Long overdue account of my wk2 & 3 CSM course...

Right - think i have left this a bit too long... and to be very honest, I can't remember every detail of my CSM course anymore... but i guess that's not a bad thing either - i will be precise and succinct.


Week 2: Design
This week was all about design - you work with a mannequin to do draping work and you trace the different patterns/shapes of your research photos and over-lay it on top of the the outline of a woman's body - to see where the lines cross the body and how it would look like as a piece of garment. This enables you to think out of the box and get out of that preconception of how a dress/top SHOULD look like. See photos - that's probably the easiest way to illustrate what we did, we drew like 60+ drawings. And this basically formed the designs of my end collection!

We also used the mannequin to do draping, re-creating shapes/lines that we found in our research.



Week 3: Illustration/presentation
This is a fun week - we did life drawing. We let our hands and arms go wild and just draw whatever we see in front of us - there isn't this "right" way of drawing - which is what i love about CSM. Also - love the "efficient" way of drawing, we did quick drawings - from 10secs to 10mins.

Overall - think the 3 weeks have been very interesting and learning something completely new is indeed VERY thrilling! Maybe I should take on something new every now and then to keep this "excitement" going!

Right... so many things happened over the past few months - let me write all about them tonight...

Back to school...

I suddenly have this urge to learn something from scratch, something entirely new. An epiphany dawn on me that I have not acquired new skills/knowledge for a long long time - probably since high school. We have always been building on what we have learnt previously, we just go more in depth as we go further up the education ladder. I suddenly miss this feeling of being in an unknown world - exploring, learning, seeing.

So I enrolled myself onto a course that I (and most girls) am interested in but have not had any hands-on experience - Fashion Design at Central St Martin's, London. This is a 3 week summer course and the outline of the course is as below:

Week 1: Research
Week 2: Illustration (translating ideas into 3D form)
Week 3: Presentation (collection of 6)

I have just finished my first week of researching - basically this is all about finding things you are interested in/that inspire you and then turn these research materials into a subject that you can work on for the next two weeks to create a collection of 6 at the end.

So I went round London looking for interesting things, taking plenty of photos and going to museums/exhibitions/markets (suggested by our tutors) to find things that inspire us. Went to:
- Tate Modern
- Hayward Gallery: "Walking in my mind" exhibition (EXCELLENT - it's a must see if you are in London: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/festivals-series/walking-in-my-mind)
- V&A Museum
- Spitalfields market
- Bricklane

I already found this a very interesting experience, though not sure this is for me... as I was told I can't be a perfectionist, I can't group things together (which means I can't really think logically) and I should just "mess things up a bit" - which i have no clue what she meant... so here you go - I am probably not arty-farty enough. But it's fun though, it's fun to see how people in the fashion world think and how they come up with different ideas for their collections.

Right - will update you at the end of my 2nd week - started doing some draping now.

Background...

Right - think it's time I write something on this blog. First off, I think I should write a bit about my background...

After graduating, I followed everyone else's footsteps and entered the world of corporate finance (the then most prestigious job). Slaving away in a big American firm in London for 2 years, I decided that I needed to make a move - well, a move that didn't take me far from what I was doing, probably a small step to the side and forward... I entered the smaller, more selective world of Private Equity (to be honest, this is the "natural" route for most bankers...). So here you go, I went with the flow, followed where everybody was going... until one day, I realised I did have a dream back in Uni days, or even back in high school - I want something of my own. Moving to PE was not exactly just following the drift- it was a strategic move too. PE is a lot closer to the business and I must say I did learn a lot about how a business is run and how to look at a business - though there was still too much "finance" in it and I wanted more hands-on operational work.

So here you go, since the end of last year, I declared myself a non-banker, a non-financier but an aspiring Entrepreneur! And have since embarked on my two projects - MobArt Gallery and HangBag. This big move also involved me relocating back home - Hong Kong.

I have put a lot more time on MobArt since the beginning of this year as there were more pressing deadlines - as we have to work with external parties and HangBag was slightly neglected (but putting that back on the radar and should be launching in Jul).

Maybe I should talk a bit about MobArt first - MobArt Gallery is not one of those traditional gallery where we have a fixed space for people to walk in and view/buy art. We are a Mobile Art Gallery - thus the name MobArt. We don't have a physical space, we are like parasite - we use existing urban spaces such as coffee shops, restaurants, lounges etc. to curate art shows. The reason why we want to do this is to bring Art back into our everyday life. Unlike London, Art is not as accessible and it seems like the general public is less interested in Art compared to the London crowd. So that's when the idea sprung to mind - bring Art to people rather than push people to go see Art shows.

Since Jan - we have opened our inaugural show Transcendence at The Drawing Room (a new modern Italian restaurant) and we are doing our second show Lost Things at Epoch coffee bar & desserterie. The first show was immensely successful and supporters of our MobArt movement is growing! =)

I will post another entry for Lost Things - have to go sort out bits and pieces now for next week.

oh - check out our MobArt website: www.mobartgallery.com