And for next term … we will develop some ideas about layers using the projector, the light on Andrew’s face and the corresponding shadow cast on the whiteboard threw up some more ideas for play with layers, opacity, transparency, masking and translation, yet to be explored. The strange feathery thing we brought back from Mount Stewart, glad to see it inhabitng the classroom beside what looks like a wizard’s hat…….Andrew cast as the Magician….

I hope we will also have a January reprise of our Mount Stewart trip, to experience a different kind of layering, a layering in time, covering – exposing – (re)discovering with memory finding altered spaces in nature’s changing cycles.

Joan Jonas

I have discovered an artist who works very much with layers in this way,  Joan Jonas, who has been delving into areas of visual narrative, playing with performance and performative drawing over 5 decades! in a way that chimes with our explorations, using drawing layering and avatars in a newly invented space/place.

Here are some stills from her work, They Come to Us Without a Word

She talks about her practice here:

Joan Jonas Drawing/Performance/Video

I am interested in her commitment to drawing as ritual, as a pleasurable activity as well as something repetitive the combining of the body with drawing, about fragments and different viewpoints.

and here is a video of her in the studio with her dog making drawings:

The students have been working on individual collages using real materials in the classroom. They have printed off photos from iPads – the now historic – visit to Mount Stewart. Combining avatars and other drawn images and building up layers using transparent and semi transparent materials.

I have asked the class to join their collages together by identifying shapes and patterns that run across their individual collages…it struck me there was a recurring leaf form in the students iPad pictures … I did quick experiment with this in my studio, using some scrap paper and choosing November’s colours of yellow and white, keeping layers floating, not stuck down. I would like students to work with rhythms overlapping from one page to the next to complete the whole, recognising similarities, repeated froms and dissolving boundaries between each individual’s ‘field’ to the next working collaboratively and seeing what combinations throw up interesting results.

I also layered up some of the cyanotype experiements I have been doing

and still playing with real and digital layering combining photographic and drawn elements almost like camouflage….

research continues …

Things are getting very busy at Killard house with Christmas performances and set building happening in the artroom, I was introduced to a giant ginger-bread-man today, (who seems to be living it large and taking over the classroom on the way to whole school domination)

We had rather a glitchy session with collaborate, but class was able to work away on some fabulous ‘real’ layermaking, I caught a glimpse of some wonderful collages all pinned but not glued (Yay for mobility) dying to see these in real life.

Once up and running with collaborate Ryan and I were able to have a whiteboard conversation with his avatar and symbol. the crystal thunderbolt maker (uploaded in the post below) here is a frame where thunderbolt thrower channels inner Elvis…

Ms Davey showed me some of the drawings the children did for their diversity project, Ben had made a whole page of different characters which resembled his avatar and Dean designed some fabulous new characters showing off their unique abilities, Sophie drew an amazing girl in an equally amazing wheelchair, and Curtis drew a rich man with a big grin, it may be interesting to develop some of these characters during the next phase of our project….

We may be able to squeeze one more session in before Christmas… fingers crossed for next Monday, I will be making an offering to the technology spirits.

I will also be asking the man in red for a teleporter.

 

 

Here are some images the students have sent me from their iPads:

I have been reading some poems by Francis Harvey and it strikes me that the poems are a way of offering thoughts in layers:

Rust

the further you walk

down the slipway you’ll see

how the mooring rings

get thinner and thinner

until the one at the end

looks like that Polo mint

you once held up in your fingers

to show me how long you could suck it

before it melted in your mouth.

The sea has a sweet tooth.

 

thinking about Layers while reading poetry:

MESHLIKE: As we read the poem each image hovers over the next – and each new layer holds a distinct image – as one layer settles over the next, each cummulation alters the last creating new shades and hues – we follow the thoughts from the surface downwards – into the depth where the thought is concentrated.

here’s another poem by Francis Harvey:

Easaranca

The waterfall that turned

white with fear

and roared for help

 

as it plunged

over the edge of the cliff

regains its colour

 

but loses its voice

when it sees

the state of itself

in the pool at its feet.

 

 

We could think about layers while looking at

this Film:

Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto

by Derrick Belcham

of a Performance by Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto

in the situation of Yayoi Kusama’s installation

Dots Obsession – Alive, Seeking for Eternal Hope  

curated by Irene Shum

in the Narcissus Garden Glass House

(built between 1949 and 1995 by architect Philip Johnson)

a National Trust Historic Site located in New Canaan, Connecticut

http://theglasshouse.org/about/

 

It strikes me that:

that’s a lot of layers – I count 6 layers to peer through, and that’s

just writing the credits

Now, the film…….looking at the layers and the work we’ve been doing……

I love the way reflections cause areas of opacity and transparency, shifting holes – we can begin to think about our collages in terms of architecture and expanded space (from 2 to 3 and 4 dimensions)

 

 

 

another version of the conversation:

and another

Today we were doing more work on ipads, this time we were building on our last session where we experimented with the tools and we did some work with layers.

We had to figure out a way to get photos of students’ symbols from my desktop to ipads, our solution was for me to upload to whiteboard snap the whiteboard

A fuzzy wuzzy wibbly wobbly screen shot of Curtis iPad with his staff of the blue flame symbol:

After the break Students were working together on strategies for joining up individual elements for a collaborative collage while I continued playing with layers and carrying through images on the whiteboard:

I can’t wait to see what the year 10 layered collage looks like, some materials the students have thought about are string, drawing pins, crushed paper, and different coloured paper.

I have asked the students also to find solutions for carrying motifs through from one section to another, linking colours and dissolving boundaries, thinking about repetition, rhythm, form, colour and pictorial space, and ways of layering using different media…all will unfold in the classroom.

Dream Narratives – Mt Stewart Revisited – Opening up the whiteboard space. I am enjoying the text which seems random and interesting to me but I know it has a special meaning to the writer

cross sans

crossing without

crossing sands

there is something about the remoteness of communication, a way of blind working that fills the space between us with other layers, it is a curious way of working. In my project with Our Lady of Lourdes this distance emanated in an exploration of interpretation, a guessing game, things not quite heard or heard differently became instructions for drawing, a game of Chinese Whispers – where the space between giver and receiver became a creative space for interpretation and invoked the evolution of an idea through corruption of the original signal.

At Killard House we have all kinds of ways of seeing each other, phones, iPads, webcam and whiteboard, we can hear each other on speakers and in phone. There is still the physical distance and still a remoteness and still the way of working blind. I can see what I’m being shown, the students can see what they are being shown; there is a lot more space out there which remains obscure, an opacity, this is a presence.