Transcription

Rosanna Rose: Hello!!!

Georgia Tooke: Hi!

Shae Myles: Yayyyy!!!!

RR: This is so exciting! 

SM: I’m so so SO excited for this! 

RR: Me too! It’s so lovely to see you!

SM: Yeah you too! How are you doing?

RR: Yeah, I’m doing good! Lovely to meet you Georgia!

GT: It’s so nice to meet you too! You look so CUTE! Ohmigosh I love your whole look!

RR: Thank you so much!!

SM: So!!! Hi everybody, thank you so much for watching! This is episode three of In Conversation With… I’m Shae Myles, one half of Jiggle n Juice, and I have Georgia Tooke, my other half! And today we are joined by Rosanna Rose! Rosanna do you want to give a lil intro about who you are and where you are?

RR: Yeah sure! So my name is Rosanna, and I’m a textiles and surface designer, currently studying textiles at the Glasgow School of Art. I’m originally from the Highlands, which is very close to Shae! But based in Glasgow atm!

SM: Ace!!! Yeah so, this is so weird, our lil ~love story~ bc we followed each other on insta for ages, and you’re from close to my hometown, and then I only met you irl last year when I came to Glasgow to see Marc, who is one of my closest friends, and your partner!! So I was telling Georgia about that story and I still love that weekend where we fell in love and it was just so amazing!

RR: It was so lovely!!! I can’t wait to recreate when galleries are open we can do it all again!

SM: For sure!!! 

GT: Shae was just telling me about your ideas! When you had that creative weekend in Glasgow forever ago!!!

SM: Yeah it was sooo good!!! So, yeah! Awesome!

GT: Ok!!! So, Shae and I have a background in contemporary art practice, but you said that you are a textiles student! So, how exactly would you define your creative practice? Bc I feel like you do more than just textiles!

RR: Yeah, so generally, we always work with colour, form and shape, as a basis of the practice, but it doesn’t only have to work with textiles. It can work on any kind of surface, so mural design, ceramics, just whatever!

SM: Soooo you are still at art school, which blows my mind! Even when I go on your insta, I’m constantly like…. it just blows my mind the fact you have so much content, consistently as well! And your brand is so consistent! So, how have you actually refined that to be you ~you~?!

RR: I think… I’m definitely aware of the fact that I’m still learning, and my practice five years from now is probably gonna be so different to what it is now. And that’s great! I really like working through projects and learning from that, and seeing how my style changes through that. But definitely I think I do have the same handwriting of design, almost, no matter what I’m working on, and that all comes back to this idea of play in design. And making work that is joyful! I think that comes across with whatever I do, kinda intuitively without thinking about it too much! 

SM: Yeah that is a massive stand-out in your practice, definitely. Is that any project that you post, or anything that you’re doing… it is so remarkably ~you!~ and that is something that people… like I don’t even think I have that, like! I’m almost a year graduated! I just feel like you really have this amazing consistency that some people will never have! And obviously yeah, your style and outputs are gonna change and evolve over the course of your life, bc you’re so young still! But it is just soooo impressive! And everything you do, you already know that I’m literally obsessed with everything that you do! So yeah, that’s just amazing to hear!

RR: I think that happens with everyone though, without thinking about it! All the work that you create has your own style to it. Your performance even has the same style as your photography - it’s just that feeling that you have! 

SM: I guess so, but then yours is so… idk, visually consistent. I feel like without it being my face in my work, you wouldn’t necessarily know it was me? But with you, your face isn’t on it, and I know that it has you written all over it, you know!!

RR: Aww thank u!!! 

GT: I was going through your insta so many times when we were coming up with questions and everything! It’s so warm and lovely to look at all of your work all together! I want my whole house to just be ~Rosanna!~ That would be the best!

RR: That would be the dream!! Make a whole house of stuff!!

GT: Yeah! Exactly!!! Totally! I was wondering… who or what do you look to for inspiration when you’re making things?

RR: So I think, definitely artist wise, there’s a few lifestyle brands that I really love! For example, Gorman - they’re an Australian fashion brand, and they have this children’s wear part of their brand called Gorman Playground! And they just produce the most gorgeous prints - bold colours, playful designs, and yeah I just love it all coming to life, it’s really cool to see! And also art studios, like Studio Proba, idk if you’ve heard of them but I love the way that they put their work onto so many different mediums. Recently, they made a swimming pool and just covered their designs inside the whole pool!

GT: I love that!!

RR: It was gorgeous!!! So yeah, I love brands like that, they just kinda do whatever they want, and they have that whole consistent feeling through their brand which is great to see! Yeah, just also things around me. So the urban landscape, the way that colours sit next to each other, and interior spaces as well.

SM: So do you think Glasgow has quite a big impact on the work that you create?

RR: Yeah definitely. Only on sunny days!!! Definitely the way that the light comes down onto the city and reflects through the different reflective surfaces on the buildings, and it sometimes just makes these really lovely fleeting moments of colour, which I love! And just walking through the city and noticing things like that is so inspiring! But also, the Highlands has a lot of that, in kinda a more subtle way. More of the natural forms of the landscape, and the curves of the landscape are really inspiring there! 

SM: I love that!

GT: That’s so beautiful! I love that!!!

SM: Well yeah Georgia!!!! You’ve been to Nairn! I took you to Nairn when you were in Scotland so you’ve seen that! And you also went to Skye as well, with your family! So you’ve seen the Highlands so maybe you can kinda…

GT: So dreamy!!! Yes!!

SM: So something that really strikes me about your work, is that it’s so versatile! You did that coffee table! Which omg make more and let me buy it!!! So you did the coffee table, and you do prints, and you do homeware mock-ups… so your work can translate onto a lot of different objects and come in different forms, so how do you choose what it is that you want to make?

RR: I think usually, at the start of a project, I won’t have a set outcome of what I want it to be. I’ll start out just really looking at the basics, and trying to find a colour palette and the shapes that I want to be using. So, I don’t really set out to create a certain thing… and then it’ll come to me in the middle of the night, or I’ll see something and I’ll just think “right!!! I want to experiment with that and see if it’s possible to do!” But I think that only really came about during the pandemic, mostly bc I didn’t have access to the print studio, so I was kinda forced to find other ways of making work that wasn’t necessarily on fabric or on paper. So yeah, it’s come about recently!

SM: Where is your coffee table? Do you have it still?

RR: Yeah it’s at home! It’s in Inverness, in our conservatory right now! It just sits there with a lil bowl of fruit on it, and I go home and I’m like “I wish I had it in Glasgow!!” 

SM: Would you want to do more stuff like that, and maybe do a lil shop or something eventually? 

RR: Definitely! I would love that!! I’m going into fourth year next year, so I kinda have to choose the direction that I’m going to go in, and I definitely want to do more lifestyle stuff, so tiles will appear again hopefully!! 

GT: I feel like that’s so awesome, how resourceful you were to be stuck in your tiny apartment, no studio access, and then thinking “okay, I feel like I’m on a roll here, I’m going to choose different mediums!” That’s so awesome!! I was wondering… so Shae’s given me a tiny peek into your process, but I want you to elaborate more on it! Do you have a specific process when you’re starting something new?

RR: I definitely do! I feel like, to be comfortable in a new project, I go trough set stages at the start, almost to just get the ball rolling. If you sit there with a blank sketchbook you’re never gonna start on anything! So usually I’ll either go for a walk, like I said, and take pictures of colour combinations, and things like that. Or I’ll gather objects together and play around with them, and make a set-up that i can then draw inspiration from. And then from there it can really go in any direction, but I like to have a mixture of art that I make quite physically, so like splashing paint around and just working really intuitively, and then also things that are a bit more considered, so going into digital design, and then actually finding a finished product at the end of it.

SM: Is that your favourite way? Do you prefer to be spontaneous, or do you prefer to sit down and really refine it?

RR: I feel like I definitely need both! If I’m finding that I’m kinda working digitally for a long time, I get really burnt out and can’t come up with any ideas, and I’m just at a loss!! If I then just switch it around and try and do something completely different usually just helps me to get out of that rut! So yeah, I think they definitely work together!

SM: Yeah, that makes sense! I feel like that probably is a really good combination of working as well… do you kinda need a lil bit of structure, but then at the same time, I’d imagine a lot of the work that is spontaneous is just so liberating to actually do. Something that I was wanting to ask was, I don’t have a design background so I’m not really sure of the process of self-designated briefs. Idk whether that’s bc of your course or if it’s just something you like to do for insta, but recently you make the post of Louis Thoroux, you revamped his Guardian cover outfit, so I was wondering why do you do these additional self-designated briefs?

RR: Well with that one specifically, I’d been working with suits on the last project I did, so they were just in my mind all the time so I was still thinking about them. I saw that and I was like “oh it would be really cool if I could do that!” and I thought “well I can use photoshop, so! Why not! See what it looks like!” But generally, I think that definelty started during the pandemic, when uni shut, and I wasnt getting any briefs from my tutors, and I had a bit of a panic thinking “am I not gonna make any work now? How do i make my own work if I don’t have a deadline?!” So I just started to kinda give myself my own mini deadlines! So just really small things, and I think it just helped to keep the creative flow going! And just doing what I enjoyed and trying out things I hadn’t done before! Trying to get over that imposter syndrome of thinking that you can’t do certain things just bc you’ve never done it before. 

SM: Would you recommend for other creatives, that they make work that they want to make? Like you wanted to do that, so would you recommend that as a way to kinda broaden your practice a wee bit, or maybe get out of the rut of maybe not making work?

RR: Yeah totally!! I think it’s so easy if you’re in uni, or you’re just making work bc that’s what you love doing… it’s easy to make something that other people will like, or your tutors will like… so if you make something that you like, then what more can you want! That will attract other people to it, and that’s the main reason that you do it!

GT: That’s so good! Ohmigosh I feel like I wanna do more of that! Just more exercises to kinda pump your creative juices a lil bit! Bc I feel like sometimes we’re so obsessed with finding our own original voice that we shut out inspiration, but how can you find your own voice if you’re not letting in all of these other sources of inspiration and building off of that! I feel like that’s what making art is all about! Adding your own voice to this collective! I think that’s such a good idea, I definitely want to do that myself now! 

I wanna go back to colour a lil bit bc I’m just so fascinated with your use of colour. I feel like it just comes so naturally to you. And so I was wondering if you could just tell us a lil bit more about the role of colour. Is it just intuitive the way you put them together or is there colour theory or what is the role of colour in your practice?

RR: I think, I always feel strange saying that colour is so integral to my practice bc it really is for every single creative person! Everyone uses colour, so how can it be your thing? But I think it’s the connection that colour has with memory, that I really love. So like if I’m making a painting I’ll listen to music at the same time, and as I’m using these colours and not thinking about it, I’ll look back on that painting afterwards, and I can look at a certain colour and almost remember the song that I was listening to at the time! So they definitely have the power to evoke memory in people, and people will associate them with different things. Like, everyone can do that, you don’t have to be an artist to respond to colour. So I think that’s a really lovely thing about it!

GT: It’s almost like a universal language that we all share! Ohmigosh that’s so beautiful! That’s so well put! I love that!

SM: That’s something that I also think sometimes, “omg this is what everyone says!!” Art is the way that it is bc we all love colour, and we all respond to colour, but that’s still such a valid thing! Esp bc it is so important to your work, and so important to people falling in love with you work! You know!!! If it was all black and white it wouldn’t have the same impact, and so it is totally warranted to say that!

Something that Georgia always talks about is an artist’s ~ah-ha~ moment! So whether that’s when you find, thematically or contextually, what you wanna work with… but I feel like maybe for you, it was more the first time you ever made something in your style that you were like “fuck yeah this is what I want to make!” Do you have an ~ah-ha~ moment? 

RR: Yeah definitely! It’s probably… it goes back quite far! When I was in school, and you probably had this too, you either had realistic still life, or a realistic self-portrait. And that was presented to you as the only routes of art to go down. So I left school a year early, and went and did an art foundation in Ullapool, and that was kinda where I first started to experiment with different types of art beyond that. We were going through the weeks and I was enjoying it, but I never really found the thing that I wanted to do for the rest of my life, until I think it was the second term, one of the last projects, and I started experimenting with abstract work for the first time! And I just loved it! And I think it was the first time I was in a state of flow when I was working, so I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing or what the outcome was going to be, I was just actually enjoying it for what it was! So that’s kinda when I knew that’s what I wanted to do!

SM: I love that!! I love that so much, I was actually just speaking to somebody the other day about art at school. Idk what it’s like over there Georgia, but it’s exactly how you described it - it’s very limited, and it’s very much checking boxes and you have to do what the SQA set out for you?!!! And it’s like, that is literally not what art is!!! And that’s one of the main reasons why I would never ever go into teaching bc I don’t agree with it, I just think it’s absolute bullshit. And if it wasn’t for me doing the exact same thing as you - I left school a year early and did an HNC at college to get my portfolio together. Like if I hadn’t done that, I would have been clueless bc the way that art is presented at school. That’s a really interesting point, and also the fact that we’ve had the same experience with that as well.

RR: Yeah, completely! 

GT: Yeah, that was the same, in grade school as well. If you were in art classes you were drawing or painting. And that’s all art is. So I actually didn’t take any art classes in high school. I didn’t take a single art class, and then my first year at university was just undeclared general studies. So it was mostly just English philosophy, gender studies… just writing papers for a year. And then I thought about doing art, and it’s just snowballed from there. So I completely agree, I was like it’s so funny how we just have such a narrow idea of what art is when we’re so much younger. 

But going back to university!! I was wondering if you could tell us about how you found studying at GSA during the pandemic and how it’s affected your practice, or the way you view the art world in general?

RR: It definitely has been really eye-opening, up until the pandemic I relied on that whole studio vibe, which is so amazing, and that’s the main reason that people go to art school. You’re surrounded by other people, and you’re in there for the whole day, making work together, critiquing each other’s work… it all happened so naturally, and I think you can get really used to that. When that’s taken away it’s just really scary! And that’s almost like a sped up process of graduating. Bc when you graduate, that all goes away as well, so it’s kinda like a realisation of what’s going to happen, it doesn’t last forever! So there was a few weeks of being really sad, and then I just wanted to see what good could come out of it, if anything. Like I was saying before, pushing myself to do things that I wouldn’t have before, like being resourceful with materials as well, you can’t just go to a shop and buy something - you’ve got to use what you’ve got around you, and that’s probably something I’m gonna carry on doing after. Just not buying loads and loads of things and actually just trying to do what you can with what you have! 

SM: I love that! One of my first projects that I did in the pandemic was I set myself the challenge to not buy anything new, and just use stuff that I already had at home, and it was really fun, like it was challenging!! Bc I’m so used to being like “oooo I’ll go on depop and find this!!!” So that is just a big thing. And also I visited your studio last year, for the open studio, I really got a sense of how important that is for you. So yeah, it is shit, but I’m glad that you’re still making, and you’re not left feeling uninspired! 

So you’re also part of a collective! Caillieach!! I was just wondering if you could tell us a lil bit about it! Bc obviously you know that we are both absolute STANS, and yeah just where that came from and a bit about the collective!

RR: Yeah, so, me, Maddie, Katie and Cara, we all met, it was back in 2016. We went to this art retreat, and it was organised by Room 13, who are a community of artists in the Highlands, who organise things like that for young people. It was all free, and accessible to anyone, and we met there and had such a lovely week together, and always wanted to do something together but it never came about. We had other projects, we were busy with other things. But during lockdown, we came back together and we wanted to do something that would mean that people in the Highlands could have the same opportunities of how we met, bc there’s really not a lot of that at all, as you’ll know! So our main ethos behind the whole collective is just thinking about us when we were younger, and what we needed, and what we would have benefitted from, and just making that for other people! I think it’s really lovely, we’ve got such a nice community of people who have all come together, and would never have known each other otherwise, and they’re just sharing their work with each other and getting involved in all these projects, and it’s not exclusive - you don’t have to be in an art school to be involved in it, which is so important. And yeah! We love it!

GT: Ohmigosh I love that too!! That’s so great! I feel like, thinking about what you needed when you were younger… I definitely know that Shae and I talk about that all the time, like  how there’s just so many ways that art school has been so fantastic, and then so many ways that it has fallen short. So it’s so nice that we’re picking up the pieces here! But yeah, Shae and I just love what you guys are doing, every time you post something I’m like “that is just a good idea!!! Saveeee!!! Share!!! Amazing!!!”

RR: That’s how we feel about you guys!!!

GT: I wanted to ask you what you had planned after you graduate… I totally thought you were in fourth year! Like, you just seem like you’re so ready for the real world!!!! I mean, do you have plans for after you graduate? Or you could just say what are your plans for fourth year? What are your plans for the future?

RR: I have… big dreams!!! Like, I would wanna work for a print company, be a designer as part of a huge team, but I think if I think too much about the future I’ll just freak myself out! So definitely taking it one step at a time! I think I would like to do a masters, once I graduate, I really enjoy being in uni, and I still think I’ve got a lot to learn. So I want to carry on that path, but yeah after that we’ll see what happens! Keeping an open mind!

GT: Yeah! One step at a time!!! 

SM: I think… not to shit on what you just said, like you’re saying you want to go and work with a big team… honestly you could fuckin do it yourself!!! You could literally make your own print hosue, come on!!! If you’re gonna dream big, dream the biggest!!!

RR: Yeah, I would absolutely love that, but I think I need a team of people around me to work the best. So if I could hire a team of people, then that would be great! But in the future… who knows?! 

SM: Yeah!! Well honestly… I will work for you!! You don’t even have to pay me!! I will work for you. So on that note, do you have any advice for other creatives?

RR: I think the main thing is just make work that you enjoy! Bc there’s always gonna be trends in design, and there’s always gonna be critiques and people who don’t like what you do, but if you like what you do then I think that’s the most important thing! Just do what you enjoy, and keep going, keep pushing through lil ruts bc they’re so common and they happen all the time, but they’ll make you better, and you’ll learn from them! 

SM: Amazing!! I second that!! 

GT: I third that!!! 

SM: So if we wanna see your work… where can we see your work?

RR: Probably insta is the best place, so its @rosanna.print, and then @cailleachcollective.

SM: Lovely! Anything else anyone wants to add before we wrap up?

GT: I just want to say, thank you so much!! Thank you for joining us today, and chatting with us, I’m so happy I finally got to meet you! 

RR: I know!!! Thank you, it’s been lovely, and lovely to see you and chat again!!!

SM: Honestly, your enthusiasm is probably enough to make anyone that feels a lil bit stuck right now just gagging to make some work!!! And I honestly think that, yeah, that’s happened for me!! So you’re a very inspiring and very determined person, and I just love your work!!! 

RR: Thank you so much!! So lovely!!!

SM: Well…. that’s all! Let’s all just take a moment to appreciate… and we’ll see you in the next episode!!

All: Byeeeee!!!!