Entrepreneur Adriana is featured artist at London Design Festival
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:15:00 BST
Her business Adriana Tavares Rugs was approached by global fashion company to display her work
POSTGRADUATE researcher and local rug designer Adriana Tavares is appearing as a featured artist at the renowned London Design Festival with her exhibition Limitless Creativity.
After showing one of her collections at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair and the New Designers exhibition last year, young entrepreneur Adriana was approached by the global fashion company Anthropologie, to display her work as their featured artist at the annual design festival which opens in London on 19 September and runs until the end of the month.
Adriana, who specialises in the creation of ‘bespoke hand tufted rugs that embrace shape, colour and innovation’, will be taking a collection of 12 ‘Toppiece Footstools’ and new rugs, especially designed for the festival as well as previous work created on community projects.
Alongside the exhibition, Adriana will be teaching free workshops in the Regent Street Anthropologie Store, where there will be a series of short activities allowing participants to explore their senses as much as possible, whilst creating pieces of abstract artwork.
Whilst the designer has been busy creating new pieces of work for the exhibition, she has also been running her enterprise and rug-making business, Adriana Tavares Rugs, which has grown from strength to strength and in turn has increased Adriana’s confidence as a designer.
“I want to change people’s perception of what a rug looks like,” said Adriana. “It’s not just a rug on a floor, it’s like a drawing. They don’t just have to be block colours and shaped like rectangles,” she said.
As well as Toppiece Footstools and quirky rugs, Adriana makes wall hangings and also creates unique pieces on commission. This involves working closely with the buyer to design and make their dream product.
Adriana has set up her rug making and design business with the help of the University’s Enterprise Team in The Duke of York Young Entrepreneur Centre.
The team assists enterprising students and recent graduates like Adriana to develop their business ideas through one-to-one meetings with their business advisors, a series of business skills events and where appropriate, access to proof of concept funding.
This has also provided her with a professional base for the business, hot-desking and free use of the electronic facilities she needs to keep her online business growing.
Design inspiration
However, life nearly threw Adriana in a very different direction as she originally wanted to become a teacher. It wasn’t until the completion of her degree, when she was awarded the Vice-Chancellors Fee Waiver for the opportunity to undertake a Masters by Research (MRes), which is only offered to those students achieving marks over 80%, that Adriana decided she wanted to go on to further study and run her own business.
Although constantly busy, Adriana is pleased with the direction she’s gone and says most of her ideas come out of the research for her Masters.
“My core passion lies within the interactions between art and craft education and this is where I get most of the inspiration for my designs,” she said.
“For my MRes, I’m researching the value of children’s art to promote art and craft education in the 21st century. Working with The National Arts Education Archive, based in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I have discovered teaching methods, namely from the Revolution of Child Art, that could rejuvenate today’s teaching. These teaching methods focused on the intrinsic values behinds children’s art and the way it should be taught to really harness the child’s self-expression and foster creativity.
“With the cuts to funding, children’s education is no longer the same. Children are taught just enough to get them a grade and as a result self-expression has gone out of the window. I am going to take some of the important values and apply them to the 21st century,” she added.
Adriana still has a real love for teaching and whilst working part-time for the mental-health charity Support to Recovery, she runs and teaches some of their creative workshops for adults and works at The Packhorse Gallery.
“I am lucky enough that I now get to teach whilst running my own business, I absolutely love it!”
- To view Adriana’s website and extensive portfolio go to http://www.adrianatavares.co.uk/.
