Next week is Arts Week in school. I will be there every day, from 8am to 5pm…ish… I’m usually there just 16hrs a week, over 3 days. I suppose it is the climax of my school year. The planning of it exhausts me (especially at the moment) but the doing of it exhilarates me. The sheer joy and adrenalin gets me through the week, then I flop. Incoherent. Incapable of doing anything that requires thought for days.
If you had asked me on Friday afternoon if I was ready, I would have said yes. I’ve got all the visiting artists sorted, all the kits, all the activities for the children to do with me – this year, mostly clay based, as we don’t seem to get much 3D work, or such mucky work otherwise.
And then I went to Ormskirk and saw the work of Paola McClure in the Chapel Gallery.
I am totally enthralled with her textile sculptures. The figures are both funny and disturbing. I am now desperate to get these shapes into some sort of form, and as I have told everyone I’m doing clay, clay it will have to be. I will have to persuade/tell class teachers I don’t want to make Aztec masks or animals any more, but these curious alien/human forms. They remind me of Shonibare’s Dysfunctional Family too. Big heads and hands, thin necks and limbs. Goodness knows how I’m going to construct these… but we’ll have a go. I can see about 100 of these figures in my head now, child-made, brightly painted, weird and wonderful.
I even know where I’m going to install them. The children will undoubtedly want to take them home, thinking they are theirs… little do they know they are merely child labour in a work of my own making (mwah ha haaaaa)……
