Artful PopUp Workshop at The Bindery

I am looking forward to a happy weekend of teaching Artful PopUps at The Bindery for CBBAG.

There's still some room if you want to join us.

Check it out here

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Small Things

I set myself a small project a few nights ago that I completed in an evening. 

A couple of weeks ago I was showing my work to a book artist, who in turn showed me her work. She told me that her time was at a premium, so when she wanted to make something, it had to be done within a couple of hours. I put off projects because I start thinking everything has to be epic - but nothing gets done unless I have loads of spare time - which I don't! So I took inspiration from the 'quick and dirty' method - 2 hours and it's done. There's a lot to be said for making fast artistic decisions and using what materials are at hand. It's also a really great way of using up some of those beautiful scraps that I can't bear to throw out. And at the end, it's so much more satisfying to have a little concertina popup book in hand, than to say I binge-watched yet another series of detective shows on Netflix...

Student Work

This March, I was invited to teach a five-day PopUp workshop at Cawthra Park Secondary School with Grade 9 and 10 Visual Arts students. I worked with them last year, too, and I have to say that they're an awesome group of people to work with! They take what I teach them and run with it. We used coloured paper to make concertina books with end boards. Every day I showed them a different kind of paper-engineering device. Their themes were Figures, Heroes, and Space (inner or outer). I didn't see the finished books until I was invited to the Spring Artfest - an annual showcase of student work. Their books just blew me away - so many creative ways of exploring the given themes and such a high level of skill and talent. Each book different - playing with a variety of colour schemes, delicate hand-cut designs, humour, inventive engineering - they humble me. Above are just a few samples of the students' work, to give you an idea of how well the books turned out. 

Results like this make it all worthwhile!