‘Breakin’ not ‘breakdancing’

Another special mention goes to Christian Wood who came to the course after working for many years as a painter & decorator. Chistian is a breaker (not breakdancer) of some note and his show featured an amazing animation that evolved from a series of studies of his friends dancing. After graduating from the FdA Christian will continue his study in the third year of the BA in Illustration at Camberwell. While on the course he became an intrinsic part of the FdA family – you will be missed, Woodsy!

Jeepers.me

Jessie Price, a mature student, who came to the FdA after working at Penguin – deserves a special mention. She was working at Thomas Matthews during the show build but still managed to install one of the strongest exhibits and make an excellent contribution to the preparation of the space. Her website demonstrates what is possible in two years on the FdA. Jessie is a graduate from Cambridge and her leaving gift to her tutors carried a very touching testimony to her experience with us: “ I can’t thank you enough for your teaching, support and conversation. From my interview to now the course has been everything I hoped.” Jessie is a very smart, talented young lady and she deserves all the success she will undoubtably achieve!

FdA End of Year Shows

Apologies for a break in posts during late June and early July. A combination of graduation, end of year shows, assessment and a family holiday has meant that we have been a little distracted of late. So here is a catch up on what has happened over the last month or so... 
The FdA end of year show took place at Camberwell from the 16th > 20th June and by consensus of opinion this was our best show ever! Kenny Foot and Nick Greenbank created the identity and a visit to our website gives a good impression of the quality of work on show. Alternatively, maybe a better representation of work produced can be found in the FdA related blogstream at: http://www.jeepers.me/following/postswithcomments. 

V&A Student Awards

We had the fantastic news today that former FdA student, Daniel Clarke, has been named runner up in the V&A Student Illustration Awards. Daniel entered his project on the Heygate Estate which was completed in his second year on the FdA in 2011. 

FdA student exhibits in Moscow

FdA Illustration student, Tatiana Alisova is currently in Moscow, taking part in the Moscow International Comics Festival, KomMissia 2012 which takes place at the Centre of Contemporary Art WinZavod (literally, the old wine factory building). The exhibition features art works of Russian comics artists, successful practitioners and "fresh blood", like Tatiana. The exhibition runs until the 26th of May.

Key Ideas: REJECT!

Illustrator JAKe, designer Zoe Bather and artist Gordon Young visited Camberwell on May 9th to take part in the Camberwell’s termly Key Ideas event. The subject of this event was rejection and to explore this subject speakers examined how rejection can help open up new developments within your work. JAKe talked about his work for Lucas film and publishers, Self Made Hero; Zoe about her work on the books that accompanied Professor Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe and Wonders of the Solar System and Gordon Young talked about a series of public art projects including the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool.  

from JAKe's presentation

from Zoe Bather's presentation 

from Gordon Young's presentation

Visit to NoBrow

On Thursday 3^rd May we took the FdA Illustration students over to our friends at NoBrow. Partner, Alex Spiro, gave us a tour of the studio and explained how they have developed as publishers over the last 4 years. He also took us through how the idea for their 170mm X 130mm series came from a Ladybird book about printing, which used an entire B2 sheet printed front and back. Nobrow are currently planning the first East London Comics and Arts Festival and FdA students will be helping make sure that it runs smoothly. FdA graduate Kyle Platts is currently working on a graphic novel for NoBrow.