Creative Arts Archives | The Open College of the Arts

edge-zine issue 7: The re-launch

We are pleased to announce the relaunch of edge-zine the student led zine it will be available to download from Facebook and to read on Issuu from the 19 July 2019. The zine is a space for you to showcase the projects you have completed and are working on. It will allow us to discuss and show the techniques, thoughts and practices we are using to create our art therefore it is vital that you share your thoughts and processes to help us all learn and develop. We are proud to publish the seventh edition of the edge-zine.

What is your tutor up to? Garry MacKenzie

I’m really interested in what nets mean to you. Do you come from a fishing background? Can you wax lyrical about the moment when a football hits the back of the net? Are you a knitter?

In conversation with: Áine Byrne

Áine Katrina Byrne is a Textile Artist and Designer originally from Ireland and now based in London. After Completing her MA at the RCA, Áine spent time working as a designer in India, before returning to London to continue her work within the field of textile design. Áine woven designs both digitally and by hand for the fashion industry, supplying high end clients and the high street. Áine is based in Hackney Wick Space studio and works as a lecturer at CSVPA.

What I learned on a writing retreat

With all that time to do nothing but write, you have to deliver, don’t you? Nope. This mindset is guaranteed to make you freeze.

Study event review: OCA Photography Midlands

10 of us Midlands OCA photography students spent a highly enjoyable afternoon with Birmingham based artist Stephen Burke at the Blast! Festival of Photography Sandwell, West Midlands.

Ask the librarian

What is plagiarism? Plagiarism means deliberately or accidentally using someone else’s work or ideas as if they were your own. Work means any intellectual output, and typically includes text, data, images, sound or performance and includes material downloaded from electronic sources. Deliberately plagiarising work whilst you are at OCA can have very serious consequences, which is why it’s important to follow good academic practices and to reference your work properly.

Breaking into the boys’ club

For centuries, women have fought against adversity to pursue artistic careers in what was (and arguably still is) a man’s world. They have suffered the humiliation of having their works passed off under someone else’s name, of being barred access to training, of struggling to do what men have taken for granted (simply represent themselves on canvas or celluloid) and of having their pieces relegated to dark corners of museum and gallery storerooms.

Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

I have always thought that serious art is not just something put into the world by its makers to express their feeling or point of view or as a reaction to some external stimulus. It’s also in conversation with work made in the past, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes in spite of the artist’s intention. To a greater or lesser extent, all works of art join a continuum that stretches back to prehistory.

Join the new OCA Book Group!

The Book Group is running again! Sign up to have a relaxed discussion about books and writing.

Interior Design and the use of model-making.

As a way of exploring the use of model-making in Interior Design Tutor Mike Fairbrass – a very experienced professional model maker, and Programme Leader Catherine Byrne – a spatial designer, have had a conversation about their own experiences of the uses of model-making in spatial design.