Mossley park Art Project – school creative sessions

For The Mossley Park Art Project I’ve been asked to create a piece of permanent public art for Mossley Park in collaboration with local school children. The artwork’s sculptural elements will be created from natural materials with detail and decorative elements created from work produced by the young participants during the creative sessions.

The start point for the artwork is ‘the tree as habitat’ and aims to reflect the importance of the trees in Mossley Park as part of a habitat shared by a multitude of flora and fauna.

For the creative sessions I spent three days working with years 3, 4, 5 and 6 from Micklehurst All Saints Primary School.

We spent the morning exploring the wooded area of Mossley Park and sketching forms, shapes and patterns to inspire the sculptural elements of the artwork and undertook a ‘bughunt’ and habitat investigation with Lesley Bardsley from TMBC. Thank you to the Friends of Mossley Park for the loan of a key to access the wooded area of the park!

The afternoon was spent back at school creating block prints inspired by our investigations and visit to Mossley Park, these prints will be translated into decorative and informational elements of the final artwork. A big thank you to the all the staff from Micklehurst All Saints School for letting me take over their classrooms each day and getting involved and helping make the sessions a big success.

We all had a great time and were lucky it only rained on one day!

 

Oldham Reindeer Parade – 12 Days of Christmas

For Santa’s Reindeer Parade in Oldham this year I collaborated with Jacqui Symons to create a rather large Partridge In A Pear Tree or rather SPIN a pear tree in this case.

The carriage consisted of a 2.5m diameter 3m high spherical Pear Tree in welded steel (a treeogesic dome?) decorated with cutout leaves and pears and a graphic style Partridge that was spun by the action of a pedal bike on the front of the carriage. The carriage was ably performed in the parade by Dylan and T-Jay from Dove Stone Youth Rangers and rising BMX star Louis Robinson and the parade was a great success despite the damp weather (and yes there is an Alan hidden in there somewhere!).

12 Days of Christmas Parade carriages

I’m currently creating two parade carriages for the Oldham Santa’s Reindeer Parade that is taking place on Saturday 8th November.

In collaboration with Jacqui Symons we’re creating the lead carriage representing a Partridge in a Pear tree which consists of a treeogesic steel Pear Tree with a graphic style Partridge spinning in it’s centre and the Four Calling Birds which is based on the abirdabode project Big Art Birdbox.

The deadline for getting them finished is tight and the Pear Tree has been a real challenge structurally but I’m hoping they’ll look good and the parade will be a success.

The Parade starts at Clegg Street at about 12:45 and continues around Oldham Town Centre to finsh at the Spindles Shopping Centre at about 2pm and is free to all,