Sunny Future for UNCOL sculpture student

Sunny Future for UNCOL sculpture student

Artist Cath Watson’s fascination with the weather and climate change has attracted further recognition.

The UCOL Diploma in Furniture Making and Design student has been selected as a finalist in the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Awards with her work entitled Topsy.

The kiln cast, lost wax glasswork is a continuation of her weather inspired pieces. She describes it as a stylisation of weather symbols using pink and blue colours to represent warm and cold fronts.

Last year, Cath’s wooden sculpture Cones and Domes was included in Auckland’s Sculpture on the Shore exhibition. The work will also be installed at Wanganui’s Botanical Reserve in time for the city’s Spring Festival.

Cath got ‘hooked’ on glass artistry after attending a glass casting course at the Whanganui UCOL Summer School in 2005. A year later she enrolled in the Certificate in Glass Design and Production programme at Whanganui UCOL, where she won the Swarbrick-Dixon student prize for excellence in glass sculpture.

Keen to learn new skills and take on more challenges, Cath is now in her second year of UCOL’s Diploma in Furniture Making and Design offered at the Palmerston North campus.“Our lecturers Andy Halewood and Daniel Reilly are great and it’s a really good environment. I just wish the course was for three years instead of two.”

Cath says she’s enjoying working in wood as a new medium for her art. “It’s a much more forgiving medium than glass,” she says.

Cath and her husband Campbell Wylie, also a glass artist, have built their own kiln and established Rocket Dog Studios in Wanganui. “We have made a conscious decision to produce unique and sought after pieces. The best way to achieve that is to get works accepted into high profile exhibitions.”

The Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award exhibition will be on show at the Waikato Museum from 5 September 2009 – 25 January 2010.

ENDS

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