PLASTER I

This past year we have had an unusual amount of work with plaster in our department. I want to show a few examples of how our students have used plaster to make moulds to produce sculptures or how sometimes the plaster is the sculpture itself.

Above are two figures made by one of our year 13 students Diana Vasconcellos. The human figure is Diana, or to be accurate a mod-roc mould of Diana. It is not a cast of Diana, but the mod-roc shell itself.  It is a three part mould joined together. When talking about casting in a y12 lesson the other day, I realised most people in the room were slightly confused about what a "cast" is. The other figure you see is a monkey which was built in cardboard and tape (using a similar technique to the year 9 sculptures based on Naum Gabo, posted a few days ago). The surface was then covered in plaster.

Here, Tomás Candeias is creating a high relief by
making a plaster mould of a carved linoleum  plate

Luisa Vasconcelos made a plaster mould of
a doll and photographed it in such a way that
 it is hard to discern which are the convex or the concave surfaces.

One of our year 11 students merged her own figure (another mod-roc mould)
with a couple of large horns, also mod-roc moulds, to create this mythical faun like creature.

Tomás Candeias in year 13 describes the process of making a series of pyramids in plaster to construct a sculpture
 



Here is Tomás Candeias' plaster sculpture complete

Photography by Tom Vilar

Tom is one of our year 12 students. He really enjoys photography and is constantly producing images in his own time, totally independently.  Tom's photographs are worth seeing. I am pleased to post some and will soon also show you his beautiful analysis on some of the images below:

Different times

Bison licking its shoulder, from La Madeleine

I am in England at the moment and have no access to the Art department database of work. Until next week, I might not be able to share with you images of our students work. But I can still share with you extraordinary things that I stumble upon. Today I received a link to an article from The Guardian concerning the artefact shown in the picture above. "The mammoth that trampled on the history of mankind" talks about the discovery of this ivory carving artefact in a rock shelter in the Dordogne. It talks about the importance of this finding in the attempt to determine if human beings existed at the same time as mammoths. The carving seems to support that theory. 

 I am sharing this here in our blog especially for our year 12 students. We have recently spoken about the importance of exploring art from different cultures and times. It is an essential criteria of the course. 

 This is a great example of artistic expression in pre-historic times. 

Printing continued

I mentioned etching recently and posted a few examples of copper etchings. Here I am posting some silkscreens. We have added screenprinting to our portfolio of techniques.



Tomás Candeias - y13 

José Sapinho - y12

 

Melissa Speake - y13

Laura Charro - y11

GCSE show setup

We have been setting up the GCSE show in Quinta dos Caniços since last Thursday... I have to say it is starting to look quite impressive. Here are some visual clues to what you can expect to see on Friday.

Ceramics in the making

I have shown you some images of finalised ceramics. I thought it would also be interesting to show you images of process. Here is Olivia's head being made. It is constructed over a mod roc cast of her face and head. Olivia is in year 10!

Etching

 I am a printmaker and its about time I show you more about the printmaking we do here in our department. When I joined the team 8 years ago, an etching press came along as well and we started making prints in intaglio with GCSE and IB students. Later we expanded the use of the press to year 8 and 9 students but we still use it mainly with older students as it is a more expensive and complex printing process than the traditional block printing and monotype work we can do with a larger group of younger pupils. Here are some examples:

 



Etching on copper by Diogo Braga. The background colour is added using the viscosity printing method invented by Stanley William Hayter.

Copper etching by José Sapinho with colour added by viscosity printing.

Copper etching by Ben Rough with colout added by viscosity printing.

 

Ceramics in IB

Here is a selection of ceramics from our IB students.

Agata Woloszyn made a cast of her face with mod roc and then pressed a slab of stoneware to make this piece.
The piece was fired and then glazed and partially sprayed in the end.

Here is a very large pot built with coils in stoneware. The image was painted with slip while the pot was leather hard and then glazed. By Melissa Speake

 

This is a skull carved in stoneware by Ana Delgado. It was glazed at high temperature

Another pot by Melissa Speake, coloured with green and white slip and then glazed.



This is a stoneware pot made by Ana Paganini. It was covered in photographs using a mysterious paper that transfers to ceramics. I say mysterious because Filipa and Leonor, our technicians had this at home but were unable to discover where is was bought. It belonged to their late father, who was also an artist. It is a beautiful material that transfer photographs perfectly onto the surface of fired clay.

                                  

What about painting...

Ok, so I haven't posted any painting yet since my comeback. So I thought I should start with Rosa Mulloy. I will post other works from our finalist students, but it seems a good idea to do so in stages. Today its Rosa!


Rosa Mulloy - Tight Oil on canvas (85.2 x 85.7 cm)



Rosa Mulloy - Life Painting 2 Oil on Canvas (59.4 x 42.0 cm

 

 

Rob Kesseler

My dear friend Rob Kesseler, author of the beautiful images that I present here , has inspired several of our students in the past couple of years.

hackelia

scutellaria-galericulata

  
hippocrepis-unisiliquosa

 Recently, one of our  year 11 students looked at Rob's work and felt inspired to look through her small microscope at home. With some help, she was able to capture some great images from slides of a stem. She worked on the images using photoshop to improve colour and contrast and then painted them on a cast of a cut section of a tree trunk.

 

 

When I sent these to Rob he was impressed and said:

 

"It makes me really proud to see things like this, to inspire young people is a privilege that means more than hanging on the walls of the Saatchi Gallery. "



Figures in action - greek pots

Earlier this year, in art lessons with our year 6 students, we explored greek pottery and looked at exquisit artworks such as this:

Panathenaic amphora, ca. 530 B.C.; Archaic

Our students were inspired and eager to make their own vases and pots. Ok, the scale was reduced to their size, and the colours are slightly brighter, but look at how they were able to build a clay pot, apply coloured slip and design silhouettes based in their own figures! (these are examples from Sally Baker's class)