Showcase 2009 2nd Edition

SHOWCASE Open College of the Arts



2009 No. 2

Catriona Meighan

Accreditations Up! The number of students working towards a degree with the OCA is on the increase. In the last year applications for assessment have increased by 41%. This is great news and reaffirms our strategy of investing in new courses, refreshing existing courses, and developing further means of communicating both with and between students – such as this Showcase newsletter and the OCA website (of which more on p3). The OCA is changing fast,

and in the coming year you can expect to see further change. However some things remain fixed, firstly our determination to offer the best in learning opportunities. Secondly our absolute commitment to be accessible to the widest range of possible students. Finally we will always be available to students whatever their motivation, whether that be to develop their artistic practice or to gain a degree.

Inside Short story Competition winner 2, 4 & 5

The OCA website 3

Mike Stevenson: Finding the Pattern 6&7

Showcase is published three times a year by the Open College of the Arts. Open College of the Arts

Who’s who at OCA Jane Horton

Paul Vincent Paul has worked for OCA since 2004 and is responsible for the development and maintenance of the OCA website. He has an interest in photography and an inexplicable affection for classic (rusty) VW Campervans.

The Michael Young Arts Centre, Unit 1B, Redbrook Business Park Wilthorpe Road, Barnsley S75 1JN Telephone: 01226 730495 Email: [email protected] Web: www.oca-uk.com Registered charity no: 327446 Company limited by guarantee no: 2125674 OCA welcomes contributions to Showcase but reserves the right to edit materials at its discretion. Views and opinions expressed in Showcase are not necessarily those of OCA, nor does the inclusion of an item, insert or advertisement constitute a recommendation. To amend your contact details or to give feedback – please contact Dee Bean, Marketing and Events, on 01226 704364 or email [email protected]

Jane joined OCA in July 2008 as Curriculum Director, in charge of commissioning new courses and ensuring a portfolio of courses fit for the 21st Century.  For Jane this role was an exciting coming together of her experience and interests.  A life long enthusiast for all the arts, Jane is a practising artist, but has a career full of experience in distance learning.

The OCA website is increasingly becoming a key resource for students and with great enthusiasm, Paul is looking forward to continuing its expansion.

Short Story Competition Winner We asked, and you delivered! Over the course of two months, Showcase received more than 30 entries for the short story competition on the theme of “Kitchen Table”. We encountered kitchen tables in many manifestations - as mementos of departed loved ones, as metaphors for life and instruments of death, and as, quite simply, “Solid wood, marked by many years of slicing and dicing.” Your stories touched us in different ways; some made us laugh, some made us think and, some made us sad. We met characters from all walks of life, from the rakish great uncle Ernestto, to Andrea, the belittled daughter-in-law who cooks up a fiery feast and the love struck Gwilym. All in all this was an impressive and widespread effort. And while

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we greatly enjoyed reading your literary offerings, we knew the time would come to make a decision. So without further ado, we present two commended authors and the winner of the OCA Short Story Competition: Commended: Arlo Richardson for Camera Girl Commended: Gwilym Pennant Roberts for Josef’s Table Finally... First prize goes to Angela Johnson for I’m Here, Mr Obama. Angela will receive a £50 Amazon voucher and you can read her winning entry on pages 4 & 5. Grateful thanks to everyone who participated in this competition. Your contributions were invaluable. Our thanks also to Tutor Nina Milton, who had a very difficult task indeed in choosing our winning entry.

The OCA website OCA’s website has never been more popular amongst its students and tutors, traffic is up 36% in the last year. We now have over 600 students registered on the website, half of whom have added their work to the website portfolios; a reflection of society’s embrace of modern web-based technologies. This increase in student participation has encouraged OCA to develop the website further, making it an increasingly valuable resource for students and tutors of the OCA.

To encourage this, we have placed an emphasis on the community aspects of the website, recently initiated developments aimed at encouraging the OCA’s artistic community include: •

A more comprehensive resources section, so more types of media relevant to your course(s) can be accessed from your ‘dashboard’

•

Audio player in the portfolios for music students

•

Video upload facility in the portfolios for film students

•

Improved permissions in the portfolios; as a student you can now choose to make portfolio items visible to:

The website has so far attracted registrations from 35 countries,



- the general public



- OCA students or tutors



- only tutors and students on the same course.

• increasing the diversity of participants and artistic perspectives beyond UK shores and the forums are providing a fertile ground for rigorous artistic debates amongst students and tutors. It is through such rigorous and productive dialectics that the understanding of subjects and concepts can be allowed to develop and evolve.

Downloads section in the course resources area – so now files relevant to your course can be downloaded. Students and tutors can add files considered to be relevant.

“

...traffic is up 36%

These additions are intended to enhance and encourage OCA’s student and tutor community of artists, and bridge the physical distances between students and tutors. The OCA will also soon be resuming its themed competitions through the website. These will be announced by e-mail and through the website closer to the time. We look forward to meeting more of our students through the website as it continues to grow and thrive, we would also like to thank the students and tutors that have aided the growth of the site through their active participation, both verbally in the forums and visually in the portfolios.

Register online: www.oca-uk.com

Student: Angela Johnson

I’m here, Mr Obama ‘Last night, Mr Obama, I had this sudden urge to stand up and

and the cat, well, maybe that’s not really true. But if I get fed up

shout, “I’m here.” My mam was lying on the sofa, with Tabitha

I can go into the kitchen on my own for a bit.

curled up and purring on her knee, waiting for the soaps to start,

I heard a thud on the window later, but my mam was too spaced

and I was sitting at the kitchen table, sending texts on my mobile,

out on her tablets to notice so I never said nothing. I scraped the

well, that’s not true really. I was only pretending to send texts as I

dog muck off when she’d gone to bed, but I felt so angry because

don’t go to school anymore so there’s no one to send them to.

thinking this shouldn’t be happening. Maybe that’s why, when I

to the wall and whispering, “They’re there in the entry, listening

was on my way to the shops this morning, and I saw Lauren Snell

to us,” as soon as I walked into the living room and tried to get

coming towards me I didn’t turn back, and bolt myself inside the

near the telly.

house as usual.

“Mam! You’ve forgot to take your tablets again haven’t you?”

“I want a word with you,” I said, trying not to think about the way

I said, handing her the tranquillisers with a cup of water. I sat

her and her gang had scared the shit out of me for so long.

holding her hand a bit to calm her. Then I threw a ball to Tabitha, and she kept moving her stump of a leg as if she thought she still had her right paw to bat it with. It looked dead funny. Well, that’s not true really. It was sad. Then my mam leaned back, and lit a ciggie. “Soaps will be on soon,” I said. “You’re a good girl, Becca,” she said, patting my hand. My mam forgets I’m fourteen and a half, and speaks to me like I’m a little kid sometimes. I wanted to tell her what had happened to me when I saw you

“Yeah?” she said, looking at me in her sneering way. I stood in her path then. “Why are you so mean to me?” I meant to sound so strong, and in control, but my voice came out all sort of weak and whining. “Excuse me,” she said. “I haven’t done nothing to you. You’re the one making up all them stories about me bullying you, and I’ve never fucking touched you.”

making that speech on the telly. I wanted to say how when you

“You get other people to do your dirty work.”

turned your head and said you weren’t just speaking to them

“Fucking liar!”

around you, but that you were talking to everyone in the whole

“I just want you to know I’m glad I don’t go to that shitty school

world I felt you were speaking direct to me, but her eyes had that funny, glazed, half dead look in them, and she’d only have said something daft like “Who is he, some new filum star?” It’s funny I thought, watching my mam’s eyelids getting heavier as she sank back in to one of her half dead trances, it’s funny me wanting to shout out “I’m here” because me and my mam spend most of our time pretending the opposite. We have to keep our

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it was like you’d told me I had a right to be here, and I kept

It was hard to get everything you said what with my mam pointing

no more. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that gang of yours throwing me against the wall, and smashing my glasses.” “You fucking made all that up.” “’You got someone to shoot my cat. She’s only got three legs because of you.” “I don’t know nothing about that,” she jerked away from me, but I

heads down and creep round like we’re invisible because we don’t

got hold of her arm. I’d worked my self into such a state I felt only

want to attract too much notice on account of the local gangs

anger and no more fear.

targeting us all the time. Even at school I got picked on which

“You took my boyfriend. You took Ashley away from me didn’t

is why I don’t go no more, and they send a teacher to my house.

you? You can’t say that’s not true. What’s up, Lauren? Can’t you

That’s all right because I’m okay here with my mam and the telly,

get one of your own or something?”

“Ashley was never interested in you, you dozy bugger. He felt sorry for you, that’s all. Even he got sick of listening to you in the end. You think everyone’s got it in for you don’t you? You’re crazy you are just like your fucking mad mother.” She laughed in my face and walked on. I kept thinking of what she said all the way to the shops. It wasn’t true. Me and Ashley had something really special between us till she come on heavy to him. Not that I was bothered anymore. Okay, so he might have made my day when he walked in and handed me this big wet bundle of fluffy white fur with big black spots and pale green eyes. I can’t say I’m not glad he rescued Tabitha from them lads trying to drown her. And I might have thought I was dead lucky to have him when he sat with me, drying her, and getting her warm by the radiators as she sat and purred between us like as if she’d always been there. But it’s no big thing anymore if he wants to hang round after the likes of her. She’s welcome to him. I kept saying that in every shop I went in, but it wasn’t true really. When I got back home I sat at the kitchen table, texting on my mobile, well, pretending to. It’s my little hiding place, that back kitchen away from my mam looking like she’s already dead in the living room. Then the social worker came. I stayed at the table, still pretending to text. I switch off when I’m sitting there, to my mam saying the gang’s there, and the social worker saying it’s all in our head. But just before the social worker left she said something about how my life had narrowed to this one room. “It’s become like a nest where you feel safe, and you’ve gone into a kind of voluntary hibernation,” she said, and I thought yeah, well maybe I have, and who can blame me? “Everybody’s dead round here,” I said. “Hadn’t you noticed?” I felt restless after she’d gone. My mam was watching some old film on the telly so I thought I’d take Tabitha for a walk down to a bit of waste ground where there’s a few scraggy trees and bushes. Tabitha was enjoying herself, jumping up at some insects and watching the birds, everything just looked grey and dead to me. Then I heard a flutter of wings, and I saw this bird on the ground with its legs tied together with wire. I picked it up nice and gentle, and managed to get the wire off its legs. Then I let it go. It flew right high up into the sky, singing and chirping on its way. Then another bird started singing, and another, and suddenly it was like as if the whole place was full of life. “I’m here,” I said, only I never shouted it from the rooftops like I thought I wanted to. I just whispered it quiet like to myself on a bit of wasteland full of beer cans and crisp packets, but, you know what, Mr Obama, it was true. ‘

Author’s profile Angela began writing fiction in her 40’s whilst studying as a mature student at Chester College, where she won an academic prize for a series of poems depicting life on the large housing estate where she lived. In the 1990’s she became a member of the Chester Gateway theatre playwriting group. She wrote a number of plays which were given rehearsed readings in the studio theatre. One play “The Budding” was later selected for workshop development at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick and given a rehearsed reading in front of an audience at the Bolton Octagon. The director was Bill Smith and the dramaturg was Kaite O’Reilly. More recently she has begun to write short stories and has been short-listed for the Cheshire Prize for Literature and the Ian St James award. Angela began studying with the OCA after receiving a grant to fund a course to help further her writing ambitions. Talking about her studies she said, “I have really enjoyed my work with the OCA, and I feel I have learnt so much, and I am still learning. I am a student on the Writing 2: Storylines course, which I am enjoying immensely. “The idea for my story came when a friend told me of her experiences as a part time teacher, teaching children who are unable to attend school, in their own homes. I felt inspired to write the story after watching Barack Obama delivering a speech soon after his victory in the US elections. He seemed to be trying to reach out to everyone, particularly those whose voices are never heard. I wanted Becca to be someone with little or no hope who happens to hear the speech, almost by accident, but is somehow inspired to look beyond the stultifying boundaries of her own existence, and affirm her right to live.” Angela works as a volunteer drama tutor for Scope; writing and producing plays with a group of adults with varying degrees of cerebral palsy.

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Tutor: Mike Stevenson

Finding the pattern Mike Stevenson trained at Liverpool College of Art, where he

subtler responses of hearing, smell and perhaps taste to consider.

was awarded the National Diploma in Design in Sculpture. He

There will be an awareness that the land we see was here before

undertook art teacher training at Manchester College of Art

we existed and will be here long after we are gone. It will have

qualifying with Distinction, and later gained a Master of Arts

stimulated myths and figured in legends and stories. It will have

degree with Distinction from the University of Lancaster.

evoked and stimulated other poets, musicians, writers and artists

Mike has worked in all spheres of education, both as a teacher

to record their own responses. It will have rewarded, frustrated

and as a Local Authority Advisor. Mike ended his career as a

and perhaps even taken the lives of the hunters, farmers, miners,

General Education Adviser responsible for improving performance

labourers and peddlers who walked here and worked the land

and attainment in a group of schools.

before our time. It will provoke memories in us of other places and

He is now, once again, a practicing and exhibiting artist. Talking

the people with whom we share our lives. All these resonances

about his work Mike says, “Anyone who pauses to look at a view

and echoes are what I seek to portray in my work. I try to look

in this country will quickly realise that our changing weather

beyond the appearance of the land - to see its bones and inner

and light means that what we see constantly changes. Areas of

organs – all the things we don’t immediately see, but without

lightness and darkness will interchange, and colours will fluctuate

which, the landscape remains just another view.

in intensity. Rarely will anything be still. Then, there will be the

“I am particularly interested in the quality of light and its effects

Ridgewalk - Derbyshire

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on the landscape. I have no particular allegiance to any media, I work in whatever seems appropriate to what I want to say or do. “I often mix media to produce a specific effect. My work almost always starts with drawing something I can see, and watercolour sketches to record colour and tone. I do not want to be constrained by attempts at photographic reality. Each finished work involves making many drawings, working towards the final statement. These might range from tentative scribbles to detailed ‘finished’ drawings. Each drawing distils some visual element or intuitive response from the starting point. Most of the finished pieces are developed in the studio from the many scribbles, drawings, watercolours, pastels, notes and jottings that fill my sketchbooks. “I visit Wales and the Peak District for inspiration. Finding the pattern, structural qualities and atmospheres of the landscape are as important as depicting what I observe. I am particularly fascinated by the problems of recession and perspective making an illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface is a constant source of enjoyment.

Porthclais - Pembrokeshire

“I believe that all artists, whether experienced or beginners, are constantly engaged in the process of teaching themselves how they produce their own works. In order to progress as an artist I need to understand how we see and interpret our world. I need to understand the visual elements of line, shape, form, tone colour, etc., and know how to use them. I need to have control over the media and techniques I use. I need to be aware of how other artists have resolved problems similar to those I confront. My work is simply the process through which I deepen and enrich these understandings. The work has its genesis when I succeed in blending these four understandings with my own intuitive response to the landscapes I experience. “I also regularly draw in the ‘Life Room’, since this is where I remind myself that formal issues such as proportion and perspective, history and tradition still have meaning and validity throughout the visual arts, and are neglected at our peril.  Some of my art work develops alongside or from my poems. I have also chosen on my website, to open the pages of some of my sketchbooks, since although these are rarely seen by the public, they are the places where starting points are recorded and ideas and possibilities tried, tested, rejected and developed until some become the more finished works.“  For further information see www.mikestevensonart.co.uk

A View to the Sea

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Advertising feature

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My recommendation to any artist working with a framer is to discuss and check their standards against those of the Fine Art Trade Guild. The standard of framing is not directly linked to the ‘glitz’ of the gallery. I have re-framed pieces previously framed by established, high street galleries and found the contents to be woefully substandard. Conversely I have re-framed pieces from ‘hobby’ framers and been very impressed by their obvious attention to detail and research into the subject. With original artworks there can also be a financial implication, not least the cost of framing should one of the higher standards be considered necessary. Even more important is the financial effect on the piece as a direct result of framing. Auction houses have, for many years, lectured on the dangers of improper framing and have numerous tales of highly collectable pieces having been de-valued due to inappropriate framing. All this said, don’t lose sight of the most important point; the frame and/or mount are there to augment and enhance the artwork not overpower it. If we do our job properly the frame should be viewed as part of the work. Remember, it’s all about the art. People have put art on walls for thousands of years, but no one hangs an empty frame. 

The ultimate protection for your artwork

This is not to say that every artist should have all of their original works framed to museum standard; determining which level is suitable should be a key part of the consultation between artist and framer. For an artist it is important to develop a working relationship with a framer and the basis of this relationship is trust. Do you trust this person with the care of your work? Are you happy that they understand the process and materials needed to frame the piece to its required standard? Are they aware of the different standards? Can they advise on the best style of framing? Any framer willing to undertake the framing of original artwork must at least be able to answer an artist’s questions satisfactorily.

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