Personal statement

Art is something I would love to teach to young children and I believe that this course would help me achieve my goal and give me the chance to experience what the teaching career would be like. I believe that art should be taught in schools and if I am to continue on my current path, I could in my own practice use the childrens' work and play to influence my work whilst influencing the children through art. I feel like my perception of art has been flipped on its head, shaken up and put back down again, and I am left to do as I please. Throughout my time at North Nottinghamshire College I have experimented with fabrics, paint, clay, wire, string and computer software e.g. Photoshop, Illustrator and Premier Pro. Being able to experiment with different materials is something I really enjoy, as well as seeing how people interact with the same material in different ways. I mainly use different types of textiles in conjunction with 3D material. One example of combining two different materials is when I created a costume that took me two days to make. This idea sprang from a previous project, in which Nick Cave, Bart Hess and Lucy Mcrae inspired me; I love the movement of the Nick Cave's Sound Suits and Bart and Lucy's bubbles and other media which they attached to parts of the body. This went down the catwalk that the local council organises every year. This allowed me to show and perform my costumes to an audience, which has a broad age range. My Extended Diploma final major project has been my biggest body of work so far. It was a mini play and sense zone also using sounds, textures and light and dark areas. Viewers would take their shoes off to crawl and walk through this space I had created. This work was inspired by the work of Ernesto Neto with his hanging crocheted walkways; I like how he was able to create something that could hold the weight of a person. I have also worked with other students towards designing and then helping to create a sculpture for the town of Worksop. We had to co-operate with the local council and Campbell's Design throughout the design process to create the final product. Currently I am working on a body of work that is based on play and mark making. I feel it is pushing my own boundaries and what I am capable of doing. I am involving performance with costume which I am filming then trying to understand what happens to that performance when it is over, also what happens to the objects from the performance and where their uses then lie. For the past year and a half I have been a waitress at a local restaurant. I get on-board with the social events that take place in the village, for example; we create and dress up scarecrows for the festival, decorate pumpkins for Halloween and I get involved with decorating the restaurant for Christmas and New Year's Eve. The skills I have gained from working in a busy restaurant are that I can work in a team, work well under pressure including dealing with difficult customers, which has improved my communication skills. I look forward to progressing to university; this would allow me to extend the skills I already have and to experiment with new techniques. It will also allow me to continue to understand where I am in the art world today and what my artwork means.