Each Wednesday in March, artist Sandra McAllister worked with the pupils from Mrs M Kenny's class and Mrs Walshe's class.
The pupils were fortunate to participate in the Art BLAST programme, run in conjunction with Kilkenny Education Centre and the Department of Education, as it's a wonderful opportunity to work with an artist and learn about the artist's craft with hands-on activities.
The main focus for the classes involved with printing.
Sandra specialises in textile and print, and it was great to see a slideshow of her own work and to talk about printing.
Before pupils printed, they were engaged in many sketching exercises, which they really loved. They also made sculptures from wire! All work was inspired by the theme of nature in spring time.
Different types of printing that the classes tried out were - making their own foam stamps and dipping these in ink or rolling them with paint and lego brick printing. The pupils also made collagraphs. These were challenging to make, but the experience was fun, involving lots of different materials and textures, putting these together on card and gluing them on. Sandra took the collagraphs to her studio, where she varnished them.
Week - by - week, the techniques of sketching, designing a printing 'plate' and the printing itself, were developed.
Each class benefitted greatly from working with Sandra, sharpened their observational skills, were focused and were also courageous in trying out new techniques, shapes, colours, materials and ideas.
We hope to take part in Art BLAST again, it's very rewarding. Thanks to Sandra for being such a brilliant teacher!
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