Art and design students from West Herts College will be uncovering a host of creative gems at their summer show next week.

On my visit, Alice Nolan, 21, from Abbots Langley was putting the finishing touches to an amazingly lithe wire sculpture of a pole dancer.

Alice tells me she worked as a secretary in London for two years before deciding art was her vocation and soon she will be off to university in Canterbury to further her studies.

“I realised it was definitely what I wanted to do. When I started this course I was a portrait painter but I’ve expanded my skills through West Herts College to include sculpture and illustration.”

Alice’s final piece of work is sure to attract attention as the chickenwire figure reclines against its pole, rocking back. It is a provocative image with a serious message to tell.

“This sculpture developed from my last work where women are used as pieces of meat. This explores how men view women as a structure, epitomised as a see-through wire frame with no heart or feelings, just an object purely to look at.”

To achieve movement in her sculpture, Alice watched videos of pole dancers and created sketches. She then wrapped chicken wire around her own body to create the form.

“For weeks I had scratches all up my arms that looked like I was self-harming. I built her from my own figure except, for the face which I created using clay moulded with a hammer and then replaced by fine wire.

Fine art students Rachel Cousins and Lily Pond are also showing their work. Rachel had to take time out from her two-year course due to a serious car accident, but now the plucky Radlett 19-year-old is off to study fashion and business promotion at University College for the Creative Arts at Epsom.

“My work looks at different types of fashion advertising and how it influences buying trends in young adults,” says Rachel. “They choose what they see, rather than what they like.”

Rachel looked at photography magazines and window displays to gauge the public’s eye for fashion.

“I grouped people into categories and found the money spent on advertising high street fashion has a bigger impact than market fashion which is cheaper to buy.”

Rachel says she shops in vintage stores and charity shops but is not beyond the pull of the high street shops.

Quirky Hemel Hempstead artist Lily Pond, 19, is staying on at West Herts to build up her portfolio and decide which route to take next.

Lily has created a series of interactive pieces involving the senses – taste, smell, sound, touch and sight. There’s a mould of a face with a pin cushion brain complete with fascinator and a box of her sister’s identity, like a dolls house of her life. All her works are colourful, humorous and eye-catching.

“Another of my pieces is a slightly ironic take on Damien Hurst’s cow and shark in formaldehyde,” says Lily. “I’ve sewn six little objects: monsters, a Christmas tree and an elephant, cut in half, and put them in jelly pots suspended in different coloured gelatine.

Elsewhere in the college, graphic designers Mohammed Jamma, Lewis Watters, Sami Pater, Daniel Young and Lisa Buckridge have created their own powerful take on classic book covers and advertising posters.

Also fashion students have made T-shirts that will be on sale during the show, as well as a display of designer pink bows in a pink marquee with proceeds going to the Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity.

The School of Art and Design Summer Exhibition is on Wednesday, June 16, 10am to 8pm and Thursday, June 17, 10am to 4pm at West Herts College, Watford Campus, Hempstead Road, Watford. Details: 01923 812000, www.westherts.ac.uk