Category: Digital Residencies

Seren, Bella and Nia

Together we have decided to work on a combined project that highlights each of our strengths in turn, an opportunity for us to create a collaborative piece! It will allow us to each show off our favourite processes, starting with Nia’s paper making and printing, then moving onto Bella’s paper folding and finally Seren’s sculptural skills. As a theme we are looking at nature as this has been a prominent subject matter within all our works and helps us to tie our practises together.

We have started by looking at recycling paper from our time on the Foundation Course to make new paper which we can then print on and will use in the next section of our practise. This section of reusing paper demonstrates that we don’t have to always look at using something new to create art, but can reuse what’s not needed to produce beautiful works!

My name is Seren Trodden, and I have just completed a year of Art & Design Foundation at
Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. In the autumn I am starting a
three year Degree course in Design Crafts at Swansea College of Art.
I want to study Design Crafts because my goal is to be a craft practitioner-maker. Visual
creativity is completely central to my life. I have a constant urge to put objects together in
different materials, to build and create reimagined forms. Currently I work in lots of
different materials – cardboard, modelling clay, fabrics, paper, plastics, found objects,
natural forms. I am very much inspired by creatures of all sorts, both in nature and invented.
I am also passionate about animal rights, and often use my work to make statements about
environmental issues and the exploitation of animals.
My final Foundation exhibition piece was a full-size polar bear’s head and claw, where I
explored the theme of Neostalgia through world issues of climate change, animal
exploitation and species extinction. The robotic parts of the bear showed the mindset of
people who do not care about the consequences as they continue to exploit the earth’s
resources and destroy the environment, viewing these animals as lives that can be
sacrificed.
I plan to continue exploring these themes over the summer and on my Degree course, and
hope to share some of my work with you during my Jane Phillips Award Digital Residency,
while also looking at different mixed media as I explore the Design Crafts pathway.

My name is Isabella Watkins. I have just recently finished my studies on the Foundation Art and Design course with Swansea college of art and design. I am headed to the Product and Furniture Design with UWTSD. I have been given the chance to have a shared digital residency with the other artist from my class with the Mission Gallery. I am honored to have this opportunity to explore and expand my skills further. 

These are some photos from my final exhibition piece from my Foundation course. There was a lot of planning involved, many angles to figure out and was definitely a labor of love! As you can tell from the above I like to manipulate forms and see what they could become, even through my testing and modeling I didn’t know what a flat sheet of A4 copy paper could really do.

Hi, I’m Nia and I’ve just completed my Foundation Art and Design course in Swansea Collage of Art and above are photos of my final exhibited piece, The Inbetween. Next I am going to do a Fine Art degree in Swansea Collage of Art to hopefully further my practise.

I really enjoy expressing my emotions through my art and incorporating the natural world into my subject matter. I mostly use acrylic paint and try to use natural materials in my work, however one of my favourite ways to create is using print making, such as dry point etching and lino cutting. I plan over this digital residency, and the summer to continue to explore these materials and subject matters and document my progress to share with you!