Irma will be showing work at the SAF Art Fair 2011 on Saturday 10th.
The fair, organised by Southwark Arts Forum, is part of this week-end’s Thames Festival . Look for her in Hay’s Galleria on Jubilee Walk on the south bank of the river between 12 noon and 8pm.
John will be signing and selling books at the Gillespie Park Festival on Sunday 11th.
This takes place at Gillespie Park Local Nature Reserve, 91 Drayton Park, Highbury, London, N5 1PH. The event starts at 12 noon and finishes at 5 pm.
In response to Illustration Friday’s word of the week, INFLUENCE, I’m showing a picture from my book, It’s Magic. On each spread, the appearance of the magician, Carlos the Chameleon, is influenced by his surroundings.
School year is finished and so ends another round of author/illustrator visits and workshops. I found it really rewarding to work with Creative Partnerships (now sadly gone) and with schools direct.
The life of an illustrator can often be insular, so doing school projects gives me the opportunity to get out there and meet some great people – teachers, pupils, fellow practitioners, creative agents…
Below are some of the best bits.
St Matthews Junior School, Luton
Designing cardboard display cabinets/ storage boxes – year 6 project. These open up to reveal dinosaurs + eggs which were made in a previous workshop .
Pop-up instruction manuals – how to make a dinosaur – explained using words, pictures and pop ups.
The finished work is displayed at the Festival of Learning at
UKCCA Luton Carnival Arts
Lee Manor High School, Luton
Working with year 7 classes, bringing the school’s charter to life, through illustration and lettering.
St Matthews Junior School, Luton
Screenprinting – three Year 6 classes developing designs and printing on t-shirts
Putney Park School
Book Box (Years 1 & 2)
The idea behind this group project was a box as a book – words on the outside, pictures on the inside.
Please note, the second image is during the prep stage – I try not to bring to bring large tins of Dulux paint into the classroom.
Pop-up workshop with Year 3 – 6
And a giant pop-up double-page spread with reception class.The children added their drawings to an existing framework which can be opened and closed.
Richmond School, Sheerness
4 different year groups, four different pop-up devices.
Y 3
Y 4
Y 5
Y 6
Enjoy the Summer, everyone – I’m off back to the
drawing board.
Eight creative practitioners descended on Lee Manor High School near Luton yesterday, courtesy of Carnival Arts Creative Partnership, ready to take on the School Charter and elicit a creative response to it from the year 7 students.
Two rappers, an artist, teacher, film maker, theatre practitioner (stage fights), author/illustrator (me) and furniture designer worked with eight classes of year 7 students – some quite lively, some even livelier – in a series of five, one hour sessions.
An end product wasn’t an essential part of the brief but, for my own part, as things were fairly chaotic at times , the choice to have one was useful in filtering and focusing on all the really good work that was being done – each student produced a piece which made up part of the greater whole. I asked them to condense sections of the charter down to a couple of words and to use graphic-style writing and imagry to convey the meaning of those words.
Over the coming days I expect some will take away their work, some will blow away in the breeze and the rest will disintegrate, ‘Arte Povera’ style.
Below are the photos – proof that it all did really happen.
Back from Donegal where I attended the opening of the Greenfort exhibition at the Ross Gallery in Letterkenny on Friday night.
Initially referred to as the Cousins Exhibition, due to the fact that we’re all first cousins – if you’re an artist and a cousin, you’re in – the exhibition was organised and co-ordinated by Damien McGinley and gallery owner, Janet Ross. It was an eclectic mix of work by eight people, and included paintings, mixed media, prints, photos and embroidered pieces. It was also a brilliant family reunion – there were people there I hadn’t seen for a long, long time.
The exhibition gave me an opportnity to produce and exhibit archival prints of spreads from the books – something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Each one was printed digitally on A2 Ilford Gallerie Pearl 290gsm using Epson Ultrachrome pigment inks in signed limited editions of 25.
The Greenfort Artists are now registered as an official collective with Donegal County Council – so watch this space!
One of the Creative Partnership projects I was involved in recently was in Buttsbury Juniour School in Billericay, where I was chosen (by the children, no less) to come on board for a series of literacy workshops with Royal Opera House CP.
I worked alongside poet, playwright and workshop leader, Joseph Coehlo, bringing an illustrator’s slant to the proceedings, in a series of one day workshops with the two yr 4 classes, which involved show-and-tell, pop-up creations and making books.
The idea for a collapsible cardboard toolbox came out of the planning meeting – hit the kids with a pop-up on a grand scale to prepare them for the paper engineering workshops to follow. It would also function as a container and a focal point, getting across the idea of writing and illustrating skills as tools.
The box made it’s way to the school ahead of me – so I was there in spirit before my actual arrival.
The children, when I did meet them, were an extremely enthusiastic bunch and it was so much fun to show my books and talk about my work. They also produced some brilliant pop-up books of their own. Below is some images of the work in progress.
We even managed to fit in a ‘live drawing’ session alongside Joe’s poetry and storytelling with the year 3s.
Combel Editorial, the spanish publisher who have taken my books, time and time again, have produced this funky, little film to promote Detective Paws, or should I say, El detectiu Grapes.
Never mind, here’s some preliminary scetches from the living room spread for your enjoyment. JOHN
My Contact-an-Author page is now up and running. Click on the link to find out what I have to offer. http://www.contactanauthor.co.uk/authorpage.php?id=650
And here’s some pictures from a recent year 6 workshop at Stroud Green school, Haringey. The children were studying mountains so I set them the task of using images of famous examples to creat pop-up 3D dioramas. They were shown how to break up the images into separate layers to make foregound, middle distance and backround which we then joined together using collapsible spacers. We finished off by creating a viewing framework. I was so impressed by what they were able to do in such a short space of time.
The children’s teacher kindly supplied me with the following soundbite:
‘John facilitated a Year 6 workshop during which the children had opportunities to manipulate perspective. The results were stunning, as the children produced a series of fascinating and carefully constructed 3D models of mountain scenes. John’s approach was child-centred and engaging, supporting those children who needed extra help whilst stretching those with stronger design skills.’
John O'Leary 