Collaboration With Passion
I attended Cambridgeshire College Of Arts And Technology in September 1968 and started a 2 year Foundation course, We were given a list of brushes and tools to bring etc, but no paper!
Paper was given to all students at the beginning of the week from the store.
The Paper came in large Elephant sizes, along with those Maroon and Black cornered tie-up portfolios that carried your powder-colour paintings.
The swanky zip up portfolios came later when your art was less bulky and probably printed as you couldn't really squeeze much in them!
We were all artists in the making, and from all walks of life.
Most of the students came from the surrounds of East Anglia and one student had never visited London before!
That year was fantastic, with trips to London by train with one of the Art School's 35mm Pentax cameras, trips to the Fens to draw, trips to Museums [ and the Kings Road ].
We made sculptures, we made etchings, litho prints, lino-cuts, silk screen prints and learnt about Analagous Harmonies and Geodesic Domes!
We learnt about photography, film processing and printing, and even used 2 1/4" square twin lens cameras!
We were lectured by some world famous photographers, such as David Montgomery and Don McCullen.
This was a very interesting time for Art Schools and you could sense things were changing, we never did get to paint and use our Palette Knifes.
However I loved the processes of printing at St Barnabas Church, and a good drawing skill came in handy for all the printing methods.
You had to draw backwards for most processes so I suppose that was good to learn, and we all became very good at it.
Once a year you could buy students prints in the centre of Cambridge, but as students ourselves I don't suppose many of us bought each others work!
I loved the life-drawing whenever we had a chance, and sometimes we would have guest tutors to teach us.