Lesson video

Hello, everybody, Mrs. Barrasso here again.

Lovely to see you all for our second lesson in this unit, installation and site-specific art.

Now, hopefully you can remember back from our last lesson, installation is all about creating that experience for a viewer, do you remember? And site-specific art is when we choose a site where we want to place an artwork, then we create something to go into that space.

We'll be doing more of that today.

In our last lesson, we focused on creating beautiful window hangings for a specific site, the window, and in today's lesson, we're going to be focusing on nature, the beauty of nature, and we're going to be creating something called ephemeral art.

Now, right now you might be thinking, I don't know what ephemeral art means.

Well, I promise you by the end of this lesson, you will know what ephemeral art is, and you'll have also created some.

And hopefully, you'll have had super fun doing it.

Let's get started.

Okay, so before we start today's lesson, you're going to need the following things.

As always, you will need your sketch book and pencil so we can record everything we've done and created together.

You'll need some paper, some glue, and some scissors.

So please make sure an adult is there to supervise you using those.

And you'll also need a camera or a device that has a camera on it.

Just make sure you've got permission to use it if it doesn't belong to you.

So if you need to, press pause now while you go and gather everything and then come back when you're ready.

In today's lesson we've already started with our introduction and recap on what we've already done.

Then we're going to be focusing on a little warmup which is going to be really fun.

Then we'll be talking about natural art, natural artists, and then we'll be creating our own natural art.

And as always, we'll finish with a short recap on what we've done today.

So, some key words, some key vocabulary that you will need in today's lesson.

The first is the word ephemeral.

Here we go, now you're going to know what ephemeral means.

It means lasting for only a short time, not permanent.

Foraging, which means to go from place to place, searching for things to use, and arrangement, which is about making creative decisions to display something in an interesting way.

So for today's warmup, we're going to start by creating a paper arrangement.

You'll need to gather some paper that you have in your house.

It doesn't matter what the paper is.

It could be junk mail, it could be wrapping paper, it could be coloured paper, whatever you have is absolutely fine.

You might want to lay the paper together and then cut or tear it in an interesting way, and then display it in an arrangement.

It could be displayed like this, or it could be displayed like this.

You can move it around and change it, and that's the beauty for femoral art.

Here is another paper arrangement that I've made.

This time I used only scrap paper.

I went on a little treasure hunt around my house.

I found some receipts, an old letter, and old birthday card, and I created an arrangement with those.

One of these is ephemeral, one of them isn't.

Can you work out which one? Did you get it right? Absolutely.

The first one, the one on the left, the one that could be blown away.

It was ephemeral because it could be blown away, so it was temporary.

At the end of this activity you might want to stick your work down.

It would no longer be ephemeral, but you will be able to capture what you've created and then have that permanent in your sketchbook.

Okay, so now it's your turn.

Today you're going to start by creating a paper arrangement.

So first of all, collect together some different paper, could be different colours, could be a receipt, junk mail, whatever you have is absolutely fine and you can create something beautiful with that.

Lay the paper, tear or cut different shapes, then play around with the paper to create different patterns and designs.

What different designs can you make? Take a photograph or sketch your favourite.

And when you're finished, if you'd like, stick your favourite design into your sketchbook.

Press pause now, and come back when you're done.

We're going to take a moment now to talk about natural art.

Now, as you can tell, natural art is created using natural things, things found in nature.

But they're not very natural in the sense that someone has put them together and arranged them in a certain way.

So if you look at the image of the rocks, someone has made an arrangement with those rocks and pebbles to make them look interesting and beautiful to the viewer.

If we look at the leaves, leaves don't really fall in such a beautiful pattern, do they? Someone has taken the time to gather the leaves to forage them, to collect them, and then lay them out in that pattern and design for the viewer to see and enjoy.

Today, you will be creating your own natural art.

One thing I love about natural art is that there's no end of materials.

Nature is all around us and we can all be natural artists without having to spend any money, isn't that amazing? There is one artist I would like to mention, his name is Andy Goldsworthy.

So just think of gold and it's worthy, where the love money, Andy Goldsworthy.

And if you wanted to look him up after this lesson, here's a great source of inspiration and many natural artists take their inspiration from him.

The things that he is able to create and the scale of them is just incredible, so he's definitely worth having a little look up after this lesson.

Here are two other examples where nature was used to create some art.

Look closely, what materials can you see? How many different ones can you find? Absolutely, did you notice the wood, the pine cones, did you spot the feathers? Let's have a little look more closely at each of these.

So look closely at this one.

How would you describe it? What shapes can you see? What materials have been used, and how has this artist used colour? Hopefully you noticed that they have put the rusty leaves on the outside and then brighter leaves in the middle with one very dark leaf right in the centre spot, peppered around that and those are lovely white, fluffy feathers just to kind of give it a little bit of texture, we would say.

And it's been left and displayed in a park or a garden for all to see.

Here is another example of natural art.

What do you see this time? What shapes has the artist used? How has the artist added height into this piece of artwork? And how has the artist used the different materials and the different colours? Lovely, hopefully you noticed, I'm assuming you did.

Again, a focus on circles, keeping the material together in this one.

You wouldn't have to do that in yours, but they've put all the wooden circles together, all the leaves, all the red leaves.

And they've added a bit of height by stacking things on top of each other, the wood on top of the pine cone.

Beautiful.

So today we're going to be focusing on creating our own natural art.

As always, we always talk about the three key ideas that are underpinning all of the artwork that we're creating in this unit.

So let's have a look at those together, hopefully you can remember them.

The first one is space.

What space will you bring to life with your artwork? So where will you go to choose your materials? Will you go to your garden, a park, a forest, maybe you live near a beach or a lake or a river.

Where will you go with your adult to collect your materials? And where will you place your artwork? Will you leave it where you found it? So if you went to the park, will you create your artwork there? Or might you put it on a little path or a bit of grass so that people notice it.

Message, what will your message be? What message will your artwork send? I hope at the very least it will be something to do with the beauty of nature, that people will stop and look at your artwork and notice nature in a new and interesting way.

And number three, transformation.

How will your artwork transform the space? How will it change it? How would it make it different? So, just a little note now about going foraging.

I love going foraging, I really enjoy it because the great thing about going foraging is it's always a surprise what you're going to end up with.

Now, when you go foraging, it's very important that you go with an adult, and it's very important that you don't pick up anything that you're not sure what it is.

Make sure an adult's there with you to help you.

But depending on where you live and depending on what time of year you do this project, there's a whole variety of things available to us in nature.

And it could be grasses or flowers.

It could be leaves, it could be pebbles, it might be horse chestnuts if you do this in the autumn time, it could be shells if you live near a beach or pebbles.

And I found a feather when I did mine, but just make sure that your adult is with you to make sure things are safe.

So for your lesson today, you will be creating your own piece of nature inspired art.

So first of all, go foraging with an adult.

See what surprises you find, use what you find to create an arrangement.

Take a photograph because remember, the artwork is ephemeral, it will not last forever, but it will if you preserve it in a photograph.

If you want to, draw a sketch of your artwork and record what you did in your sketchbook.

Pause the video to complete your task, and come back and resume when you're done, enjoy.

Fantastic, how did you get on with that? I hope you enjoyed it.

Being in nature is one of my greatest joys, and I love, love, love the seasons and how nature changes.

And that's what I mean when I say there's an endless supply of materials at our disposal, which is just fantastic.

So let's have a quick talk about what we've done today.

We've already achieved so much.

So we started by creating a paper arrangement, by cutting and tearing different paper materials and creating something beautiful.

Perhaps you chose to stick it down, or perhaps you chose to keep it ephemeral, either way, I hope you enjoyed that.

We also talked about natural art and how natural artists use nature to create an arrangement in a new and beautiful way.

Finally, we finished with a little bit of foraging and creating our own natural art.

Really hope you enjoyed it and enjoyed creating something beautiful.

So now I have a question for you.

Do you remember how I said, I promise at the end of this lesson, you will know what ephemeral means? Let's see if you remember.

Ephemeral art means art that will last forever.

Is that true, or is that false? Well done, it's false, absolutely.

Ephemeral art is temporary.

It only lasts for a short time.

So tonight when you're hanging out with your family, why don't you try and put the word ephemeral into a sentence? There will think you are a genius by using such a fantastic, interesting new word.

So let's talk now about sketchbooks.

This is my sketchbook page.

I've titled it natural art, and I've written a little bit about what we've done.

I've included some photographs of the artwork that I created and to bring a little bit of nature onto the page, I even stuck in a few of the leaves that I collected on my forage.

The questions I was thinking about as I wrote this were, what interesting things did you find on your forage? How did your arrangement of the items transform them into a piece of artwork? What did you enjoy about this activity? And did you see anybody stop and admire your artwork? I hope so, I hope people noticed it.

So the three key ideas, space.

What space did you transform with your artwork? Message, did you help people see the beauty in nature to stop and notice, especially in a path that they might walk through every single day and not always notice what's around them.

Artwork like this can make people just pause for a moment and notice it.

And transformation, how was your space transformed by your artwork? Well, I really hope that you've enjoyed today's lesson and you've had fun focusing on nature and ephemeral art.

I would love to see what you have created, and I'm sure we would all like to see each other's ephemeral artwork.

If you would like to and your adults say so, please go into Twitter and share a picture of your artwork using the hashtag on the screen.

Lots of love, see you next time.