A team of ceramic art students from Cardiff School of Art And Design travelled to the Green Man Festival to make a Cob sculpture. Their live -in-the-mud report was delayed but we’re thrilled to have the more today.

The first post appeared here: Cardiff Ceramics in the Field – Post 1

Day Four | Wednesday 19 August

Jack McGonigle

The rain poured!

We made a start at the initial layer of the red dragon which was to have three layers, each layer using a slightly different cob mix, from a high content of coarse sand to help structure and bulk out the form, to finer sand allowing more subtle modelling to take place.

The rain helped our stomping the cob but it was hard work, five of us undertook the job so that there was a constant pile to use for sculpting. We agreed it would be a good idea to have some of the dragon complete and some of the dragon with the straw skeleton showing to narrate our progression and give kids and adults more than just decorating to do!

Jane Plahe

Rain in torrents. Took a long lunch break to warm up. The white cob was easier to stomp, but horrendously sticky as the rain continued. Found that if we pressed it out onto a layer of straw it would hold together better for covering the form of the dragon. Got most of him covered with first layer, then moved tents around to make the site look tidier and more professional, but it is difficult, especially in the wet, to keep things tidy.

Day Five | Thursday 20 August

Jack McGonigle

It was a shock about mid afternoon as a flood of kids came running over to help us. That’s what’s so great about the Green Man festival. Almost all the kids are willing to get stuck in a help with just about anything. It was a big shock after a quite quiet start to the week. It was expected to pick up as all the festival goers arrive on the Thursday, mostly in the evening.

Due to it being our first event I don’t think we were quite ready and some things weren’t as controlled as they should have been. Going back to the campsite, shattered, we knew that the next day would be even more hectic and we would have to be on the ball.

Meg Beamish

Once the festival got busier and people became interested in what we were doing, the work felt much more rewarding. Helping children to create with cob and watching them really become absorbed in a creative task was amazing. I feel that children are often discouraged from messy activities, and so being a part of a project that not only educated the public about cob but also allowed children to create freely without the worry of mess was fantastic.

We had the dilemma of how much creative freedom to give the public and how much constraints we would apply with our dragon designs, it is a hard line to draw, but I feel we made some good compromises which allowed our designs to remain but also had the addition of texture that was added by the public.

Day Six | Friday 21 August

Isabella Bilstein

As we had been stomping cob, bundling hay and modeling dragons for 5 days already, we welcomed the audience participation over the weekend hugely. Our enthusiasm was still great but when the power in our legs was fading the kids took over the leading role on the tarpaulin.

Community art projects are an area of great importance in which I want to place my self after I finish university. I already knew that before being part of the Green Man – Dragon building. However I had mostly been working with adults in the past. The most significant experience was to teach ceramics at Trinity Methodist Church on Newport road (Cardiff), which is a drop in center for refugees and asylum seekers. To work with children is different. I noticed, most of all the very young helpers we had were able to get into that “creative zone” very easily. All artists know it to be absolutely essential for the making process and yet sometimes near to impossible to get into.

I started wondering what the reason for this is. The real flow of creativity is achieved only when I manage to blend out most of the external impressions from my surroundings. To see or perceive something beautiful and inspiring may help me to get into the “creative zone” but it is not what feeds the flame that is creation. It is sustained by the opening of the barriers that separate the “outside” world as we perceive it from the impulse for creation, the externalization of ideas that had previously slumbered in our subconscious.

The reason for this may be that young children, most of all pre-school age, still perceive their environment – and themselves as part of it – in a different way than adults do. It is easier to blend out worries and fully immerse in the process of making when one has not yet consciously faced any existential fears. To be at peace with the world means to be able to forget about it.

This purity and innocence, even ignorance are the traits that make children true artists. They can channel the internal impulse and give expression to that what inspired the making in an unhampered way.

Day Seven | Saturday 22 August

Jane Plahe

Today we must take the sculpture down. It has to be gone by 11 o’clock tomorrow. We decided to work late, if necessary, and take down at 3 o’clock. It is the first really nice day for a while, and there were lots of people wanting to model.

I also suggested making dragon eggs out of the cob for kids to take home. Will incise with a simplified line representation of the dragons.

Story-time was very busy, and the fire bowls that were lit to coincide with the end of the story worked beautifully. Relaxing day, modelling and chatting to participants. The size of the dragons have led to them being the setting/context for lots of fantasy action, with their story re enacted with passengers sat on board! The lovely cob absorbs the suns heat and is strong enough to be climbed on, and the straw base gives them a lovely, sprigy, skin-like resilience.

 

Thanks to all the Cardiff team for this fantastic blog from their community work at Green Man. There was lots more of their ideas that we couldn’t fit onto our site. There’s more information about their work here:

Ceramics at Cardiff Met

Cardiff School of Art and Design: BA Ceramics