Columbine Elementary School
students and staff are about to put their Best Faces Forward!
During four weeks in April and May, a
garden of bright colorful faces and flowers is springing up to grace an
area that will be seen by students and visitors every day for some time to
come.
In
the project local artist-author Sarajane Helm has created for the Artist
In Residence Program, everyone at the school is involved in decorating
hundreds of miniature masks made of polymer clay and creating a fabulous
new installation in the atrium area to the right of the main entrance of
the building.
Here's how the atrium looked before the
installation.
A fresh coat of paint in a shade of dusky
purple will set the stage nicely for this installation. Masks and flowers
will line the triangle area above, and bloom as two-sided
"flowers" in the planter area below.
"This
is a BIG little project!" says Sarajane.
Together with the assistance of her
husband Bryan, art teachers Gabrielle Minger-Wright and Anna Harber will
work to supervise the creative explosion that happens when hundreds of
students in Kindergarten through Fifth Grade meet up with an inviting
medium of expression like polymer clay!
Non-toxic and amazingly versatile, easy to
work with and available in local craft stores, this has been a primary
working medium for Sarajane for over twenty years, and she delights in
sharing it with others.
She
creates a wide line of wearable art and with Bryan often collaborates on mosaic
sculptures and school projects that can be seen in her books and on the
website at www.polyclay.com.
Some supplies for the Best Faces Forward
project were donated by Polyform (the manufacturers of Premo and
SculpeyIII polymer clays) and other vendors, while the major funding for
the Artist In Residence program comes from a generous grant from the
Target Corporation.
In
this undertaking, students in all grades will learn how to mix colors and
manipulate clay to form millefiore "canes"
that provide patterns, as well as the ins and outs of model formation and mold
making, rubber stamping on
clay, and many ways of decorating an expressive and individual miniature mask.
Some
of the students help to knead and condition the clay and to mix the
colors. 
With more than twenty-four pounds of clay, there's a LOT to do.
"Each one will be a different little
work of art" says Sarajane "and when put all together, we'll
have a colorful and creative garden where personal expression blooms! It's
vital to keep art available to children, and I'm very glad to have this
opportunity to help the wonderful young people at this school generate
access to their creativity with the assistance of the Longmont Council for
the Arts and St.Vrain Valley Schools."
Mask forms were created using a mold made
and demonstrated by Sarajane, and the Third, Fourth, and Fifth grade
students, as well as the staff, each got to decorate a mask.
The artists
could select between gold, copper, or silver bases as shown here.
Embellishments are chosen from cane slices and bits of colored clays, and
as you will soon see each is very different and wonderful in its own way!
Here are some of the canes we had made by
the second day. At right you can see the original sculpt from which the
mold was cast. Everybody liked the flexibility of the mold. These canes
are also used in decorating the masks.
Everyone gets to see cane-making demonstrated, and to be
part of the decision making process, and everyone gets some hands-on time
with clay. Everybody is part of the creation process!
The Kindergarten,
First and Second grade students spent hours creating the clay sheets used
for cutting out the flowers using the cane elements made in class. This is
a sampler made with at least one slice of each kind of cane that was made
in three days. Using simple components like snakes and sheets, canes like
bulls-eye and jellyroll striped canes, checkerboards and more are built.
All canes, no matter how complex the final image may be, start out simply
with pieces of colored clay. Reducing the cane makes the image smaller.
Click
here to see more!
