Louise West

Louise West is a contemporary lace artist based in Derby, England. She creates and develops lace designs from traditional methods such as bobbin lacemaking, including individual and bespoke jewellery. She continues to create lace for the purpose of to make the wearer feel good about themselves by using traditional methods to create modern wearable lace, and lace created and inspired by fine silver jewellery. Louise teaches her methods of lacemaking and the fine silver jewellery in her Derby based studio and other locations by arrangement. 

Louise started lacemaking in 1992 through doing various courses, and progressed very quickly, even gaining experience in the real world of work whilst in education through university. Lace has always been her main focus however she has taken on many formats and continues to be inspired by many more recent artists and designs.

She has also produced work for Nottingham Contemporary where she got asked to produce a lace design as a mould for concrete slabs to create an abstract design around the building for an architecture company.

Her attitude towards her career and education is inspiring as she is always willing to learn and experience new types of design, even though at first she thought she would be judged as she is of an older age going into uni when she did. She continues to be inspired by old and new methods which teaches me how to consider different types of artists when researching about photography.





After listening to her educational talk it's made me realise how i can use other aspects of art and design within my photography, for example she produced lace of Richard Branson, which originally would have been taken from an image. Therefore taking an image can then be adapted into so many ways, such as printing; linking with lace, as it acts like a template for it.






A lot of her work recently is contemporary as she creates fashion pieces through her love of lace, previously she has made products such as; an Autumn leaves Collar, Old fashioned Victorian fans linking back to the history of lace successfully and also a lace and silver ring. She has also linked lace with wire and produced something called Silver Magnolias. I particularly like this piece as she has created a sculptural piece that could be used within interior design.

The most recent exhibition was the 'In Fine Style:The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion, opened on 10th May and ran through to 6th October in the Queens Gallery, Buckingham Palace. Louise is featured on the digital audio visual guide given to visitors to the exhibition to explain how bobbin lace is made, as the paintings of the fashions feature a lot of lace. The short film was shot by Edward Jarvis and is being used in this introduction to the exhibition to explain the process. Louise was invited and attended the Private View on Monday evening (13th May) and was able to see the painting first hand.

"It is a great privilege to part of this prestigious exhibition, I hope my explanation helps the visitors understand lace a little" Louise West

I personally think that lace has affected the fashion industry positively since it all began as it has introduced patterns and textures that are vibrant and bold that are used to this day by fashion designers around the world. But it has also affected architecture through metal structures and buildings and is still developing each day now.


Bibliography

http://www.louisewestlacedesign.co.uk/

Camera Composition Controls

Today we got asked to re-produce 9 images of camera composition controls, these were; Line, Patterns/ Textures, Rule of Thirds, Frame within a Frame, Angle, Reflections, Colour, Focus, and Shadows.

After producing our images and editing them slightly we were asked to compare them to last years photos where we did the same task, this has allowed us to see how we have improved in our techniques.

October 2014

October 2013

Since last year i think i have improved my camera composition controls through my imagination and creativity within my photographs. Here you can easily see that this year i have photographed various subjects through broadening out my choice of subject matter , however last year you can see that i mainly photographed within one location, mainly with a landscape theme therefore restricting me and my skills.

Gemma Germains Guest Speaker

From today's guest lecturer called Gemma Germains, it has put my future into perspective as she seemed to be very genuine into what she was saying about the future and how there will be ups and downs and you have to work hard to get what you want in life.

Gemma Germains is a creative director who has her own studio and business called Well Made and works with luxury retailers, international publishers, restaurants, brand designers, and arts organisations to deliver copy, social media and content strategy. Today she gave us an incite into the creative industry and what we can do to help our future.

She spoke about internships; and the importance of getting paid. She believes that internships can be successful if paid and you can build relationships from it, however if not then she disagrees with them completely as companies thrive off your talent and fresh ideas and you as the creative designer get no credit from it. Some companies not even trusting you with client's design work and involving you with meetings etc, belittling you so it makes you feel worthless as you haven't been given the right work experience to get a full time job in your chosen career path.

However she believes solely in building up your own freelance work and portfolio. Mainly getting contacts for yourself and building upon them to gain stability and confidence within yourself and your own business/work. Gemma has explained to us that it can be hard and there are plenty of challenges ahead and some of them you do get wrong, and told us not to worry as it is a learning curve for all.

She believes "if you’ve got all this spare time and energy and finance to support yourself whilst working for someone else for free, why don’t you invest it into your own project? The stuff that gets a name is self-initiated work."

She also believes in going to university as it allows you to open all doors and to communicate with others that could potentially help you within your future career or even work alongside with. I agree with this statement solely as a lot of companies now like to see that you can work with others and they like to see that you are experienced within doing this. Not only this but some freelance work even hire teams/pairs of designers to work together on a brief for example a graphic designer and photographer coming together to create a poster.

Gemma Germains, i personally find inspiring as she told us about what she had been through on a story timeline of her highs and lows since she started university, it represented to me that nothing can stop you from achieving your dream. She came across to me as your average lady who can make mistakes but conquers from them to achieve something magnificent.

Bibliography

http://wellmadestudio.com/

https://vimeo.com/80978016

http://www.kin2kin.co.uk/gemma-germains/