Rachel Moore - Artist and teacher
I am so excited to be working on this project which combines murals with some big graphics and aims to create a really lovely space in what is a very happy school. This space will compliment the existing rather lovely mosaic garden created by artist Liz over the last year.
The project we are about to start at Sundorne Infant School in Shrewsbury is based around the Monet Waterlilies series of paintings. Working outside in lovely sheltered quad area which has already been bark chipped in the middle and has various play logs and some sandpits we are aiming to create a really peaceful area where children can go to think and just be. I have been looking at these pictures and painting one of my own to really get to know the work more.
My very small waterlilies painting - Mr Monet will be turning in his grave!
The project has been in the planning and gaining-funding stages for about 6 months now. Last week Rachel and I sat down and planned out the sessions - our first decision was that over-planning was a bad idea both for the project and for our brains! We agreed:
One wall will have paintings and the other is to be decided
We will use some acrylic panels somewhere in the project
I will work on three afternoons with the three Reception classes. In these sessions, the children will produce drawings of the bugs and bird and flowers they might find in Monet's garden, these will be printed on to the acrylic panels
At the beginning of June, the five KS1 classes will work on painting the murals
I talked to the Dulux tech lady before ordering and would recommend this to anyone embarking on this kind of project. Dulux were very helpful in advising us as to how to apply the paint and what to use; Smooth masonry paint which is avaliable in 1200 colours - amazing. We ordered tins of red, yellow, blue and white to stay true to Monet's limited palette.
Imagine how exciting it was to get to the school to find 12.5 litres of paint, bags of new paintbrushes, tape, plastic, paint kettles and rollers - all waiting to be arty with us.
On Thursday I spent two hours in the quad, thinking and measuring, marking out the space. I decided to section off the wall into five panels four of about 1m x 750mm and one of 400mm x 750mm. There are five classes and i figured this would make the division of labour easier. The youngest of the KS1 class will do the smaller panel. I did, by-the-way borrow the shortest child to make sure he could reach the top of the panels - he could and proudly went back to class with his 'Well Done' masking tape badge on his jumper.
Mock up of wall one with murals
Once the marking out was done I asked Rachel to come and have a look and make sure she agreed - she did. Spent the rest of the time rubbing down the panels lightly and wiping off the million spiders from under the window sill, shame to disturb them really but what a pain if legs and bits of dust got into out paintings.That was all really for Thursday so took some pics and talked through thoughts with Rachel before heading off home. I love going to this school, the children are so fired up about creative stuff and when they see me say "Hello Mrs Boulton...I mean hello Carla!" I like that.
The next important task according to the Dulux lady was to paint the areas with fungicial wash, this is a poison when it's wet so Friday afternoon at two was my slot, no children would be using the space and the weekend would give it time to dry and work. Luckily the rain held off and the mushroom-killer was on within an hour.
Spoke to the head Alan Derry, he has been really supportive and is also excited about the project. Showed him my revised plan for the wall opposite the Monet murals, this was my shower-time brainwave. This wall is exactly the same as the one on which the murals will be painted. We had previously thought we would paint more murals and then float acrylic panels showing drawings over the top. After a few discussions I thought it would be a shame to cover up the paintings so proposed that we make a big word out of acrylic cut-outs and have this printed in the same colours as the mural and with the younger children's bug, bird and flower line-drawings on the letters. Both Alan and Rachel liked the idea which is double-exciting.
And the word is . . . r e l a x.
Mock up of wall 2 with coloured acrylic letters
Another ten minutes with Rachel and to put her amazing pics from the Musee d'Orsay Paris onto a memory stick for me - wow, what a fab place, why have I been to Paris every year for two decades and not been there? Below - Les Nuages by Claude Monet
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