Work Experience with Alice Walton

Over the summer I managed to get a bit of work experience with local ceramic artist, Alice Walton.

 

I learnt a lot during the time I spent helping her. She taught me basic skills such as how to pull handles, pack, set and fire a kiln and reclaim and properly wedge clay, as well as showing me how to make and decorate some of her products. I learnt how to properly press-mold objects, which I really enjoyed, and used an extruder for the first time!! I did a lot of glaze tests for her and this involved applying some to raw clay. I've never done this before but it seemed to work and it saves a lot of time because you don't need as many firings. We even tried to take apart an old kiln which was really interesting.

 

Overall, the whole experience was great. I learnt so much and got a lot of advice. It also made things seem a lot more achieveable (in terms of becoming self-employed), as it wasn't an option that I'd really, truely considered.

 

Take a look at her lovely work:

http://www.alicewaltonceramics.co.uk/index.htm 

http://www.alicewalton.blogspot.co.uk/

Finland

My final trip before I go back to uni was Finland. I'm half Finnish, so I went over with my mum to visit family and friends.

 

The architecture and landscape is very different, which I found incredibly inspiring.

 

I also visited a few museums, including Arabia Center, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and the Design Museo and Design Forum Shop.

 

 

 

Zagreb

Next on my summer schedule was a holiday with my boyfriend to Zagreb, Croatia.

 

I visited a lot of museums to gather some research for my summer project, including The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Marton Museum, The Mimara Museum, The Museum of Arts and Crafts and The Museum of Broken Relationships (great one to go to with your boyfriend, huh?!).

 



 

 

 

Budapest and Novi Sad

 

So 2nd year came to an end and I moved back to Brighton for the summer!!

 

I had a very busy summer planned and the first stop was Exit Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia. We flew into Budapest, Hungary and spent two nights either side of the festival there.

 

Everyone should go to Hungary and Serbia. They are amazing (and cheap!!) places with lovely people and incredible food!!

 

I took some photos to use as colour inspirations and research for my summer project:

 

 

Sainsbury's!!

 

Just before going back to Brighton for summer, I found out that our meeting with the Sainsbury's design team had been organised!!

 

Although I didn't get the placement in the end, it was an excellent day. We got a tour around the Sainsbury's headquarters in Coventry, which included the area that the design team work in and their mock-shops.

 

After that, we had 10 minute slots to present to a team of about 5 people from the home-ware design team. It was pretty daunting and I think nerves got the better of me because I really didn't know what to expect, but it was such a good experience.

 

I'd never even considered working as a designer for a big company but it really opened my eyes and I will definitely look into it when I graduate.

 

These are two of the four boards that I presented, along with 4 sketchbooks and some of the samples from the 'Competition Project':