I ran the last two of the major workshops over february and march, each with one half of the year 10 group.
Going with the theme of self portraits i took them through all the monoprinting techniques using photocopies of themselves to monoprint from and also got them doing blind drawings of each other which was really successful and a good ice breaker to the session, very funny. they did some really good work as well, hopefully they’ll remember the techniques and carry on at some point.
I also had great help from Don and Kate once again, fabulous helpers i couldn’t have done it without them really, well i could have but it wouldn’t have been as good, i think the point is to give the kids something to experience they normally wouldn’t get and lots of attention is certainly one of them, also really handy to have other proffessional artists to give them advise, i’m not sure it was appreciated as much as it should have been by the kids but thats the usual story, it’ll sink in one day years after they’ve left school.
i had got more year 7’s to do more monoprinting of pictures to do with the environment to then graffiti onto the sculpture but in the end i didn’t think it would look right, it still worked well as an exercise to get them to engage with the themes anyway and some kids have since planted some peas that they grew from seed to grow up the willow trellis which is great.
the lights working at night! well almost night, i tried so hard to stay late enough for it to get dark but got kicked out by phylys the caretaker just before it was properly dark, so i am still to see the lights in their full glory, i think they will really come into their own in the autumn term, lots of open evenings and christmas do’s and parents evenings. guess i’ll just have to visit.
Fully powered by the sun! i should add…
some detail of the sculpture garden…
we called the sculpture garden ‘the elemental garden’ with the dragon being fire, the copper sculpture that is going to grow and corrode being earth and leaving wind and water to be explored at a later date. I like this idea of leaving an unfinished project, it means it will evolve and grow, rather than going stagnant, is always a shame when you put loads of energy into something and then it’s just left. i guess thats the nature of puplic sculpture tho, it’ll be interesting to go back and see whats changed.
