Graduate Print Awards 2014 | 2nd Place | Fran Buss

posted by Emma Fisher September 16, 2014

Second place in our Graduate Print Awards 2014 is the amazing Fran Buss. Within our Print Award submissions we received a large amount of printed textile entries, but no one impressed our panel quite as much as Fran. Her screen printed textiles for her graduate show collection have such a professional quality it’s hard to believe she is a graduate of 2014. Fran impressed everybody with her well considered designs, strong concepts and impeccable finish. We are very happy she claimed second place.

Her graduate collection focused on the “embrace of the superficiality of modern culture.” Identifying the loss of definition between the authentic and inauthentic in a post-modern culture, she explored how the value of materials has been lost through “digital screens and virtual realities.” Through her screen printed fabrics she displayed the reproduction of aesthetic surfaces of materials, ultimately making these surfaces therefore inauthentic. She played with the loss in value of luxury materials like fur and wood, against more inexpensive materials that surround us everyday.

Her portfolio of work is very impressive, and just one other project that caught our eye was the work for her Pre-Collection that included another series of impressive graphic prints. This project derives from the same theme of the crossover between the digital and the physical worlds. As she describes how “the digital screen struggles to convey repetitive patterns such as stripes honestly, instead resulting in moiré patterns on screen.” She made physical versions of the prints to be overlayed and moved over each other to create natural optical illusion effects instead.

Fran brought something really exciting to the print awards this year, showing the diversity in the medium and potentials of print, we love her for that and look forward to seeing where her explorations take her next.