During the summer of 2006, I had travelled to
Canada’s newest territory: Nunavut. It
was during this time when an idea evolved in my mind, setting the stage for
another art adventure that would realize itself almost two years later.
I spent two weeks surrounded by arctic tundra
and many many smiling young faces. I had
travelled to Rankin Inlet, Nunavut to complete another portion of my project
entitled “Canada: Glorious To Be”. While
I was there the IBC (Inuit Broadcast Corporation) created a feature documentary
of my visit and a couple of years later, I had made a few edits of my own to
create another video that is now streaming on Youtube.
With the cooperation of Rankin Inlet’s
elementary school, I soon found myself teaching a very special art class…
Soon, many small canvas paintings depicting the
Earth, moon and sun were created! As you
may be able to see, only three designs were used for these paintings. One group of paintings has the moon
positioned on the left side of the canvas, while another has the moon centred
on the canvas and the third design has the moon positioned to the right side of
the canvas.
It was the evening before this class was to
begin and I had just finished preparing the canvases when inspiration shone
down upon me…
I had a total of 12 canvases laid out before me
and the designs had already been drawn.
I was simply looking at them all… lined up in a neat row… thinking about
how I wanted to teach my upcoming class.
As my mind drifted around, a spontaneous thought entered my mind. “What if I made each canvas to be a frame of
an animation film? Wouldn’t that be an
interesting project?”
I smiled!
It was far too late for me to do this work
using these 12 canvases as this time, but I was hopeful that soon I would be
teaching another workshop when I returned to London and I would see if I could
use this idea at that time… and I did!!!
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| Moondance Art Workshop |
Upon my return home, I set off to introduce my
art workshops to the principals of a few of London’s schools. Both the principal and vice principal of
Matthew’s Hall found my work to be unique and inspiring and soon arrangements
had been made that would see me putting together three classes that would see
the creation of three fun canvases.
After these workshops were completed, I was
asked to put together another workshop for the next school year. It was at this time when the ideas I found
while in Nunavut came into being…
The school’s principal wanted me to put
together a workshop especially for the foreign exchange students who would be
attending the 2007 – 2008 school year.
There were 26 students in total, from grades 2 up to grade 8. I would visit the school once a month for
seven months and teach three classes each month with each of the grades.
Each of these three classes was broken down
into two portions. The second half of
each class was to be the painting portion where the students would work on
their individual canvases that would create the ‘frames’ needed for the animation
film.
During the first portion of the first class, we
talked about the concepts of animation so that the students would be able to
understand how their individual painting would eventually be used to create our
animation film. Using drawing paper, I had
the students create their own animation film.
The paper was divided into eight boxes and the students had to draw
something that would change from box to box.
Since we were also talking about the wonders of life on Earth, I thought
that it would be appropriate to have the students create images that would show
something growing from a seed into plant.
Most of the students drew pictures showing a flower growing big and tall
and full of colour.
During the first portion of the second class,
the students and I discussed the wonders of water. We talked about the difference between salt
and fresh water. We discussed the water
cycle and shared concerns about how pollution is now a part of this important
cycle. And then we talked about animals
that live in the water and chatted about how each animal lives in a unique
environment and how each environment provides food and shelter for these
animals.
Since the students were creating paintings that
had already been designed, I wanted to give them another art opportunity where
they could use their own imaginations to create an image. I handed out a drawing sheet that had a
simple image of a turtle on it. The
students’ assignment was to create a living environment for the turtle.
Most of the drawings that were created showed
the turtle underwater, surrounded by other fish with plants and rocks on the
bottom of the ocean floor. A few
students really used their imaginations and created a drawing showing the
turtle on a sandy beach, moving towards the water. All the drawings were amazing!
I always like to share with my students the
fact that almost anything can be turned into art and so we began the third
class discussing how we can create art on our dinner plates by arranging the
food in fun ways. We talked about how
you can walk down the street in an artful way and this topic got us talking
about music and dance. Soon I had my
guitar in hand and the students smiled as I filled the room with a fun melody.
Since we had been talking about and drawing
images of turtles, I thought that it would be fun to teach the students how to write
lyrics for a song… and so the topic was turtles!!!
We learned how to use the art of song writing
to share stories with others. Our song
spoke about how we feel about turtles, their shapes and colours, where they
live, what they do and how they need protecting…
The Turtle Song
I think turtles are great
They’re big and round just like a plate
They live in the water most of the time
I think turtles are swell
Blues and green colour their shells
They live in the water most of the time
Turtles need more room
Away from cars that zoom
They live in the water most of the time
They hunt in the water
They play in the water
And they bath in the sunshine the rest of the
time
I remember the first time that my students and
I sang this song. The first time we sang
it, the students’ voices were barely audible.
The second time we sang it, I encouraged them… by example… to sing
louder and after a few more times I had the students shouting so that we could
be heard in the hallways. And we were!
The principal came into the room with a few
other teachers and their faces were full of smiles. At the end of our song, they clapped very
loudly and my students grinned from ear to ear.
At the end of this program, I had 26 individual paintings that would soon be used to create a 10 second long video. Seven months worth of work for 10 seconds of film!!!!
I met many other teachers during this time and
one of them offered to help me create this film… which is a good thing since I
didn’t have any equipment or computer programs to do this. We met at his house on several occasions and
soon the film ‘Earth and Moon and Sun’ was almost complete… it just needed a bit
of music to make it more enjoyable to watch.
I went to visit my music teacher. He had a recording studio in his basement and I was glad to receive his donation of time and expertise as we recorded and looped together a couple of short ‘ditties’ that I had created with my guitar. These two recordings are used in the first two sections of my video.
The third section of my video was a bit longer
and I thought that it would be nice to use a song that most people are familiar
with. Since I love peace so much, I
decided to use Cat Steven’s ‘Peace Train’.
Finally – all the bits and peaces had been put
into place and my very first Youtube video was complete…
Jim Kogelheide
2015
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