Trading Places/CR.E.A.T.E. Programme

Third Phase Residencies

Back to residencies

St Catherine's PS, Falls Road, Belfast; Anushiya Sundaralingam

Open Day

Written by artist Anu on 7 June 2005

We had our open day. It was great fun. We displayed our linen dresses and sculpture work including sketchbooks with all our experimental work. Everyone liked our sketchbooks and all our ideas.
We projected some of our work onto the linen dresses. This created some colour and texture. Each time we projected a different picture, the linen dresses’ shape and colour changed. We shone lights onto the dresses to create shadows. This made lovely shadows and made our classroom look like a gallery.
Just as people arrived to view our work, disaster struck. Our beautiful three dimensional wedding dress had fallen and broken. Luckily no one was hurt and we hope it can be repaired for the exhibition.

We have had a fantastic term, produced some brilliant work and can’t wait for the final show.

Paper to Linen

Written by artist Anu on 6 May 2005

We liked what we had done so far; we started to cut our paper dress onto linen. The linen dress was out of shape which created a feeling of natural movement. We hung the dress up on the clothes line. Then we made a slide show of all the stages we had gone through to create all these works. We accidentally discovered that projecting images of faces onto the linen dresses created a subtle effect. Then we started to take photographs of ourselves and others who were involved in the project to show the work we had done.

Our Sculpture

Written by artist Anu on 6 May 2005

After finishing our experimental sculptures we decided to use card to make a small three dimensional wedding dress with Colleen’s and Ckyna’s drawings. We made a two piece two dimensional dress and then we cut one piece in the centre and slid it over the other piece to create a three dimensional stand up dress. It worked! We were very happy!

The school gave us some Perspex with which we created a large dress. We all participated in drawing the outline of the dress onto the Perspex using felt pens. We then cut the dress with the jigsaw. The finished result was a massive, amazing dress. Again we played with lights and patterns using a data projector and an overhead projector.

For the next step in our project we used electric tools to make patterns on the Perspex dress. Different tools made a mixture of marks and gave us texture. Water based paint was put onto the Perspex and then cleaned off leaving a pattern where the Perspex had been cut. We had great fun using the tools and learning something new. At last everything has come together and we were very happy. We have worked hard and achieved a fantastic result.

Drawings and Patterns

Written by artist Anu on 6 May 2005

We are still experimenting with card to create a large dress. We projected drawings onto the card to see what effect this would achieve. The results were very good and we decided to do this for our finish piece.

We used a view finder to look at Saris to help us to focus on the pattern. We then projected these patterns onto our dress. We also scanned Saris to get texture and colour.
We then projected this onto the dress.

Then we looked at old and new wedding dresses in books to help us to create our own patterns which we then projected onto the large paper dress. We liked the patterns so we cut out some of the patterns and then projected lights onto them to create more shadows and patterns.

Then we made a linen dress using a sewing machine; it was fun using the machine. But we didn’t like the dress. So we ripped up the dress and hung it on the clothes line and projected patterns to see what would happen? Nothing special! Back to our original plan.

Flax Dress

Written by artist Anu on 1 April 2005

This is our flax dress.

Saree

Written by artist Anu on 1 April 2005

We looked at Anu’s linen work and that gave us an idea to create a flex dress.
We were happy to see Marie O’Donoghue from BELB. She joined us when we were discussing our work. Our fun time began when we saw Anu,s sarees. It was colourful with lots of patterns and it was very long. We hade fun wearing the sarees. We made Chinese dragons, shadow dresses and long dresses. We have lots of ideas to create our big dress.

It’s great to see the children beginning to understand what the project is leading to. They understood more and more about the materials, creating something new and are gaining the ability to discuss the work and their own ideas.

3D Work

Written by artist Anu on 1 April 2005

We had a great day. We made small sculptures with many new interesting materials.
Used linen to make 3D dresses, card to make stand up dresses and many other materials to make 3D works.

Musical Instruments

Written by artist Anu on 13 March 2005

We saw lots of musical instruments, which played themselves. We were really inspired by the musical instruments. We were able to create our own artwork in the gallery. We did collage works and drawings. We even had our lunch there!

Our first trip to an Art Gallery

Written by artist Anu on 13 March 2005

We went to Ormeau Baths Gallery to see an exhibition of Music, Film, Art and Technology. The Gallery was really big but there were no paintings! The works we saw were installations and video art.
The art works were very different from what we had imagined. We saw an upside down garden shed. We went inside the shed and there was a large television screen. We stood on the roof of the shed for the first time in our lives. We felt light headed but it was fun.

There was a big tent that made sounds. It was made out of a soft material. Buzzing noise came out of it. We went inside. There was a metal piece hanging down which looked like a hammock and there was a mattress under it.
We enjoyed the installation works more then video works. It was really fun because we were allowed to touch some of the artwork. We discussed how installation works are made, the materials used, how it is displayed and about the subject matter. We would like to experiment with new materials in our work too.

Written by artist Anu on 5 March 2005

Hanah said “I enjoyed tearing the paper to make a dress. I could use fabric or different types of paper to make more dresses. It might be good to try it with silver wire to get light shinning on it or you could dye it to make it look colourful”.

Dress

Written by artist Anu on 5 March 2005

Here is the dress that we made out of flax and woven coloured paper.

scalf

Written by artist Anu on 5 March 2005

We have been looking at the shadows, they were big and facinating. We projected lots of interesting things. Here we are projecting anu's scalf.

Start

Written by artist Anu on 5 March 2005

P5 said, ’Hi Anu’ with a big smile. I was really glad that they were happy to have me back in their classroom. We started by discussing what we did before last summer. The thing that stood at in everyones’ memory was the wedding dress, the punch card patterns and the big weaving with materials.

We started by making a dress by folding a paper in half, drawing the shape of a dress and tearing out that shape. We enlarged this by projecting the paper dresses on to the floor. The children drew around the silhouette of the large dress and these were hung up on a clothes line and we projected light on to them to see what effect this would create. We ended up with ‘shadoe’ dresses.

Then the children decided that they wanted to add patterns to the dresses. We achieved this by projecting punch cards on to the dresses.The result was so good that the children wanted to experiment with other materils. They tried projecting a piece of linen, a woolen scarf, feathers, hands, coloured cellophane, plastic coloured discs and other materials found. The effects were veried, everything excepet the cellophane and the discs produced colour on the dresses. When we discussed what we could do next, children suggested we use glass, tinfoil, aluminium, plastic, fabric and wire. We can’t wait to start 3D work.

Back Again

Written by artist Anu on 5 March 2005

I started the day with Miss Shaw’s P3 class at St Catherine’s by looking at the photographs of last term’s work. The children enjoyed looking at the colours, patterns, the use of lights and shadows. They said that it was fun to see all the art work that other children had done and they commented that art could be made out of anything. After looking at the art work the children did drawings of what they had seen and liked. Lots of wedding dresses appeared and lots of circles and shadows were also evident.
The children added that they could create a wedding dress using old clothes, coloured paper, linen, flax, plastic, shadows, wool, peas, flower and paint. The mind boggles!