Save The Arts - Shrigley
An ex student sent me a petition to save the arts - well worth a look. Visit Save The Arts for more info.
Julian Beever's accessible 3D pavement art always get a favourable response in my classroom, so I look forward to showing my students this video of the making of The Crevasse by Edgar Mueller. While it removes some of the mystique surrounding this form of trompe l'oeil, time-capture vids like this are useful in subtly overcoming objections to sustained drawing - 'instant' results generally being the preferred route!
Having tried a teeny bit of paper cutting, I'm in awe of this beautiful stop motion animation from Andersen M Studio for the NZ Book Council. My friend Sarah McIntyre posted this vid the other day, as tweeted by Neil Gaiman, so it's already garnered a lot of comment about the place. The voice over is in the evocative spirit of Gee's writing, and it made me think about my own association with some of the locations mentioned... living in the inner city suburb of Kingsland, taking a shortcut each day across those tracks to work on Mountain Road, opposite the castle-like prison, (Mt. Eden), just downhill from Auckland Grammar where the boys enjoy a lofty view of the prison yard.... The selected text is so rich visually. Yeah, I love all the NZ scenery, but it's somewhat refreshing not to see a mountain/river/lake in this advertisement. I'd only been to Auckland once as a kid, and apart from the harbour bridge, my main visual cue was the prison. Which to a kid is more like a castle, turrets and all. It's an unusual NZ landmark, and it makes a superb paper sculpture. Oh, and as for the delicious voice over, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that's Alan Dale, (aka Jim from Neighbours, also in Lost, West Wing, Ugly Betty etc) reading the script in his native Kiwi accent. (OK, I could get shot down....)
