On July 8th we made a Giant Bird with the public at The Kilburn Festival!
We made a Kingfisher because Kingfishers are on of the only birds who have species found across the planet! We thought this fitted nicely into the Festivals theme of Community, Inclusivity and Diversity.
So we made an inner armature from wood and then covered it with wiremesh and newspaper.
Then we covered the whole thing in Plaster and decorated it with hundreds of fabric squares.
The Festival also had an Olympics theme, so the colours we chose were the same colours of the Olympic rings!
You can watch a 2minute video of the making of the Giant Bird here! ->
We had such a great day! Thanks to everyone who took part.
The Mayor of Camden invited us to display the finished piece in the local Town Hall!
If you would like us to create something special for your Event, we would love to be a part of it!
To celebrate May Day and The Crouch End Festival 2012, Leona and one of her assistants from Artist's Resource went to Stationers Park, N8, to make a life size Sculpture of a sheep! But not just any sheep - a psychedelic one!
You can Watch the video of the making of the Psychedelic Sheep Sculpture by clicking on this photo below:
Leona and Miriam started off in Hornsey Vale Community Centre, making the main structure of the sheep. We used wiremesh, wire and newspaper to construct the sheeps body, head, legs, tail and decorative swirls on it's back to represent the wooly coat.
When the wire stage was complete, we took the sculpture outside to start on the plaster stage with the public. Anyone could join in! It was so much fun meeting local parents and children who all helped cover the sheep in plaster.
When the plaster had dried, we went onto the next stage - covering it with 100's of squares of fabric! We had so many gorgeous fabrics to choose from! Everyone had lots of fun gluing their chosen fabric squares onto the sheep sculpture.
When the sculpture was complete, we donated the finished piece to Hornsey Vale Community Centre, N8 so that everyone who visits this fabulous place can see and enjoy all our hard work.
For the last few weeks of Spring term, the children made their own Marionettes! They looked so fabulous at the end it was certainly worth all the time and dedication it took to create them!
First of all the children drew out the Marionette on a sheet of A3 paper - positioning all the limbs so they fit on the paper and were proportionate to each other.
Then they started to cut wire to fit each limb and made loops on either end of the cut wires. To keep all the 'limbs' together we stuck them with masking tape to the drawing in between sessions.
Then they used newspaper and masking tape to form each limb, body, head, feets and hands. Some of the children chose to do animals, so their body parts were much different to those that made figures.
When all the body parts were made, the marionettes were assembled. This was where the fun really began as the children could see their creations come to life!
Next was the super fun painting stage.
Finally came choosing fabric for details and individual styles.
When the Marionettes were complete, we made cross-bars out of kebab sticks and attached the Marionettes to them with invisible wire. The children had so much fun interacting with their new creations! Here are just a few of the finished ones:
For the last session this term - and for 2011! - the Children Made Christmas Rag Wreaths!
It was so, so easy and a great project to do to a little festive music in the background!
First of all, 3 colours of fabric were chosen. Strips of fabric were cut to approx 3 inches by 1 inch. Around 30 strips were needed of each colour.
Then the children were given a piece of wire to bend and tie into a circle, star or heart shape. Then they got busy tieing each fabric piece to the wire to fill the whole shape. Remember the order of your colours when you make yours!
So gorgeous! They even tied ribbon to the top and wrote Christmas messages in the centre.
Merry Christmas to everyone - from all of us at the Art Club!
See you next year!!
For 2 weeks this term, the children embarked on a project called "The Human Painting' Here's a concept image I made to explain the idea to the kids:
The way it worked is that the children were each given a piece of calico to hang over themselves, kind of like a poncho. Then they chose some fabric samples they liked from a huge bag of fabrics. They cut out the samples into squares and circles and laid them onto their costumes to form abstract designs.
The children had to decide who they would be positioned next to in the final artwork. To keep continuity each child make sure their costume featured the same fabric on theirs, as their neighbours.
They took great care in pinning the fabric together. A couple of the children even got into some sewing. It was a joy to see the concentration on their faces!
After each costume was complete, a few of the children laid out the remaining pieces of fabric on the lawn, everyone got in their positions and I climbed on the climbing frame to get the final picture from above:
