In November, Yew Wah Gubei held three sessions of featured workshops in art and fashion. With professional guidance from two artists and designers, students had the opportunity to explore screen printing and resist dyeing. These workshops inspired students to think critically about the relationship between art and design, and helped the students to expand on their range of skills so that they could decide which technical aspect of fine art they would like to develop in the future.

Screen printing is quite popular in Europe and America, and there are many independent screen print studios. Screen printing is widely applied in textile design. In order to show our students how industry professionals work, we invited Mr. Gregor Koerting to run a four-day screen printing workshop at school.

IdleBeats is the first independent screen print studio in China, founded in 2009 by the art duo Nini Sum (China) and Gregor Koerting (Germany). Together, the two have formed a strong partnership and have spent many years focusing on the medium of screen printing and its numerous creative possibilities. In addition to screen printing, IdleBeats also creates murals, products, posters and album arts. Over the years they have gained rich experience and an excellent reputation for various kinds of projects. They also have had exhibitions in China, Australia, US, Europe and Southeast Asia.

Gregor introduced to the students to not only the history and development of screen printing, but also the professional application of this technique using industry standard equipment. The students were able to learn a variety of processes which will add breadth and depth to their work. The terminologies and concepts in textbooks, such as stencil, squeegee, mesh, screen, emulsion, and transfer paper, all came alive through exploration and practice.

Textile Design is an essential element of fashion design. The development of different dyeing techniques enables fashion design to be as creative as it can be. Ms Yoon-kyung Kim, who has specialized in textile design for many years, gave the students two sessions of tie-dyeing workshops full of creativity—Resist Dying T-Shirt and Shibori Scarf. The patterns and colours created by indigo dyeing were so beautiful and amazing.

Yoon was formally trained in art, starting at a young age attending art schools in South Korea and later in the U.S .graduating with a degree in textile design from Rhode Island School of Design. She has further developed her career in New York City, Seoul, Shanghai, and Suzhou as a designer, merchandise purchaser, colorist, market researcher and educator. Over the past decade, she has been in various teaching positions for fashion, textiles and fine arts in China. Much of her inspiration for creating and teaching art and design is drawn from her diverse experiences from all corners of the world.

Under the guidance of Yoon, students learned the basic dyeing techniques that involve folding, bunching, wrapping and stitching the fabric to create incredible patterns with the indigo dye on a T-shirt and a scarf. It does not matter whether the end result is within the student’s expectations or not, it makes the student think what kind of pattern they could create next time!

The school motto states, ‘Align with Art and Humanities’and Yew Wah Gubei is dedicated to offering as many opportunities as we can to teach our students specialist skills in art and design. We have been inviting artists, designers and educators from the area of art and design to bring new perspectives to the new students, guiding them and inspiring them to expand on their experiences of exploring materials, processes and techniques.