MAGAZINE

CHURCHDOWN SCHOOL A Visual Arts College

Churchdown SchoolWinston RoadChurchdownGloucesterGL3 2RBTEL: 01452 713340Email:head@churchdown.gloucs.sch.uk

THE CURVEOpening Days/times:

Mon-Fri: 3.30 - 5.30pm

Weekends:Sat 10-4pm Sun 11-4pm

Group Bookings by appointment only.

Contact : Clare Reeves (Arts Administrator)

cre01@churchdown.gloucs.sch.uk

Tel: 07800 588325

Science meets Art in Space.

This term, 7W have taken part in a project that was a fantastic combination of Art and Science. They have been studying the Solar System in Science lessons, so took this as inspiration for some 3D models.Firstly they produced some 2D pictures

of how we see the planets from Earth. This was then taken much, much further, to create dioramas showing what the surface of each planet looks like. Using a huge array of materials from pasta and corks to cotton wool and glitter, each group worked on one planet, and made harsh, rocky, volcanic models of Mars and Pluto; or soft, wispy representa-tions of the gas planets like Saturn.Much fun was had by all, and the end results of all their hard work were truly inspiring – they should be very proud of themselves! Very well done to 7W! DATES FOR YOUR

DIARYAnthony Green &

Mary Cozens- Walker Exhibition 8th - 20th July 2006

The Big Draw Family Workshop

Sat 7th October 2006

Art & Design Clubs every Tuesday & Thursdays

3.05 - 4pm

CHANT

Year 10 Work Related PupilsThis group worked with Mosaic Artist Barbara Disney for two days in May and June to create their own pieces using recycled ceramics. As a professional Artist Barbara showed pupils examples of her public Art in Bristol city centre. She impressed the group with the fees 0her large

pieces can command (between £7k - £20K. Issues of health & safety, book-keeping, teamwork and general working procedures were covered.

3D Design Club Tuesdays - A3. 3.05 - 4.00pm

Do you want to work with clay?contact

Jacquie Pedley (Art & Design Technician)

Vertigo Exhibition Rajasthani Textile Workshop

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Editorial Page 1

Welcome to Chant the Visual Arts College Magazine

Year 10 3D students took part in a free visit to Sudeley Castle to see the new Vertigo Exhibition; 20 Year 12 Art students went to Cirencester to work with a team of master block printers form Rajasthan.

Central to Churchdown’s new status as a Visual Arts College is its purpose built Gallery, “The Curve”.

Everyday Obsessions Exhibition Page 4

The Curve Gallery Page 3

Midsummers Night Dream Page 5

Student Gallery Pages 7 & 8

Chant MagazineEditorial Welcome to Chant, the name Chant was given to the schools first magazine and is the old English name for Churchdown. The purpose of this magazine is to celebrate the progress Churchdown School has made in its first year as a Visual Arts College. The magazine is a visual journey using photographs, examples of students work and information about future events and collaborations.

The first major change this year has been the building of the Curve Gallery which will be officially opened with a joint exhibition of the work of Anthony Green and Mary Cozens-Walker. This exhibition is a major coup as both artists have International reputations.

The Packer Prize was an Art competition timed to coincide with the Turner Prize at Tate Britain. Churchdown staff were invited to enter work in 3 categories of Fine Art, 3D and photography, workshops were arranged to develop individual skills. The amount and quality of entries was very impressive. Prizes were awarded and the work was then auctioned in aid of an Arts charity.

A a number of cross curricular projects have been arranged. In September the Science and Art and De-sign Departments will work together on a project look-ing at cells under the microscope. In Art and Design students will look at the way artists such as Terry Win-ters use skin cells in their paintings. Making links in this way can improve students’ knowledge and make learning a lot of fun.

A key target for the school is the improvement of students’ skills in digital art. The school has purchased a number of laptops and computers that can be used in and around the school. The ICT Department are putting together a digital art unit for Year 7 which will introduce students to the tools and techniques used by digital artists.

The other major development this year has been the work achieved by the community coordinator in work-ing with the partner schools: Chosen Hill Secondary and Longlevens, Parton Manor and Innsworth Juniors and Milestone School. There have been a number of Saturday Morning workshops with students from both Churchdown and the partner schools working with a wide range of artists.

Tewkesbury Festival BannersHardworking Year 10 pupils have been busy designing and making banners for the Tewkesbury Festival (24 – 28 May). Jo Edge and Lucy Norman developed a design using appliqué letters, and Shilpa Amin and Carly Greene made a large school badge set against a brightly painted canvas. The pupils worked hard beyond the school day to achieve their ambitious banners.

After School Art Club

Many pupils enjoy the opportunity to regularly work after hours. Young people from Years 7 to 13 can frequently be found making and creating and generally having fun through Art in their own time beyond the school day.

Saturday Morning Art Workshops

These have proved to be very popular with students from both Churchdown and the partner schools taking part. Workshops are usually for 3 hours and allow students to tackle new techniques and sometimes produce group work. On 21st January over 40 pupils from partner primary schools, Parton Manor and Innsworth Juniors worked alongside Year 7 pupils from

Churchdown. Artists Adrienne Craddock and Barbara Disney led sessions in printmaking and mosaic. Year 10 pupils attended a Saturday printmaking workshop on 11th March with Adrienne Craddock. Learning that the artist sells her prints for £300 each and that one print run of 20 prints had nearly all sold gave the group something to think about. Responding to a line taken from a song, pupils made their own blocks based on a face. Thev resulting work was imaginative and expressive and worthy of exhibition in a high profile gallery.

British Film Institute

In the second part of term Churchdown School will be piloting a new scheme to develop literacy through the use of short films with a select group of pupils in Year 7. Consultation is underway with Jane Davies, English Advisor for Gloucestershire.

Thanks to the following Teachers & Students

Milestones - Jane Longford and Anne Marsden Longlevens - Marylyn Nelson, Sarah BakerParton Manor - Susie Phillips Innsworth - Sarah Edge and the whole staffChosen Hill – Tony McCulla Emma Watts, Jemma Cullis, Sophie Spiers and Kerry Rodway

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The Big Draw Page 6

Community Arts

A celebration of students work from Key Stage 3 and 4

Alive, creative, dynamic, inspiring, and very, very funny.

On Saturday 8th October, 20 Year 8 pupils attended an art drawing workshop to celebrate the Big Draw

Anthony Green & Mary Cozens- Walker have assembled a remarkable and beautifully executed collection of stitched and painted objects, paintings, prints and three dimensional constructions

Community Arts News Pages 9 & 10Initiatives with our partner schools & outside agencies/Saturday Morning Art Workshops/ After school Art Club news/School links with Artists.

Artwork produced by Churchdown students has been exhibited in a range of often impressive, locations. These include the University of Gloucestershire, The Guildhall Gloucester, The Watershed Bristol, Oxford University, Gloucester Cathedral, The Millennium Dome and The Tate Modern.

Central to Churchdown’s new status as a Visual Arts College is its purpose built Gallery, “The Curve”. The new name reflects both the arching sweep of the Gallery’s design, and the central theme of the Art status not to just think in straight lines!

This large exhibition gallery and creative workspace is situated, significantly, at the entrance to the school. It is equipped not only as a conventional exhibition space but also includes the technology to create and display the latest digital art. The gallery will provide a space for the school and the community to work together and extend the school day.

The Curve’s opening events show the diversity and significance of its new role. The first is an exhibition by the exceptionally talented post A Level students at the school, the second is an exciting exhibition by the nationally renowned artists, Anthony Green and Mary Cozens-Walker.

The opening of The Curve will enable the school to stage exhibitions in a spacious custom-made gallery throughout the year. Our students will be able to work alongside practising artists then jointly display their new creations in ideal surroundings.Parents and friends will receive invitations to view forthcoming exhibitions.

The Curve

THE CURVE Opening Days/times:

Mon-Fri: 3.30 - 5.30pm

Weekends: Sat 10-4pm Sun 11-4pm

Group Bookings by appointment only.

Contact EMAIL: cre01@churchdown.gloucs.sch.uk

Tel: 07800 588325 (Arts Administrator)Elliot Babbage Yr 11 Fine ArtJemma Cullis Yr 13 Textiles

Helen Heard Yr 11 Fine Art Adam Jones & Hannah Griffiths Yr 10 3D Design

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Student Gallery 2006Student Gallery 2006

Student

Art & Design ExhibitionThis display of student work represented the best of GCSE, AS and A Level 3D Design, Fine Art and Textiles. The Lord Mayor of Tewkesbury opened the Private View, attended by students, families, staff, friends and members of the local community. Councillor Paul Ockleton admired the work with individual students, many of whom have recently left school and are attending Art Foundation courses.

Diane Fisher, from the Churchdown Thursday painters group has recently celebrated the standard of work our students have achieved in the local Churchdown newsletter. An arts officer from the Gloss Arts Centre in Gloucester who also attended the Private View was most complimentary about the range and quality of work displayed. The exhibition was likely to be the last major showing of our student’s work in the entrance hall as it exists at present.

STUDENT GALLERY

Claire Matthews Yr 13 Fine Art

Helen Field Yr 13 Textiles

Nathalie Marshal Yr13 3D Design

Anthony Green & Mary Cozens- Walker have assembled a remarkable and beautifully executed collection of stitched and painted objects, paint-ings, prints and three dimensional constructions – all combining to reveal an intriguing portrait of their lives together.

For more than 20 years Anthony Green has continued to paint stories from his personal life. His memories, dreams, and actual events are all included in his work. He said,“My concerns are universal, sometimes tasteless, frequently artless, but never dulling. I wanted to paint adolescence, bicycles, carpets, dog, Eric, failure, Greens, hair, irritation, his step-father, kisses, Mary [his wife], nasturtiums, optimism, quiet, roses, sexuality, tenderness,undies, vice, walls, his aunt, and much, much more.”

Mary Cozens-Walker draws strength from her memories of seemingly trivial events shared with her husband, Anthony Green, and their daughters, meals, attending church, visiting aunts, walking the dog etc. She introduces these subjects in a combination of her chosen media painting, sculpting with papier-mâché and plaster, stitching andcollaging. Her pieces require a high level of skill though she is careful that we should not be distracted from the theme. Her boxes are not unlike doll’s houses but with character and greathumour including the smell of mothballs used, for instance, for Marjorie’s

Bungalow - an affectionate recollection faithfully reproduced of a member of the family frequently visited in her old-fashioned surroundings.

Mary Cozens- Walker

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EVERYDAY OBSESSIONSan exhibition by

Anthony Green & Mary Cozens-Walker 8th-20th July 2006

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Midsummer Nights Dream

“Alive, creative, dynamic, inspiring, and very, very funny. Normally when I watch a Midsummer Night’s Dream at least a third of it bores me; the lovers are whiney and two-dimensional, or the fairies are irritating, or the Mechanicals just aren’t funny; in this production, all three components of the play performed at an ex-tremely high level resulting in high octane levels of comedy….”

The whole school production of Midsummer Nights Dream took place in the Autumn Term. Some of the work for the production was inspired by theatre, dance and music workshops supported by the Fishpool Project. The Fishpool project is a local initiative raising attainment amongst black pupils. It aims to enhance self esteem of the pupils involved and seeks to improve the inclusion of the pupils in the life of the school.

An African Arts Theatre Project using EPIC theatre style production techniques and street theatre created a fresh and innovative approach to the play. Regular Music Technology Group sessions were led by a local practitioner from the Gloucester-shire area – Danny Mackenzie. These sessions explored computer based music composition in a hip hop dance style dance style. The group produced a backing track for a live rap which formed part of the final production.

A day’s dance workshop was lead by a local practitioner from Gloucestershire Dance. This workshop was based on traditional African dance and widened the range of black cultures to which the pupils were exposed. 23 Pupils participated in the final dances which formed major scenes within the final production. The final production played to full houses and received enthusiastic and copious praise as the following review indicates:

The dancing, “chatting” fairies were the ones that added a real verve and post-modern, pulsating palpable dynamic to the show - amazingly choreographed, executed with stunning talent - proving Shakespeare (“Bill”) to be the inclusive celebrator of life in all its different guises he truly is deep down.”

The Big DrawOn Saturday 8th October, 20 Year 8 pupils attended a workshop to celebrate the Big Draw this is one of a series of events organized by Drawing Power. One group worked on a large piece inspired by ‘Autumn in the Forest of Dean’. Leaves were carefully observed to achieve accurate shapes and colours. Inspiration fron a Virginia Creeper growing outside the art room provided a blaze of colour . Oil pastel colours blended and inks washed over the top created resist textures and marks. Pupils experimented with leaves and twigs to achieve marks inventively with paint.

Each person moved around the 20 foot paper changing places every 20 – 30 minutes. Students needed to stand on stools to see the huge piece and were amazed at the rapid progress they made in a relatively short period of time.

The second group worked on a large combined piece based on the work of Frank Stella. The individual work was treated to a range of techniques exploring shape, colour and texture. These pieces were then mounted into one large exhibit. Stella’s work incorporates sheets of coloured twisted metal and in order to achieve this effect string relief was placed on snakelike pieces of card. The final work involved students weaving their individual sections together.

The morning was greatly enjoyed by pupils and teachers alike so much so that everyone is keen to repeat the opportunity to work for 3 hours on a Saturday.

NEXT ‘Big Draw’ Family workshop on Saturday 7th October 20065 6

Oliver Williams and Gina Tallon

Tobias Smith

Kamara Fable

Kamara Fableand Philip Sutton

COMMUNITY ARTS NEWS Longlevens Junior School

Three classes of Year 4 pupils at Longlevens Junior school have been involved in a collabo-rative textile project with students in Italy, Holland and Sweden. Teachers agreed at an Art INSET to develop work in silk painting, fabric collage and weaving. The children made work based on Gloucester that included the Cotswolds, Gloucester ‘Old Spot’ pigs, elver fishing in the River Severn, and the Gloucester Rugby team The Deputy Head teacher recently went to Holland to exchange the textile pieces with Sweden and Italy so that four large collaborative banners can be assembled representing life from each country.Year 13 students visited half a day a week for six weeks to paint scenery for the school’s production of ‘James and the Chocolate Factory’ they created six flats and numerous props.

Milestones School

Two key themes of ‘Hot and Cold’ and ‘Spring and Autumn’ inspired students to work on large weaving frames. The students chose fabrics of appropriate colours and a huge variety of textures. Listening to the sound of fabric tearing made students Catherine and David laugh out loud. The scale of the frames enabled the classes to use their hands and arms as well as fingers and thumbs to pass the wools and fabric strips through the warp.

Innsworth & Parton Manor JuniorsAfter school INSETs in Art were organised for the whole staff of each school. Teachers used a range of approaches for observational drawing, experimenting with media and materials to achieve tone, colour and texture to support the use of sketchbooks.

Richard Box, ArtistIn January the international textile artist Richard Box worked with Year 10, 11 and 12 textile students. Richard regularly gives talks to textile groups throughout the country he was inspired by embroiderer Constance Howard to move from paint into fabric collage and machine stitching. He brought over 20 pieces of his work and also demonstrated his skilful use of the sewing machine to encourage free machine embroidery.

VERTIGO EXHIBITION

All Year 10 3D students took part in a free visit to Sudeley Castle to see the new Vertigo Exhibition. This was an amazing day with lovely weather, a picnic in the grounds and examples of really inspiring artworks. Sculptures included a swirling vortex made of water and a section from under the skin by Damien Hirst. Students were particularly interested in a rose arbour created from large metal letters reading ’Happily Ever After’. Students discussed the artists ideas which revealed a lot about their own thoughts on marriage and relationships. RECYCLED MATERIALS WORKSHOPThis was then followed up with a full day workshop with visiting artist Peter Marjoram working in recycled materials. Students were particularly excited by the power tools and quickly became immersed in creating their own individual sculptures inspired by the works they had seen.

In October over 20 Year 12 Art students arrived at the Organic Farm Shop in Cirencester to work with a team of master block printers form Rajasthan, North West India. The workshop enabled students to see the traditional blocks of rosewood being carved by an expert and later to use these to print their own piece of fabric. A master dyer mixed the traditional colours and several print-ers showed their expertise, appearing effortlessly, to achieve lengths of fabric beautifully printed and overprinted with patterns and colours. The block motifs included elephants, camels, flowers and feather patterns.

As they entered the workshop, students were catapulted into a corner of India. Aromatic burning incense filled the air, mingling with exotic spices from curry dishes cooking in the nearby café. Walls of the studio were adorned with outstanding drapes of pattern and colour. The team of Rajasthani printers, dressed in jackets and shirts of their own design and making greeted the group with impeccable manners and smiles. Students were treated to samosas and milky cinnamon tea which really rounded off a wonderful visit. The fabrics were fixed and washed and sewn into scarves and cushions by the team, the students were delighted with the final pieces.

RAJASTHANI TEXTILE PRINT WORKSHOP

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Family workshop

On May 20th children and parents from Longlevens, Innsworth and Parton Manor Junior schools worked with artists at Churchdown. The aim of the morning was to have some fun working together using unusual materials. The workshops were in feltmaking, batik and sculpture (using re-cycled materials).