Elisabeth in Middle Fifth recently went on the annual St Ives trip with the art department. Here’s her summary outlining what they got up to:
Early on a Friday morning, the art department set off with around thirty tired art pupils ready to raid Cornwall. Later in the day when we had all caught up on a bit of sleep, we headed to Falmouth University for a range of workshops. Some started by lifting heavy ink vats to create riso prints (a stencil duplicator), others heating and moulding their very own Venetian masks, like my bold plague mask, and others by creating their very own tote bag. Leaving swiftly with our new masterpieces, we arrived in St. Ives.
That evening, there was a ‘trashion show’ where we created a variety of styles. Varying from a rather cheeky angel to a ‘Miss St. Ives’. Rather exhausted but cheerful, we then went to bed. The next morning, there was a little trek after breakfast to see the Barbara Hepworth Museum and sculpture garden. Most of this was in the garden. Filled with sculptures designed to make you focus in on the ‘negative space’, we completed sketching exercises to try and capture the essence of this, with the help of an artist named Greg. We then moved on to the Tate in the afternoon, exploring abstract art, discovering cheese on a canvas, and doing a Picasso based exercise. We also discovered the vibrant art of Beatriz Milhazes, whose style we then used for our own creations.
The next day, we studied the shape and form of boats stranded in the low tide. We used the method of simplification to abstraction to turn these boats into a simple abstract sketch. We then used these to create a monumental sand drawing all together. Next we used this to do some tide line art, transferring parts of our sand art into other materials, e.g. seaweed, pebbles and even more sand! We finished with a ‘radicle’ surfing lesson filled with capsizes, attempts at standing up and a lot of sand.
Thank you to all the teachers who made this trip possible and sacrificed their weekend to come with us and care for us!
The St Ives trip occurs over a weekend at the start of each academic year in September for Middle Fifth pupils. During the trip this year, pupils were involved in several practical workshops with artist Greg Humphries, in response to the environment and the exhibitions visited. The work completed on this trip forms a significant part of the pupils’ second coursework project, which is worth 60% of the overall Art GCSE grade so it is integral to the year’s studies.
You can see photos of the trip by clicking through the Flickr gallery below.
