Mhairi is now in her third year and is developing a collection of functional objects based on her beautiful illustrations which have been inspired by listening to music.

These beautiful objects gave been designed to support music books.

Shoned and her 3dsp!

3DSP is a process module in the second year where students are asked to investigate a specific technique to enrich the practice.

This work belongs to our second year jeweller, Shoned. Shoned has a very detailed view on what she investigates and has decided to explore possible applications of colour that reflect images she has taken of mild and rott!!!

15 minutes later!

Rug almost done!!

Spending ....

Esther and Penny with their purchases .. Students buying Christmas presents and treats before getting back onto the coach it's been a successful day for all

Other news

Kate has just bought some massive circular needles from Ingrid Wagner three stalls down and is now frantically knitting a rug she's only been at it ten minutes and at this rate will have a rug within the hour !!! Go Kate !

Thought for the day

Preview of Made by Hand was fun Kate and I are both impressed by standard and variety of work on show all the second year Crafts Cluster students are due to arrive by coach anytime and I'm happy to see so many makers that I've taught in my career exhibiting I can remember pivotal tutorials with them all and I feel really inspired by the creative journeys that they have taken since graduation i decided to take photos of all their stands for this blog . I'm feeling quite emotional and very privileged about doing the job that I do being able to contribute to peoples creative journeys and with the students about to arrive an acutely aware of the journeys about to come ... So here's the photos of makers that are exhibiting today that I've taught ... and from me thank you I love teaching !!

Made by Hand!

So, finally, after a long day and a morning full of assessments, Del and I finally made it to the Made by Hand exhibition in Teadegar house, Newport!! It's the end of the day and we are both in need of food!!

Formative group assessments

Well, even though it only feels like we have just started the term, we are already in the middle of some of our formative assessments.

These particular ones are with our third year crafts cluster students. The assessment groups are of mixed practice and it allows the students to see that we are not defined by process, but by practice.

We talk about practice at Hereford, as we understand that all making is just communication and expression.

On today's round of formatives, we have a nice mix of blacksmithing, ceramics, woodworking and jewellery scale objects.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of how we do assessments here, it's quite informal and all members of the group contribute to the feedback.