The BTEC Team
Irene Vergitsi - BTEC Coordinator | Fashion & Textiles Sr. Tutor
Irene Vergitsi graduated from the University for the Creative Arts (Epsom) with a BA HONS in Fashion Promotion & Illustration in 2005. From 2003-2005 she took intensive courses in Central St. Martins on Textile Techniques and Costume Design. In 2004 she had her first solo art show at the Ydrotechnon Gallery in Athens. Coming back from London in 2005 she took part at the Athens Cowparade with the cow “Spidercow” and worked as a Creative Director (Publishing Dept.) at Artoon, an animation company. From 2006 till today she has been working at Attica, the dept. store, as a Designer in the Marketing Dept. In parallel she is a freelance designer collaborating with various fashion brands and for the 5th year a Sr. Tutor teaching Fashion & Textiles at the Doukas BTEC Foundation Course in Art & Design at Doukas School. Since September 2013 she is the BTEC Coordinator of the course.
Role description:
Responsible for student admissions, I am often the first person a student will meet when they begin their experience on the BTEC Art Foundation Diploma course. In my role as BTEC Coordinator, I am mostly focusing on the organization and development of the BTEC courses at Doukas School. I monitor the overall quality of our provision including staff performance, faculty meetings, as well as giving students the guidance, alongside their Higher Educations Advisor, to make their university choices. The BTEC Foundation Course at Doukas changes every year, it adapts to the evolved university entry requirements, to the EDEXCEL specifications and to the high demands of the Art & Design sector.
Lesson description:
Fashion & Textiles offers the students the chance to learn and master various techniques such as printing, painting, weaving, felting and sewing textiles. How to create garments, patterns and installations from scratch using multiple methods and materials. Learning about designers, illustrators and artists that have been innovative and cutting edge to the history of fashion and how trends have been ‘manipulating’ our lifestyle and the world we live in. Students create individual briefs based on their given projects so they can focus and explore their chosen ideas and really present a very interesting and imaginative outcome.
Janet Lines - Ceramics Tutor | FAD PT Supervisor
Janet Lines was born in Buckinghamshire, England. She attended St. Margaret’s High School, Hertfordshire. She did her Foundation in Art and Design at Camberwell and obtained a BA Honors Degree in Ceramics from West Surrey College of Art & Design (now part of UCA). She lived, worked and studied in Munich for 4 years attending the Kunst Akademie. She came to Greece in 1982 and has taken part in ceramics group exhibitions in Thessaloniki and Athens. She runs her own ceramics workshop since 1992.
Role description:
As FAD PT supervisor and tutor, I am part of the administrative team that facilitates the running of the Foundation alongside my role as specialist tutor as well as supervisor to all Part-Time students attending the Foundation program.
Lesson description:
Soft clay can be pinched, coiled, slabbed, worked within a mould, folded, modelled, wrapped…. pushed to its limits. It can be transformed into unending possibilities from delicate jewelry, functional domestic ware through to sculptural forms and architectural features. Throughout the Art and Design Foundation Diploma course students will have the opportunity to discover clay through hands on experimentation. They will be taught making techniques, surface decoration, glaze application and methods of firing. They will develop skills which will enable them to realize their ideas in clay or in combination with other materials such as metal and glass. Their practice will be informed by research, museum and gallery visits.
Laline Pierrakos - GCE & IB Art / BTEC Life Drawing Tutor
Laline Pierrakos studied painting at the Wimbledon School of Art in London, graduating with a BA in Fine Art. She obtained a diploma in the restoration of paintings on canvas from the Istituto Spinelli in Florence in 1999 and thereafter worked in the restoration studio of Hamish Dewar Ltd. in Piccadilly, London. Subsequent to this, she executed murals and stencilling decorations for a number of private residences in Athens. In 2006 she co-founded the art gallery Aleph in Athens and has since been responsible for the hanging and overall set-up of numerous exhibitions there.
Lesson description:
Life drawing is an amazing way to learn how to draw, because when it’s wrong even the students can see it! However the lesson is not just about making a correct anatomical drawing, it must work as a piece; (it might end up illustrating the tension in the body, or be a caricature) it is extremely important that the students learn to be selective with their mark- making, and see it through to the end. They must see their life drawing not as exercises, but as completed works in their own right. In order not to become predictable and boring, the size of paper, the materials, the length of the poses, the models, the perspective etc. are different every week, this way students are never able to create a comfort zone and will hopefully have more opportunities to have a breakthrough. Students must also be encouraged to learn to analyse paintings using the correct terminology. Some of the lessons will begin by looking at a particular painting/artist who is relevant to that lesson’s angle. All lessons will end with a 5 min look/talk at everyone’s work, so that we can learn from each other’s style, and also become less shy about our work.
Eileen Botsford - Creative Computing / Creative Writing / Public Art Tutor | HCS Lecturer & VL Organiser | Course Promotion
Eileen Botsford is the Creative Computing, Creative Writing, Public Art Tutor and the Historical and Contextual Studies Lecturer at the Doukas BTEC Foundation in Art & Design. Parallel to teaching she also runs a big part of the social media marketing of the BTEC course. She has a Masters in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and a BA Honours in Public Art & Design from Chelsea College of Art. Eileen has achieved an international career in the arts taking part in several Biennales, solo and group exhibitions as well as commissioned and self-initiated Public Art projects. She has accepted a number of sponsorships for her work including those from the DESTE Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the GNTO. Publications and interviews include Vogue Hellas , Gynaika Magazine, Greek Modern Pioneers of The British Council, Kathimerini Newspaper and various online publications. She is recognized for her work as an artist as well as her inspirational talks in the field of 'Art & Design in Education'. Eileen is a member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece.
Role Description:
I run the cource's promotional projects such as the web/blog development/exposure and our social media platforms for all of which with I am working closely with Irene Vergitsi. In adition to this, I organize the Visiting Lecturer talks which take place monthly, as well as the series of online talks with creatives from abroad.
Lesson description:
The most effective way to take computing a step further is through creative minds which think out of the box and are able to explore, exploit and reinvent the usage of computing. And, this is what we are achieving with our new Creative Computing Department at the Doukas BTEC Foundation in Art & Design. There are several sectors in our Creative Computing Department, most of them entwined: We explore the use of social media and it’s integral part in today’s communication, while our students learn the vital role of exhibiting themselves online in the most effective method which best suits their style of work. We explore net.art which today is correctly considered a sector of Public Art. Through net.art our students learn to consider their online platform as a studio and learn to create for it or within it. We also explore the ultimate creative use of the iPad which is currently one of the best computing tools for the roaming and mobile artist. We use iPads and their never ending creative apps in the most unconventional ways, making them valuable tools, not the beginning and the end of our creative journey.
The Public Art lesson entails working closely with the Life Drawing / Fine Art Tutor Laline Pierrakos helping to combine conventional Fine Art Practice with Public Art. It comprises of an introduction to creating site-specific art work, as well as a hands on experience in working with public art projects from scratch to finish - researching, building proposals and creating or installing the work on location. The work created can vary from mural painting, site-specific interventions, performance, to on-location projection shows, onsite and online interactive pieces including net.art projects. The aim of the department is to open the student's horizons to the possibilities of Art, outside of the confined context of the conventional art markets and galleries, while exploring new ways of self-expression within the public domain.
The Historical and Contextual Studies Lectures take place at the beginning of each new project, providing the students with a research grounding and a source of inspiration to launch their projects from. The Creative Writing lesson helps young artists to get into the habit of reading up on their contemporaries and understanding how people are affected by the world around them. Most students enrolling in an art course are not expecting to write much! Like most diploma courses all students do write an essay eventually. This however is not as daunting as it may seem because students are eased into it, starting with small lectures to illustrate the importance of contextualising a work of art and then presenting a variety of works from a particular angle. They are also taught to analyse and evaluate their own and others’ work, and that by putting it down in words we become more aware of why an image ‘works’ and ultimately understand the ‘recipe’ for creating challenging art.
Katerina Tragas - Architecture & 3D Design Tutor | FAD Full Time Supervisor
Katerina Tragas is a Greek Canadian born in Athens. She completed her high school studies at TASIS Hellenic International School and obtained her BA Honors Degree in Architecture (2005) and later her Diploma in Architectural Design from the University of East London (2008). She has taken part in a number of Architectural workshops in Rotterdam, Porto, Galicia, Marseille, and Copenhagen. She has worked as a professional architect in Athens and is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece. She is a BA (Hons) Architecture Lecturer and Design Tutor at AKMI Metropolitan College. In addition to being a freelance architect she is the FT Student Supervisor and the Architecture & 3D Design Tutor at the Doukas BTEC Foundation Course in Art & Design at Doukas School.
Role description:
As FAD FT supervisor and tutor, I am part of the administrative team that facilitates the running of the Foundation alongside my role as specialist tutor as well as supervisor to all Full-Time students attending the Foundation program.
Lesson description:
We all experience architecture without thinking about it. The space that surrounds us, our homes, our schools, the built environment, even our memories are linked in one way or another to architectural experiences. When designing a building the architect has an important goal, to cater to the needs and wants of the inhabitant, and to create a space that is functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. Through this course you will begin to comprehend the essence of space, form, function, and materiality. As well as how our experience of space is determined by architecture and design.
Paris Koutsikos - Graphic Design Tutor
Paris Koutsikos (parisko) is a graphic artist born in Florence in 1967 and is based in Athens, Greece. He studied Visual Communication Design in Athens (AKTO) and in London (Middlesex University). For 12 years he was responsible for the art direction of OXY Pbl. Since 2007, he experiments in a wide range of different graphic applications including murals, typography, collage, painting, illustration, installations and, lately, silk screen printing.
Lesson description:
Graphic Design combines text and image to create a concept. The course is taught by merging each student’s artistic flair and individual style with technology to create digital art & graphics their purpose of which is to communicate certain messages to the spectators. Students learn basic typography & layout principals, how to vectorize images, how to manipulate photographs, illustrate in digital form as well as how to enrich their ideas and transform hand drawn designs using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign programs. Through course projects and specialist techniques sessions, students are opened up to the possibilities the graphic world brings to their work.
Anastasia Vasileiou - Photography & Film and Portfolio Preparation Tutor
Anastasia Vasileiou studied Fine Art in France and in the UK. She graduated from Winchester School of Art in 2005 with a BA in Painting and then moved to London where she continued her studies and worked. She did a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design and in 2008 she obtained her MA in Photography from London College of Communication. She taught art at primary schools in London and now she works as a professional photographer in Athens. As a visual artist she takes part in exhibitions in Greece and abroad.
Lesson description:
One of the main aims of the photography class, is to teach the students to look through the lens. Help them think before taking a picture, compose, frame, select, realise that a photograph is not just a “click”. Make them appreciate the medium and it’s role in art history, beyond any preconceptions they might have. During classes basic photographic techniques will be introduced to the students so that they can familiarise themselves with the notion of analogue and digital photography and the photograph as an object.
In addition to the above basic studio photography will be taught in order to produce great quality photographs of the students’ artwork for their portfolios.Finally throughout the year we will experiment with film, which -in its basic form- is very much linked to photography. Advanced techniques will be developed based on individual students’ needs (ex. Animation).
At Doukas Art School we recognize the importance of a good portfolio as one of the most vital steps towards admission to a University. As a portfolio tutor I always emphasize to my students that their portfolio is the image of their creativity and talent for the universities and must not be taken lightly or as something to do at the very last-minute. A portfolio is an on-going creative record that evolves, combining all other projects, forming a final product that is actually the visual representation of all the student’s work and effort. In Doukas Art School we start at week 1 by teaching our students the basic steps of creating a portfolio and emphasizing that the admission requirements differ between Universities or even Courses. It is essential for students to understand that by producing the right volume of work they increase their portfolios’ flexibility and strengthen their statement, increasing their chances for successful entry to the University of their choice. Universities usually require a portfolio of 15 to 25 pages, in digital form, which either has to be sent by email or uploaded on the web. Students, through many hours of proper guidance and hard work, learn how to convert work from their workbooks into various digital formats by the use of appropriate software. Through the portfolio preparation sessions, students learn how to select, edit, compile and present their work in a professional manner. During the one-to-one tutorial sessions students are assessed on their progress and receive feedback and advice for their on-going projects.
Edward Nevill - Glass Tutor
Edward Nevill was born in the UK in 1967. In 1992 he obtained his BA in Architectural stained and painted glass from the Edinburgh College of Art and his MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art in 1996. He has worked as a glassblower and stained glass artist both industrially and as a tutor and lecturer at various places including Columbia Glassworks, the Bushy Museum, Swansea School of Art, the National Glass Centre and the Design Council to name but a few. He has taken part in many exhibitions/shows in the UK and commissioned work for Alexander McQueen, Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Lesson description:
Students will be informed about the processes relating to stained and painted glass: how to cut coloured glass and translate their idea whether traditional or modern into stained glass. This could either be fused together in a kiln, or leaded together as traditional architectural stained glass so often is. Students will be taught the technique of glass painting and silver staining. Referring to the art and craft of eras such as the medieval and Renaissance eras up to the modern day, students will become aware of how they could translate their idea in a personal way and taught how to fix their pieces of glass together with lead, solder and putty cement so that the panel can be viewed as a whole.
Dimitra Kollia - Metal Tutor
Dimitra Kollia studied design, jewelry, sculpture and lithography at the EOMMEX school in Athens. She worked at various workshops and participated in art exhibitions showcasing her jewelry designs. Today apart from being a Metal tutor at the BTEC Foundation course at Doukas, she has her own workshop where she continues to design and create jewelry.
Lesson description:
Students will be introduced to metallurgy and to the basic metal techniques focusing on copper and its alloys. Ancient and modern techniques will be taught and artists and designers who have inspired and made a difference in the Jewelry and metal sector will be presented and analyzed accordingly.