Talk About Art are delighted to be running a first project with Holy Cross Primary School. TAA artist Salina Jane started the project on 16th September 2021 with a much welcomed first return to face-to-face delivery.

This is a record of how they got on and the fantastic work produced!

Week 1
Holy Cross is such a happy school and so enthusiastic about making art, and about talking about it.

Our first week of this project we were lucky in our choice of artists; Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  It was two days before the L’Arc de Triomphe was to be wrapped.  Students loved the idea of wrapping huge objects and Islands and how the artists always left the space cleaner after they left!  They said their work was about getting us to look at the objects in a different way by emphasising the outlines and shapes.  Everyone wanted to walk on the lakes and were fascinated at people being part of the installations as well.

We drew objects from around the classroom, and had great fun finding the right object and thinking about its connection to the environment.

Week 2

Week 2’s class started with much excitement, as you were able to log onto the website of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and see L’Arc de Triomphe live.  Everyone marvelled at it and we imagined what people must think walking past.  The people and cards moving around it were so tiny and it make us really look carefully at the shape of the monument.

Our main artist this week was Senga Nengudi and the students loved that she spoke up for other people who weren’t able to speak for themselves!  One students really liked the idea of dancers moving around the art work.

For our art project we looked for objects around the classroom that had interesting shapes and connections to the environment, as as it was a sunny day we were able to work outside and lots of children chose to draw plants from the garden or parts of the structure, like the mosaic walls.  We then used our imagination to turn our drawings into animals, thinking about the impact of the objects we had chosen on animals in nature.  Lots of turtles and sea creatures appeared across the pages.

One student had created an artwork during the week, especially to bring into class.  It was a page painted with flowers and with a message to save the earth!  The students are really thinking about how they can use art to share the message about the environment to others.

Week 3
Our artist this week was Agnes Denes, and the children loved that she planted 11,000 trees and that the work would continue to change.  One student said its not just about the plants, but she involves people too and it will be there for years to come.

For this weeks’ art assignment, we made dynamic sculptures from paper.  We folded paper and wrapped it and cut it and curled it.  One student is a huge fan of origami, so he was able to show us some extra special folding techniques on his piece.  All of the materials we used were pre-used and we were able to re-use the materials to make our art.

Week 5

Benjamin Wong was our artist in week 5.  The class loved his ‘Mermaids hate plastic’ and his work recycling e-waste!  For our own project inspired by Wong’s work we created collages of sea creatures.  For this the children had brought in their own collage materials, which included the packing from their lunch!  They said they particularly liked to collage using their our own materials, being able to use different materials and turning the pictures into something else.  There was some impressive creations this week!