Cape Town Creative Academy lecturers shine at the Riebeek Valley’s “Intimate Art Encounters”
Meet the Resident & Co-exhibitor artists
Wiehan de Jager (Resident Artist)
Visual communication designer, printmaker, illustrator and CTCA lecturer and Programme Co-ordinator for Foundation, Wiehan de Jager, opened his Riebeek Kasteel studio to visitors throughout the weekend. His practice bridges design, craft and conceptual art, testing the versatility of paper through collage, printmaking, drawing, painting, and digital illustration.
The work is textural and layered, with sensitive detail balanced by bold organic gestures as it explores movement, stillness and change. In the studio, visitors witnessed how marks, materials and iterative choices build towards resolved works.
Clayton Sutherland (Co-exhibitor)
Clayton Sutherland, Programme Co-ordinator for BA Communication Design and practising ceramicist, co-exhibited as a Collaborator. His hand-built ceramic artefacts evoke weathering, erosion, fissures and fractures, drawing inspiration from objects found in the land and seascapes. Embracing chance, Clayton’s process demonstrates how disciplined experimentation produces work with character and conceptual depth.
Together, Wiehan and Clayton model CTCA’s core value: rigorous design thinking coupled with material intelligence and open, accessible conversations about how ideas become form.
Why this matters for Communication Design
- Process made visible: Students and art lovers witness sketching, prototyping, tests and “productive failures”, the scaffolding that underpins professional practice.
- Transdisciplinary fluency: From illustration and print to ceramics and exhibition design, Wiehan’s and Clayton’s practices show how designers move across media while keeping concept and audience central.
How Solo Studios mirrors CTCA’s model
- Small, practice-driven learning: Like Solo Studios’ intimate encounters, CTCA’s model prioritises close mentorship and studio-centred teaching that builds sophisticated aesthetic judgement, critical concept development, and creative problem-solving.
- Master-led mentorship: Our lecturers are active practitioners. Students learn directly from master designers and artists who translate current industry methods into teachable frameworks.
- Transdisciplinary teaching methodologies: We integrate research, theory, and hands-on making—so students learn to move between fields (e.g., visual communication, illustration, print making and curation) and prototype ideas that are culturally literate and industry-ready.
The outcome is innovative graduates equipped to collaborate across disciplines, communicate clearly, and deliver work that is both conceptually strong and impeccably made.
Congratulations to Wiehan de Jager and Clayton Sutherland. Their presence at Solo Studios exemplifies CTCA’s ethos: learning through making, guided by master practitioners, within a transdisciplinary framework that prepares students to lead creative change.
Solo Studios proves it: CTCA’s experienced educators balance deep industry expertise with specialised learning activities. Through training and mentorship from master designers and artists, as well as appropriate teaching methodologies in transdisciplinary design, we guide students to become innovative graduates who think critically, collaborate fluently, and make with intent.
