Never would I thought I would have started my third year on a positive note, encouraging myself to go for opportunities that are not going to come back, having the confidence to talk about my work in oral presentations and preparing for short interviews and a podcast.
November 2018 – I was self encouraging myself to take part in an interview for an Zandra Rhodes internship which involved screen printing as a practical element and chose the best selection of three samples that goes to show my screen printing skills and good work ethic according to their internship specification. I also handed over my up to date CV to see what I have been up to as a designer it’s employment history and achievements.
Interview process – Claire Parlby conducted an internship interview for five minutes at Plymouth College of Art where she studied an art foundation course and mainly was talking about my samples I brought in and why I would like to intern for Zandra Rhodes and its key points I mentioned from their job specifications to justify my answers into more detail. I felt I performed my interview very well because I was preparing my answers ready for some questions that I might be asked at the interview after the sheer of hard work had paid off.
My advice that I can possibly give you for before and during the interview is to be confident in yourself and show off the best work that is relevant to their job specification and be prepared to be enthusiastic to talk about your work for the opportunity given.
January 2019 – it took two months to hear back what the outcome was informing who was successful from the interview process and it was notified on google classroom that I was one of the four people out of twelve people to be given a day’s studio and a work placement which will happen at the same week as New Designers in London.
Screen printing was one of the strong textile skills that I was really good at, replicating realistic drawings originally from my primary research and gained an understanding of technicality of working with the mesh screen, squidgy and exposing my own artwork onto a screen using the acetate material. Furthermore, I have further explored other printing methods such as monoprinting, linocutting, devore and procion p processes which is furthering my practice more in order to make my printing designs more innovative and helps me to vary with printing skills as a textile designer. Procion p printing is a process that I hand render my own designs onto a screen mesh and then screen print it with manutex which then takes the procion p dyes onto natural fibre fabrics such as cotton and habotai silk. Devore is a printing process that can be printed and heat pressed on the back of the fabric in order to burn off the fibre transforming into a three-dimensional design.
My advice I would give to you on this topic of researching internship opportunities is everytime you see an internship that you are really going to enjoy then take it because it definitely will enhance your CV and enjoy learning new things that are going to appeal your employment history.
Love Farrah x