Date: 12 December 2008
Time: 2-6pm
Participants: Chan Sze Qi, Lai Ming Jun, Ng Sin-Ee, Yap Kah Man
Details: Designing Life is a workshop to educate the participants on the importance of art and design through any applications. Here, the participants will be asked to paint the gate in front of the nursery and think about eye-catching visuals, support with creative ideas.
---
A fine Friday, the first day and the workshop started fine. With some simplified lectures about what defines art and design and also showing examples of some mundane artistic applications. Well I got to talk for approximately 30 minutes before I got them busy with activities.
(*Before getting them into gate-painting, some warm-up exercises will be conducted to let them learn from the very basic. )
I brought unwanted/recycle stuff for them to play with, it can be a collage, or a decorative craft. The main purpose firstly, is to add values to something abandoned, secondly to be able to see 'values' in something abandoned. Both are not mutually exclusive, the former requires imagination in creation (creativity), the later is more about imagination in perception (appreciation)...like the Gutai Group Manifesto in Japan. (bear in mind that this is just the idea of this workshop, such philosophical thinking will not be and cannot be taught literally in the workshop, but rather from self-realization through Montessori inspired activities)
Somehow they understood through some very simple kiddish collages of Alan Fletcher, but the reception wasn't at all positive, they thought those were ugly and tepid. I did try to explain the essence in his works which somehow ignore the demarcation between life and design but I didn't try too hard before it went worse and perplexed them, they are just 11 or around there.
We went on and started playing with those unwanted stuff.
Really messy table we have!
Well, they seemed busy...
...or maybe pretending to be busy.
Aha. The owl is mine.
It looks warm, passionate and adorable, by the almost 10 year-old Ng Sin-Ee. Amazing.
A cat with Diners Club ears, by Sin-Ee.
Nice colour combination, nice fish by Yap Kah Man!
Notice the very cute little pink lotus flower down there? By Kah Man too.
This is one of my favourites, it has curves and it is a 3D design, by Lai Ming Jun. Lai Ming Jun also did a 3D dog which I am quite impressed. Come for the display at the end of the project if you would like to have a look!
Ok, this one is from the eldest participants Chan Sze Qi. No collage animals but a Christmas card. I think it is an okay design, but what I found more interesting is the paper interlocking system there, which she cut out from a box.
I didn't quite appreciate it until I noticed the delicate cuttings of typo 'C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S'...with the counters (holes) too, hah! Hm, good effort. (But Sze Qi, if you are reading this, here is an advice; you spent too much time on this card! It wasn't wrong, but I think you can do better if you have some nice and simple ideas, spend more efforts on touch-up instead...and you just have to experiment more, try to be quantitative when you are learning, ok?)That's all for today.
The workshop continues tomorrow, I will be conducting a lesson on how to generate different sorts of patterns and explain some basic symbols found in Malaysian traditional patterns. Also showing them some modern patterns in Syed Thajudeen paintings, Hundertwasser's works of art and Dan Funderburgh's graphic works. The study of patterns may help them in the visual brain storm process of gate-painting.
No comments:
Post a Comment