There was a short exhibition of schoolchildren’s work at 68 Hope Street on Saturday afternoon.
It was organised by Claire Tolen and Gemma Rhodes who are 3rd year Art History students at JMU. For their final-year project they spent some time with year 2 (6 yr old) children at St Malachy’s Catholic Primary School and I’m pleased to report that the experience hasn’t cooled their desire to go on and teach art in schools after they graduate.
The children were introduced to idea of montage through looking at the work of Picasso, Ernst etc. and the theme for the works was Celebrity. Claire and Gemma believed that the imaginative minds of the youngsters and the modern fascination with celebrities would produce some interesting results and they were not wrong.
Some are quite humorous, some made it obvious who/what they liked and others had problems with the idea of montage and just wanted to draw their own little world.
Apparently it was all great fun and sounds like a successful project all round. I was just sorry I arrived too late to see all the children proudly pointing out their masterpieces to their friends and family.