I continue the journey that my memory has taken us on, right back to the autumn of 1979 and to the First Year Department. At the time, this was located in two former town houses, fronting to 6 and 7 Blythswood Square, and backing to Bath Street, with Bath Lane in between. The two Georgian double fronted houses of the 1820s were connected by bridges spanning the lane. This opened onto Blythswood Street which was once called Mains Street. The official entrance to our First Year Department was the door at 7 Blythswood Square. These buildings had once been the location of the West of Scotland Agricultural College, a fact that was proudly proclaimed in a tile and mosaic on the floor immediately inside the heavy front door.
The address was of historic interest as having been the home of James Smith, a wealthy architect, his wife, family and notorious daughter Miss Madeleine Smith. She became infamous for poisoning her lover with a huge amount of arsenic. Miss Smith thus scandalised the sensitivities of Glasgow society of the 1850's, with details of her clandestine love making and callousness, then walking away from a possible death sentence by a Not Proven verdict. The story is legendary and has been well recorded in many books, plays and films. The actual site of the crime where Madeleine administered the eighty-four grains of arsenic in cocoa to her Channel Island lover Pierre Emile L'Angelier had become one of the male toilets, in the basement with a window to Blythswood Street. Some tourists and sight-seers would wait patiently to be taken to see the location. But clearly the configuration of the building had greatly altered over the years.
I will always remember my first actual class at the First Year Department of the Glasgow School of Art. Our year was divided into six groups. My group started with a Three Dimensional study in spatial awareness. There were three areas of study, which covered every aspect aspect of art and design. Two Dimensional Work (which covered a huge brief focusing on Design and Composition in two dimensions) ; Three Dimensional Work (which focused on everything in the third dimension, including exploration of spatial awareness; and Drawing, which of course also covered painting. There was also "Liberal Studies", which covered the History of Art and the compulsory Life Drawing each evening of the week, except Friday. We were required to complete one area of study per term, which was continuously assessed, and at the end of the year we submitted work projects and folios which were formally marked. So early on that first day of actual work we were taken to a studio on the "ground floor level" of the Bath Street section overlooking Blythswood Street. The room was large and bright. There was a grid marked off on the floor and rising up the walls. Into and onto the grid were an assortment of items, placed haphazardly. Each student was then given the co-ordinate of a cubic measure of space in the grid and the study enquiry was to remake the shape of that cubic space using different materials, twice the size of the original! My cube was filled by a plastic sack of unfired chopped clay. I had to think of the true shape, construction, texture... Then I had to reconstruct it using prescribed materials, for example clay had to be replaced by balsa wood. It was certainly an interesting brain teaser to begin life as an art student.
The day ended in a top lit attic studio and here we all began our compulsory life drawing classes, which became a long term commitment for me, throughout art school.
Every Wednesday we had "Liberal Studies". Our tutors in the Blythswood building had a day off. One of my two personal tutors went every Wednesday morning to have her hair done at Gerralts, at Woodside Place, Charing Cross. There she had the front and top beautifully coiffured but the back was always ignored and seemed to be left as the tangled mass that it was. Meanwhile, we all reported to the main building, the world famous 167 Renfrew Street, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's outstanding masterpiece. As in the previous week we ascended the flight of steps and swung through the front doors, which I noticed were complimentarily hinged to allow an uninterrupted progress if carrying a port-folio or large painting. Every inch of this wonderful building was designed to be beautiful and functional, while always inspiring and encouraging to the creative people using it. This time it was the west wing we would be exploring. Our lectures were presented by different lecturers each with a specialist knowledge. We had already been to the Mackintosh Lecture Theatre, in the west basement and were to get to know the space very well.
I have always felt that I was initially attracted to Glasgow first by the wit and humour of its friendly people and then by the amazing architectural internal space that was The Glasgow School of Art Library. This space has always been regarded as the very pinnacle of Mackintosh's achievements. Its three tall oriel windows designed so cleverly as twenty-five foot hexagonal prisms that absorbed maximum daylight from the west and lit three levels of that magnificent interior: the library, the gallery and original book store. This had already become my most favourite space, and well before my arrival and enrollment, I had imagined myself there using it. When I surprised myself and became a student, I was a little disappointed not be able to visit whenever I wished. Access was actually by appointment and one was chaperoned there by a librarian. It was a special sanctuary, a peaceful place to think, reflect and be inspired. Located on the first floor, it closed the west corridor which linked it to the museum at the top of the central stair. The tall west corridors were each lit by three south facing windows, those on the first floor leading to the Library had alcove window seats, originally intended for tutorial purposes. Access around the building was excellent, with each level of both east and west wings being served by a seperate designated dog legged stair, functioning as a stair tower.
This inspiring building just sat so comfortably in that grid on the hills of Central Glasgow. Indeed what would the city be like without the Mackintosh School of Art? It has been perched up there on Garnethill for a creative century, looking like a Scottish medieval castle when viewed from below in Sauchiehall Street and a factory of inspiration when approached from up there in Renfrew Street. I live in the hope that it will rise from the ashes of the fires of 2014 and 2018. Much of the interior of the Library was recreated after the first fire by very talented and skilled crafts people. Some of it was not yet installed at the time of the 2018 fire, and it would be marvelous to see this work installed, in a rebuild. It was a great privilege to have been able to grow creatively there in the original and acquire magical memories which I now enjoy recalling.
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