St James P.S. | Artist journal

 

A Real Visit…..THE PLAN…………Slow it down, keep it simple and just get to know the class!!

I decided to bring my studio to St.James…..well some of the most important bits and pieces; my plants, a blanket, a flower press and my books of course!! I unrolled a floor plan matching my studio dimensions across the classroom floor and invited the P2 to join me there. We had lovely chats about the space and the children recalled some of the details we had discussed the previous week. I told them about the books in my studio and inspiration I find inside them. I had packed my familiar “book boxes” and some new ones based on objects from the studio; “a cow that eats parsley”, “a plant spider”,” it looks like snow” and other tales!! There was great fun and excitement opening them.

After lunch we followed steps to make a folded book and the children used the inspiration they found earlier in the morning to fill the pages.

I really really enjoyed the day. Ms Cross said it went way beyond her expectations. We left excited and confident again about what we might make together!

 

we plan for listening and activity that might enable this.

I pick up on interests around instruction and direction, what we hear or how we read and understand words. How we interpret these words and what we imagine.

In the studio on my bookshelf, inside the pages of botanical books, I find detailed descriptions of plants, a particular language to describe them, and then I have to scramble to the middle pages to find a drawing of the plant, if there isn’t one I have to imagine. Robert Lloyd Preagers words describe intricate landscapes……. a postcard image does not accompany them….. presenting possibility and potential to imagine these places. I remember an exhibition by Haris Epaminonda, presenting objects with specific information omitted allowing spectators to reinvent or reinterpret each piece every time it is contemplated. I think about instruction based art, guidelines, diagrams, and rules…….Sol leWit_ each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently, artists working like composers, writing instructions to be realized again and again.

I am not be in the studio again this week, but I want to share this space with P2. I tell them what happens there and describe what they might find in this space……

…….theres a sculpture made of flowers, they are Cow Parsley flowers, I picked hundreds of them in May, and dried them in a giant flower press. They’re not in bloom now so I describe them;

The hollow stem grows to a height of 60–170 cm (24–67in), branching to umbels of small white flowers. Flowering time is mid spring to early summer. The tripinnate leaves are 15–30 cm (5.9–11.8 in) long and have a triangular form. The leaflets are ovate and subdivided.

The hollow stem grows 60-170cm high, it branches out into clusters of small white flowers. The leaves grow on each side of the stem, they are like feathers, they are 15cm – 30 cm long and are triangular in shape.

Ms Cross breaks down this description into step by step instructions and the children make drawings of the Cow Parsley flowers.

We followed with more drawing instructions to imagine what these flowers now squashed look like and to make a drawing of a Cow Parsley Veil together;

Draw a dot.

Draw 7, 8 or 9 spots around the dot.

Join the dot in the centre to the spots with a line.

Draw7,8 or 9 small dots around each spot close to it.

Cut your drawing out and join it to someone elses

“ it looks like snow”……..”or dragon flies”!

Our session moves fast, its loud and i’m a little lost in Boyle. While we planned via email, we didn’t get to talk it over. I don’t know the children and they don’t know me, its difficult to hear me and see me on this sunshiney day; and we’re struggling to get to know each other!

A great chat with Ms Cross after our session, we remember how much planning is required, and decide a real visit as a next step.

A wobbly start, a bunch of new technical issues, out of the studio and in my sitting room I meet a brand new class…….new faces and names, a whole new atmosphere and energy.

We meet earlier in the year this time, and the class are still getting settled………

we just got started, its all brand new again!!

I pack my suitcase…..filling it with flowers and “bashers”, gathering hammers, chimes, tubes and anything we could use for bashing!!

We talked about preserving, holding on to things, ways we could keep these flowers for longer. The flowers the class had given me on my last visit had faded and fell away. We thought about other ways we press…..pushing, putting heavy things on top,  squashing, squeezing, jumping on it…….lets give this a go

.

Ms. Cross had a stack of fabrics cut and ready. We laid the fabric out and arranged a picture on top with the flowers I had brought……. Then we got to squeezing and squashing, tapping and hammering, beating and hitting, drumming and bashing the flowers into the fabric, leaving the most beautiful marks, stains and images ……

Again we were filling the school with lots of noise. We follow in the afternoon with quieter workings, opening the flower presses, drawing and making paper, trapping the pressed particles within the fibres.

 

 

Reflection and evaluation, what did we do, what do you remember……..a vote is cast and the real visit wins………I’ll just have to come back again for one last visit.

 

Where do you start……

A wave ?

A smile?

A nod?

 

A HELLO,

Hello can you hear me ……

HELLO????

 

I watched excited faces eager to connect, but all I had was silence.

 

COMMUNICATION…….. that’s where we started

 

We were all new to this way of working and it felt strange.

We had to get to know each other, how to work the microphone, how to focus the camera, how to ring C2K in an emergency!!

We had to allow the children (and ourselves) become familiar with this new means of communication in the classroom environment.

 

Not allowing ourselves to be put off by bumps on the way , Stella reassuringly said “lets just try it, lets see how it works”

 

AGAIN…..

A wave, a smile, a nod….. HELLO?

And then we could hear each other, loud and clear,

seems so easy now,

but we thought we should practice this thing; LISTENING

Virtually There presents a whole new way to communicate with listening being a key part of it.

 

I felt welcome in the classroom. Stella approached the project with openness, not allowing it to be pinned down by the current class theme. We wanted the project to go where it needed to and welcomed each others ideas. It helped that we were on the same level in terms of knowledge around the technology. Beginners, we figured it out together, working and learning through the process and supporting one another. We found the mic, focused the camera…….

and we just got started.

 

All kind of wonderful sounds were floating through the classroom, a radio, a noisy lot upstairs, the birds singing, the wind whistling  and someone counting??

With listening devices we could hear even better; there were talking sounds, builders making a new footpath, drilling and stamping, the whiteboard quietly hushing us and a leaf falling off a tree!!

The sounds were documented through sound wave drawings. We found, loud and harsh noises, soft and gentle noises, there were sounds that went up and down like umbrellas and lifts. We gathered materials and listened to their voices, and found ways to make them sing. We tapped and shook, and watched and waited, we PERFORMED. In elaborative sound suits we travelled the corridors of St James and filled them with new sounds.

 

Thursday became an important day, as eagerly awaited as PE day.The children have been so receptive to this way of working, their responses surprising both Stella and I.They dealt better with the glitches and noise that we couldn’t figure out.

 

We’ve been taking it slowly, just getting to know how it all works, how we work and how we might work together. We’ve been giving all this TIME. When is a good time to meet up……. it didn’t work this time……. where did the time go…… I forgot the time…. looking forward to seeing you all in the morning time…..

Sometimes finding time can be a challenge but we have learned that making time to plan is really important. At the end of our sessions we reflected on what happened and began planning for the following session. On one occasion when we did not have time to meet to discuss our plan and so we met stumbling blocks instead. Our plans were directed by the children’s interests which Stella would watch and translate to me. Our planning became stronger the more we worked together. We did not plan a real visit until we were midway through the project giving ourselves lots of experience with the technology before we met up in person. At the end of our real visit, we used a reflective framework ORID to look at everything we had done and plan where we would go next. Planning flowed better from this point, as we knew each other better and were more confident in our roles. Trusting each others judgements, we had more confidence to call it, to move on or stay with something a little longer. There was a better sense of ownership as the technology became less of a focus and we could work on other ideas.

I got to know the class better. P2 know lots of things about me…… P2 asked where did I sleep, how do you draw a 3D hat and where do you stop to go to the toilet on the long journey between Belfast and Boyle?!!!!

We’re getting to know each other, so we can keep working together

We’re not in a hurry, and now we’ve pressed flowers and planted seeds, we’ll watch and wait and give it TIME, if we listen we might be able to hear them grow.

 

Over the past few weeks just getting to know each other took centre stage……and now we are ready to learn what we can do with all those extra buttons we haven’t been using!!

 

 

 

What kind of seeds were they, imagining what they might become, we guessed drawings……

This week I’ve been busy picking Cow Parsley for my giant flower press. I wanted to share some of these flowers with P2. I folded a envelop for each person in P2 and sent them off in the post. They arrived just in time, Ms Cross collecting the envelop from the office just before we began our session. There was huge excitement opening the big envelop to find all the little envelops inside, and the performance of the names on each envelop being read out and the children collecting their gift. How did I know peoples favourite colours?? Some people placed their flower in the flower press and others brought theirs home to share with Mums and Dads. There were seeds in one envelop and we spent the rest of the session planting. Now we wait!!!

We are getting to know each better now, to capitalise on this P2 came up with some great questions to ask me today…..

HOW do you draw a tree, animals and a 3D hat? How would you draw our classroom?

WHAT do you do when you are not on the whiteboard?

WHO do you make things for? Who teaches you? Who is your favourite rock star?

WHERE do you go to the toilet on long journeys, sleep, go if you need something to eat??? Where are you now, where is your studio. WHERE is the red suitcase??

WHEN are you coming back to visit us/ will you come and visit us in P3/ will we make another sound suit. When you were young were you good at art?

When are we going to start our art????

My real visit the previous week revealed real treasure. Ms Cross had a box of rescued flower presses awaiting some attention. Their was great fun opening the presses to reveal more treasures, the children coming up to the camera to share them with me. We decided we would collect some flowers and press them too. Step by step we folded envelops, we could carry with us on the way to school to pick and collect materials for the flower press.

Today I just popped in to say hello to P2, and thank them for the lovely visit I had…..virtually this time, to cause a little confusion, how was I in a different place today and so far away. And there were the flowers too…..gone….to their new home!!?