Artist Cv

Lamia Shafiq

  Artist CV

I am hard working and motivated individual who is currently at the end of my first year at MMU studying a Textiles degree. I have had outstanding experience, where I have learnt new techniques and expanded in areas that I had a main interest in such as hand embroidery. Each project has brought out my creative side and enabled me to show others what I am capable of doing. While being a full time student, I have taken a part time job where I have learnt essential skills that will be beneficial to me in any environment I am in. I have gained great customer service skills, the ability to work as a team and I am used to working in fast pace and challenging environments. This has also helped me manage my time at university, as I feel I have improved my management, timekeeping and organisational skills.

 Education and Qualifications

2011- Current: Manchester Metropolitan University

           ×             ×    Textiles in practice, BA(HONS)

2010-2011: Xaverian Sixth Form College

           ×             ×    Art Foundation course

2008-2010: Xaverian Sixth form college

           ×             ×    A levels in Textiles, Business and Sociology

2003-2008: Levenshulme High School

           ×             ×    GCSE’s in Textiles, Mathematics, English Language and Literature, Science ( Double Award), Religious studies,   Drama, French and ICT

           ×             ×    I also achieved a certificate for Italian (Grade 3)

Employment

July 2009 – Present                    Sports Direct, Sales Assistant

Duties and responsibilities   

           ×                       ×     Customer service and tidying stands, interacting with customers offering advice and guidance around their purchase.             

           ×       Ensuring stands are stocked throughout shifts, ensuring I support customers with their purchases, answering queries and interacting in a customer friendly manner, keeping stands tidy to a high standard, tagging of items and overall interaction with the customer throughout their whole shopping experience. Working on tills, assuring customer’s needs are met.

Also had work experience in WHSmith (September 2007), where providing excellent customer service was the most important skill I gained. Team work and working in very busy environments were also very essential.

Interests

In my spare time I enjoy socialising with friends and family as well as working part time at Sports Direct and concentrating on university work. I also swim and jog on a regular basis to keep fit. As I have an immense passion for embroidery, every so often I create embroidery samples which are mostly hand stitched. I also regularly attended art and fashion exhibitions.

Blogging task

My project was based on the two opposites Calculated and Chance. I felt as though these words would be quite challenging and interesting. The way I approached this task was by looking at contextual artists. In one of my lectures an artist called Fernando Brizio did some artwork based on chance, he let felt tip pens leak into porcelain. Initially I thought I would focus more on chance, however when I started researching on calculated I started focusing my project more on this but brought elements of chance into my work. My ideas did change whilst proceeding with my work, as certain things did not work to my standards. Also getting advice from tutors and peers helped which slightly changed my ideas.

My use of colour has significantly improved. I was quite afraid of using colour in my work and just stuck to using black and white. The workshop on colour helped me become more confident in using colour and the different ways they could be used. I particularly liked the gouache paint they demonstrated, and I have been frequently using this in my work. I feel as though my downfall in this project was developing my work and focusing on an idea. I felt as though I had too many ideas it was distracting me from focusing on one particular thing and slowed my process down.

The knit workshop was enjoyable in series workshop 1 and I felt as though I wanted to improve my knitting skills. In my last project, I felt I developed very well with knit and hoped the same with this project. However, I found it a bit difficult and struggled creating samples and trying to develop and experiment with them. As I was looking at calculated art, I felt as though maybe I should have chosen something more like print or digital as they fitted more with my brief. However, I did experiment and learnt many new techniques that have helped me.

My sketchbook has been used for direct thinking, where my ideas were placed immediately into my book. Some of my work I edited on Photoshop as it gave a better effect although I am not that good with Photoshop.

I realised most of work consists of different lines and style of lines, so I feel as though I may push this further but still bringing in elements of calculated and chance. I started looking at lines in shells and cells, so maybe this could help me with my second part of the project.

I feel as though the presentation of my work is up to standards, however I should add more notes at this may help people that are looking through my sketchbook get an idea of what was going through my mind when doing certain things.

If I were to start this project again, I would have a chosen a different workshop as it would have fitted more with my brief. My contextual reference helped me decide what to focus on more and helped me with my colour selection. Comparing my work with peers has helped me, as their advice and looking through their sketchbook has given me ideas and made me become more confident in my work.