Hats Off... Redlands College art students...

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One of the year 10 classes joined me yesterday for a session of monotypes and photographic transfer techniques. Both very simple processes but as always with printmaking it is often the most fundamental responses that are capable of evoking the most memorable images. I was conscious of relaying methods that extend within my own practice that recognises the poetic engagement with process and allowing the choice of medium to inform the thinking and the 'aboutness' of their final works. Not that they had a lot of time to 'resolve' anything. The session was very much focused on responding. 

At rare times throughout my teaching career I have recognised a certain nexus of creative intention that is suddenly evident within a particular group dynamic. It is a collective energy that simply arrives within a workshop or class situation where a high standard of individual creative responses suddenly mirrors the collective intentions of the group. In some strange way that I am unable to fully articulate the individual and the collective is transformed into a singular entity. It can be a rare event but yesterday this small class of students responded in ways that were quite inspiring.

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