Adaptation

 Maja Hagen 
Illustration and Visual Media 

A lot has happened since my last post. I started my internship at the Sarabande Foundation beginning of January. Founded by Lee Alexander McQueen the foundation aims to support upcoming talents by giving them a studio space to work in, opportunities such as exhibiting their work and meeting important people in industry and giving them overall support in growing their creative practice. They also want to encourage interdisciplinary practice, supporting a range of various creatives such a jewellers, milliners, fashion designers, photographers, painters etc. This is particularly interesting to me because I have always had a fascination with the power of collaboration and the way other practices influence our own. The team is quite small but the office never feels empty because we have freelancers such as journalists renting spaces which again adds to the idea of having many different practices in one building. Me and two other interns who have their own specialist interests and skills divide the work load between us depending on where hands are needed and our own interests. The first two weeks consisted of a lot of physical work, photographing artworks, organising them and general organisation. My highlight was when I photographed a piece by Craig Green, who is also part of Sarabande and whom I have admired for a very long time. In addition Sarabande hosts a series of events such as workshops or talks. These would happen around twice a week and require us to work in different areas such as filming, photographing, tending the bar or checking in people at the entrance. After some time I started being give more tasks relating to layout designs of catalogues, press books, event invites. Layouts were something I never considered as one of my strengths which is why it was interesting to see that my work in this field was valued by the team. One of my gif e-invites was actually posted by Wallpaper Magazine which gave me new confidence in this field of designing. When I started the internship I thought that the learning outcome would be primarily based on understanding more adobe programs or my digital skills in general. In reality I have learned very different skills, arguably more important, such as a better time management as well as a new found appreciation of the time I can spend on creating art, something I have dearly missed during my full time employment.

Another important journey of my DPS has been moving along too. As I mentioned in a previous post I was attending a short course at LCF at the end of last year, which aimed to introduce the students to the fashion designing process. With the knowledge I gather there I applied to the BA Fashion Design at CSM. After two sleepless nights I handed in my mini portfolio and was fortunately invited to attend an interview at the end of February. The whole experience, including the interview, has truly been a stress test for me, juggling full time work and creating a portfolio to the best of my ability has given me a chance to test my capability to work under pressure within a tight time frame. I haven’t heard back as of now, probably due to the corona virus outbreak, but I am trying to stay realistic and focus on all of the things I have learned through the application process. ​

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Obviously the recent COVID-19 outbreak has had impact on all of our further plans. I had plans to travel to Japan to learn about traditional making techniques as well as doing a sewing course to gather first experience in the making process of designing fashion. My self-initiated project also relied heavily on this plan as I was going to create a full outfit from the research I conducted for my Fashion Design application. It feels like this is a time to prove adaptability and resilience as well as the ability to thinking outside the box to adapt to the current situation. So instead I looked into another area that interests me which is 3D printing. Using an earlier project as a starting point I am currently creating a ring that will be 3D printed in wax and then cast in silver. I am also planning to develop this piece further by looking different engraving techniques. One of the jewellers at Sarabande, Castro Smith, has offered me valuable advice along the way. This project has allowed me to use my time at home in the most productive way possible, which is all we can do during a time like this. ​