An Expedition...to an exhibition. 'Is this us, or WHAT?'

To add to the whirlwind of stuff that's been going on this last few weeks, I have been privileged enough to have spent a chunk of time each week running some art workshops for the 32 very talented young artists who make up Year 6 at my local primary school.

This series of lessons were all based loosely around the subject of 'Me' and included self portraits in realist, surrealist, cubist and pop art style. We have created life sized angels with 3d feathered wings and encapsulated an emotion in a Lichtenstein-esque bubble. It's been fun. The end of term has sprung up, oh so soon, and so we celebrated a culmination of our efforts with an exhibition, or expedition, as some of our artists have been calling it, entitled 'Is this us, or what?'

I'm currently enjoying that warm fuzzy feeling of a real achievement (and slight exhaustion) and looking forward to more workshops with Year 5 next term. Ancient Greece I do believe, bring it on..... :-)

A Rubbish Popcorn Dog

In the midst of the crazy pre Christmas season, This week there has been a little beam of sunshine in the form of a project commissioned for the aptly named 'Sonny'.
This latest Rubbish Picture has been created to commemorate the naming ceremony of the very gorgeous young man whose face can be seen peeking through the camouflage of blue hues in the background.
Rubbish Dog is made out of popcorn wrappings, (just the right shade of brown) a Fat Face Christmas gift catalog and appropriately, a bag of Wagg Dog food. The background consists of packaging; from tea bags, Marks & Spencers Salt and Vinegar crisps, Rich Tea biscuits and some random NHS Swine Flu leaflets which the paper boy obviously got bored with delivering and just shoved in their entirety through my door instead.

Rubbish Zebra

Yesterday, someone shoved a Christmas Marks & Spencer's meat catalogue through my door. Being a vegetarian I made it into a nice Zebra instead.

I've been a bit rubbish at keeping on top of the Rubbish Pictures of late, busy with some standard issue graphic design as well as teaching some lovely art workshops to primary school kids (more on that later) so the Wallop shop over at Folksy is emptier than usual, yet still has some bargains on sale should you be interested in a nice christmas gift?!

This weeks rubbish picture then, is the lovely zebra, whose body is made up of aforementioned meats catalogue, and is stood upon a mound of pea and soya bean packet grasses. The beautiful blue sky consists of all those annoying bits that fell out of last Sundays paper supplements, as well as a few ingredients panels from various reconstituted frozen potato products boxes....well, its a busy time of year, and junk food always keeps the kids happy!

Doodle Addict T shirt Project

My Doodle Addict Tshirt results have been added to the Gallery over at Doodlers Anonymous, it's such a great project and already the responses have been hugely varied and inspirational. Go over to Doodlers anonymous here and check it out. :-)

Invited to enter the Man Photography prize 2009

It's very cool being a part of the Royal College of Art Alumni. Even though I spent the entire 2 years I was there doing my Masters Degree, feeling overwhelmed and in awe and never quite got over the feeling of not being worthy, now I get to sit back knowing that I've done it, I've been there, I've marched through the Royal Albert Hall wearing the fake ermine and the silly hat and now I get to relax and be sent all the interesting stuff via email. :-) I feel very fortunate.
The latest of the interesting stuff, was an invitation to enter the Man Photography Prize - a competition open to all current and past, RCA students. The title this year is 'Word On The Streets', and it seemed like a fun thing to do at a weekend, 'Why not' I thought to myself. My girls were very willing models and we were walking around London anyway, so my answer to the brief was based upon using the first line of one of their nursery rhymes split across the 5 required images, and hidden in the very ordinary, street scenes. (click on the images to see bigger versions)

My models enjoyed the end results so it was time well spent, whether it gets anywhere in the competition or not. I am, however, really looking forward to seeing all the shortlisted entries to the competition in an exhibition at the college gallery from 17th to 19th November. I'm intrigued to see what everyone else came up with, no doubt it will be an awesome collection and well worth a visit.

Doodle anonymously. (But put your name on it!)

Hello. My name is Katie and I am a doodle addict. It's been 10 minutes or so now since my last doodle. I do like a distraction, as I'm sure most people who work alone do.... it's always nice to have something more fun to do that the actual something that you're meant to be doing. And so it was this week when I received my pristine t shirt through the post from Doodlers anonymous with the invite to scribble all over it and post the results to their gallery.

I gave myself an hour. There had to be a time limit or I'd have been there all day - but it was such a fun hour! Once you've got over the initial 'hmmm, what to draw, don't want to ruin it' thoughts - and just doodle, doodle, doodle.... it's fun. Therapy, I think.

Here's the results - odd that my doodles turned into a kind of bonkers town, complete with resident mermaid and one lone cow. Must say something about my inner self.... ;-)

For all those in need of some doodle therapy, (and I would recommend it to many of my friends!) get yourself a tshirt from here and start doodling!

A day of Mariscal inspired character design

There are days when it's particularly useful to have children of a certain age, as you get to go to certain events that you'd look pretty sad going to by yourself. One of those such days was the family workshop that we went along to yesterday at The Design Museum. To run alongside the fantastic Mariscal - drawing Life exhibition currently showing on the second floor, families are invited to join in a character building workshop in the Design Museum 'Space', using Mariscal as inspiration to concoct, design and draw new characters and then transform them into 3D.

My two apprentices had a fun afternoon and came up with some fantastic creations, 'Time Dog' and 'Mr Pink' the scary spider, to name just two. Plus they got to use a squillion felt tip pens that all actually worked and had their first glue gun experiences. An art education happening without anyone actually realizing - lovely stuff.

The exhibition continues until November and I would thoroughly recommend a visit.