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Notes from October at
The Riley School
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This month we settled into a rhythm of classes….. and then…
Art Week!! It was a highly collaborative immersion into Art related explorations and creativity. This month’s ( belated) Riley Notes are curated by Anna but represent the voices and writing of all the children and facilitators who stretched themselves to engage in something new …
If you have not found the time to come by to really see and learn about the pieces created make sure you seek them out on Parent’ Night.
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This year for Art Week, six small but mighty groups worked with different materials to create new Riley sculptures on campus. Drawing inspiration from local artists Bo Atkinson, Eric Darling, Alexis Iammarino, Bernard Langlais, Pamela Moulton, Tara Morin, and Jay Sawyer the week’s hands-on, cross-programmatic curriculum excited and challenged children and faculty alike.
Read on for an indepth look at each sculpture.The quotes are sadly unattributed.. There was just too much wonderous conversation going on to keep track of our sources.
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Metal Sculpture
Mystical Life of Riley, 2023
Metal Artists: Robert, Gus, Milo, Riley, Felix, Avery, and Cedar.
Facilitated by Craig.
Steel, Linseed oil, Copper coated welding wire, Glass, Stone
“The idea may not be exactly agreed upon but let creativity flow and it will become something great!”
Metal team ventured to the J-Bone (Jay Sawyer) studio in Warren for inspiration. They spent the morning walking around the sculpture park while Jay told many anecdotes about each of the art pieces he has created. They learned about different welding techniques and materials used to create different aesthetics. Finishing the tour in the metal studio the group learned about tools, safety and the importance of having a vision for the use of found objects.
Once back on campus, the group got to work brainstorming ideas. They had a cohesive vision almost immediately - a Sword in the Stone inspired sculpture. They sketched the ideas, created 3-D mock-ups from card stock, evaluated the materials on hand, harvested the rock from the forest and then "dry-fit" everything together. The sculpture incorporates found objects such as old door knobs, old saw blades, chains and an old mattock.
Visiting artist Seth Richardson arrived to help weld and bring the vision to life. With Seth, the children learned about welding safely, prepped the pieces, observed welding in action and even had an opportunity to use the equipment. While the sword was being built, the children drilled out the rock as a base for the sword (with help from visiting artist Bill Heiden).
Children agreed upon boiled linseed as a finish/sealant for the sculpture which will protect it from rust but also allow natural elements like moss or lichen to develop on the piece - a finish technique learned from J Bone.
Everything came together in the large pine tree in front of Wade Acres. The large granite rock sits, seemingly buried in the ground, with the gleaming sword magically stuck deeply in the center. At the pinnacle of the sword is a brilliant shining diamond adding to the mystically quality of the piece. This expansive sculpture climbs up the trunk of the tree juxtaposing the hard cut metal shapes of birds and nests with the organic limbs of the tree.
“I learned how to weld, I learned how to properly sand glass without shards going everywhere, it was really fun, actually.”
Donations of materials and cutting services from Rockport Steel made this project possible. Thank you to all who helped make the children’s vision a reality!
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Mural
Chickens: At The Riley School We Are Free, 2023
Mural Artists: Lilli, Aya, Grady, Ronan, and Evie.
Facilitated by Anna.
Nature, Color, Play, Children, Nature, Chaos
“Our mural is just a painting on the wall.”
The Mural group headed to the streets of Rockland for inspiration early in the week. Led by Leith MacDonald, the children took time to observe and talk about the process, meaning and design of each mural. They ended their mural walk at the Flannagan Center where Alexis Iammarino showed them the Art in Action studio and shared her process for creating large, meaningful pieces of art! “Alexis is cool, and she helped us talk about murals. She helped us learn how we plan the mural and that it takes time.”
In the quiet of the library, the group decided what they wanted to represent with their mural - Nature, Color, Play, Children, Nature, Chaos. “It was hard to agree on things.” When they brought pencils to paper the vision became more clear. They then used a planning technique learned from Alexis to combine many ideas/designs into one creative cohesive vision. “It took us three days of planning. We planned and then painted, and it was fun.”
Starting by priming the wall (before it rained), the children were excited to move to the painting part! Being intentional about every step of the process, they then transferred their design to the wall before getting out each color. “We used a permanent marker to make an outline.” In an effort to create a cohesive color scheme, they mixed all of their own colors; each color has a bit of Riley green! ”When we painted it got very colorful!”
We had a perfect painting window on Thursday and, because of all of the planning, we were able to paint the mural in one day!
“We made a mural that represents the Riley School. I am very proud of it. I was surprised that we made it look so good.”
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Wood Sculpture
The Couch, 2023
Wood Artists: Andy, Owen, Sam, Jasper, Anthony, and Zion. Facilitated by Hattie.
Wood, Rope, Plastic, Screws
“It was challenging but it also felt easy because of the way we worked together, each day we made so much progress and still had fun doing it.”
On Monday morning, when the group began to discuss possible ideas for what the wooden sculpture might look like, the idea of a giant couch came up. They then began to wonder how they could make this giant couch a multi functional play structure. After a brief discussion of ideas, they took off on a day of field trips for inspiration and education. The first stop was the Langlais Sculpture Preserve where they met with Shannon who gave a tour of the grounds and the barn. Once the tour was complete she generously offered them tea, paper and pencils so that they could sketch out ideas. The couch idea remained, but each child had some ideas on how they could add some personality to the couch; chickens perched atop, and a giant R for Riley were some of the ideas that were sketched out.
From there, the group went to the Cedar Works warehouse where they had a tour and then were able to pick through lots of lovely scraps of cedar and brought back a carload of supplies to begin working with. They also stopped at Cedar Works storefront on the way home to play on their structures and gather more research.
Tuesday was all about designing and practicing hammering and chiseling skills. To cement the design, they made a large mock up of the couch and discovered that an A- frame structure for the back of the couch would create the stability that they were looking for and also would make a fun tunnel like enclosure on the back side of the couch. With this idea they decided to make the back side of the A-frame a climbing wall! They were well on the way to making a play structure with many functions! Cedar Works so generously donated part of their Rustic log cabin style set along with a slide. They didn’t know where this would come into play, but knew they wanted it to be some part of the project.
On Wednesday, they began to build and worked all day long! They scraped the bark off of the 3 foot logs that make the legs of the couch, they screwed together the seat and began to build the A-frame, and they put together most of the Cedar Works play structure.
On Thursday, it was time for some finish work, securing and fine-tuning the final structures, screwing in the last boards and pieces on the climbing wall and attaching a door to the tunnel. It wasn’t until they stood the large cedar structure up that they decided for sure where that would fit in; it would be the giant coffee table that sits next to the giant couch, of course! They decided to use the slide positioned on the back side of the structure to be somewhat discreet to not disrupt the couch-like look of the piece.
Finally, it was time to add some adornments to give the couch a little bit of flair, along with some cushions, in order to be able to distinguish the difference between the couch and a large wooden bench.
“I enjoyed building and learning how to use the tools and drilling and want to use what I learned here to build forts and stuff.”
We could not have had such success in bringing our ideas to fruition without the lovely hospitality from Shannon at Langlais Sculpture Preserve, or the generous and enthusiastic staff at Cedar Works, and the many parents (Mike and Olivia Drolet (Dawson’s parents), Lizzy (Zion’s mom), Dan (Leon’s dad), Wes Walker, Craig Letowski, and all of the facilitators at Riley who came through to help us with all of the things that came up throughout the week.
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Micro Sculptures
Window Friends, 2023
Miniature Artists: Viv, Stella, Lucy, Ally, Raven, and Sebastian.
Facilitated by Alicia.
Cardboard, Card stock, Felt, Popsicle sticks, Wire, Beads, Mirror, Leather, Air-dry clay
“It was the details that really brought it together.”
Tara Morin of the CMCA came to Riley to share her craft of making micro art. She talked about scale and creating art at different levels of scale. She brought examples of her micro art which fascinated and inspired the children.
The children then worked together on how to incorporate their individual ideas into a collaborative art piece. They planned, drew, and made mock items. They practiced making miniature people, buildings, animals, and furniture. They created a village with various creatures, buildings, transportation and people. Using various materials, they saw how they could manipulate them into micro things. They also worked on the appropriate scale for their scenes.
After experimenting with various materials, they then determined how to share with the community their micro art. They found windows around campus where they could put in various scenes — hidden surprise “sculptures”. Their micro sculpture is Window Friends.
“Scale is important! You don’t necessarily have to make something really tiny, small is enough.”
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Rope Sculpture
Chicken In a Nest, 2023
Rope Artists: Tessa, Saskia, Lilou, Laurali, Trevor, Jahyah and Otto.
Facilitated by Tori and Ginger.
Rope, Plywood, Nails, Chicken wire, Wood pallet
Inspired by Eric Darling’s rope sculptures at Merryspring Nature Center and the work of Pamela Moulton, the Rope Sculpture group brainstormed, sketched and put their ideas to a group vote. By inventorying the materials they ensured they had enough rope to create all the elements of their design. They then determined the size and scale of the sculpture using: Pi, circumference, radius, measuring, proportion, fractions, and decimals. As they started working on the original design, they discovered that a redesign was needed and pivoted the “Chicken Lady in Nest” into “Chicken in a Nest”. The wire armature of the nest was woven and knotted over with frayed rope. They measured out the chicken’s body, determined the right proportion to the nest and cut her out before they attached rope to our plywood gal using the smallest nails they could find….lots of them!
“I think it would be fun to try making clothes out of up-cycled rope next!”
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Concrete Sculpture
Riley Chess, 2023
Concrete Artists: B.C., Ian, Johnny, Johnathan, and Oren.
Facilitated by Kyle.
Concrete, Chicken wire, Paint
“It was a lot of fun, but it was also really hard. Building our small sculptures was frustrating, but once we finished one, we got to say, “Hey we did it!” and celebrate.”
Monday was spent learning about concrete. Johnny made the discovery that cement and concrete are different and we learned about the different ingredients involved. We also visited Bo Atkinson’s home and studio to see his cement and concrete sculptures and learn about his process.
On Tuesday, we decided on building a 4ft chess board and pieces. The theme of our chess set is “Riley.” The kings and queens are childlike forms, the bishops are chickens, the knights were intended to be goats but are looking a lot like dinosaurs. Our rooks began as tortoises, but we made a last-minute decision to use a sandcastle mold instead.
Wednesday and Thursday we built armatures from chicken wire and covered them with concrete and cement. We also poured and formed our chessboard and experimented with different mixtures of cement, sand, gravel and water. We’ve all learned a lot about how cement and concrete work and are excited to share the results of our process-focused concrete installation.
“It was fun sculpting with cement because I’ve never used it before. It was kind of like clay, but it was less forgiving. I like how it came out and I hope kids enjoy playing with it.”
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MAGNOLIA PROGRAM
with Susanna & Tori
This month has been filled with such amazing activities and beautiful experiences! We have jumped right into Fall with fun art projects and Autumn themed learning games. The children have truly enjoyed settling into our routine of the day and are becoming quite caring of one
The art produced this month was heavily influenced by pumpkins and fall. We started off this month by decorating small gourds we harvested with dots, influenced by the work of artist Yayoi Kusama. We have enjoyed watercoloring on our woodsy walks, and working on our grip strength with LOTS of paper cutting. We have turned all the little bits of paper we cut into collages. We have worked a lot on our color recognition by going on color matching hunts in our classroom and the woods. The children have loved exploring how dot markers work, and have created some major color explosions on paper with them. For Art Week, the Magnolias enjoyed walking around campus, getting a first hand glimpse of how all the art projects progressed. They lent a hand helping the rope group unravel rope for their chicken nest. This week has been all about Halloween! We made collages and colored jack-o-lanterns, decorated bats with bright pastels and worked on our dexterity by wrapping yarn around cut out mummies!
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JUNIPER PROGRAM
with Mia & Lindsay
The Junipers enjoyed participating in Art Week! The children were in all of the group projects in some meaningful way, whether that was big or small. In the “miniatures” group, they got their very own presentation from an amazing local artist, Tara Morin. The Junipers were then able to walk around and observe the older children as they planned for their own miniature models. All left feeling inspired and decided to create our own miniatures for our classroom dollhouse. We created our own doll families, with the children designing their clothing from felt, using buttons for eyes (Tara had discussed the movie ‘Coraline’ in her presentation and how they used miniatures to create the film) and yarn for hair. We then created our own gallery in the doll house by painting our very own mini canvas!
Throughout the week, we were able to get a look at the cement chest set being created for our campus, the new Sword in the Stone that the welders were working hard on and the giant wooden couch we are all very excited to play on…the children were so excited to be able to climb up a real couch and slide down on a slide to get off. The wood group showed us how they strip the bark from logs to prepare for building and how they used teamwork while working with large and heavy materials. The Junipers spent a lot of time in the rope group where they created a chicken nest sculpture for our agricultural area. The children learned about the different kinds of rope (some sink and some float) and how to use the resources around them to create something new. They spent a lot of time carefully securing and unbraiding the rope to form the “nest” of the sculpture.
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