A THEATRE of dreams where innovation and creativity are harnessed into an unique educational environment, the Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD) ranks amongst the top 50 colleges in the world to study fashion, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. The reasons behind its success are outlined by Andrew Carey.
THE COLLEGE
Corridors of creation, the buzz of a student population and a community thriving on ideas, imagination and concepts. LSAD is alive and very active from early until late, housing 1,300 students through four student years and across six disciplines with a further two more degree programmes to come on-stream next September.
Students of all ages, nationalities and mindset bustle, support and grow in this unique place they call home for four years. The result at the end of that journey is something that everyone is agreed on and that is a gateway to the world with the LSAD brand on their side.
THE STUDENTS
Kim Vincent – Ceramics
KIM is one of a number of the LSAD graduate students, across six disciplines who have come to the end of their four-year degree journey. She says it has been a journey filled with “ups and downs”.
“This place, this college, this theatre of dreams and innovation that we work in is amazing. It is not a walk in the park and it is down to what you put in to it. You can love it and hate it at the same time but that in itself gives you invaluable lessons in life”.
As Kim puts the final touches to her collection of work that will showcase among her student peers, she says that it is the community spirit that has been paramount in getting to the end of the four-year journey.
“We have been working and honing the skills to build an understanding of clay, but actually, at the end of these four years, we are really just beginning”.
Having completed a foundation course in a local private college, Kim said that she had been out of the education system for some time having worked and raised a family.
“This was a second chance for me to go back to school and do something I really wanted to do and I can’t thank those near and dear to me enough for that.
The English-born ceramist, who moved to Ireland a number of years ago, has been shortlisted for the Future Makers awards 2015.
Olivia Furey – Painting
SLIGO native Olivia Furey has dedicated four years at LSAD to finding her voice, her style and in turn to delivering a message through her art and words.
“We have had a really good four years here and our show is the highlight that we are looking forward to”.
Olivia says that she has drawn inspiration from her interest in music and contemporary culture.
“I work a lot with feminism and as a feminist I am concerned about the lack of visibility of women in the rock music industry so I make zines and I do performance art with painting where a lot of it is inspired by the Riot Girl movement.
During her college time, Olivia staged a guerilla performance in the college canteen and a few weeks ago she made a collaboration with a band and made a speech about feminism and played the electric guitar with a drumstick while the band played a track Sonic Landscape.
Olivia doesn’t think that there is a lack of women in rock music, “it is their significance that needs to be raised.”
Parodies of album covers, is another art-form that Olivia says she has found helps deliver her message from her voice that she has found through LSAD.
“I came her because there are more options and I wasn’t sure what discipline I wanted but when I came up and say the studios, I was hooked and I knew I just wanted to be here. This college has helped me, my thoughts and the creative process so much”.
Emma Quinn – Fashion
FOR a student embarking upon a LSAD discipline there is none more renowned than the students of the fashion college.
With past graduates like top Irish designers such as Marion Murphy Cooney, Danielle Romeril and Joanne Hynes et al and to name but a select few, students who cut, stitch and tessellated their way through the corridors of LSAD’s fashion department do so to live out their dreams and hopes.
Emma Quinn is one such budding designer.
“I can’t believe we are here. This has been a joy and something I don’t want to leave but something I am so grateful for having done.
Emma draws inspiration from the diverse and main stream alike. That is key for her creativity and in her graduate collection, the Donegal native chose to address the portrayal of OCD and bipolar disorders in the movie Silver Linings Playbook.
“I thought it was interesting, in the movie, how the characters of the father and son, clash within the family and the disorders in their portrayal.
Tackling block colours and asymmetric design, Emma adorned her six piece collection with pharmaceutical beading where hundreds of tiny pill capsules were hand sewn to her garments.
“But the years here were brilliant – that’s why I am able to look at my work and feel that I have accomplished so much. This college is brilliant and getting to do a work placement with Charlie May in London for three months was a great influence and benefit to me.
“I came the length of the country nearly to see this college and fell in love with it immediately and knew this is where I wanted to study.
As the end of her four-year journey narrows her focus, Emma says that the international stage is calling her and she has plans to move to London.
Rachel Connell – Visual Communications
“WE REALLY have been preparing ourselves for this point”.
Visual communications, Rachel Connell explains, has been a quite different pursuit through the college structure as while others would have had many exhibitions and displays, her work has been building up to this graduate show “so to get to exhibit our week, during this week, is huge for us”.
Rachel is working on a printed work, where she examines the beauty, structure and lost art of handwriting.
“I am looking at how more people are taking to their phones and tablets to write things as opposed to using a pen and paper. I’m presenting samples of handwritten pieces, type and the interviews that back up my information.
“It’s a book that I want people to be able to look through and there are little to-do lists for those that may not have written in a while – it might inspire people to write again.
Scottish-born Rachel, moved to Ennis some years before embarking on her LSAD journey, a move that was based on the college’s international reputation.
“I always wanted to go to art college and the variety here was essential. LSAD appealed because you had that choice and for me, coming from straight from school, it was the best way to go.
And now, the threshold of full-time employment awaits the 22-year-old graduate who secured a job with her employer from her three-month work placement in Belfast last year.
“I’m going in as a junior print designer but I am delighted it’s what I always wanted to do and now I am getting to do it.
Aine Finnegan – Print
An observation of the night sky. Simple colours and textures you might think, but the complex nature of the pattern and form that makes up the casting of light through the darkened world we see through the naked eye is how Galway born Aine Finnegan goes to end her final year project in the print department of LSAD.
Aine describes her work as being like pinpoints in the night sky.
You cannot but be drawn to the century old printing press and the cast iron machines that cover the print room floor. Double height white walls of the old laundry and college seem like the perfect backdrop to host the benches and print stations that make up this exciting area.
Working with hybrid print making, the combination of digital form with monoprint on top, Aine shows just how this unity functions in a perfect blend of the old and new.
As a Galway girl, Aine travelled to Limerick in search of her degree and she will stay after securing a slot with Limerick Printmakers.
Ciara Huwald – sculpture and combined media
THE perfect note, for German born Ciara, is an endless strip of paper, perforated with tiny holes that run through a music maker with the end result being an endless loop of melodies.
An unlikely source of tunes but Ciara Huwald was certainly thinking outside the music box for this installation that is as delightful as it is innovative.
“For the last few years I have worked with music and this semester I have worked on an installation of this music box and sounds.
“My work has focused on creating codes and language that can be brought back to music. Coming here for me was something I think that was always just meant to happen”.
“This is my capstone to my time spent here in LSAD, and now, I have been accepted at the Royal College of Art in London”.
THE HEAD OF SCHOOL
James Greenslade
“IT’S the staff here. That’s what makes LSAD it is and the teaching faculty is second to none.”
That’s how the head of school at the Clare Street Campus describes the key to the national and international success that the LIT run school has enjoyed.
The graduate show is the highlight of the year “where 200 students celebrate their last four years here. There is some amazing work and everyday I come to work, meet the students and see their pieces evolving, that’s just something special.”
“The students have spent the past four years building up to the graduate show and now in the last four or five months, things reach fever pitch as it all comes together. That makes this environment so special to be a part of and their work some of the best you will see.”
The unique space that the college occupies, incorporating the old laundry, the hot wall, the church and the convent, is as great a source of inspiration as you can find
“There is a queue outside the door here at 8am every morning – they just want to get in and savour what we have – the trouble then is getting them out, because we have to close the doors at 10pm. But that just goes to indicate their appetite for the space.
The show, which will be launched by Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan runs from Saturday June 6 to 14 inclusive and daily from 10am to 4pm.
