A school and community project using weaving to brighten a town.
Back March 2020 fibre artist Lanny Mackenzie worked with kids at Spring Terrace Public School near Orange to create colourful new artworks for the school area.
The $3000 funding was received by the Spring Terrace Public School P&C
The plan of the art workshops was to theme around local birdlife and the community. Art installations will be painted, created and woven. A wall mural, totem poles and nesting art installations will be permanently incorporated into the school gardens.
Lanny facilitated three weaving workshops and wrote (on her Facebook page):
“We started with coiling small baskets (well some of the kids baskets kept on growing so in the end they weren’t so small anymore) I loved how they just dived in and absolutely absorb new concepts new techniques and see things as new challenge , no fear no retribution ‘just have a go’ attitude to any art topics.”
“The next project was working with various woolly materials to create God’s eyes than adapting the same techniques to creating mandalas from recycled bike wheels. Then using various collected donated salvaged materials, the kids created their waste2art bike wheels woven wall woven to their tennis court fence.”
Images below by Lanny Mackenzie.
As this was an extra-curricular, community project a good collection of teachers, parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles came along to help on the day of the workshops then at home with finishing the wool mandalas.
Luckily this part of the project finished just before the #covid19 #stayathome period started.
Lanny says “Stay safe everyone and we’ll continue on our ‘teepee’ & woven bird sculpture project when school comes back.”
Learn more about the artist on her Facebook page
The Country Arts Support Program is a small grants program of the NSW Government administered (up until the 2020 round) by Regional Arts NSW with support from the regional arts development organisations.