GLASGOW School of Art is always full of the odd and unusual at degree show time. ``Elpida? Yes she's still around. She has to come in to put water on her tree,'' I was informed. This is Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva's spectacular giant Living Tree whose branches and roots drop 24 metres through three storeys of building from glass roof to basement.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh's concept of the school's central staircase as ``a living forest of vertical shoots culminating in four stylised `trees' that grow upwards to appear to support the canopy of the roof'' has provided her inspiration - and with a little help from her friends: Millar Scaffolding, BDP architects, The Borders Forest and Central Scotland Countryside Trust she's managed the impossible. ``Natural materials are what fascinate me. I've always worked with branches - but this is the first tree.''
Vasileva, who now goes on to do post graduate work at the Royal College, is one of several notable sculpture students, like Rod Maclauchlan and Cate Barrington-Ward. Tassy Thompson also uses wood, but starts with ready-mades like a hammer or coathanger and then manipulates it in to clever surreal structures which she displays perched high up on long poles like a juggling act at the circus. (She also has an outdoor art installation at the corner of West Graham and Rose Street.)
Lindsay Montgomery takes blue Plasticine to coat an entire room with her word dictionary. Yellow socks are good enough for Graham Young whose interests of conservation and the environment are handled with a light, wry touch.
These days it's often hard to say what discipline these inventive Fine Art students hail from. Mixed together for display purposes, Maria McCavana's cut paper pattern dress and inscribed red bath could be painting or sculpture or environmental art, while printmaking crosses with photography on several occasions.
However one thing unites these students. All are suffering from the savage financial cuts gratuitously inflicted in draconian manner on Glasgow School of Art. It doesn't seem to matter which way they turn, fewer staff and more students - both with reduced resources - inevitably makes for low morale. Sheer exhaustion comes into play here.
It's sad that in its centenary year financial problems are threatening to overwhelm such a famous Scottish institution.
If students are expected to work for a living as well as study; if three staff are asked to do the work of 10 over a seven-day week, it's obvious that this will have its effect. Undergraduates are there to be taught. The Scottish Office seems to have forgotten this simple fact. I'm told that there is light at the end of the tunnel - for most it can't come fast enough.
Hard times makes a sense of humour all the more vital. Karen Reynolds's illustrated short stories about love and sex bring a smile. She has a happy knack of hitting the nail on the head. Following in David Shrigley's footsteps she's put her one liners on pants, T-shirts, badges and cups. William Maw is printmaking's sophisticated answer to this brand of strip cartoonism which also appears in Natalie Frost's red and white Glacier Mints and Tic Tacs. More red and white in Sophie Macpherson's 101 Things to do with a Stripey Board which involves, as so often this year, a video - but here cleverly presented as integral.
Three girls in Room 8 also have a nice line in wit, with Claire Byrne from Environmental Art showing off her pants; Jacqi Harrison sure she's the disco queen going to live forever and Rae Morrison contributing blobby Oldenburghian sculptures.
Happily the ubiquitous videos appear to live comfortably beside good traditional drawing and painting (although there is noticably less good drawing than usual) with Denise Findlay's excellent portrait faces displayed next to Daniel Norton's interesting videos and installation.
Don't miss Mette Jorgensen's beautiful photos; Finlay MacKay's You will Never Know How I Feel in Braille and bees; Scott Sherry's mapping with chess or music as pathfinder; Paul Nulty's Pedigree Cows; Tara Danischevsky's sinister bald men, Lesley Angus's photographs and Sarah Malone's ethereal oil painting of a white apron.
The Mackintosh Museum, as the space at the top of the stairs is known, is the place to be as everyone sees your work. This year Charles Habananda is the chosen printmaker. His animal etchings are startling in their black anger and malice while Cathy Richmond's paintings are big and brave; Eliott Brook's zebra has wings; Dawn Harrison shows videos and Helen Graham explores mystery in her figurative oils.
Complaints. I wish students would put the names on their note books and label their work. It's really difficult to see whose is which. No wonder so many, Habananda included, loose their sketchbooks! Fine Arts may get less funding but it gets more media attention, at the expense of design subjects like textiles, product, jewellery and graphics.
I missed Graphics and Illustration last time - wrongly as they are consistent award winners. This year looks good, with serious hands-on projects about mental health, road rage, breast cancer, packaging and the new metric measures. I like Amanda Turner's conceptual books, plates and alcohol study; Johnnie Leathers's stamps; Stephen Doogan's Absolut Glasgow ad; Louise Drysdale's bar codes and Helen Grohmann's postcards. Photographers Anna von Bromssen, Renate Johnsen and Louise McDonald are outstanding while illustrator Jane Dunne is one of several off to London's Royal College.
The cross over between departments gets more blurred every year and several conceptualists could profit by a look at these departments.
Happily Scottish results have been straightforward. A row broke out at London's Royal College photography department with all students unanimously protesting about unfair results by covering their exhibition work with black plastic. This powerful gesture of solidarity underlined their grave concerns at ``chaos and academic mismanagement''.
Originally more than half the students were failed by the external assessor and one member of staff. The other staff support the students, who are asking for a total reassessment.
One of Glasgow's success stories: student placements in schools, was celebrated recently at Scotland Street School in I Can't Paint Miss, which goes to Strathclyde Art Centre for the summer. It's the sixth year in Strathclyde that more than 60 art students worked with pupils in 54 primary and secondary schools.
The spectacular results range from wonderful illustrated reading books made by St Roch Primary 7s for Primary 2s; a giant doll's house for Lanark; imaginative hats for a fashion show at Coatbridge High; packaged bananas at Bellamine Secondary; murals on Islay; fabulous flowers at Paisley's Merksworth; tactile books for Pennilee; chairs, textiles, papermaking and calligraphy. Students do more for the community than most of us know.
Other successes are Barbara Rae, the first Glasgow School of Art lecturer and only the second Scottish woman, to become a Royal Academician, and Douglas Gordon, a 1988 graduate just nominated for the #20,000 Tate Turner prize.
The Scottish Office should realise that Glasgow School of Art does a huge amount to put and keep Glasgow on the map. If money can no longer be found for education - what about some Tourist Board cash for our famous Art School? I'm serious.
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