Waharoa Project and Portraits in Clay
Today was another session working on the Waharoa Art Project. This project is an artwork at the entrance way to our school. You can find out more about the symbolism behind the Waharoa on the Island Bay School website. Behind the waharoa is the ‘frame’ for our artwork. We have created a design which is to be painted onto large boards and inserted into the frame. This time around the boards are to be painted by students in the senior school and inserted into the structure behind the waharoa. The idea is that the boards will be replaced frequently so that different students get a chance to contribute to the artwork.
I had help from Sophie’s class today. They were very enthusiastic and had a great time painting the large boards with the bold colours. It was a very productive morning. We did the second coat on nearly all of the plain coloured boards and started to paint the boards that have a design on them. The students enjoyed contributing to the community artwork. It was great to observe the students working out the best strategy to get the task done, solving problems and giving each other pointers on painting technique. They did a wonderful job at showing our school values today, particularly showing the four Cs: Curious, Creative, Critical and Collaborative.
Last week I went to the City Gallery for a tour of the closing exhibition of Split Level View Finder: Theo Schoon and the art of New Zealand. While I was there I was reminded of Ronnie van Hoult’s sculpture on the roof of the gallery. The sculpture, Quasi, is a giant hybrid hand-face and has quite a presence in the Civic Square. There has been a fair amount of controversy around the artwork so I thought that I would see what the students thought of it. I am always keen to hear what they think and I love hearing how open minded they are when it comes to experiencing art.
For the second part of the day the students created clay pieces channeling Ronnie van Hoult’s Quasi. Since it was the last lesson that Sophie’s class will have with me this year I gave them a bit of choice on how to complete the task. The only guidelines were that they had to build up facial features to create a portrait. And to attach their clay pieces together with slip! Some of the students wanted to create portraits of their pets, some were self portraits and some were imaginary portraits. The final products are all so different and certainly have some personality.
