It's a Long Story...
A Working life Art and Design
Beginnings - 1979-81
It was an exciting time to be an art student in the Hope Street buildings of the then Liverpool Polytechnic at the end of the 70s. There was an energy of creativity buzzing through students staff and the city. In spite of doing a lot of clubbing and seeing countless bands, we all got a vast amount of work done.
The design course, where I specialised in printed textiles, was broad and painterly and there were opportunities for frequent trips to London to visit designers and exhibitions, besides a trip to Paris and Milan. I had the opportunity of several weeks studio experience, firstly at The London Design Studio, an Arts Council project from where I sold my first design to a New York client, then in Paris with the legendary Madame Calisti in her studio on the Quai Voltaire, where I worked on designs for French fashion houses and two of my college designs were bought by clients visiting from Japan.
1980s Paris
After graduation I moved to Paris for life in a garret, the obligatory bit of English teaching and to seek work in design studios, freelancing first for Paul Hargittai Designs on Rue de la Paix, then working at Dessins Ramis in Place Gaillon. The studio worked on everything from swimwear to wallpaper and even once, on designs for pots and pans. Other designers there were French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, but as I helpfully spoke English I began to attend the design shows and then in 1984 Monsieur Ramis took me to New York for the first time to show the collection there.
1990s New York
New York became my favourite place and I set up a base there from 1991 buying a tiny studio on 24th Street where I would base myself to work with clients on 3 or 4 trips a year for over 20 years.
Meanwhile in the UK I was living near London and in the late 1990s was delighted to be asked to do some more teaching as visiting tutor to the post graduate students at the Royal College on Art.
2000s
A family health crisis in the early 2000s forced a break in my heavy work schedule reducing to a smaller output for intermittent New York trips. However, I returned to the International Design shows in Frankfurt and Brussels from 2008 and was thrilled to connect with old friends and new.
2014 -2019 France
Another life change took me back to France, living this time in Antibes, though travelling regularly to Paris and New York with design work.
In Antibes, I discovered the Atelier du Safranier, a renowned printmaking studio and gallery equipped with a beautiful historic press originally brought to the south from Paris on the demand of Picasso, then residing close by, who had wanted his favourite technician and the press to work with for his etchings. There I embarked on an intensive study of printmaking techniques from the traditional etching and drypoint to experimental mono prints and carborundum.
In 2017 I did printmaking demonstration for the inauguration of Antibes as a "Ville des Arts et Metiers".
My printmaking work has been exhibited in the Centre Culturel d'Antibes, the Atelier du Safranier and the GallerieTransartcafe.
My final event in Antibes was a fun project making and printing carborundum pebble hearts to present to the Mayor of Antibes and the Cultural Attaché at an event for Valentines Day 2020
2020 - Present - Biggar, Scotland
Fulfilling a long held desire to settle in Scotland, my home and studio is in the centre of Biggar just to the south of Edinburgh. An invitation to illustrate a book in 2020 was the push needed for a skill reset with an in depth study of computer design programs, notably Adobe In Design and Illustrator. Any designer traditionally trained to work in gouache and ink can find digital work counterintuitive and frustrating. However practise brings fluency and combining old skills with new tools on design projects is now second nature.
The job list is pretty full in 2023 with design projects, future Open Studios and another book on the horizon.
Jennifer Turner 2023
