Popular LTU course this summer at Europaskolan
The popular summer course "artistic anatomy and sculpting" organized by Luleå University of Technology (LTU) is given this year at the Europaskolan in the city of Strängnäs. It is the 6th year in which the course is organized, but the first time in Strängnäs, and it is immensely popular.
- New art forms have emerged as the video game and movie industries have been developed. Everything has become so ultra-realistic and the skills are demanded by companies in the industry and that's why it is a popular education, says the summercourse teacher Jim Vikström.
He is a teacher of sculpture and teaches on a daily basis also students in datagraphics and attribute makeing at LTU Skellefteå. He feels that the summer course can be a natural beginning for further studies at Luleå University och Technology.
Jim Vikström is actually Europe's only trained teacher in écorché, the art of depicting the human body. 2001 he trained in the subject of classical sculpture in Florence. There, he helped to build a classical program in écorché, which was more common in the academies in the 1800s. In modern times, écorché have not got such a big response among artists as they are more engaged in associative creation and that's also why there are so few classically trained teachers in the subject according to Jim Vikström.
During the six years that the course has been organized it has always been full of applicants for a bit more than 20 participants, and one could even find applicants on the waiting list. It is the only course at university level at Europaskolan, and it is held in an old 1800-century building with fine facilities, according to Jim Vikström. Participants in the summer course is between 19 and 40 years, mostly between 25 and 26 years. It is open to all who have at least a one-year arts education and are qualified to apply for university and college. The course is already in full swing and will run throughout the summer with full activity and creativity, even into the evenings.
- In this program you build a skeleton, bone by bone. You get a better knowledge of body function and structure. If you are building a character that knowledge is necessary, said Jim Vikström.
Most participants of the course is data graphics, but according to Jim Vikström is some of the students also from the College of Arts and an older individual who participates in the course see it as a restart of his former artistic activity.
