Alumni in the arts
The arts have always featured prominently in our alumni activities. Here we showcase a selection of your recent endeavours.
If you’d like to contribute to Arts Review, email your suggestions to us. You can also discover books published by your fellow alumni on our monthly Bookshelf page.
Divine Design
A stained glass window designed by Emma Lindsay (BA Architectural Glass 2007) has been installed at Canterbury Cathedral.
Her competition-winning design was chosen for its “beauty and timeless appeal”. It was dedicated during a ceremony in the summer and is expected to adorn the cathedral’s Great Cloister for centuries to come.
Miss Lindsay says: “My design, Gathering, is inspired by the image of a wheat field in a gentle breeze and incorporates autumnal colour including oranges, golden yellows, pink and peach tones. The imagery of wheat is intended to honour the heritage of the Garfield
Weston Foundation who have been generous supporters of Canterbury Cathedral and to whom the window is dedicated. It also refers to the original purpose of the cloisters and is a theme which has a profound spiritual significance in Christianity.”
Miss Lindsay has won several awards for her work, including the Ashton Hill Award from the Worshipful Company of Glass Painters in 2008 and the McCarrison Society Art Prize in 2011.
60 Seconds: Trevor Jones
MA Fine Art 2008
Born: 1970, Lavington, British Columbia, Canada
Education: MA Fine Art 2008
Current Home: Edinburgh
Current Roles: Executive Director, Art in Healthcare; exhibiting artist; part-time drawing and painting tutor at Leith School of Art.
Favourite Read: BBC News app on my mobile.
Favourite Listening: Spotify browse – currently along the lines of Radiohead, Muse, Ed Sheeran, George Ezra.
Favourite Viewing: I can’t wait for the next series of Sherlock.
What most inspires you: My Dad. He’s a retired mechanic who worked in the logging industry. He is a born problem solver and to this day he has this calm and unwavering approach to sorting things out.
Greatest Influence: Travel has had an enormous influence on me. I’d add my university education as a very close second.
Trevor Jones is Executive Director of Art in Healthcare (AiH). Since its establishment in 1991 AiH has built one of the largest collections of original Scottish art in the country, amounting to more than 1,400 works, which it makes available in hospitals and other healthcare settings for the benefit of patients, staff and visitors. AiH has a growing outreach and art workshop programme, a thriving internship programme and a sponsorship scheme. It offers an art consultancy and collection management service.
When I was deciding on my dissertation topic I consciously chose something that not only was interesting to me but also could potentially provide employment. I discovered that the connection between creativity and health and wellbeing was something the healthcare sector was beginning to take seriously. I was offered the job with AiH a month before graduation, so it paid off.
Bookshelf
Open Very Carefully, Illlustrated by Nicola O’Byrne (Nosy Crow 2013)
Nicola O’Byrne (BA Visual Communication Illustration 2010) has won the Picture Book category of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize
2014 with her book Open Very Carefully (Nosy Crow). The book, with words by Nick Bromley, was highly commended in the UKLA Book Award and was longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. The second book in a two-book deal, Use Your Imagination, was published in August 2014.
Be the First to Like This: New Scottish Poetry, Includes work by various recent alumni (Vagabond Voices 2014)
Be the First to Like This: New Scottish Poetry is an anthology of diverse work from Scotland’s new generation of poets. It features 40 poets including
Claire Askew (MA English Literature 2008, MSc Creative Writing 2009, PhD 2014), Janette Ayachi (MSc Creative Writing 2006), Aiko Harman (Creative Writing MSc 2009), Dorothy Lawrenson (MA Fine Art & Painting 2004) and Samantha Walton (PhD English Literature 2013).