Lino printing panties…

This year I decided to extend the lino project I did with my Grade 10 students last year. I told them to find an image that they felt represented their personality or had some personal symbolic significance. This image was imported into a photo-editing programme (Gimp) & I taught them how to remove backgrounds from their chosen images & flatten the tones using various tools (one of the tools being “cartoonify”). We printed these images and the prints were transferred on to soft linoleum using lacquer thinners transfer. All of this happened at the end of a week at the beginning of this term. By the Friday everyone has started cutting tiles. I thought that the class would take the following week to complete their cutting – silly me! They were so enthusiastic that the majority of the class completed the tiles on the weekend & by Monday morning they were ready to print!

 

I gave them various printing options & asked them to hand in their three best prints. The options are listed below: 

1.     Image on WHITE - EVERYONE MUST DO NO. 1.

2.     Same image on COLOURED, PLAIN sheet

3.     COLLAGE coloured paper

4.     Collage in tissue paper over print

5.     Use existing (other) image, i.e. magazines, photocopies of previous work, thinners print, old paper, etc. - choose carefully.  Beware of printing on too old paper, badly chosen newspaper print, etc.

6.     FROTTAGE/rubbing

7.     Print on fabric or any other interesting surface

(This list was compiled from a printing list created by Jeanette Gilks for a printmaking workshop I attended a few years ago) 

 The following images are representative of the variety submitted for marking. Some students handed in their prints on mirrors, tiles, canvas, and surprisingly - even a pair of panties (the student assured me they were new - I am smiling as I write this)

 

Collaboration works

I recently collaborated with Lara Mellon on an artwork that is on the KZNSA gallery's members' exhibition "Red". I wasn't going to exhibit at all - I felt that I had enough work to do with our next upcoming exhibition (May 2012) at Fat Tuesday called "Lost, Found & Stolen".  We were walking along Durban's beachfront promenade (pic below) & Lara convinced me to work with her on a piece for the KZNSA exhibition.

(She told me to not interrupt her as she proposed an idea - she knew that I would initially refuse) Since we both have full time jobs - Lara suggested that we set a time limit on this piece & not work more than one day on this artwork. Surprisingly once we had set our minds on this time limit we really focused & the final artwork eventually only took us six hours to complete.

We initially discussed making a two panel piece & then I remembered that I had rescued an old table top from going to the dump at school. This table was originally housed in the boarding establishment at school, was the perfect colour - red vinyl & had been burnt by an iron. Lara suggested that we both use images that are familiar and have meaning for both of us - she often works with silhouetted figures and I draw and paint sparrows. The burnt hole suggested a nest - so it seemed appropriate to place the sparrow next to the nest.  The original table top was so beautiful with its gold spray - painted marks, peeling vinyl and natural wood - that we really had very little to add to the aesthetics of this piece. We have had positive response to this piece, but most people are confused by the nails. The nails visually connect the panels & have symbolic value - but also have special significance for Lara - her grandfather worked with wood & she kept his old rusting nails. 

    

Statement for Red Sky at Night…by the collaborative Sienna Sam

The inspiration for the title of this piece came from the weather-lore rhyme:

Red sky at night; shepherds delight,
Red sky in the morning; shepherds warning

It suggests that people were more in touch with their environment unlike today where our culture has disconnected from our surroundings.

In the spirit of post-consumerism we chose to work on a found surface and in a collaborative manner. Rejecting mass –produced packaged products and looking with a greater awareness of what already exists around us. Our co-operation makes reference to times when people were more aware of each other’s needs and worked towards a common goal. 

This piece warns about the danger of disconnecting from our environment and each other.

 

Click here to read Lara's blog about this piece & to see the table top before we worked on it. 

Artists Journals

I want to introduce my Grade 11 students to the idea of art journalling - so I set them homework drawings that must have text integrated with the drawing. I have just come across Andrea Joseph's journals via Pinterest. Her ballpoint pen work is magnificent and I am sure my students will find her work inspirational:

 

To see more of her work on her blog click here.

Cats, underwear, exhibitions & the future

 In 2000 I transferred to the school I teach at now - a private girls' school. I remember being and amazed by the facilities and subjects on offer to the girls. The violin in the top left corner represents the privileges available at this school. I bought my two cats Matilda – a Devon Rex and Sam – a Sphinx when I moved to Musgrave Road. The building in the bottom right is my classroom - I teach in the top floor of a Cape –Dutch style house.

Some parents thought that I was doing my laundry at school when they caught sight of underwear flapping gaily in the wind from the balcony of my classroom. A sports match was about to take place on the courts directly in front of the art room – so they thought they would take it upon themselves to "rescue the reputation of the school" and remove the art teacher’s "laundry".

They came rushing up the stairs sounding disgruntled & got a shock to find me at the top of the stairs marking girls’ artworks. It was a Saturday morning – so no one knew that I was at school. They very respectfully enquired about the underwear on the balcony & were embarrassed when I told them it was an art installation. One of my Grade 11 students had made an artwork protesting the censorship of women by men in some Durban communities. At the time - women who wore mini-skirts were being humiliated by men ripping their clothing off them in public. The men thought it was inappropriate for women to wear revealing clothing. The provocative underwear on the art-room balcony was supposed to declare that women should be allowed to wear what they like without fear of reprisal.      

 

I started exhibiting with Lara Mellon and Maggie Strachan in 2009. These two pages have images from our most recent exhibition at Fat Tuesday in 2011 called “Two Goats and a Dog.” Lara did the figure on the bottom left. Maggie's dog is in the middle and my goat is in the top right.

 

The last page of my sketchbook features the sparrow image from my webpage. The sparrow looks “along the line” to the future.      

Apartheid and teaching at a Boys' High School

The last time I blogged I skipped a double page of my sketchbook by mistake - the two pages that represented my time at university. I attended Wits (The University of the Witwatersrand) in the early 80’s. This was a time of political turmoil in South Africa and the violence of the times was reflected in student art – consciously or subconsciously. I made drawings and etchings of fighting armoured dogs – I have always been frightened of large dogs. A small section of one of my drawings is represented on the top of the left page and Jane Alexander’s “Butcher Boys” an iconic Apartheid piece stretches along the line from one page into the next.

After teaching at a boys’ high school I transferred to an all girls’ high school. The pace was a little more gentle– but as any teacher knows - teaching is never boring. I taught computer literacy at this school as well as art – hence the computer code at the bottom of the page. The girls “rescued” a mounted impala head from the back of the school stage and installed it in my classroom. He was named “Harold” & the girls used to bring accessories like scarves, hats and earrings & change his “look” on a regular basis.

One of the most bizarre occurrences I experienced whilst in my classroom at this school – was watching a man drop into the lesson from the ceiling. The roof was being repaired & he must have missed his footing/tripped & came crashing though. He luckily (or unluckily) landed on a beam – one leg on each side of the beam. This stopped him from falling all the way to the floor – but he obviously did quite a serious injury to himself.  He didn’t make a sound after falling, and then after a period of time groaned & slowly lifted each leg back into the roof.  The girls had initially shrieked (as girls do) & then collapsed about laughing – it was a bit mean, laughing at his predicament, but at the time it was really funny.