Interview With Katherine West: 

By Robin Quinn, Taylor O’ Connell, and Sophie Barling. 

We don’t have a clue what we are doing once we’ve finished our degrees, and we don’t know what our futures might hold. We look up our lecturers as our mentors and creative influences during college and this prompted us to interview them. We sat down with our three lecturers Katherine West, Louise Manifold and Ger Leslie to gain an insight on how they developed their skills, found their passions and learn what mistakes they made in the past, when they didn’t get it either!  We first intervied Katherine West.

‘’How did you find your college course, and what was your first day of college like?’’.

Katherine responded by telling us she grew up in Dublin and in a very creative household. She knew she wanted to study art from a very young age. She had a lot of freedom, and she was never told what to do. Katherine always had art supplies with her and would create art whenever and wherever she possibly could, drawing on the walls and scraps of paper. Art seemed like a very clear path for Katherine as her mother taught in NCAD.  

At the time Katherine was applying for art school, it was much more difficult to get into college. She was only 17 years old when she applied for NCAD and had to submit a very extensive physical portfolio compared to how we submitted online portfolios.  

Katherine always had a keen interest in art, but she also loved theatre. As students, we were very curious to hear if art was always our lecturers focus, so it was interesting to hear about how she also loved theatre. She continued to do theatre throughout college, even travelling from Belfast each weekend to attend rehearsals.  

Katherine spoke about how the “craft design” course is what she focused on after completing her foundation first year. This included working with ceramics, metals, and glass. She really enjoyed glass work, and this was her main interest for her first year of college.  

Katherine quite enjoyed studying in NCAD, but there was a slight issue for her, that being it was a 4-year course which resulted in a diploma, not a degree which is what she wanted. This led to her studying for one semester in Belfast, but because of the violence of the troubles she returned to study at NCAD after the semester. She was 21 years old when she graduated college and immediately moved to France to work for a potter. She said France was a very exciting place to be at this time, compared to Ireland where there was not as much access to seeing art in galleries or museums.   

‘’What was it like living in France away from all your family and friends? as we can all relate moving away from family for college.’’

Katherine didn’t feel like living away from home really affected her as she spent most summers growing up in France. She mentions how Sundays were ‘letter writing days,’ the main way of communicating back then, as there were no phones, radios, computers. Her sister also lived in France at the time which meant there was always a family member close. She told us she never felt lonely, she always had friends and college classes always felt like a tight knit community.   

 ‘’How has the societal influence on certain topics such as feminism, the LGBTQ+ community, etc, changed within your practice and life experience, compared to when you were in college?’’

Katherine started by saying that they were very politicized in college. They were all in societies, and she was involved with the student's union. A group of her friends even ended up in the newspaper for doing a protest against their medical cards getting taken away. She mentioned how the art community was already considered very ‘alternative,’ so the LGBTQ+ community was normalized while she was in college, she said she never questioned anyone's sexuality stating ‘’that it’s just your community, you don’t question it.’’