Children's Mask Making

While other young artists continued with their various individual projects last Friday,  Lise worked with Joey, Annie, and Zenon on mask making with plaster bandage.  Joey had already cast his face mask, and started building it up and adding horns as per his design from last week.  Zenon and Annie cast each other's faces, and then started on building up the basic structure to add the details that they had previously decided.

Dream Catching

Tuesday afternoon was given over to making dreamcatchers at the studio.  Marco cut wire to make the circular frames, then we wrapped each loop with fabric and wove strands of wool into a central net.  More wire supported colourful beads and ostrich feathers.

Dreamcatchers originated with the Ojibwa IndianNations as protective talismans for the children.  A dreamcatcher (originally made of a willow hoop with a sinew net) was hung above the sleeping place.  Bad dreams would be caught in the net to wither in the light of day.  Good dreams would pass through the central hole, then slide down the strings of beads and feathers to grace the sleeper...

Tie-Dye Fun

This afternoon was damp, cool, and colourful at Turtle and Moon, as we all twisted, tied, and tortured our t-shirts -- binding them tightly with rubber bands and pink wool, then dunking them into steaming saucepans of dye.  Red, blue, green, pink, black... take your pick.  Fix the colour with salt, unpick the bindings, and hey presto!  The sixties classic will never go out of fashion (really!) and the afternoon was a hit with kids small, large... and grown-up!

Words on Paper

The second writing workshop took place on Thursday afternoon at the Studio.  We split up into pairs, an adult working with each child, and once again, the focus was on story writing.  We used two types of prompts, written and pictorial to weave stories:  during the first half of the session, we worked off written prompts such as 'You wake to find a dinosaur in the garden...' and 'Tell the story of a bat who couldn't fly', and after tea break Rachael passed out photographs from the book Street Photography Now, from which a variety of scenarios and stories could be constructed.  The results were wide ranging and wonderful -- from the Three-Headed Reptile that Stelios decided to 'deal with in the morning' to the bat who was cured by eating a 'special food of French pastry' to the scientist developing a non-burstable ball and the old lady who collapsed thanks to her allergy to cheese...

At the end of the session, anyone working on a summer project was invited to share their work, and Zenon read the prologue to his story, Demon Wars.

Everyone had a great time and is looking forward to next Thursday... and the apricot cake was a treat!