Party on!

On Sunday we hosted and attended a birthday party of the gentleman that we made the 80th birthday card for. He generously invited us to share his birthday celebrations!

We love a party, especially when the food has been made by Alice our fabulous catering coordinator!

We enjoyed a sing-a-long and listening to an opera singer, the art group had made the decorations during a group, they looked fab!

Everyone had a fantastic time!

Mad Hatters Tea Party!

To mark the end of our Alice in Wonderland project we just had to have a Mad Hatters tea party - after all we already had the hats!!
We had a fantastic afternoon and were joined by volunteers who worked with us when the art group first started 8 years ago! It was lovely to all be together again.

We had scones and cakes, which had been made by the creative writing group the night before, it was a great way to round off the project and the terms work ready for summer scheme!

Birthday Card

This morning the art group worked together and made this card.
We were so pleased with it we almost didn't want to send it!
It is going to a gentleman who was involved in setting up our charity in the 1960's, to celebrate his 80th Birthday!
We chose a garden theme for the front of the card because growth is something that is very important to us!

3D chapter pictures

Today we made these fantastic 3D scenes inside boxes!

Each box contains a picture to go with one of the chapters from the book Alice in Wonderland.

We talked about perspective and tried to make our pictures have a fore and background!

We used a frame and stuck things onto it so that they were in the front of the picture, it took lots of planning and discussion, we sketched our ideas out first.

We got there in the end and as always we're thrilled with the results of our efforts!

The Hatters just keep getting madder!

Leopard and lion hat! GRROWWL!!!!





Team work on Sun Moon and Stars



Top Cat!
Deep Sea World

Spring has sprung!

Transport-tastic!

Flower GardensFantastic Fish creation!

A bunch of Mad Hatters!

Today during art group we made hats using paper!

We did not use glue, tape or staples!

Our hats were made using Origami - the art of paper folding.

It wasn't easy, we started with smaller bits of paper before we moved on to head size pieces!

At the end of the group we all had a hat to decorate and wear!

Tea Party Table...

Today the art group talked about perspective, we used what we had learned to draw the lay out of the table at the Mad Hatter's tea party! When we finished one picture we found a place at the table and drew another cup, saucer and tea spoon!!

If at first you don't succeed...

TRY AGAIN!!!

Phew! It took some amount of team work, but together we patched up last weeks work!

We think that the moral of the story is;

"More paste, less speed!!"

!

Sometimes it just doesn't go how you expect....

Hmm!

We've had some paper mache related problems - too much paper and not enough mache we think!!

We'll have to revisit our giant tea pot on Thursday, with a bit more paste this time!

Like we said sometimes it just doesn't go how you expect, but then you get the chance to learn how to deal with situations where you feel disappointed and have to do things again!

Puppets stage 1...

We started work on our Alice in Wonderland puppets during this weeks art group!

We are making the heads for our puppets using paper mache.
We ripped up newspaper dipped it in paste and layered it over balloons!

Next week we'll start to build up facial features!

This is a really good recycled project, the balloons were left over from a party, the bottles they're attached to used to hold the juice we drink at groups and the news paper is from our recycling bag!

Calm in the middle of a storm...

Sometimes the most beautiful, the most remarkable things happen very qiuetly while everyday chaos happens all around them.

That happened in the art group today.

I hope the emotion that I feel about this comes across in what I'm writing, because it is no exaggeration to say that my heart soared when I witnessed this and I have been left 'wobbly lipped' because of it!

The group was very busy today, literally standing room only, in amongst the madness, one member of the group and her support worker sat painting. This in itself may seem unremarkable, but the group member has recently been away for a month to 'detox' and come off medication that she had been taking for a number of years, her doctors said it would be worth the lengthy process and that it would make a real difference to her life.

Today I saw the difference.

In the 7 years I have been working with this wonderful young lady she has always needed intensive support to participate in the groups. Sometimes I have described her as being a 'passive participant', which I believe to be just as important as active participation, to belong, to be welcome, to interact, tell me that's not important.

Today she painted independently.

We squirted poster paint onto paper and she took a brush and without support found the blobs of paint and brushed them in, again and again!

Like I said my heart soared.

I needed to share this with you all so that this important, important achievement wasn't just something that happened at the art group today.

I started these blogs to celebrate the things we do here, daily, weekly, not just the big things, the things that get in the local paper, the everyday extra ordinary things.

This is what it's all about for me, people having the time and the space to just be.

Cupcake anyone?!

Once we'd finished our bottles that would have contained liquid to make Alice shrink, we needed to make the cakes that would grow!



We were super busy today!

We painted our cakes using the same technique as our bottles, the challenge this week was that we needed to mix the colours for different parts of our cakes!
We hope you'll agree that our hard work produced FANTASTIC results!!



How delicious does this cake look?!

All we need now is.....

... a giant tea pot...

... and a confused dormouse!!!!

Like we keep saying "Watch this space!!!"

"15 blue bottles, hanging on the wall...."

Here are some of the bottles we painted last week, complete with their "Drink Me" labels.
We think Alice would have a hard time deciding which one to drink!

A lot of bottle...

We painted during the art groups this week.

We worked on HUGE bottles for our Alice in Wonderland project.

We talked about colour mixing and about 'pointillism'. we tried to use this technique in our work and built up our pictures using dots.

We didn't find this easy, but we were really pleased with the results!

Art is a personal thing

One of the members of the art group carries this fascinating

'sculpture' with them.

It is called 'Tubes'.

It's form changes frequently but it is always made of the same components.

Photographed and published with permision of the artist.

Alice a week later....

Here is the second in the series of Alice drawings, it is by the same artist as the previous 'Big Alice' picture, in this picture Alice is the right size to get through the door but discovers it is locked and that the key to open it is on the table!













I couldn't resist putting up another 'Big Alice' picture!
Especially when the colour is as riotous as it is in this work!

Altered images

This week for our light graffiti project we worked on altering our own image

We took photo's using the digital camera

and used the computer to change how we looked!

A lot of laughing went on while we were working!

We found making the changes very funny

- especially on the photo's of the staff!

A little bit of history...

Please visit we are poets and read about a small slice of our history, it's below this picture and is titled Shine!

Another step down the rabbit hole...

Here's a fabulous piece of finished 'big Alice little Alice' work!

In this picture Alice is too big to fit through the door!


There's so much detail in the picture, what a fabulous portrait of March Hare hanging on the wall!

Masks

We made these glazed clay masks as part of a project about Native American Indians.

We talked about the shapes and symbols that were used in traditional art, we looked at pictures of totem poles and then we used this as inspiration for our own work.

We worked with a local ceramic artist, who showed is how to use objects, like pen lids, to make marks in our clay and how to cut out shapes and stick them on using 'slip' which is a mix of clay and water.

We glazed our masks, but before they were fired the colours looked very dull and nearly all the same, so it was a great surprise when we got them back to see how bright and shiny they looked!