The Gusserane Art Intervention: Week 3

With our third week of workshops we decided to do something different and give the younger and older groups a different exercise from one another. Els facilitated the workshop with the younger group first of all; she showed the children a brief presentation of the artist Joan Miró in order to inform them a little of the type of exercise she was going to do with them.

(Above: Joan Miró, Blue 1, 11, 111, 1961).

Miró was a Spanish painter, ceramicist and sculptor from Barcelona and is historically categorised with other artists such as André Masson, affiliated with abstract surrealism. His paintings divulge the deconstruction of the conventional painting techniques of the time and probe the dream like in their content but also the abstract in their application and form. His initial paintings show a more direct representation of visual elements and then over the course of his career one can witness the breakdown of these elements in his style, rejecting the oppresive expectations of bourgeoius society (which he resented deeply) and reverting back to the almost child-like. Els showed the pupils a couple of his paintings in a digital slideshow and asked the children what they thought they saw in the paintings. Referring explicitly here to how he showed the sun and other objects in his images, she wanted to draw the pupil's attention to this as she felt they needed to see other ways artists have represented the sun/grass/clouds etc. in thier work.

Following this presentation we then handed out markers and big sheets of paper to each of the pupil's, then Els asked them to close their eyes and follow her instructions. Many of the children appeared to struggle with this sudden change of routine, finding it difficult to cope in drawing without being able to see what they were doing, understandably. However, Els' instructions were clear and concise and after a few mintues the majority managed to warm up to this strange new concept. Simple details to draw such as "Two straight lines from the top to the bottom", "A large circle in the middle" and "Three black dots on your left hand side" being some of them, Els wanted them to create their own abstractions. The unique ideal of abstraction is that the result is not considered and not pre-conditioned, the marks the artist makes are organic and free from formality. After about 15-20 mintues of this exercise, Els asked them to open their eyes and look at their drawings. Some had been cheating and looking beforehand, yet the pupil's who had been diligent in keeping their eyes closed let a chorus of gasps out at what they saw.

In relation to the Miró paintings, she had showed them particularly how he made the objects in his images appear to overlap using colour and changes of tone. Although the children were restricted to using only a black marker, it was a seed that needed sewing for the potential of the paintings she hopes they will be doing soon. With that they continued following Els' further instructions of how to finish their drawings by filling in certain places in black and adding elements to any blank spaces. Many of the pupils responded well to this exercise, a number of them remarking how much fun they found it "doing something different".

For the afternoon session we had the older group undertake a slide making workshop. It was the first time I had created a workshop exercise of my own and so I was anxious as to how it would play out. I initially showed the group the clear acetate sheets they would be drawing on and explained what they would have to do.

In order to do it we had to venture back over to the main building of the school and find enough available windows, the exercise being to create a slide sheet of a landscape drawn by hand on the acetate. We stuck them to the window and instructed the children to stand still and carefully draw what they saw through it. This was tricky at first for them as they commented saying "It keeps moving around" and so we had to remind them to remain in one place and at a particular distance to concentrate on one view. The exercise was to show them in a way how a a camera operated, they were to act as one themselves, look through a lens and focus on one image and try to capture it. This took about 20 minutes and then we brought them back to the hall and had them stick their drawings to a blank piece of cartridge paper so that they could see more clearly what they had done.

The next part of the workshop became a little more complicated as I gave each of them their own slide frame and a scissors and had them cut out a small square of their individual pictures to fit the slide. This proved difficult as many of the children cut out squares too big and were trying to force the pictures in, some had completely broken their slides in order to to get them open and some had to have it done for them. Once everyone managed to produce a fully completed slide, I set up my Hanimax slide projector and collected the slides table by table and showed the pupils what they had done. At this point I made it into a game that they were to guess what part of the school they think the pupil drew or what was in the picture itself. The results I found quite fascinating, as the small details suddenly enlarged to great sizes appeared rather spectacular, and footed my interest in repeating similar techniques in my own practice.

Alot of the images the children created almost appeared completely abstract, so they were not far off from Els' earlier exercise with the younger group. I felt the pupil's engaged well with this workshop, especially when they saw the result projected up on to the wall, I remarked on how important details and depicting things are, depending on their own preferences, as things they may not find important play a big part in image making.