A few weeks ago, as a sort of trailer for this post, I published a single drawing I had made of the school where I work. Now the full set……
Night School
I have worked at Maasland College in Oss, the Netherlands for more than twenty years. I teach, I paint in my own studio at home, I draw when I travel, and yet in all that time I have never made a drawing of my workplace. Time for a change! A few months ago I started with a first drawing. Happy with the result, I continued. It then became a series of nine drawings of different corners of the school, based on photographs I took early on winter mornings when it was dark outside and the corridors were empty, almost, you could say, a kind of Night School.
Night School
The school community will be able to see the exhibition firsthand, everyone else will hopefully enjoy the digital version here.
They are a little different to the images that I normally make, but certainly form a good set. You can find these drawings and other series of my studio work at my recently renovated website:
I draw quite a bit. Whenever I travel one of my drawing books travels with me. In my studio work I plan and prepare using drawings (on paper or digitally) to plot the way ahead. Yet in we’ll over twenty years working in education I have never turned my attention towards my working environment in the form of drawing it.
A while back I decided it might be an interesting challenge to pick up, and so a series of drawings began. I’m still working on the series. I don’t think they are ever going to become more than a series of drawings; I’m not expecting to take them into a series of paintings. But they are starting to become something of a ‘complete set’ in my view.
In many ways they are fairly detached from the paintings I make. Although they do share a certain geometric quality. The architecture of the buildings l work in have plenty of interesting angles and lines. Maybe that’s what kept me interested while I have been drawing.
A full display of the series, online, and quite possibly within the school is likely to follow quite soon, but while I’m finishing things off, let me put this first on of the series out there as a taster
The 75th anniversary of the school where I work has been celebrated this year. Reason enough for a whole series of events and activities to mark the occasion. Without doubt though, this weekend was the big one. An afternoon and evening filling reunion that in the end was attended by close to two thousand ex-pupils and staff as well as many of those currently teaching.
I’ve taught at the school for over twenty years and so have been looking forward to the event. I’ve done my part in the preparation work designing posters, display boards documenting the history of the school and coordinating the production of a celebratory artwork.
But I must admit to not being quite sure how I would experience such a mass event of ex-pupils ranging in age from their early twenties, up to a much more select group over the age of seventy.
After my twenty plus years of teaching at the school, I was trying this week, to puzzle out just how many different children I have taught over the years. I’m not completely sure, but I think the total probably lies somewhere between 2500 and 3000. Obviously, they weren’t all going to show up, but a reasonably number could be expected. How would that be? How many would I recognize and how many names would I be able to drag up from the area of memory where pupils’ names seem to pile up in what feels like an incredibly unsorted fashion?
Looking back on the evening I don’t think that I did too badly. I got some names and failed with others! I recognized so many of the pupils I’ve taught even with well over a decade having passed in many cases.
Was it a good experience? Yes absolutely, although at times quite overwhelming. It did me good to be talking with ex-pupils and hear them recount a small detail of something you said during a lesson back in 2010 that they still remember and has caused them to ponder and think about it on numerous occasions since. That is what you are in education for, those seeds you can sow and experiences you can give! One thought I often share with pupils is that teaching art and culture at secondary school level is about giving a little baggage that they will be able to make use of for a lifetime. One ex-pupil at the reunion said he remembered me saying it and admitted to being a little sceptical as a fifteen-year-old at the time. But his summer on a visit to Rome and walking through a museum there, he returned in his mind to the lessons. He found he had a little perspective, a little knowledge that allowed him to find his way into a particular artwork.
Another reminisced about the group artwork we made based of Goya’s third of May painting, another recounted a project that focussed on the Dutch coast. These are the nuggets of knowledge, experience and enjoyment that get carried away. The art lessons are in so many educational contexts the ‘odd-ball’ lessons. They’re different of virtually all the other subjects on the pupils’ timetables. But that ‘otherness’ is the very reason why they should be there and be taken seriously in every school context. They offer pupils a different way to work, to think and to experience the world.
In education a lot is written about peer group pressure. Generally when it gets mentioned it is very much in a negative context. It’s linked to pupils under-performing because of the influence of others or children being led astray because they don’t want to stand out from the crowd.
These sorts of examples are recognizable to anyone who works in education.
However peer group pressure can have a sort of flip side. Let’s leave all the negative connotations behind and call the flip side The power of the crowd. A winning football or hockey team gets something of this quality, people are swept along on its success, individuals within the team are lifted up by their achievement and share in the achievements of others in the team. We see glimpses of these sorts of qualities in education from time to time, but for me is difficult to imagine anything to match the effects of the music, song, dance and drama project that we have visiting our school this week.
A group known as the Young Americans visit our school every two years. It is a group of about forty or so performing arts students, principally from the U.S. but also from a large number from other countries around the world. They visit for three days and work for that time with all our bilingual second and third classes (ages thirteen to fifteen), normally a total of around 180-200 pupils.
During two and a half days of intensive workshops they put together with the Young Americans, a performance of music, dance and song that is presented to a packed makeshift theatre in our sports hall in the afternoon and evening of the third day. For the Young Americans it is a well-practiced and well-oiled format that allows them to integrate all of the pupils into the performance, often with all of them on or around the stage simultaneously. It is for all the pupils an incredible experience.
I am used to having to motivate and engage a class of thirty pupils. Sometimes that’s easy, other days you have to work a lot harder. I am also all too aware that there are odd pupils in classes that in the normal run of things are simply quite difficult to ‘reach’ or quite difficult to motivate. So how is it that they are up there on the stage dancing, singing, smiling and enjoying it with the rest of them?
Well the answer to that lies in the power of the crowd. It starts with the overwhelming enthusiasm of the Young Americans. The pupils really don’t know what’s hit them to start with. They show them just how cool having a go can actually be. They support and encourage, they applaud and put an arm over the shoulder when it’s needed. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Their high fives and shouts of encouragement edge the nervous pupils forward. And before you know what is happening the pupils are joining in, cheering their classmates on. There is a growing belief in the group that they can make something special. Pupils who are normally ‘background’ inhabitants are suddenly discovered, and they find themselves making the giant step from the background, literally into the limelight.
Come the performance in front of 600 parents, family and friends the tension and excitement rise. Suddenly that thirteen year old who has hardly said a word all year in class is on the stage singing a solo, maybe only two lines before someone else takes it over, but she has done it and in doing so performed to a theatre full of onlookers, an achievement she wouldn’t have dreamed of just two days earlier.
What has brought her to this point? Well that is part the sheer enthusiasm of the Young American group, but it is also partly the subtle shift that has occurred in the peer group. They have been swept up in the enthusiasm, the excitement and plain thrill of performing.
As a teacher involved in the arts and cultural education it is fantastic to see. Often I feel there is just a handful of us at school to defend and promote the importance and value that the arts in the curriculum have. Watch one of these shows and a door is opened on the possibilities and crucial role culture, drama, music, art, dance, etc. can have for our young people.
The Young Americans will undoubtedly be returning to our school.
The project in short has involved groups of pupils (aged 14-15) who have completed the following:
Researched and analyzed, a group of artworks from the history of art that in some way have a relationship with one another
Singled out one artwork and wrote a story (in English, their second language) for younger children in which the afore mentioned artwork played a significant role, and in this way is introduced to the younger readers
Produced illustrations to accompany the story
Photographed the images and combined them with the text to produce layouts for each page on their iPad
Printed and bound the book for a finished project
That was the working process, and as my previous post illustrated there has been seen some good work made, the digital layout work being particularly pleasing to see.
The whole project though has today taken its final turn. I went with a group of nine of the pupils and a selection of the books to visit a primary school, De Fonkeling, where they are also working hard to get more English into the curriculum.
Here, my pupils then read the story books to the oldest children at the primary school (aged 11), explained the project and showed the illustrations.
I entered the school with a group of perhaps slightly nervous fourteen and fifteen year olds, but I left with a group who were clearly surprised by the attention that they were given and the rounds of applause that they received at the end of each story. The younger children played their part fully, filling feedback questionnaires about what they had heard and reacting so enthusiastically. All in all, a very rewarding and authentic experience at the end of a long project.
The southern Dutch town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (or Den Bosch) there is currently a large exhibition of the work of the town’s most famous son, Hieronymus Bosch. Works have been gathered for around the world to be displayed in the Noordbrabantsmuseum to mark the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death. For Den Bosch the exhibition really is a big deal as there are normally none of the town’s hero’s works found there and for a few months at least they have been able to amass a considerable set .
Hieronymus Bosch is a much loved artist in art rooms around the world. His complex compositions are filled with endless detail, fantastic places, the most curious creatures, pleasure, suffering, heaven and perhaps most of all, references to hell. There simply is so much to see and explore.
Den Bosch is about tens west of where I teach, in the small Dutch town of Oss. Our local museum, the Jan Cunen, is a whole lot more museum than you might expect to find there. They are savvy enough to know when there is an opportunity to ride someone else’s wave of publicity and that is just what they have done by choosing to align their own programming to a degree with the major event in the neighbouring town. They have even been able to do this by inviting an artist with his own roots in Oss.
The artist concerned is Chris Berens, and has been presented and promoted as an artist drawing on Bosch’s work from 500 years ago. Berens’ work uses some of the visual qualities found in Bosch’s work, an eye for detail and at times huge complexity, but in a more contemporary manner. I have visited the exhibition twice this week with the groups of fifteen and sixteen year olds that I teach. The work is rich in fantasy elements but misses the background religious messages that lie under the surface in Bosch’s work. Technically the work is also rather different being built up of multitudes of manipulated computer prints and hand applied ink work that bring a considerable intensity to the finished work.
The link below gives a little insight into his working practice:
My pupils have enjoyed their visits this week and once again have been quite surprised at the cultural offerings that the local museum can offer. The complexity and rich fantasy element in Berens’ work is particularly engaging in the eyes of the pupils, at least when they pause long enough in front on a single work to give themselves time to unpack some of the riches to be found there. It is no secret that patience not the strongest point of an average fifteen year old!
Bosch’s work is accessible to children and young people on several levels and will continue no doubt to be drawn on by art teachers around the world. In this context, and as an interesting contemporary parallel, Chris Berens’ work is also worth a visit. The technical approach in his use of collage and mixed media is an aspect I will be drawing on in the coming weeks with my classes.
I do like a bit of good street art. You round a corner in an unfamiliar town or city to discover a permanent or temporary addition to the urban scene. Much of the temporary variety can be very sharp and engaging in its message, have a social or political point to make or simply be very funny. In comparison the permanent variety can often seem rather dull and unamusing, be it a statue of some local hero or oblique reference to the history of the area. Rarely does humour seem to have played a role in choosing the artwork to be displayed.
The same can surely not do said of the newly unveiled public artwork in the Dutch town of Oss where I work. At least I assume that there must have been at least wry glint in the eyes of the commission who decided that this artwork should be placed between the railway station and the large chemical and pharmaceutical business on the other side. I had seen it being built for a week or two as I waited each day for my train to arrive. Initially I had assumed it was some sort of bicycle storage facility. But as the top section went on it became apparent that Oss too had made a piece of street art that celebrated a significant detail of local history. But it was a rather unexpected reference, leaving me to suppress my laughter as I boarded my train.
The aforementioned pharmaceutical company used to be known as Organon and was a major producer of the contraceptive pill, and it was this part of local history that is being landmarked. What had been made was a fourteen by seven metre pill strip, complete with twenty one press out ‘bubbles’ for the tablets. It wasn’t until last week that I saw the piece in its full glory. For twenty one days the lights under one after the other of the bubbles is extinguished, thus counting the month away. Finally, after dark in the ‘fourth week’ all the lights burn red, subtle it certainly isn’t! The council had chosen for a giant, glow in the dark, animated pill strip!
When seeing it all light up on a dark evening up you have to kind of admire the silliness of it. They can’t have been too serious about it…..can they?
Rather conveniently I am actually dealing with street art in all its forms in a series of lessons with some of my classes at the moment. We will undoubtedly be talking about the pill strip at some point. It ticks many street art boxes, sight specific, content and location connected, surprising, eye catching and funny….although I still have my doubts as to whether this was actually the intention.
My pupils have enjoyed their visits this week and once again have been quite surprised at the cultural offerings that the local museum can offer. The complexity and rich fantasy element in Berens’ work is particularly engaging in the eyes of the pupils, at least when they pause long enough in front on a single work to give themselves time to unpack some of the riches to be found there. It is no secret that patience not the strongest point of an average fifteen year old!
Peter Sansom 