Category Archives: Environment
End-of-year camps for December 2014
Colours never run out!
Do you like arts and craft? Artist photographer Nel Lim will be running the Blue Horse camp this December 8-12th.
Don’t miss it! Clay, Collage, Colours and more.
What about Drawing and designing your own garden? Permaculture designer Nova Nelson will run a workshop where you observe, design, draw and make a garden… on wheels! Sign-up now for the Garden Camp December 15 – 19!
See you at l’Observatoire!
Students participate in the production of the hoarding for the new Jurong Hospital
A new hospital is being built in Jurong. And I was called in to help produce an artwork for the hoarding lining the new Jurong Gateway Road (don’t look for it, the street is not yet on the maps. Hint: it’s opposite the IMM building) while the hospital is being built.
This hoarding was a perfect setting for a community project. So, students from several Jurong primary schools as well as secondary schools and JC were involved, as well as people from St Luke’s Old Folks’ home. To fit with the building, the theme of “Build a Picture of Health” was proposed.
How do you make over 80 participants help in a large drawing?
I decided I would draw a setting, representing different parts of everyday life, from Home, to Outside (in Town or in the Forest), the Community Park and the Hospital. And then, I would ask the participants to produce drawings relating to “Picture of Health”. My job would then be to fit their pictures in my drawing.
During the workshops, after an introduction on the hospital, I conducted a brainstorming session on the theme of “Picture of Health”. This was to get the participants to expand on the meaning of health… and we did get beyond the “eat an apple” to stay healthy. I wanted the students to walk in unprepared. I did not want them to do research ahead of time. This was a spontaneous exercise. Students were invited to use their favorite medium. Some like to paint big pictures. Some are more comfortable with a small pencil sketch. All was possible, but the theme was defined, and I walked among the students, helping them decide what they would do. In the end, some students produced some of the backdrop, some produced inspiring images that end up being hung on the walls of the different rooms I drew. Some wanted to paint “beautiful images that they would want to see if they are sick and need to get better”. Some drew settings that allow for healthy lifestyle.
Finally, some of the images were selected to be finished by the elderly from St Luke’s Old Folk’s. For those images, the participants were given the choice of coloring the vignettes either with paint, or with seeds, producing a beautiful effect.
The students from my workshop at l’Observatoire also participated. And after a time of discussing all the elements that fit into a Picture of Health, they took to painting a number of pictures too.
In the end, I had to put this outpouring of over 80 images into a 50m-long image. Needless to say, there was a lot of back and forth deciding what the background would be like, and then where each image should fit.
Finally, here it is, as it was sent to the designer at the beginning of the month… they have made it into a very long sticker, interspersed with text and other images relevant to the hospital.
At the Community Park
At Home
at Hospital
Outside
Here, I would also like to add a few of the pictures contributed by the different participants of the community. Can you find them in the picture above? If you find the picture is too small, why not go and check out the hoarding in person? It measures 2.5m in height and is 50m long… surely there, you can spot your picture!
Holiday Program 2012
It’s that time of the year again!
School’s out and kids want to do things.
This year, all holiday activities take place at the new Observatoire at the Blue House in Bukit Timah.
You can sign up for Printmaking for one afternoon or morning (and come home with a set of Christmas cards) in December, or you can sign up for a week of Drawn to Nature camp (Observing nature and drawing inspiration from it) from 10th to 14th of December.
Either way, make sure you visit soon!
Drawing and Art Classes
I have had so many requests for individual art classes for 6 – 7 year olds that it is time to open a new class!
We’ll be drawing on Saturdays, from 11.30am to 12.30pm, just after the Open Studio for the older, more independent ones (it means you could always sneak in early to see what these guys are up to).
What do we draw? Animals (lots of them), and then objects around us. We draw from pictures and we draw from real life. We go out to the woods to draw, and we get inspired by each other’s drawing. More information here.
To sign up, fill the form at the bottom or give me a call (9273 4991).
This will be the last drawing session before the relocation above the Blue House School in August. The classes there will take full advantage of the outdoor conditions and will take a twist, since we are becoming l’Observatoire, where science and art are given equal place for discovering our environment.
Micro/Macro at the Zoo
I’m very excited to be part of the Big Draw in Singapore this year. I’d heard about the event in Britain, and it is only the second year it is happening here.
Micro/Macro is a workshop happening at the zoo on the 19th of November from 10am to 2pm at the proboscis monkey enclosure (behind the Fragile Forest).
Macro
The participants (children or adults) are invited to try their hand at “Gesture Drawing”, to capture the essence of being a monkey. Those creatures move fast and you have to be fast with your charcoal, let go of the details, capture the movement. This kind of drawing is usually used to draw people, capturing them on the go, and artists use this as an exercise, to loosen up and tune their mind to drawing and observing.
Micro
The participants are then invited to try their hand at histological drawing. This time, they are given a piece of monkey tissue to observe, in the form of a histological section slide. These slides are ready to be slipped under the microscope, which can be focused to reveal different structures. In this case, the drawing is used as a means of observing detail. There is plenty of detail, and often repeating patterns.
The result will be a display side-by-side of these two different ways of capturing “what a monkey looks like” from different people, with different personalities, different abilities and different goals…
I can’t wait to see what people come up with! See you at the zoo….
Isadora's Workshop 