Can you teach me to be creative? Part Two

Thursday saw my students and I at the Victoria and Albert Museum continuing our studies in art and design by looking at the decorative arts. Sketch books in hand, and after a brief meeting at an Internet Cafe to look at www.babylonshager.no we jumped in a London cab to continue our lessons.The girls were blown away by the building alone and we headed straight for the fashoin rooms. The museum had an exhibition on about Grace Kelly and her style, but with over 5 floors and several thousnds of exhibits to look at, we didn’t need to immerse ourselves in that and begun to look at fashion through the ages.I adore fashion and costume – always have, if I didn’t do gardens, i would probably do somthign involved with fashion or costumed esign. My first job was as a costume stylist and the cult by sadly no gone, Laurence Corner near Camden. I explained the social climate of the time, and they compared the fashions here with those of Norway.They were engaged with the exhibitions, and after an in depth chat about underwear, I felt now was a good time to see how they got on with direct insipration from one of the exhibits. I let them choose, we had walked round the whole exhibition, and they had seen all sorts of costumes from 1715 to present day. Kari Mette chose a corset, Wenche a 1960s dress, whislt I plumped for a 1930’s satin frock (which given my love of all things 1950s) was a turn up for the books!Seated round a table, pens and lines flew across the pages whislt we sat in relative silence pouring over the exhibts we had each selected. I explained to the girls, that they could either take inspiration literally in the form of the lines or structure of the fashion, or they may prefer to be slightly more abstract with the interpretation, instead deciding to draw inspiration from the atmosphere the piece evoke, or how it empitmoised a period in time. They got it, the slide into thier creativity had been steep but they loved it!After lunch, I decided to try and narrow down the options and concetrate on the 20th centuary galleries, hoping the Babylon girls would be able to draw some parrells with the the modern art they had seen at the Tate modern a couple of days earlier. We were limited for time, so we walked round briefly charting the changes from Art Nouveau to Art Deco before moving across to view the modern and post modern exhibits from 1945.They were delighted they had begun to recognise art movements and make connections with some of the artists and movements that we had touched on previously, They started to analysis the shapes and materials as well as the historical context and begin to draw down ideas from that to transfer into garden design. They were on a time limit to catch thier flights back to Norway so we didn’t have time so their task was to pick a item from each 20 year period in the 20th century and draw a garden based on that object, so one from 1900-1920, 1920-1940 etc…They then flew back to Norway so I have yet to see the results – but here are mine as I felt the teacher needed to follow the students to see if se could practise what she was preaching.

Garden Egg Chair Object: Chair Place of origin: Germany (designed) Date: 1968 (designed)1971 (manufactured) Artist/Maker: Ghyczy, Peter (designer) Elastogran GmbH (manufacturer) Materials and Techniques: Lacquered, moulded polyurethane with synthetic textile upholstery over polyurethane foam paddingGarden Design Object: Garden Design Place of origin: London or England Date: May 28th 2010 Artist/Maker: Kieffer-Wells, Katrina (designer) Earth Designs(maker) Materials and Techniques: Outdoor cusions, metal arbour, fireglass spheres, hardwood decking, Stainless Steel Balls, Pebble Mosaic, Garden Office, Ball Chair, Globo Lights,

Cut, Slash & Pull Object:Pair of shoes Place of origin: Britain (made) Date: 1990 (made) Artist/Maker: Westwood, Vivienne (designer) Materials and Techniques: shoes covered in satin with regular cuts in the fabric.Garden Design Place of origin: London or England Date: May 28th 2010 Artist/Maker: Kieffer-Wells, Katrina (designer) Earth Designs(maker) Materials and Techniques:Pebble Mosaic, Buxus Hedging, Slate Paving with large cobbles, sedum roof, love seat swing, water fountain (rose shaped), Pearl hanging curtain, heuchara, hebe, peony, black iris,

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Lara Hurley June 8, 2010 at 12:23pm

I could have done with this a couple of years ago - I used to teach garden design at Myerscough College and the 'leap' between inspiration, concept and design was always a tricky one that many just couldn't understand. How to abstract an idea from an object is something I've only seen well explained in a book 'From Concept to Form in Landscape Design'.
Cheers
Lara