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M.V. What year was that?
J.W. Mid ‘80s, ‘85, or somewhere round then.
M.V. And that was one year? J.W. I did it part time over two years.
M.V. So you had to work and fund it yourself?
J.W. Yes I was doing part time, I did some teaching Inner London education
Authority, and had worked previously, a series of jobs with National Consumer
Council and the Consumer’s Association. So I continued doing part time
work with them.
M.V. And when you finished?
J.W. When I finished, one of the things that
happened towards the end of my time at Goldsmiths, was I got together
with a group of people and we put on a show under the name of“Terra Firma”.
It was group of artists, we’d got together. I think there were six of
us, and the intention was that we would continue to show and we used to
meet regularly and talk about work and stuff, and we did put on a show
in London, and I think, at that point, I decided that I really wanted
to continue with ceramics. I didn’t feel like I’d taken it quite where
I wanted to.I started looking at Masters courses. At that time there wasn’t
too much on offer in the UK. I think it was like Cardiff, The Royal,
Wolverhampton, or something like that. So I started to look in the
States and my teacher from Goldsmiths encouraged me in getting
me some names of places to write to. So I applied to Cranbrook.
I applied to three actually and I got in two but I took the place at Cranbrook.
M.V. And, but you had to find a lot of money again?
J.W. Well, this house which for seven or eight years, I had been labouring
over, at this point was in the situation where I could rent it out. So,
that paid. I got some funding from the school itself and the fees then
were I think it was like five to six thousand dollars and that was pretty
much taken care of, and so I just had to fund my living expenses, and
that was actually much cheaper living in Detroit than it was in London.So
it worked out fine.
M.V. And that was a good course? Was it important to you?
J.W. Yes, it was very important, it was very intense. I was suddenly,
of course you can imagine being thrown into a completely different culture.
I mean so many things about suddenly landing in Detroit, trying to find
your way around and learn the whole system, you know, of American education.
Cranbrook itself is not a university. It was a small educational
institution. On site, there’s a couple of schools, there’s a boys’ school,
girls’ school, there’s a science museum and there’s an art museum, and
there’s the art academy. So, there were about a hundred and twenty, a
hundred and thirty graduates, just graduates. There were no undergraduates
at all. It was a very interesting mix of people and eight or nine departments.
Everybody working very intensely, and for me it was a really important
time. Developing ideas, and learning how to, you know, express them, and
we’d regularly have to do presentations, and that kind of thing. I think
it was quite professional in that sense, in that it helped me to, you
know, not just to do the work but to actually be able to take it somewhere
else.
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