Discover what it takes to put together a collection for an arts degree show as final-year Loughborough University Fine Art student Jess shows us the processes involved as she prepares for the Creative Arts Degree Show 2022.
"Hi there, my name is Jess and I’m currently a final year Fine Art student. I’m twenty-two years old, having started at Loughborough after taking an impromptu gap year after my A-Levels. Or, well, I call it a gap year. I actually started an Illustration degree at Arts University Bournemouth and quickly realised that Fine Art was more my calling. So, I dropped out, reapplied to Loughborough and now here I am.
Much like everyone in my year, my time as a student at Loughborough has been irrefutably marred by covid. It hit mid-way through my first year and has coloured the experience ever since. I do get to credit the lockdown as the push I needed to get my work in the direction it’s now in: Self-portraiture. Turns out its quite hard to find models for your work when in a national lockdown.
What really got me to where my practice is now, however, is that in the summer of 2021 I developed arthritis. Acute-onset, Migratory Polyarthritis to be exact. This development forced me to completely change my practice. I couldn’t physically do the type of pieces I was creating in my first and second year due to my new disability. It did, though, give me something meaty to make my self-portraits about, so silver linings, I guess. Now, I do large scale self-portraits on felt fabric, sewing my own poetry into it afterwards that expresses my feelings about my changing condition and my new life."
You can follow Jess on Instagram: @jesswilliamsillustrations
We wish Jess every success for the future.
