School Trip

A while ago I was asked if I would attend my daughters school for a day to teach the class about sculpture/making. The lesson will follow a trip to Lulworth Cove which is historically a smugglers cove but is also rich in fossils.

So I am off to the sea side with the teachers and twenty nine 7, 8 and 9 year old students. It will be a good experience and having worked with school classes before I find the enthusiasm refreshing especially the way in which children look at things differently to adults. The older we seem to get the less we actually see when we look. A beach can be seen by some as a mass of bland uninteresting shells, pebbles and sand. But on closer inspection we see a wonderful reference library of shapes, colours and textures, all of which can be used when thinking about sculpture and/or turning.

The prospect of giving a lesson to such a young group is quite daunting as having two young children myself I am aware of the searching questions they can ask, they are often thinking with 'beginners mind' something that can be lost in adulthood.

So we will be collecting items of interest and using these to investigate what has been seen and how it can be used for sculpture and should be a lot of fun.

The picture at the top of the page is one that I have taken of a few pebbles collected the last time I went beach combing, these will be used as my starting place for a sculpture for the lesson.

The picture below is of a form I have turned from Rock Maple and which will be used for a new colouring technique I have been playing around with. More of that later.