My foundation

My obsession for creating started at an early age, when I was little I would spend hours making things from plasticine, drawing people, painting, making clothes and directing plays with my little brother and sister. I was very shy and lacked confidence and never imagined leaving home, let alone moving to South London. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I just knew I wanted to create.

My early influences

I grew up in North Devon in the 80s and 90s on a sheep farm, before social media and before mobile phones were available for the average person. So my early influences were from family:

My Dad is my hero, whatever life throws at him he bounces back he’s so resilient, he taught me how to be grateful and kind. Not only was he a farmer, but when I was little he went back to college to study to be a carpenter, joiner and cabinet maker (which had been a passion of his for years).

My Mum taught me to always go the extra mile, to push things more and to be ambitious. She was a maths teacher, who ran a Maths centre in the 90s (before people were ready), had a column in the Times Educational Supplement as a Mathagony Aunt, and invented a times table game called Perfect Times.

My Stepmum helped to give me confidence and persuaded me to study for my degree. She also helped to ground me in things like how to budget, save money and lots of other really useful advice.

My wonderful gran taught me how to cook and how to sew. When I used to stay with her I’d make clothes, my favourite was a waistcoat made from curtain material (it was the 90s!!!)

Also I was the eldest of 6 children (and later after I left home my parents adopted my little brother), so I had to grow up quite quickly, teaching me that everyone is different, and needs to be treated the way that suits them. Each one of my siblings has their own unique personality and I love the different qualities they have (I’m very lucky).

Learning what I loved

I always loved learning and at school my favourite subjects were Art, Maths and Technology. I think this was the start of my creative problem solving. For my GCSE final exam I did a little animation, bringing to life ‘Storm in teacup’. I studied A level Maths, Art and Media Studies, but didn’t really find my passion until I did a year Art Foundation course. I loved it, I spent the first 6 months experimenting and playing, it was bliss. It opened my eyes and it was during this time that I realised that I wanted to be a designer. In the second 6 months I specialised in Graphic Design, although I was told by the fashion teacher that I was far too colourful to be a Graphic Designer and should do Fashion. Everything I created was by hand, hand cut lettering, handmade books, photography as it was time before we all had computers. I had the most amazing design tutor Ben Lidell he gave confidence to apply to do a design degree.

The game changer brief

For me getting a job at the end of it all was really important, so that’s what made me decide to put Croydon Art college as my first choice. As part of my application I had to to graphically interpret the phrase ‘POST HUMAN’. It was the first time that I felt out of my comfort zone but quickly worked out my approach. It was just before google had launched and I didn’t have a computer, but I knew I needed to do research and to get inspired. I worked part time at the local hotel as a chambermaid so I started collecting all the Sunday supplements. I created spider diagrams for all my thoughts and visual boards. It made me think, it’s our brains that makes us human from what we experience to our emotions. So the idea struck, a brain in a jar. I had fun creating an image to bring this idea to life, making a brain out of plasticine and setting in jelly. Then played with the typography all about the mix of Upper and lowercase, like it had been displaced. I then had to go to London to present in person. After an intense group interview, I was very pleased to get in to the Croydon Art College.

Reflection

My early years gave me my love neon, (I am a child from the 90s), taught me to be kind, helped me to be independent, gave me my foundations for problem solving and my confidence to leave home to study what I loved. I’ll fill you in on what I learnt during my degree in my next blog post.