Driving down to the school today, there were two families being interviewed on RTE 1 about being without all their techno devices, games, phones, ipod's etc and the TV for a week. Last week they were handing it over and this week they were getting them back. It got me thinking about when I was a kid and how little we had in terms of digital gadgets and devices to occupy our time. I thought how strange it must be for a kid today to have no idea of how to occupy their time or thoughts without some sort of intervention from a device. I thought it would be an interesting exercise in college to switch off everything for a week and just get a book or pen and paper and do something the good old fashioned way, just to see if it could be done.
Anyhow, today was my second day in the school. I arrived a little early again to help set up, and the sight of 27 'white heads' with the most amazing caricature features, peering out the window was quite a sight! We had 29 out of 31 in attendance today and I was given the task of helping the 7 who were absent last week, to catch up while the Artist went on with the rest of the class. Luckily I had listened the week before, and listening is something I am finding increasingly hard to do lately. I find that if I am interested in something I can hear 7 conversations at once, but if I am not.... This blog is not called 'Bettina's World' for nothing. The rest of the group went ahead and primed up the dried heads and they were about to move to the next step when one of the children asked why they had not attached the shoulders to the head yet. This question luckily, led the table I was at, to catch up rather quickly to the other group, as they all did it together today. They rolled up two sheets of newpaper into oval ball shapes, and taped them to the milk bottle just at the base of the neck. They then continued on pasting the white paper strips over the newspaper to get the form completed.
I looked up this link , (I think it is someones blog), http://ayearofpositivethinking.com/2010/05/31/a-great-artist/ because the Artist in the school said they had based the idea of their project on 'the pink head' by Louise Bourgeois. I liked this bit from the link:
“My name is Louise Josephine Bourgeois. I was born 24 December 1911, in Paris. All my work in the past fifty years, all my subjects, have found their inspiration in my childhood.
My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.” (Louise Bourgeois, epigraph, Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father; Writings and Interviews 1923-1997)
But to get back to the task on hand... the next step was to paste colour tissue paper over the body and shoulder area. They had to tear small pieces of tissue paper and overlay them so that the body was covered up to the base of the necks they had made. Some vibrant colours started to emerge out of the sea of white and in a way I was sad to see the white go as it definitely made a real impact, but also happy to see the bright colours emerging out of every corner of the room. It was as if the sun had instantly come out. One by one they covered them over and then they had to put them back up on the window ledge to dry. During the break, the Principal came in to introduce himself. He told me he had been on a holiday to South Africa recently and had had such a fantastic time. That is always good to hear because not too long ago, I would've been ashamed to admit I was from there, because of all the negative comments I would inevitably have to endure, and the assumption that just because I was a South African, I would be racist. That conversation reminded me that I would soon be home again to get another dose of vibrant colour, vivid blue skies and some sun during the Easter Break, and by then, this project would be over. There was also talk about the question of funding from the County Council for this project for next year, and that again has called into question the importance of funding for initiatives like these for artists.
No comments:
Post a Comment