The Gusserane Art Intervention: Week 9

This week we returned to Gusserane for one day as the schools would be having their mid-term break and we will be missing our Thursday with them. Els brought in lots of materials for the older group to commence sculpting in the afternoon i.e. blocks of wood, aluminium wire, craft clay and crepe paper. She thought my idea of getting the younger group to paint pictures and then add drawings was good so we set up the painting for the younger group.

Unfortunately my camera wasn't working today and so I have no images to add to this post.

Since it was a bit of a last minute idea I wasn't entirely sure of how the exercise would follow through. When the class came in and got their materials I attempted to explain to them to try and paint similarly to how they did their Miro images, by creating big abstract shapes and designs, except without the dark lines to start and that we would draw on top later. They were given the three primary colours to work with and I was met with a strong atmosphere of confusion and questions, many not quite grasping the idea but giving it their best shot. One or two simply ignored the brief and painted their own background storyline with very recognisable pictures, some found it too difficult to get their heads around and so there were a number of paintings quite similar to one another (copying the person next to them). A majority had forgotten their basic painting skills, the point of the exercise was to paint the background with enough time left to let it dry and draw on top, yet many applied the paint too thick to give it adequate time and some even decided to mix the colours and ended up making their images too dark. Five or six in the group produced very well painted abstract pictures with clear edged shapes and smooth application of the paint, a good few others managed to produce nice paintings although not quite as abstract as we would have liked. Els mentioned that it was a good idea to give them an opportunity to paint again as we could see a distinct change in attitude in some of the children. Up until that point we had been consistently drawing in our workshops, albeit copying or still life, but it had been a while since they painted and compared to last week there was a huge change in concentration. It was interesting to note how the change of medium they worked with affected their work practice.

The afternoon was exciting as it was a brand new project for both us and the pupils of the older group. Els' son was on mid-term break and was with us to help distribute materials such as the wire and the clay whilst Els and I assisted with their builds. Els had asked them to bring in a rock or a piece of wood heavy or flat enough to stand alone as a foundation for their individual pieces, she also brought in extra just in case some had forgotten. To get them started we put a staple into their piece of wood or helped them tie wire around their rock and let them take it from there. Initially they were given just the wire to experiment with, once again the abstract idea seemed to cause difficulty for a number of them, with many saying "I don't know what it's meant to be." and us trying to convince them "It doesn't have to be anything!". However they struggled through their limitations and got much more creative when incorporating the clay and crepe paper. We supervised and aided with any construction problems they had and pushed them to go bigger as next week we would be getting them to do almost life size sculptures. About forty minutes in, nearly the whole group was completely absorbed in their piece, coming up with new ways to shape and work with the wire and clay, building them as high or as wide or as ambitiously as they could go. At the end we had picked out a handful that were well made and would work well as shadow sculptures. A lot of the pupils expressed a great enthusiasm for the lesson and were looking forward very much to next week's session.