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The Collaborative Clay Dry Season Art immersion short course gave 10 budding potters/ceramic artists the chance to realize the creative possibilities of hand built pottery. Under the expert tutelage of Gerald Clapham, we explored techniques including pinch pots, coiling and slabs. Day one started with hard labour grinding and sieving clay for a Terra Sigillata mixture, a surface slip used to seal and decorate pots by ancient Greeks and Romans. The mix was left to settle for a couple of days before we had to siphon off the usable liquid (yum).

Several days of building followed and individual projects included functional pieces, vases, bottles and plates. More organic forms included seed pods, and tropical flowers. The week of construction culminated in two alternative firings at Studio Elevenlee, Raku firing and smoke firing. Raku firing involved removing pots from the kiln and placing in containers filled with flammable materials such as saw dust and shredded paper. Smoke firing was in a converted steel rubbish bin and involved wrapping pots in a foil sagger filled with flammable materials and Gerald’s concoction of ‘swamp juice’. The danger and uncontrollable nature of these processes just made the results even more special and a real highlight to finish the course.

The recent Adobe courses are CDU we’re both intense and valuable.
As the week went on the learning began to solidify much more and become something useful, not just a big scary unattainable program.
I feel much more confident to create using adobe and look forward applying many aspects of the course artistically and professionally.

The intensive ceramic workshop was a buzz of activity and artist camaraderie from day one. The students led by Gerald Clapham created a wide variety of hand-built ceramics. The course covered an in-depth introduction to Sager ware and the beauty of Terra Sigillata creation and application. The last day and a half were spent at Gerald’s studio, glazing and preparing pots for Sagger, Raku and electric kiln firing. The Sagger method involved wrapping the pots in two layers of foil with a variety of natural combustible materials such as seaweed and coffee, before placing in the kiln. The Raku ware was taken out of the kiln at a very high temperature and placed in a reduction container. This involved lots of exciting flames, billowing smoke, with safety rules and equipment. A big thankyou to Gerald for sharing his studio space and imparting so generously of his time and considerable ceramic knowledge.

Post By: Veronica Hodges
Contact Email: vrhodges@bigpond.com
Date: 19-08-2020 Time: 09:15 pm
Message:
This week long immersion was a thorough introduction for beginners into watercolour techniques. In the course, we learnt a great deal of colour theory, tools, paper and paints to use (and those to avoid), stretching water colour paper to a board, tonal values, flat wash, gradient washes, a variety of techniques to add textures and experiment. The course also enjoyed a morning at East Point to experience en plain air painting and sketching. From this experience we all completed a painting. A morning was also dedicated to spontaneous painting on a variety of papers. This course would suit anyone wanting to get a good grasp of watercolour techniques and painting.

Photoshop & Illustrator Course Reflection – for Korin Lesh, Amanda Rains, and Jane Kennedy

The week was certainly intensive for us. Korin Lesh, Amanda Rains, Jane Kennedy and Samantha Galletly all participated in a week jam packed full of the basics to help us get into Photoshop and Illustrator. Both software packages can be used for graphic design and digital art. Illustrator, we learnt, is a vector based editing software that can be applied to manipulate and create simple graphics that need to be printed or displayed at different sizes. We trialled a number of simple step-by step processes for editing and creating printable graphics. In the sessions related to Photoshop, we learnt how to modify already captured photos right down to individual pixels. We learnt different ways to apply filters, special effects and photo refining tools. Over the course it became apparent that it is so useful to know both programs as they can often be used together. In Photoshop its best not to add any text to an image because it can distort, while it is far easier to transfer edited images into Illustrator and add or manipulate into text there. After this week intensive we are far more familiar with the programs and feel we better understand which software will assist in possible Art projects in the future – although we are keen for more training! The week intensive – although huge- just scrapped the tip of the iceberg of the capabilities of both software packages.
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Image of Bronwyn Packwood in ‘Fantasy Maps’ session at 2019 FoT

Festival of Teaching
Lauren Wilson Bradshaw Primary School, Alice Springs

I had an absolute ball at the Festival of Teaching held this year in Darwin at Palmerston College. I can’t thank Art Educators NT enough for fantastic the opportunity to travel to Darwin this year and attend the festival. The Event was a fantastic day filled with a range of different learning spanning the curriculum as well as two engaging key note speakers.
I attended all four of the Art based workshops. All these workshops were fun, engaging and hands on. Veronica Hodges taught us the art of Gel Printing and how you can make your own gel plates, as well as incorporate a number of different found materials into our printing. Bronwyn Packwood showed us how we can incorporate other curriculum areas, such as history and geography into the art room with her session on fantasy maps. Alison Dowell taught us a new and exciting way to teach drawing portraits for students of all ages -including drawing, collage and mixed media materials. And to finish John Eaton from Oxlades showed us solarfast printing, and we were able to experimenting with a wide range of inks, dyes and mediums.
The event was also a great opportunity for remote art teachers, like me to meet and connect with other art educators in the Territory and be involved in practical art based professional learning. Thank you again Arts Educators NT for the opportunity to attend this event is has been the most valuable Professional development I have attended all year.

This is a fantastic opportunity for teachers to get inside information from Jasmine Jan about what the Territory Wildlife Park has to offer children, art and teachers. AENT members will have free entry to the park. If families or friends want to join, they will need to pay to enjoy the day at their leisure outside of this event. Light refreshments provided. Please bring your own lunch and water – or purchase at the park.
Sunday 29th April free from 9 am until 1 pm

$10 for members
$20 for non-members

https://arteducators.nt.edu.au/product/a-personalised-i…for-aent-members/

Post By: Korin Lesh
Contact Email: korin.lesh@ntschools.net
Date: 13-09-2017 Time: 09:00 am
Message:
I would like to take this opportunity to thank AENT for supporting me in attending the Festival of Teaching in Darwin. It was a stimulating, informative and enriching experience. I had the opportunity to engage professionally with colleagues and contribute to collegial discussions. The workshops I attended gave me new content and teaching strategies that I will implement in my art classes. These experiences helped to broaden my knowledge of the Visual Arts and gave me new skills to improve my practice. As I live remotely having this opportunity to share and spend time with other art teachers was a rich and rewarding experience.
Thank you
Christine Jaya Regan

I very much appreciate the opportunity to attend the Festival of Teaching and meet with other educators, particularly Art educators.

I have been working in remote NT for 3 years now and have not had the opportunity to engage with educators outside of my school. I found attending the workshops gave me the opportunity to reflect on my practice and also in some instances reassure me that I am doing my best to deliver equal opportunities to and have high expectations for my students.

Angelina Naidu

Post By: Korin Lesh
Contact Email: korin.lesh@ntschools.net
Date: 25-08-2017 Time: 06:30 pm
Message:
Come and join us to celebrate the opening of our 2017 members’ exhibition this Fri at DVAA!