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The Tree Project: Katy Hackney & Anna Gordon
292 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we speak to Katy Hackney and Anna Gordon.
Katy Hackney's jewellery is an on-going exploration of material, colour and form. She regularly exhibits worldwide and her work can be found in public and private collections across the UK and abroad. Katy also serves as an Associate Lecturer in Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins.
Anna Gordon, now Head of Silversmithing and Jewellery Design at the Glasgow School of Art, studied at ECA under Dorothy Hogg graduating in 1994. Alongside her impressive teaching career, Gordon has an established reputation as outstanding artist jeweller in her own right, creating geometric kinetic jewellery, usually oxidised silver and gold, often constructed from repeated units and with a strong linear quality.
During her time as Head of Jewellery & Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art, renowned jeweller and educator Dorothy Hogg MBE inspired students in the workshop and beyond. For more information on Dorothy Hogg, the project and participants, visit: www.scottishgoldsmithstrust.org/tree-project.
Hosted by Ebba Goring
Edited & Produced by Eda Obermanns
Cover Image by Shannon Tofts
Music: Precious Memories by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Treeve Project
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the second episode of the Treeve Project Dorothy Hogg Life and Legacy podcast series. I'm Emma Goring from the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust and this podcast series has been developed to highlight the impact and legacy of the late Dorothy Hogg MBE and her influential time leading the jewellery and silversmithing department at Edinburgh College of Art.
00:00:25
Speaker
The participants in this project were selected by Dorothy alongside her friend Curator Amanda Gain. For more information on this project and all those involved head over to our website www.scottishgoldsmithstrust.org.
Meet Anna Gordon and Katie Hackney
00:00:44
Speaker
In this episode I'm joined by Anna Gordon and Katie Hackney. Welcome. Thanks both of you for joining us. Let's start with some introductions.
00:00:53
Speaker
My name is Anna Gordon. I am the head of the BA course in silversmithing and jewellery design at the Glasgow School of Art, and I'm also a designer maker of jewellery. And I graduated from Edinburgh College of Art, my undergraduate in 93, and then I did a master's, so I finished in 94. I'm Katie Hackney, and I was at Edinburgh and graduated in
00:01:22
Speaker
1989, I believe, and I do a multitude of things. I teach at Central Saint Martins and the jewellery course. I teach predominantly first years. I also have my own practice, but I do a design with a knitwear designer and I do work for films, researching and making. So yeah, I'm all over the place.
Anna's Artistic Journey Begins
00:01:53
Speaker
Thinking back from your time, just starting at Edinburgh College of Art, can you tell me about what led you to apply and study at ECA? What made you want to choose specialised in jewellery? And then also a bit about what you remember about the department. So I always wanted to go to art school. I think it was something kind of in me. I'm from a family of musicians who were not sort of conventional.
00:02:20
Speaker
sort of a job prospects family, really. Art school was kind of on my radar from the very beginning. I was determined to get in. I remember my art teacher saying that, you know, it's very competitive, you know, you need to be, you need to have a plan B. And I just completely panicked. I thought, plan B, I don't have a plan B. And I went and did life drawing classes and all this extra work to get my portfolio together because I was just absolutely determined that that's what I wanted to do. But I had no idea when I got there what then
00:02:50
Speaker
would happen. I just knew that I wanted to be in that space and then in those days you did a general first year so I knew I was going to do a bit of everything but I had ideas. I might want to do painting or printmaking or perhaps something like interior design. So that was where I was sitting when I first applied and then Edinburgh
00:03:11
Speaker
I guess I'm from Fife, so it wasn't far away, but it was far enough away that I could leave home. I was looking at Scottish schools, I'd been in Edinburgh, same degree she was actually, and sort of looking back, I think jewellery might have been in there. I had a friend, Pamela Murray, at school. Her family had a small jewellery business in Boburnia State in Fife.
00:03:34
Speaker
and I remember visiting her and seeing her parents, they had this, it was like a courtyard with Otter and a stained glass artist and I just remember thinking it was like some magical sort of wonderland going into this place where everybody was making all these, it was basically a craft arts and crafts sort of set up and so there was definitely making with my hands and I've always made things, three-dimensional objects I think, that's something that I've done since I was a kid so
00:04:02
Speaker
That was my, that's what I was going in with. Other than that, I didn't have any preconceptions. And what was it about, you know, when you're on that general course, what made you want to decide to specialise in jewellery?
Dorothy Hogg's Influence on Anna
00:04:18
Speaker
I think Dorothy did a brilliant job of seducing you. Even if you weren't interested, she would lay out, actually, I'm sure your pieces were on the table, Katie. She would lay that bench out on the third floor with all this amazing work and
00:04:31
Speaker
Katie had made a rocket, maybe a rocket ship with a dog that went to the moon. I remember seeing all these things and just thinking, it kind of opened my eyes to discipline that it wasn't just about making objects that were worn on the body. It was bigger than that. And it was kind of more interesting in a way than what I'd already seen. It was more diverse. And I thought, actually, the scale appealed to me.
00:04:58
Speaker
you know, it was something you could hold in your hand and I suppose objects that I've made previous to that had always been kind of handheld, little figures or, you know, carved wooden toys or, you know, it was things I've made at home. My dad's
00:05:13
Speaker
a patent maker in the shipyard so he had a good workshop at home so I was always in there tinkering away making things. We sort of fixed musical instruments and things like that so it was quite precise work so I was under supervision I was allowed in there it wasn't a space I could just had had free reign of but it was something that I really enjoyed doing so it was a scale as well so I think that idea of going into a workshop
00:05:36
Speaker
and seeing all the tools, it was familiar. I felt like I know this, this feels like the smell of things, like, you know, you have things at the machine shop, that smell of the oil and metal. It was kind of familiar. I thought, well, the smell's a little, you know, I know what this is. I think there was almost an immediate, like, yeah, I quite like it in here.
00:05:57
Speaker
just thinking what you're almost everything you said is so familiar like almost the same it was about leaving home but not really going that far and just never it wasn't really um i don't think i even thought about it it was just like i that was what i was going to do it was just i made things and again it was scale i made small things at home as a child all the time just things from clay things from
00:06:26
Speaker
bits of paper and sometimes I
Katie's Creative Roots
00:06:29
Speaker
did make jewellery. At one point I made lots of jewellery out of paper and my dad took it into work and sold it to all the people in the typists and all those old-fashioned jobs. Yeah, I just kind of had always done it, even though after that sort of first year, which I suppose is like the foundation year in a Scottish college,
00:06:51
Speaker
but it wasn't called that. You tried out lots of things, but almost everything I did, I tried ceramics, I did sculpture. I thought I wanted to do sculpture right until I think almost the day, the day that you had to decide, I was like, oh, I don't know which one to do. And my mum had been a jeweller. So I had been in her workshop, had all her tools, or could get all her tools.
00:07:18
Speaker
And it just sort of felt like it just kind of, I just slipped in and thought that was the thing I should do because, and I think it was scale and it wasn't really about jewellery. It was about making small, because I was never, you know, I had the opportunity doing painting and sculpture and even printmaking at Edinburgh, but it was always quite small, what I did. Yeah, and jewellery is small sculptures.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, so it was just about making things out of anything you wanted in a small scale. And again, you said, Anna, about the Dorothy sort of enticing you, luring you in. She did a good job of that. But she was, I think, I'm not 100% sure, but I think her first year as head was my first year at college. She might have started the year
00:08:14
Speaker
when I did my first year I think it might have been her first year so she was new as well and she was really keen obviously but you know I got I came in and
00:08:30
Speaker
I remember going to the interview really clearly because Dorothy kind of started off by giving me a warning because I was sort of renowned for being a bit late and she was like, we know what you're like, we've heard, we've done some research on you and you've got to promise that if you can't be like this, if you're going to come to us, but then still managed to persuade me that it was the department to study in.
00:08:57
Speaker
Obviously she managed to keep that energy going for decades, you know, that was I think some, you know, people that we've interviewed who were part of her last group of students, you know, it was that absolute excitement she had that lured them into that department because that enthusiasm and just, yeah, it was infectious. She was like that about, I mean, even the last time I met her in Edinburgh, I bumped into her in the
00:09:26
Speaker
I can't remember what gallery, I was in a cafe in a gallery with my daughter and she'd been knitting with kids doing Sankara glove.
00:09:36
Speaker
she saw me I didn't see her and she came racing over like with these gloves on going instead of kind of going hello she was like look what we've been making so it was you know she was so excited about it and passing on the the tradition and trying to keep that going and working with kids I think so she yeah she did keep it keep going
00:09:58
Speaker
I think she loved the idea of children as well coming through and having permission almost to make things for living. It felt like, you know, you make these things. Well, I did it in my own time. It wasn't something I ever did in art school. You know, art school for me was life drawing or still life or, you know, I think
Exploring Artistic Freedom at Art School
00:10:17
Speaker
I did a little bit. Anything 3D for me was things I did at home and it was my own little world. And then you get to art school or art college and it's almost like,
00:10:27
Speaker
I can do this this is actually I could do this for a living I can make all these all these things I love doing in my own time because I didn't have any experience of contemporary jewelry I didn't realize that that was even a thing and how broad it was and if you think of where we were in the 70s and 80s and that revolution of materiality and
00:10:46
Speaker
suddenly it was allowed. I think that was what was exciting for me, you know, I can do this, this thing. And you learn obviously the better working skills and all of that, but it was more about it could be made of anything and it can be anything. The rules were really, really open. And I see it with children coming through in workshops. And I think probably also she worked with the kids in Laughlin School. I think she had quite often would bring them into
00:11:13
Speaker
into the department now and again, you know, I think that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. But I think she just really loved that idea. She could just, you know, if you made a decision, you wanted to bring a bunch of kids in, you just did it. You don't need to fill out a risk assessment form or anything like that. It wasn't any of them. No. Some of the things we used to do at college now, thinking on it now.
00:11:36
Speaker
She did a lot of that with the incorporation of Goldsmiths. She founded the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust. She was a member for many, many years and got lots of pictures on file of Dorothy leading workshops with children. She was so good at that.
00:11:49
Speaker
Thinking about your time actually then, you've selected jewellery and you've gone in to your second year with the focus on jewellery. Thinking about your time over those next years, what was it like in that department? What do you remember being that you mentioned Katie about being phoned if you were late? What was the kind of ethos in there about working? I think it was just encouraged to do anything you wanted
00:12:18
Speaker
at any point. I remember staying really late because it was there was only six or seven of us. And as as we went on through the years, obviously you kind of the stress level racked up towards the final degree show. But just I just remember it being like a group of us that would be in there doing whatever we wanted. And if there was anything like I remember mentioning or saying to Dorothy,
00:12:46
Speaker
quite like to use a piece of this material or try this out and then the next morning she'd be like right I know where are we going to get this and you can you know we'll get it you can do it you can try it she was very hands-on as well that she'd always be in the workshop there was an office but it was always open you could just wander in and out there was no kind of
00:13:09
Speaker
barriers between her office and us and just encouragement of being able to try if she could get her hands on something that you wanted to try.
00:13:23
Speaker
you could do it. And again, I think there was that, there was a much less health and safety than there is now. So we would be doing, you know, just open the window and let the fumes go out from this really toxic chemicals that we were thinking about it now. I think because of that, I think I was a bit of a slow starter and I did, I was lazy and didn't go in as much as I should have and blah, blah, blah.
00:13:52
Speaker
She was so encouraging that I just ploughed through just producing loads and loads of, I really enjoyed all the testing and the sampling. And I used to make all these sample boards that I think Dorothy held on to for ages and just trying things. And I don't think she ever said.
00:14:12
Speaker
You know, there's certain techniques that are meant to be done in a certain way and she would just say, just do whatever you want and see what happens. And we did. And so I remember experimenting a lot, just experimenting for weeks.
00:14:29
Speaker
That was massively encouraged as well. There wasn't a right or wrong answer. And, you know, that journey was the important bit. I think it wasn't a mean sin end, it was let's see where you end up. Let's see what happens with this material. I mean, I remember you did the Platinum Award, didn't you? There was a competition called the Platinum Award that was sponsored by a company called Ayrton Metals. And they gave you a try ounce of platinum if you were selected as one of the shortlisted winners. You got 31 grams of platinum.
00:14:59
Speaker
and I think up to a certain amount in other materials. And I had tried to create this piece. I'd made pieces in silver that had been, I wanted them to look like they had been drawn on the surface. So I'd taken a big file on the silver and hacked the silver up and then rubbed it back and oxidized it so that you got these lines that look like cross hatching, a bit like an etching.
00:15:23
Speaker
But of course, I then wanted to recreate this in platinum. I'd done the design board without even thinking platinum doesn't oxidize or do anything. So I was thinking I'd set the design off and got my troy eins to platinum. And I'm thinking, how on earth am I going to get this surface, this sort of painterly or drawn surface onto the metal? And so I just did the same thing. I just got the same file and started hacking this platinum up. I think it's the first time I've seen Dorothy slightly like, you know, what are you doing?
00:15:52
Speaker
That said I need to get this surface and then we filed up some gold and fused the gold into the surface and rubbed it all back. We were working with the surface of the platinum in the same way as we worked with a bit of silver. I mean silver at the time wasn't expensive but you know silver, copper, it wasn't treated
00:16:10
Speaker
a different way so there was that sort of freedom not to think not to sort of balk at something too much and just you know give it a go and see what happens and actually you ended up with much more expressive work that idea of creating you know that marrying drawing and making I think was a big thing about you know that liveliness of the of the sketchbooks and all the sampling in the final piece so that you weren't designing something very rigid and then
00:16:37
Speaker
making something that was very rigid. She was fairly keen on keeping that expressive quality I think.
Malcolm Appleby's Workshop Experience
00:16:44
Speaker
I remember I think one thing that really stands out in my head was Malcolm Appleby coming in. Did he come to see you as well? And he was just like, it was like a performance, like some man turned up with a big trunk and I think he probably did the same thing for each year but you didn't know that and he
00:17:05
Speaker
It was like there was that atmosphere in the department of you being able to kind of do whatever, you know, it wasn't rigid or controlled, but he would come in and make it just complete chaos, but such fun at the same time. And I really remember him coming in and just having such a laugh and making tools, like we made engraving tools with him and engraving into steel and just like playing and it didn't,
00:17:34
Speaker
feel you know we learned a lot but you didn't feel like you were learning you just thought you were having a fun week with this interesting person so yeah because they were at college together at the Royal College so they were friends so yeah he would he would just sort of come I think they hitchhiked across Scotland together one summer I think
00:18:00
Speaker
I was going to talk about the sort of dynamic, I guess. Well, you've got Dorothy, the head of the ship, and then you had Bill, who was very technical and kind of, you didn't mess with Bill. I mean, if you thought Dorothy was kind of strict, Bill didn't take any of these at all. You know, he had his bench probably not the same. I don't know if it was like this when you were there, Katie, he had a bench in the middle of the workshop.
00:18:29
Speaker
and y'all had to stand round his bench and he'd had it specially made, had all these drawers and when he was doing a demonstration it was like a performance, you know, he'd cool the drawer out and then something would be in a box, they'd open the box and they'd unwrap the thing inside the box and then take something out and it would be another box and then, you know, you're waiting to see what this thing is and I remember doing raising, hand raising,
00:18:51
Speaker
it all ranges to ask and he opens this box and takes it out eventually after opening and revealing about two or three different boxes and then finally a little sort of felt wrapped article this tiny little egg appeared with a hinge on it and this was him this this is hand raisin which is kind of you know there was an element of trying to
00:19:13
Speaker
So I suppose ambition, he was wanting to make you look at things that were almost impossible for us to make at that stage and aspire to be that good. So there was a technical element to the course. I definitely felt that Bill sort of led the charge on that. He was the sort of techniques man and really diligent and didn't take any shortcuts. You learn things the hundred percent proper way. Yeah, he was so technically
00:19:42
Speaker
proficient. And yeah, you had to make things properly. But I'd forgotten about that. We had to make boxes. We made eggs, which, yeah. And yeah, proper little silver boxes and things with hinges. But I remember when you were talking about him, I remember him
00:20:02
Speaker
looking at something I'd made and seeing something like you've put enough soldier in there to single battleship because I used to just blast just like fill holes with soldier and he was all about getting everything absolutely precise like the silver boxes we made were round and they had an angle.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, you didn't butt soldier, you just, you mightered it all really carefully and he'd send you back, he'd look at it with a loop. No, go and do it again, do it again. So there was, yeah, there was the two sides of making going on in tandem and Hugh as well, the technician was so lovely and so helpful and he'd do lots of casting and
00:20:47
Speaker
He was good for making tools as well. If you needed a tool, they'd just turn something down, you know. I remember kind of having free reign to that workshop. They had all the metal, the sort of steel, and you could just grab a bit of steel and put it on the electric saw and cut a bit off and make, if you needed a tool for something, you just could not go on up. And you know, it was that official induction, you just got on with it in that tiny little machine shop.
00:21:13
Speaker
I think that's because the numbers were so small that if somebody did want to go and do something like that, somebody could sort of quickly show you and then it wasn't like there's loads of people needing attention at the same time.
00:21:30
Speaker
I left the store room. Do you remember the store room through past the office? There was a store room and Dorothy was a great one for just if anybody had anything that they were getting rid of, she would take it. So she had a big bag of wood that an instrument maker had off cuts, little bits of hardwood. And that would be in the store. And then the scrap metal was all in the store. You know, if you had worked on something, it was a disaster. You could put it in the scrap bin.
00:21:58
Speaker
And there was all sorts of stuff. I think she was a real corridor and kind of collector of materials, but it was such a brilliant resource. If you weren't sure about something or you had an idea, but you weren't quite sure what materials you wanted to use, you could go into that store and have a rummage and see and try things.
00:22:17
Speaker
you didn't have to think oh it might work in wood, I'm going to order some wood or maybe I need a bit of copper wire or you know there was a real resource there of materials like a kind of materials library almost of stuff that was just free to use it was all recycled from other departments and people she knew I think it was
00:22:40
Speaker
The instrument maker, I think, had been a friend of Lachlan's who donated all the stuff, things that were too small for what he was doing. But for us, bits of wood that size were, that was a brooch. I find that really inspiring because if you were stuck, you weren't just sitting with a bit of paper and your pencil, you actually could go and find some materials and practice and do testing in three dimensions. Did either of you do any sort of internships or work experience opportunities while you were at UC?
00:23:11
Speaker
A lot of the things that happened happened through her relationships with people. I went to Hamline and worked with a German jewellery company called Manu and that relationship was basically through in Horgenta. I think we've been on the stand the year before and one of the students was drawing and the coach just said what you put your drawing and she goes I'm just here with the art college and work
00:23:36
Speaker
and they got chatting and it was a tiny little company. And then from then on in, they would invite a couple of people over every summer to work with them. And it was a family business in Hamlin and it was, you know, an amazing setup. So I did that one summer. I worked for Western Bemore one summer with Lauren, actually. Lauren was working there at the time and I went on exchange to Finland in my, I think it was maybe in my third year. And actually I went with a printmaker
00:24:04
Speaker
So myself and a printmaker from Edinburgh went over and I actually did quite a lot of printmaking over there, like that. Again, you went to this college and it was in Lactey, it's a jewellery school, but they had a printmaking and fine art area as well. And because of my lack of finish and their lack of English, I kind of was fairly feral. I could go for what I wanted. So I actually ended up in the printmaking department, did quite a lot of drawing and printmaking there. And actually
00:24:31
Speaker
Classic Dorothy, I went back and, you know, you had to present what you'd done when I was away. I felt slightly guilty saying I haven't really made any jewellery. I had designed jewellery and intended to make it and I'd asked for some, you know, put an order in with the technician for some gold wire and some silver tube. And I was giving up a bag of scrap jewellery for the silver and the same for the gold. So I spent my whole time melting it down, making tube, you know, so I had made tube and made wire, but I hadn't done anything with it.
00:24:59
Speaker
But she just got really excited that I'd done all this other drawing and printmaking. So, you know, she saw the value in it, even though it wasn't sort of an expected thing to do when I was away. I thought I might have been in a wee bit of trouble for not having, you know, my own jewellery. But I was looking, I was looking and observing and taking it in and doing something with that information. And I think that was the thing that was valuable in her eyes. What a great experience, Anna.
00:25:28
Speaker
Katie, can you tell me a bit about your degree show and what you remember from your work at that time? That is so different to what I do now. It feels like another person. So the degree show was in the, it wasn't in college, it was in, what was that place called? The City Arts Centre? Down by Waverly. Yeah. So
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah it felt it was kind of a real, it was quite strange to exhibit out of just having to get everything down there and my work was quite looking back at it now. It was all about animals and dogs and things which
00:26:08
Speaker
now I'm like, was that me? But it was quite experimental, I guess. I just kind of made loads and loads of things that I wanted to do from all my drawings. I did loads of drawings in my books of funny scenarios, the sort of cartoons, and I did a lot of my drawings were three-dimensional. I remember getting a, you know, you had to, you maybe had to give, make a presentation drawing, like a paint up.
00:26:35
Speaker
and I was like I don't want to do this because it was just I don't know I just didn't want to do it so I turned it all around and started doing these things with clay and pushing drawing into clay pouring dental plaster and turning it round and then drawing and painting like a paint up in three dimensions sort of or maybe two dimensions so I had these great big slabs of cast plaster on the walls of drawings
00:27:01
Speaker
and I made frames and I made this spaceship and I made all these things and I think I filled my showcase full of gravel or something I was just like but Dorothy was all the way kind of go yeah yeah do it do it do it and and I was like yeah I just really went for it and so I've made almost this little environment and popped everything in on this big pile of gravel but I remember
00:27:28
Speaker
It was a really good experience getting out of college and going into this venue and it felt really kind of important and special instead of setting up in one of the rooms in the college, which often happens. And I sold loads of it. I was really surprised. I wasn't prepared for that at all. I sold tons of it and I was a bit like, oh,
00:27:50
Speaker
I don't know if I want to sell it, but really carefully, that was another thing Dorothy, really helped us price our work and really consider it. So yeah, I sold loads of it and I think that was a really good lesson almost. Because you kind of don't really think that much about it when you're at college, you're just doing what you want to do. And then suddenly you're exposed and people want it.
00:28:17
Speaker
And did you have quite a lot of drawings? Your drawings were obviously the wall pieces. Yeah. Yeah. It was quite a focus on that. I remember degree shows weren't just your jewellery, you had a portfolio and the portfolio wasn't a portfolio of designs. It was just your drawing or your research or the sampling or a mixture of it could be kind of any mashup of any of those things. But it was expected that you would show that alongside the work. So there was a sort of context of what you would do. Yeah.
00:28:47
Speaker
It showed the process, what you've been doing rather than just the finished article. I was in the college actually, we were in the, what was the lecture theatre? I did second subject, I did a second subject in stained glass. Did you do second subject Katie?
00:29:07
Speaker
Mine was silversmithing that's why I made that spaceship because I was like, I'm because silversmithing would be taught by Bill and would be raising really carefully and I realize now how awkward.
00:29:21
Speaker
I was all along and I was just like, well, I'm doing silversmithing, but I'm not going to use any silversmithing techniques. So I got lots and lots of sheets of metal and started riveting them together to see how big I could go. And then I was like, oh, I don't really want to do this as an abstract thing. So that's, I made some things out of metal that were bigger than jewelry. And one of them happened to be a spaceship. So that was my second object. Because I did, um,
00:29:51
Speaker
stained glass and actually my exchange year had quite heavily influenced my stained glass because my stained glass windows were all based on the etchings that I'd done when I was in Finland so I had to start with stained glass and then the jewellery back, my jewellery was all kinetic, it all moved and I suppose that has carried through my work now, it still has that element.
00:30:11
Speaker
I remember having long discussions with God about how we were going to make the case move so that all the things would move because there were sort of boxes that had moving elements in the top. So they only moved if, if you were walking or if it, you know, if you, if you not the case, they would all shimmer. So we had a long discussion about how we did that. And in the end, my dad made a case that had a little spring mechanism that you just pulled a string and it was just enough to create a slight judger in the case. And then everything would start moving.
00:30:41
Speaker
But, you know, again, lots of sales and then new designers going down to London. We did that. And that feels like a long, long time ago, I was having a chat with our current director in the art school and actually we both won a Habitat Award the same year. I hadn't realized we were in the same photograph and, you know, newspaper clipping. And that was based on the drawing. So the drawing, the portfolio that I presented of, I did quite a lot of still life drawing.
00:31:10
Speaker
And it was just about composition really, it was about objects and you know, and it was oils and I scratched into the oil paint, it was all quite expressive. But you took that portfolio with you designers and they were really interested in the drawing. I think they liked the jewellery but the drawing was the thing that that had
00:31:31
Speaker
sparked interest and I won this habitat prize and then worked for them for quite a long time actually freelance doing all sorts of things nothing to do with jewellery which was quite exciting time so. What were you designing?
00:31:45
Speaker
I was designing, I started off, I did a swatch book for them to start with, and it was all about metal finishes. So basically saying, okay, remake candlesticks, or I don't know, furniture legs, four different surfaces could be put on them. So I did, I mean, it felt like, I did feel like I was getting paid to do nothing really. I was sort of saying, well, here's a scotch blank finish and here's a sandblasted finish. So it was just about how can you treat the surface of metal to create different finishes? So I started off doing that.
00:32:13
Speaker
and then I did some designing of things like the metal art pieces with candlesticks and boxes and they used to have quite a lot of tableware and you know not just
00:32:24
Speaker
functional things so I did quite a lot of that and then I did Christmas cards for a long time. I think I sent them a Christmas card one year that I'd made and they said oh could you do some. And again I'm a bit like what you were saying earlier about you know I was making things and getting paid to do it because it wasn't my designs, I wasn't a textile artist who'd created a surface pattern that was then going on everything.
00:32:45
Speaker
I didn't feel like I was being exploited or used in any way, I felt like I was able to add something to their repertoire that was just a small part of what I did. I suppose it was earning money and when you first graduate you sell your work at degrees show but you have to keep that momentum going and it was a good way for me to get started and it opened my eyes up also to diversification. I thought it doesn't have to be jewellery, I can do all sorts of things. These skills I have
00:33:12
Speaker
can transfer into all sorts
Post-Graduation Opportunities and Adaptability
00:33:14
Speaker
of other things. And I think that's something as a teacher today that I'm still saying to students, you know, just because you've learned this skill doesn't mean that that can make you do this, this, this, this, and this. Just think about what that's given you as a toolkit. I think you're particularly that. I'm just thinking about the things that you've done. Yeah, I know it's it confuses a lot of people when if I meet somebody new and they say, what do you do? It's like,
00:33:41
Speaker
I'm not quite sure. And sometimes it's easier just, there's no point in talking about it all because it's too much, but it's also working with people, I think is part of why I've ended up doing what I've ended up doing. You know, opportunities come up because of who you meet or who you know. I just always go, oh yeah, try that. I like to try all sorts of things.
00:34:07
Speaker
So Katie from when you graduated at ECA can you plot some of those different experiences? Then I went to the Royal College and Dorothy made me apply. She was like right now you are going to do this and I was like oh am I? I didn't have like a this is what I want to do and this is my plan. I didn't have a
00:34:31
Speaker
goal in life. I just wanted, I just knew I liked making. So she was like, okay, now you're going to go to the Royal College and made me make my portfolio. And I worked, you know, I worked really, really hard and I remember making, making the actual portfolio and making everything. She had this ceremony that she did where everybody had to kiss the portfolio before it went off. And then I got in and it was like, oh, okay. Because I didn't really
00:35:01
Speaker
I don't know, stupidly didn't think I would get in. So I did that, went to Royal College for two years and then basically that was me in London and I didn't go back. Then after the Royal College I set up a workshop with three other jewellers, two who I was with at the Royal College
00:35:21
Speaker
Claire Underwood and noon Mitchell Hill and then Liz Bone was looking for a workshop at the same time as us at cockpit. So we got a studio cockpit and then I was there for maybe 10 years.
00:35:35
Speaker
So in that time I was making small batch production jewellery. I kind of was scrambling to make money basically. So I did go into kind of cast silver jewellery production and was selling it in liberties and all sorts of shops. And then just decided I hated doing that. It was just, you know, working in a little mini factory. And then I started going back to experimenting with materials.
00:36:03
Speaker
And then because of, I think that was a kind of knock on, like using different materials and making jewellery from bits of old toothbrush and a piece of spectacle, cellulosacetate and wood. I sold the pieces, but obviously they were all one off. They were kind of like studio art jewellery, moved back into that world and then started doing other jobs to kind of supplement
00:36:28
Speaker
just needing to earn a living so I started teaching. Then at one point I set up a shop with a friend Jane who's a costume designer and then we decided that we didn't want to do that anymore. It was an elaborate hobby that got out of control and then I started working with her in costume. She asked me to do research one day she said you're really nosy
00:36:50
Speaker
And I think you can do this. And she had two jobs on the go, two film jobs. And she was doing that film Suffragette. And I did all the research for her and made pieces for it. And then it just kind of grew. And then I started working for lots of other costume designers doing research and making.
00:37:09
Speaker
And while I was in cockpit, I met Jo Gordon, who has a small knit. She sells knitwear. And I used to go in and out of her studio a lot because we were right next door to each other. And then 15 years later, she was like, oh, do you want to come and help me design? I think I don't want to just do it on my own anymore. So I started working with her.
00:37:32
Speaker
So yeah, it just spread, spread out and I really like it. I really like working with the costume designers. I like working with Joe and working teaching at St. Martin's with the people that I teach with. So it's all, it's like the collaboration.
00:37:52
Speaker
I'm sort of thinking back to your experience or our experience with Dorothy and the idea of anything goes and saying yes to anything there was never a kind of no you can't do that and that's maybe I can see a thread through your life. Yeah I mean at times it can be really full on because there's certain times of the year when I'm teaching a lot and then if I'm doing a film job
00:38:17
Speaker
And then if Jewel wants me to do some design work, it's like seven days a week, but, you know, it comes, it's like all freelance work. It comes and goes. So you, you do it when it's there. So yeah, but I, I really, I like where I've got to, but I didn't plan it. It just sort of happened. Guys, are the things that you're making with the costume designers, are they Jewelry or is it other objects?
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah they are, I mean some of it is really varied like say I've done sometimes it has to be historically accurate so like for Suffragette I did quite a lot of the obviously pins and things or they would say there's this piece of say a brooch that we have got photos of and we think it looks like this can you work it out and then recreate it
00:39:09
Speaker
or I did, I worked on The Crown as well. I did loads of research for Jane for That which was fascinating because it was really, it was a very small period of time really and we were looking at the shapes of the, shapes of the costumes of people, what people wore over a very short period of time and getting it really really right but then there would be
00:39:30
Speaker
something from a photograph again that had to be recreated and also there was a big masked ball in it and Jane just said do you want to come in we'll set up an arts and crafts table she called it and we got this massive table in the studio and we had to what was fun about that was it was a costume ball in the 19 late 1950s so the costumes would have been made and they weren't you know something that had to be copied
00:39:59
Speaker
And it was an under the sea ball. And we had to make enough fancy dress costumes for about 100 people. And we just got loads of stuff and glue guns and banged it all together and made masks with scalloped shells. And I had a team of people working with me just going, right, we'll put that together, glue, get that on, get that on. And it was like really full on fast paced. And then sometimes,
00:40:27
Speaker
I've done, I've done quite a lot of headpieces and crowns weirdly. We worked on The King, which was a thing with Timothy Chalamet and he had a crown, but we didn't, Jane Petrie, who I worked with a lot, didn't, she didn't mind if it wasn't completely historically accurate, but it had to look obviously of the right period. We did lots of crowns and loads of big, I suppose they'd be like chains of office when people used to wear almost like mayoral chains.
00:40:56
Speaker
but we made them out of loads and loads of brass fittings from a, there's a shop not far from where I live that sells leather, but it also has loads and loads of old stock of buckles and studs and all these things made of brass. So we just made these huge things from old, some of them are horse brasses and all sorts of things. And that was a massive production. And then recently I worked on a science fiction 20,000 years in the future.
00:41:25
Speaker
you can just make it up you can just you know obviously there's loads of research and kind of there was seven different planets that had to look very different and i would make a few samples of the oh there's this planet that's all wet and mossy and there's that planet that's hard and dark and i made up we bought different materials and made up things and then there was the costume props people downstairs were kind of making more of the same
00:41:53
Speaker
So it's really different. It's so varied. And yeah, sometimes Jane might just send me a picture of a piece of embroidery and say, I want a necklace for a 16th century queen from a piece of embroidery. And I'm like, ah, but she's got great faith in me. I think more faith than I do and just likes to throw things at me and see what happens. It is really good fun when it's going, but it's sort of terrifying at the same time because you don't have, it's not like being
00:42:24
Speaker
you know, Anna, you'll know like you're in your studio and you can just kind of play around with things and put them to the side and leave them there almost for years. But with this, it's like, right, we've got two weeks and you have to do it. Sometimes I think the analogy was holding on to the side of a runaway train with your fingernails.
00:42:44
Speaker
I get somebody that I teach with sometimes who lives really close by, he sometimes helps me with making because I can't physically make everything. He so likes to screw everything together and make everything really beautifully, which you do when you're making a piece of jewellery.
00:43:02
Speaker
But I'm just like, do you know what? We don't have time for this. You've just got to get it to, you know, use really low melt solder and whack it together really quickly. And he's often quite horrified by that. And I have to really, you know, say this is the budget. This is the time you can't, you know, you go you go back on everything that you believe in is, you know, making something really beautifully front and back. Can't do that in film work very often.
00:43:31
Speaker
Anna, do you want to pick up from where you were talking about what happened after Habitat? Well, I went back to study. I did a Masters in Edinburgh. I then did New Designers again. It's a sort of repeat year. And actually, I then started to develop quite a good client base. I think, you know, I sold really well, particularly at New Designers. Degrees show us all, but I remember New Designers was kind of transformed. I remember thinking,
00:44:00
Speaker
gosh there's people here that have money you know you price something up you think nobody's ever going to buy that you know and then they don't think twice about it i remember having a moment of just because i can't afford my own work doesn't mean there aren't people out there that can i think having done a master's in developing the work
00:44:15
Speaker
It was really useful for me. It gave me an extra year, I think, to build confidence in my own practice. And then I did a residency. I'd actually always done a bit of teaching with Dutch. She'd kind of always pulled me in if somebody was off sick. I remember teaching second subject. When I was doing my master's, I actually taught second subject jewellery on a Friday. And I don't ever remember getting paid for it. I just did it because she asked me to. You know, that kind of like, okay then. I remember, you know, Frances Priest.
00:44:45
Speaker
I'm a character. She was one of my students. I joke about it. I said, I remember you. I can actually see the jewellery aesthetic in her. So I can see how that might have
00:44:54
Speaker
influence. I actually really enjoyed it. I then got a studio in Edinburgh with Anne Little and Emma Gayle who were two years below. So they were just graduating when I, by the time I'd done my master's in two years, Artisan Residence, by the time I'd done that and was leaving, they were leaving and we set up a studio together and I was in that studio for about 10 years and really loved it. It's just a wasp studio in Dalry in Edinburgh.
00:45:24
Speaker
and I was living nearby and then I got a call, I got a call from Dot first, this is the classic Dorothy, you get the foreborn and you're going to get a call from Glasgow. I said oh right okay. So she'd been approached and they were looking for somebody to cover Jack Cunningham who was doing a PhD at the time so he was paid a day a week funding to pay for somebody to come in to allow him time out just to study for his PhD.
00:45:50
Speaker
Roger Miller came to see me in my studio. Talked to Edgy, speak to me, I didn't understand what he was saying. To start with, you know, he said, we've got a .2 FTE blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just have to say, speak English, I don't know what you...
00:46:01
Speaker
I don't know what you're asking me, and he said, oh, one day a week, I thought, actually, that would be, yes, please, that'd be a nice thing to do. Because I had, after graduating in that 10 years, I had done quite a lot of teaching. I did Con Ed classes, I taught summer schools, I went in to do bits and pieces with dots, project work, things like that. So it's always something that I quite enjoyed and had done as a sort of, it supplemented my pay, I guess, it was a sort of steady income.
00:46:28
Speaker
done bits and pieces and when that job came up at Glasgow I thought yeah I could do that and that just kind of crept up a bit like when you were saying Katie I didn't plan it, it just kind of happened.
00:46:39
Speaker
I also did things I went to Aberyst with, I did a residency there. Yeah, lots of things. Chelsea Craft Fair used to do that every year, that's not regular. I've never done goldsmiths and goldsmiths was always at the same time as Chelsea and I never felt my work was precious enough. Goldsmiths was quite a grand affair. Back then it felt like a much more precious jewellery fair, whereas now I think it's taken the space of probably where Chelsea Craft Fair was back in the 90s I would say.
00:47:03
Speaker
I guess I was just open to things. I was doing the freelance work for Habitat. I was doing exhibitions. It was an exciting time and it felt kind of even after graduation.
00:47:14
Speaker
was always still there, you would always get the notes and the kind of phone calls, so it didn't stop when you left, there was always a sort of contact and bear in mind there was no email at that point, it was all, it was letters, you got letters and cards and I saw this in the newspaper and thought of you kind of, it would arrive, you know, so there was this there was a sort of contact all the time and I think that feeling
00:47:39
Speaker
of not wanting to let her down was still there. You know, you still felt like, oh gosh, yeah, you know, she's still in the background watching her flock, if you like, and then going into education. I mean, I'm from, my parents were teachers, you know, we were from myself, music and the arts really, but they taught. So it was familiar territory for me going into teaching, but teaching in higher education was new.
00:48:05
Speaker
I like teaching students because I don't feel, you know, in a school environment there's much more other stuff going on whereas I think students come in and they're good and they want to do it. It's a really fulfilling environment. You can really nurture people through and if people don't work hard and don't do it, it's kind of sad but it's not, it's kind of on them really.
00:48:25
Speaker
And I think it's nice to have that freedom to kind of not feel that you have to get, you know, they're responsible for themselves, they're adults, I guess. And by the time they get to art school, they want to be there. You know, I think there's also that. So there are highs and lows, you know, when Katie and I worked together, yeah, I've been working down at Central St. Martin. So, you know, we're familiar with the changes. It's quite different now, I would say, to have you with your students.
00:48:50
Speaker
What do you think some of those main changes are compared to, you know, I guess maybe the autonomy that Dorothy had compared to what you deal with? Are there ways that you can kind of continue Dorothy's legacy of teaching through your own work?
Continuing Dorothy Hogg's Legacy
00:49:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that trying
00:49:08
Speaker
to, I think, the encouraging the students to just, you do, there is no right and wrong, but you kind of say that and then you're like, you know, we did have a policy at, Jeremy Till had a policy at College of that there are no rules, but actually there are some. But I think, yeah, that encouraging the students that there isn't, because they quite often think that you know all the answers, you're there to facilitate them finding out what their answers are.
00:49:37
Speaker
because there isn't a right and wrong and trying to try to keep that going I think is a a Dorothy thing you know just what do you want to do and and go for it it's it's difficult because I think the culture now is that there's what's the formula and that there actually isn't a formula
00:49:57
Speaker
know at the moment we're revalidating and rewriting coursework and you're looking at things like learning outcomes I'm thinking I don't even know if I could have told you if we had any of those when I was a student you know could you have told you what your assessment criteria and your learning outcomes were making work you just made work and you would talk about it and if you had a you know being assessed I remember being assessed and sitting in a room with Bill and Dorothy and they would have the workout or Sue might be there you know they'd have the workout and they would talk about the work and talk about
00:50:26
Speaker
why it was good or not good. It wasn't about just getting agreed and feedback. It was actually, you had a conversation about it and it made you understand why something hadn't worked
00:50:38
Speaker
And normally you agreed, you kind of knew when you make something that hasn't worked, you know, pretty much away. You became quite particular and diligent about getting things right. You know, all those testing is a means to an end to getting something right and knowing that the first thing isn't going to be the right thing. You have to kind of, there's a process of failure that is required to get to the good stuff.
00:51:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think you saying that about the failure, we talk about that a lot with the students. It's like you have to make mistakes. I think there's that often, not always, but just like the fear of making mistakes and wanting to just say, right, well, I want to do this and I'm going to make it and it's going to be great. And not going through the process of multiple mistakes and tests or something you might do and you might just go, that's not the direction I want to go in. You have to turn back around and
00:51:31
Speaker
go back to research or... It means take time. It feels like things, people want more immediacy, they want things to happen without a much backup, much to kind of hold it. I think there's a grades thing. I mean, I'd love to remove grades from the whole thing. If you could just make work and not be thinking about what I need to get an A off. I think the grades make it kind of disable creativity sometimes.
00:51:59
Speaker
That might not be a popular thing to say, but I remember one year.
00:52:04
Speaker
we had we had an assessment point and it wasn't a final assessment point but we used to issue grades and I asked our registry if we could just not issue grades at that point just giving feedback and they said yeah that's fine and actually as soon as we did that you could see the the environment changed and the students were much more receptive and less worried about making the mistakes they realized actually this is part of a journey it's not the end and it's never the end it's never a full stop you don't get to find a year and that's it stopped
00:52:32
Speaker
So those errors and learning through making or trying or having the courage to give it a go happens throughout your whole career. No, we don't have all the answers ever. So yeah, I think it's a shame that it's become quite grades focused. Student numbers also don't help. I think numbers are tricky because you don't get that same relationship with students, you know,
00:53:00
Speaker
How many students do you have in the departments that you teach in now? I think on average they start off just over 40, about 42, 43. It has been more and it has been less. We're about half that. It's actually quite a difficult thing to analyse because, you know, when you're a student, you're a student, you're looking at it up the way. When you're an academic member of staff, you're in a different position.
00:53:26
Speaker
I spoke about this with Sue Cross since I'd actually seen she would be a good person to ask because she was there. She's been there throughout the whole journey, if you like. And I think similar to parenting, you take with you what you've learned. So, you know, we'll be doing things, Katie, that we learn as students because you kind of copy and emulate things that you know worked for you. So I think that culture
00:53:55
Speaker
coming through is really strong and I see it in institutions. I did a little bit of a mapping exercise of people who've been taught by DAWT and in education and people who've been taught by DAWT or taught by people who were taught by DAWT, you know, that kind of and they're in every institution in the UK. There's somebody in every single specialist service and majority course in the UK that's been either taught by DAWT
00:54:23
Speaker
or taught by somebody who taught, you know, it's kind of everywhere. You start sort of tallying it up, then you realise actually, well, they were Glasgow, but yeah, they were taught by Dorothy and Dundee or, you know, whatever she had been. There's definitely really, really strong threads in education.
00:54:44
Speaker
Is there anything that you feel like you want to speak a little bit more about or go back to? It's quite interesting. There's been quite a few themes arise through the conversations. And one of them was all around Dorothy's ability to kind of focus in on the specific needs of the student and how everyone learns differently and in different ways. And that she was really good at being able to identify that. And then another theme was also her vast network and how she would be able to pair people
00:55:13
Speaker
you know, even if it wasn't in jewellery, it would be a designer or a different opportunity that might benefit that student. So thinking about that network thing, I think her kind of ability, a lot of the time the network, it wasn't people that she just knew, she had no fear in just going and asking for things.
00:55:34
Speaker
you know, I remember they were having a platinum exhibition at the museum in Chambers Street. They needed funding. And she came in one morning and she'd managed to get funding from like the Royal Bank of Scotland or something. I said, well, I was walking home last night and I noticed they had a platinum account. So I just went in and asked to speak to the bank manager and, you know, conversation later that they'd sponsored the exhibition or they give money towards it. It was things like that. You just thought confidence just to do it was admirable. And, you know, things
00:56:05
Speaker
connection with the company in Germany, Manu. It was a conversation on a trade stand. And the next moment we were sending students every summer to live in their house, actually. We lived in the family home with these people and then worked small casting production jewelry. But it was a really amazing experience. That sort of one conversation, a nugget of an idea or a nugget of potential would then be, it was never discarded. It was always kind of like, how can we get the most out of this?
00:56:35
Speaker
all of that time and energy and effort and actually she was relentless in terms of work ethic and I think retrospectively speaking to
00:56:47
Speaker
When she was ill, it was one of the things she said, she kept saying to me, don't burn yourself out. And I'm thinking, that's rich coming from you. She was the one that was always pushing me. But I think there was a point in the end where she thought maybe she should have not been quite so relentless. Relentless. Relentless is quite...
00:57:10
Speaker
I suppose a harsh word, but it was exactly that she was thinking about, and it wasn't just thinking about jewellery all the time, it was thinking about the students and the department and her teaching and other people all the time to try and get whatever she could to help them. But she was, I mean, jewellery was her, I think as well, like I told
00:57:38
Speaker
I can't remember who I was speaking to. It might have been Amanda, but we used to live when I was in third year. I lived in Stockbridge with two other students from the college and used the same supermarket as her and her husband and used to kind of go, oh, I've just got out. And then I remember once walking in and seeing her with a star fruit
00:58:04
Speaker
standing in the fruit and veg department and she did this thing i don't know if you like there's a she would go like this
00:58:12
Speaker
And she'd do that and we'd all go, oh, here she goes again. So she'd pick up, I don't know if you were making something and go, oh, could it be an earring? Could it be a brooch? And she had this thing and she was grounding in the supermarket, doing it with a piece of fruit to Lachlan. And he was just kind of going, yeah. He was like, oh, that's a memory of, you know, even she went with it to the supermarket. It was everywhere with her.
00:58:38
Speaker
You'll probably find that that Starfleet was then on the bench in the college the following morning. They're working with kids as well I think. I remember when she did the residency at the V&A and I took my daughter and she was tiny, she was like maybe pre-primary age I think and Dorothy gave her so much attention and kind of like right we're doing this. I think it was like an
00:59:03
Speaker
was loads of stuff going on in the in the museum and there was loads of things to do and make and she kind of got Nancy and was like right you're gonna make this you can do that and she was you know at the stage where she was just beginning to make things and it was just so lovely that she gave everybody the time and the attention no matter who they were I think was very Dorothy. Yeah she did similar in the National Museums of Scotland I remember taking the boys and again they were
00:59:34
Speaker
certainly young prime age, one public preschool at the time in effort and they were twisting wire with the drill and stamping things into shim and they were all fist student in there.
00:59:49
Speaker
left dripping in jewellery and just the joy you know she clearly just loved that reaction you get when you work with kids and they they get it you know there's a moment where the light comes on and you can see that focus and i think that was something she strived for in kids but also in the students because there is a moment
01:00:10
Speaker
where your brain clicks and you just totally get it. And then you become the obsessed maker that we have become, you know, the kind of, that's all I want to do. And I'll be here till 10 o'clock at night or overnight or whatever it is. She was very good. She did the thing with the objects. I totally remember that meeting. It was like, you know, is it a buckle? Is it an ornament? She was very good at promoting the students. So if you're in a situation like a degree show or a new design or whatever,
01:00:39
Speaker
She would introduce you, but she wouldn't just introduce you as you. She would say, this is Anna Gordon, and she won the Panama War, blah, blah, blah, or this is Katie Hiney, and Katie's at the Royal College of Art. And, you know, there was always a kind of like, like your mother would do. You were just like, you were just slightly mortified going over. Yeah, kind of like, go and speak to that person.
01:01:01
Speaker
figured at throwing in at the deep end a bit his mouth. I've been in situations where I remember being at the, there was an exhibition of Bill's work after he died in the Scottish Gallery. I had an evening of talk chat and I popped along, you know, I wasn't sure even where I was able to go, but I popped along and I was there. And just before you know what's happened, she's saying, so Anna, can you tell the group what it was like to learn under Bill and I was completely unprepared. You just, you step up and do it because she's asked you to do it.
01:01:31
Speaker
you're always aware that at any moment you might be asked to do something. One of the things that kind of strikes me with speaking, you know, and obviously the people that have been selected for these interviews, you know, have a range of careers, but something that I keep coming back to is just like the confidence, but they had confidence in their
Dorothy's Encouragement and Student Confidence
01:01:49
Speaker
abilities to be able to take up some really incredible opportunities.
01:01:53
Speaker
like almost straight after graduating, whether it'd been, you know, working for a company in the Philippines or, you know, working in design, it seemed that the skills that you learn on that degree gave you enough confidence to be able to think, yes, I can do a job like that, or I can take up an opportunity like that. Was that about that, or was it really a lot of, you know, Dorothy being that kind of enthusiast and champion of you?
01:02:20
Speaker
Maybe a bit. I mean, I think Dorothy did, she did encourage everyone to just go for it. And I don't ever remember her saying, oh no, you can't do this or you can't do that. It was like, do this, do this, do that, and just kind of crack on with it and do it. And I suppose that must have instilled confidence that you could do anything. Yeah. I think she pushed you to do things outside your comfort zone a bit as well. There was that all the time. And I think if that happens quite a lot,
01:02:48
Speaker
you realise actually what's the worst that would happen. I was fairly fearless at college. Social and cultural time was different. Students, you know, we had funding and I felt freer probably than students feel today. I don't know if you feel like Casey, but I felt, you know, art school was kind of a big adventure and I didn't feel scared of graduating or what am I going to do next. I just thought,
01:03:10
Speaker
I don't know what I'm going to do next, but it'll work itself out. In my head, I just thought, you know, I didn't have any plan. If somebody said to me, what will you be doing in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years? If somebody said I'd be sitting here now in this conversation, I would have been, I wouldn't have believed you, you know.
01:03:27
Speaker
none of it was planned but I do think she was kind of in the background all the time you know I talk about her being like Master Yoda she was always in the background even when she's even now she's still there you know I still get what we don't do and there's a level of quality that you have to maintain and there's a kind of I still feel there's a level of quality and a legacy that you have to maintain I feel a responsibility for that I think
01:03:58
Speaker
And that's not a bad thing. It sounds like it's a huge weight, but I think it just pushes you to be better and to try and maintain that quality. And I mean, that's more and more difficult with financial challenges in education and all of those things. But that was one thing. The other thing was also just to keep making your own work. I think that idea of stopping. I mean, a lot of people who work in education, especially people who work full time, don't make a lot of their own work anymore. In order to make your own work, you have to kind of be doing it in your own time, really.
01:04:26
Speaker
And that a lot of people think, well, I've got a full-time job, I'm not doing that. Whereas I've always kept that thread of I have to be doing that other thing to make me a better teacher. I have to be doing it in order to be able to have a conversation with the student. It's a difficult thing to keep going, but it's something that is really intrinsic to me. And actually it's something as a person, even though I'm working in education, the making is the thing that's got me there. And it's the making's the thing that I would do if I had to choose one thing to do in my life. Yeah, I agree.
01:04:55
Speaker
It's hard and it's like just fitting everything in but it can be done even if it's just a little bit here and a little bit there. It's not about having a show every year, it's just about maybe making one thing or there's something on your bench still working progress. So it's a kind of measure of my mental health if I'm making something or not. I know that my husband, he'll be like, you've not been in the workshop for a while, are you okay? Something like COVID wasn't in the workshop at all.
01:05:24
Speaker
and it was an interesting observation because he was saying you should be at you know instagrams full of people going oh yeah i'm not working just making stuff like you know for me i lost my confidence in the risk taking i think because everything else was such so awful and you know you're managing the situation with students it was so difficult and you couldn't it felt like an impossible situation i thought if i go into the workshop and start making something and it doesn't go right
01:05:54
Speaker
I don't think I can handle another thing going wrong. I think it's kind of self-preservation. I need to just focus on this because I can't be taking risks on something else at the moment. I think the same. I felt the same. So many people were like, oh, I learnt a new skill. I did this. I did that. And I was like, oh. Only afterwards I thought about it. Why didn't I make more use of that time?
01:06:17
Speaker
It just felt to me, it was survival mode. It was too difficult a time to have that space. That's the first time I've had such a big chunk of time. I haven't made anything. And then I came out of it quite productive. Thanks Katie and Anna. It's been so wonderful speaking with you today and thank you very much for taking part in the podcast.
01:06:39
Speaker
We'll add some links and images on our website on the project page at www.scottishgoalsmistrust.org but before we go is there anything else that you'd like to add or say especially about Dorothy? I mean I think if I hadn't been taught by Dorothy I wouldn't be where I am today which you know you kind of hear that said a lot in different contexts but I do truly think that
01:07:06
Speaker
I don't know what I would have done because she really pushed me and saw something that I didn't see and just was like, you've got to do this. And with quite a forceful, although she was very kind and calm, it was done with a lot of grit and force at the same time. And I really value that.
01:07:29
Speaker
I completely agree. I mean I've had her advice throughout my career, you know, I've been in touch with her over the years and you know if I've ever not been sure about something I would ask her and I think it's given me the confidence to do what I'm doing now. I don't think I would have had the confidence or the drive or the
01:07:50
Speaker
Yeah, I just wouldn't have thought it was possible, I think. So she gave me that. I think confidence is a big thing. You were mentioning it earlier. Yeah, but it's probably true. I think what was lovely about the exhibition in London was seeing all those people again. And even if there are people like Lauren, it wasn't in my year. So I didn't really, I knew you all for it, but I didn't really know her. But then I meet you. She was involved in the Ghostmas Centre.
01:08:17
Speaker
these come and judge the prizes at New Designers every year. And there was an immediate connection when I met her through DAW. It was like, oh, you know, you were at Edinburgh and I was at Edinburgh. You know, it felt familiar immediately, the conversations that we could have about work and things. It was lovely. And, you know, she's somebody that I've got to know since then. So the people that weren't in my graduating year, I know now, but might be before or after, but the connections through study, I mean,