An Evening of Art

Went to a gathering of established and mature artists, this evening. Artists that is in the widest sense of the word..musicians, writers, animators, actors, visual artists ......... and more.... We had been invited to a show and tell showcase, I was asked to talk about a recent project I did with students and the local Art gallery. Fortunately the town in which I live has the most extensive and excellent collection of 20th Century modern Art in the UK outside London. Unfortunately we have nowhere to display it permanently.

Last autumn all the famous Abstract works were on display in the Art Gallery and I took a group of 20 gifted and telented 14 year old musicians to the Gallery to be inspired by the works of Art, the musicians then wrote original pieces of music which we recorded to play to their peers. Their peers are all the 240, 14 year old artists which we teach. We studied Abstract Art and they were asked to respond to the music their peers had written in their sketchbooks and on A3 paper using dry media. The aim or purpose was to be able to record their emotions, feelings and thoughts in an abstract visual way, but in response to the music. You need to remember that the majority of the students had not seen the original works of Art, only a selected few of the musicians had .

The finale to this adventure was, a group of the muscians played their music live in the Art Gallery to a captive audience, who were sat amongst the paintings, and on a big screen behind them a powerpont presentation ran of most of the artwork created by the 14 year olds. We certainly gave those famous artists a run for their money!! It was an awsome occasion that cold February evening, comments were very favourable from our "audience" to the 14 year old budding artists.

The powerpoint presentation about the project, I gave to the assembled artists tonight was well received judging by the complimentary comments and hopefully inspired many of the assembled artists into new ways of thinking in their own work...and just maybe ...may encourage them to work with adolescents with a little more enthusiasm.