Totem Poles

Yesterday in Southfields, one of my pre-school groups looked at Native (North West Coast) American art. We talked about totem poles and the stories they document before making our own totem pole together out of big boxes and junk modelling supplies. There was also the opportunity to have a go at carving sculptures out of bars of soap, since the Native Americans didn’t construct their totem poles, they carved them out of tree trunks.

This is available as a one off 2-hour workshop from Eyes Pie Arts. Contact matthew@eyespiearts.com for details.

Early years art: Fun with pipettes

In this morning’s Eyes Pie Art lesson in Wimbledon some 2 year olds used pipettes to collect, transport and drip a lot of watery yellow paint. I attached a paper ramp to a chair onto which we could drop the paint and watch as it ran down, painting long lines as it went and collecting in a big puddle at the bottom. Some of us really enjoyed watching the paint dribble down the paper, and some of us liked the way it squirted out of the pipette when we gave it a good squeeze. Pipettes are a lot of fun and perfect for many different early years art activities as they also provide great exercise for developing fine motor skills.

The painting that we made was magnificent. It reminded me of this painting of summer by Cy Twombly – maybe we’ll look at some of his work next week:

Motion Picture

On Sunday I took some LEDs, button batteries, cameras and televisions to the Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park, London, for a family workshop called “Motion Picture”. The idea was that, using the camera’s night mode (which records video at a lower frame rate than normal – fewer pictures in the same amount of time) we could capture the movements of our bodies and display the forms created on the television as a succession of still images. We made appendages to wear – springy hats, head bands, necklaces, cuffs – or hold – wands, shields, fans – and danced with them in a black-out space infront of the cameras and watched as the lights’ passage through the air created ephemeral light sculptures on the screen:

“Motion Picture” Family Art Workshop from matthew james Kay on Vimeo.

While the video camera was showing a constant stream of images on a big television. There was also a stills camera attached to a small TV so participants could see the still photos taken of their movements straight away:

Print making

Recently in Eyes Pie Art Lessons, children in a few South London nurseries have been exploring print making. We have looked by prints by artists through the ages, including Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print of a great big wave, Andy Warhol’s screen prints of Marylin Monroe, Tracey Emin’s monoprints of birds and a potato print of Abraham Lincoln by Corey McAbee. Two key elements of printing that we have been learning about are that you can make lots of pictures of the same thing and remake the exact same picture in different colours. We noticed that the prints that we make are usually the mirror image of the thing we used to print with.

We started this topic with an exploration of the sorts of marks you can make with different tools. We used potato mashers, meat tenderisers, lids, pine cones, combs, forks and stick to make marks in slabs of soft dough or clay .

We then used the same tools to make prints on paper using paint. Having repeated our marks in the dough/clay, this time we focussed on the different colours that we could use.

Meanwhile, in one nursery a girl practicing to use scissors got her paper stuck between the blades. This, she realised, looked just like a butterfly.

So of course we used the printing equipment that we had out to make some butterfly prints. We folded the paper in half and then unfolded it and printed shapes on one side (mostly) of the paper. When we folded the paper over again and then unfolded it we found that “there’s more!” as hte prints we’d made on one side trasnferred some of their paint to the other side of the paper.

Next we investigated what sort of prints we could make with leaves. It was a slightly more complicated process but some of us really enjoyed going through all the steps on our own to make a series of great prints. First we used rollers to put paint on different leaves and put the leaves painty-side-up in a tray. Then we placed a sheet of paper over the painty leaves and patted it all over. When we lifted up the paper (and peeled off any leaves that had got stuck) we had prints of all the leaves that we’d painted. The prints of the leaves had different lines all over them which were details that had been printed from the leaves’ veins.

Hacking Education

This guy describes an approach to learning that is entirely self motivated, and characterised by creative and critical thinking. Which makes me wonder about the logical progressions hardwired into the design of our education systems. Watch the video for his description of how he “hacked” his education, a process which he calls “hack schooling”. I ask myself – why do we invest time and energy and money during the early years and foundation stage in encouraging children to be motivated active learners who can think creatively and critically only to see them placed in a standardised schooling system where they are pressed to obtain excellent exam results in literacy, numeracy and science? Is this not at the detriment of creativity, practical skills, life skills – things that will ultimately contribute far more to the child’s future happiness and wellbeing than whether their maths grades will land them a lucrative job?