Salt Dough

Salt dough modelling was the main activity in the children's art class this Tuesday afternoon.  Several books were on hand to provide ideas but not everyone used their suggestions:  Joey made a pizza -- and Leo made a pizza pan!  Lise's going to bake everything in a slow oven, and next week, we'll paint them. See you then!

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  A dreamcatcher (originally made of a willow hoop with a sinew net) was hung above the sleeping place.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!

Writers' Workshop Kicks Off

Joey guards his story from the camera's prying eye 

Nothing happens without Costis. 

Making stories

Reading 'Consequences'...

Thursday afternoon at the studio saw the first gathering of theWriters' Workshop, Words on Paper, led by local writer Rachael Pettus.  A small group ranging in age from seven (Joey) to 53 (Rachael's sister Ruth) gathered in the studio, talked a little about the essentials of story making, then began work -- and play.  The younger ones, who had had little formal learning in English, had some difficulty with spelling, but a nearby adult always helped out.

The first exercise was a round of the old party game Consequences, in which each player writes a man's name at the top of a page, folds the paper over, and hands the page to the player on the right -- who then writes the name of a woman, covers it in turn, and hands the paper on... until a story is created involving where the couple met, what they wore, what they said to each other, and what happened 'consequently'.  the game is a rigid form of story-telling, made fascinating and funny by the details provided by each player's imagination.

After a quick refreshment break, we moved on to another form of story creation, the composite story.  Unfortunately we didn't have time for a full round:  each player wrote a beginning on their page before passing it to the right, added a 'middle' to the paper that came to them, before passing that one on and  completing the new page that came from the player to the left.  This allowed a much freer form of writing as each writer built on the paragraphs written by the writer before.

Despite running out of time, we passed around lots of good ideas and Rachael left with the suggestion that participants take some of the images generated by the stories that we had begun, and develop them for next week.

Art in the Park

A cameraman from Paphos t.v. did show up in Heroes' Park on Saturday afternoon, and thanks to Sophia Agathocleous, left after half an hour with an articulate statement about the Art and Wild nature Foundation and its aims in Greek and plenty of colourful footage of children and adults painting and sticking. Combined with a print interview that Doerte gave the Cyprus Weekly last week, that should guarantee us some coverage in the coming week.

This weekend saw us mosaicking leaves and lizards as well as a polka dot fish, and painting a snake and Georges the Giraffe (complete with neon-pink horns) for completion next week. In order to provide some colourful background for the t.v cameraman, the bird and the snail were set up nearby, and the children enjoyed games of Wolf and Sheep during the drink break.