A vivid talent shared

and textile talent, will be held on June 27-28 at the Islington Business

Design Centre when awards will be presented for print, weave and knit

from Coats Viyella and the magazines, International Textiles and Elle.

British Petroleum will be the major sponsor, contributing #25,000

towards the event, which, in five years, has proved immensely successful

as a job-finding exercise for Scottish students, winning them

recognition both at home and abroad. The Scottish Development Agency has

invested half the #80,000 required to mount the show, which for the

first time will be open to the public.

SOMETIMES in the course of student life a class encounters a teacher

whose skill reaches it not just as instruction but as a gift, teeming

with insights and fabulous possibilities.

Norma Starszakowna is one such tutor. In six years the dazzling

vividness of her students' work in Dundee has alerted the design

industry in Britain and overseas to the powerful creative verve pulsing

in the textiles department at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. Yet

if it were otherwise it would be extraordinary for Starszakowna herself

is acknowledged as one of the most exceptional textile artists in the

country.

Quite simply she is also one of those natural communicators whose

contagious love of her subject is matched by unstinting determination to

open doors of fortune to others. In conversation she downplays this

tenacity, mocking it lightly as opportunism, but among colleagues on

either side of the Border Starszakowna's commitment to her proteges is

widely admired, despite the taxing standards it imposes.

Throughout the 12 months since Scotfree was last held Starszakowna has

raised almost #5000 in sponsorship to fund Dundee's contribution to this

year's show. That sum far outstrips amounts raised by the other four

participating art institutions in Scotland and Starszakowna's

achievement is both marvelled at and envied, given the uncertainty that

surrounds business sponsorship in a small country with diminishing

indigenous companies, and the generally dispirited mood of educationists

seeking to sustain special projects on impoverished college finances.

A substantial amount of cash has been donated by Tayside Regional

Council, Orkney Islands Council and Dundee District Council which, over

the years, has come to value the printed textile department's

involvement in design workshop enterprises within the community. But

Starszakowna has also proved something of a hotshot entrepreneur in

setting up commissions with both local and national manufacturers. Two

profitable commissions are now in progress with the paper goods company

Robert L. Fleming of Dundee and the stationery specialists Paperchase of

London.

Since its inception five years ago Scotfree's unique job-finding

mission for design students has proved one of the most effective

hard-sell ventures undertaken by the Trade Centre of the Scottish

Development Agency. In the past the bulk of the money required for the

show has been provided by the SDA, but this was never intended as a

permanent arrangement and from this year the colleges -- Glasgow School

of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, Duncan of Jordanstone, the Scottish

College of Textiles at Galashiels, and Grays School of Art in Aberdeen

-- must individually raise as much money as possible while seeking the

benificence of major corporate sponsors. British Petroleum have

undertaken that role for next month's exhibition, thus allowing the

event to continue directing leading fabric manufacturers and design

consultancies towards work of unusual artistic dynamism and quality.

Starszakowna's dilemma now, of course, is that old one of success

being taken for granted. ''If you generate too much of it,'' she says,

''some people presume it's easy and they leave you to do all the work

again and again, totally discounting the hassle and unremitting slog

that goes into any one sponsorship deal.

'' As we have no administrative back-up in the department most of my

holidays are spent on the phone, badgering companies to support us, and

I have to say that although we have had tremendous help from many, I do

somethimes feel as if I'm scrubbing a floor with a toothbrush.''

In all of this Starszakowna has vigilantly ensured that the effort

involved in hawking around the begging bowl hasn't destroyed creative

concentration. When she became head of printed textiles six years ago

she took charge of a department that she had always known, as a

part-time lecturer, to be well run. Even so it was one in which textiles

were regarded as craft-based rather than an expansive vehicle for

artistic expression. ''The status of the place and its morale were quite

low,'' she recalls. ''For instance, there were very few visiting staff

to provide that crucial outside stimulus, and there were no industrial

links at all, which meant the students were working in isolation.''

The priority was to get vitality up and running. Starszakowna with

fellow tutor and designer Andy Taylor, with whom she lives, achieved

this first by developing a fashion dimension to the course, followed by

Design Bias, a city-linked workshop providing industrial experience to

post graduates.

''During that time the ethos of the department ran parallel with the

energising of Dundee,'' says Taylor. ''In the 70s the city had the heart

and stuffing knocked out of it, but now with significant investment

taking place things are much more hopeful. Equally we have excellent

students coming through and have doubled our intake in 12 years with

numbers of applications coming from abroad.''

Starszakowna's tussles towards perfection in her own work allow no

slippage into complacency at any level. While encouraging originality

she abhors slapdash presentation masquerading as artistic licence, and

her insistence on mental discipline pays off. Her students are virtually

unsurpassed in the number of textile First Class honours gained each

year, and the paths between Duncan of Jordanstone and St Martin's in

London and the Royal College of Art, almost vibrate with the ambitions

of her post-graduates. Last year, when 22 RCA places were available

nationally, seven out of 15 Dundee students gained admittance to the

Royal College. This year, against international competition, the RCA has

given four of its 11 places to Dundee.

Norma Starszakowna, born in central Fife of Polish and Scottish

parents, was herself the first Duncan of Jordanstone student to be

accepted by the RCA. Pregnancy prevented her from taking up that place,

but in one of life's symmetrical turns that baby, Jared, now 23, is a

silversmithing student at the Royal College. Her second son, Nick, is

studying interior design at Dundee.

Her father, who returned to live in Poland many years ago, came to

Scotland with the Polish Free Army, and apart from the marvellous florid

folk tales which he told his children there were other painful stories

about dislocation, suffering and death camps. Lapped by that sobbing

wave of history, Starszakowna found her own work evoking themes of

violent exile and bereavement.

The early collages were sombre metaphors for swaddling clothes cast

into shrouds and the pitiful, lonely comfort of a refugee's allocated

blanket. Such imagery, she reflects, was perhaps too heavy, and she

seems more happy with her current textile hangings billowing with

painterly effects of uncontrived detail and finesse.

This July several pieces will be included in a British Council

exhibition to Guizhou University in China. But from tomorrow Scots can

see an example of her work in Cyril Gerber's show, The Compass

Contribution, which opens at The Tramway Theatre, Glasgow, and runs for

six weeks. And in that selection many who know Starszakowna will

recognise the nudge she gives to others, jarring the soul into

imagination, setting it rolling, never again to stop.