WEEK 1 and 2
For my Fine Art in Society module, I am interested in using art to help the community and spreading the creative arts more in society. For this, I set up a weekly placement in a local secondary school. Having been told the school building looks to bare and clinical, the art department, including myself, have taken on the task of creating art projects to hang in every section of the school. This started by hanging some of the students pop art inspired work to brighten up the reception area and then we started on a larger project for the centre cafeteria area. As the school is focused on LGBT awareness and support of the LGBT community, we decided to centre this piece around acceptance and sexuality. Year 8 students designed tiles with this brief, of which we collected over 200. I then sorted these tiles and picked out the brighter ones which were separated by colour to create a homage to the pride flag. The tiles that were less bold or colourful will fill the background, but the ones I selected were used for the centre of this 'mosaic' to make the centre focus of the heart shaped hands stand out. The mosaic will be separated on two giant boards, with one hand on each. To create the first hand I stuck the tiles, in rainbow order, on top of a free hand drawn shape. To avoid cutting the students tiles in half, I lined the edge of the shape with block colour/patterned tiles I created myself. I then repeated these steps for the other hand and stuck it on the boards. At first the design around the hand pieces was fairly simple, however, upon hanging the piece, one of the boards broke. After, carefully removing the tiled shapes, they were stuck onto another board, together this time, and I painted the pride flag and a quote about LGBT communities behind them.
WEEK 3 and 4
For the technology and graphics section of the school, it was decided to hang some Roy Lichtenstein inspired work. I painted the selected pieces on large scale canvases and the technology teachers cut down some dowel to stamp on each dot. This was a long process but with help from some year 7 students it didn't take too long. The end result was bright and colourful, which is exactly what the head teacher had asked for. During this week we also hung some smaller projects in the school. This featured some of the students work in the reception area and around the school, two butterfly origami pieces and a tree piece in the centre of the school that the students made with some guidance, based off spreading love and kindness.