21 Sep 2022
ART JAMMING WITH STUDENTS AT STUDIO RED
On the morning of 9th September, our studio at Sam Mansion was transformed into a vibrant art jamming space, as 35 spunky high school students from Dalat International School visited for an arts field trip.
One of our studio team designers, Cedric, explaining the technique of staining tea bags to the attentive students.
Students from the Trust group brainstorming concepts for their artwork, guided by Chee Chung, one of our studio team designers.
The morning kicked off with a short introduction and welcome presentation by the studio team. We explained the research and creative process behind our studio’s art projects, and also showed the students pictures of our artworks created using different materials and mediums, such as gyotaku (fish stamping), stained tea bag portraits, soil canvases and so on.
It was definitely fun to see their fascinated reactions! Some of the more curious students raised their hands and asked questions, ranging from the serious (‘did you use dye to stain the teabags?’) to the more light-hearted (‘did you eat the fish afterwards?’).
Next, it was time for our guests to get a hands-on experience of making art themselves! We divided them into groups and gave them two hours to create an original art piece, using the technique of stenciling and spray painting on a bamboo weave canvas. To make things even more interesting, each group was assigned an emotion- ‘Bliss’, ‘Trust’, ‘Confusion’ and ‘Anger’-to inspire their creative process.
It was interesting how each of the groups brainstormed their assignment differently. For instance, a student from the group Trust said thoughtfully, “When I eat something, I trust that it’s not bad. When I sit on a chair, I trust that it doesn’t fall. Maybe we could all think of things that we trust and sketch it out?” With that, the team grabbed their pencils and started mapping out key words on paper to help visualize their emotion.
The Bliss group came up with a unique collage of motifs and symbols to portray their assigned emotion.
Likewise, the Confusion group had a creative process that involved making random doodles of physical features (“Put the eyes on the head, make them wider and scared. And maybe draw a pair of hands!”) Their final visual was of a person navigating a maze of tangled paths, with arrowheads pointing in different directions. However, in contrast to the first two groups, Bliss took a more practical and methodical approach, opting to search online for reference images. They also made use of technical design aspects such as silhouette, composition and negative space, to create a collage of motifs surrounding the Chinese characters for ‘Bliss’.
A disorienting tapestry of colours produced by students from the group Confusion.
In the last hour, the students took their stencils outdoors to 'paint' their cut-out images onto bamboo weaves. Some groups made impressive final touches, choosing specific colours to heighten the emotions in their artwork. The Anger group, for example, used a palette of red, orange and yellow and black to depict a human silhouette unleashing its wrath and fury, whereas Confusion, true to their emotion, bombarded their canvas with a haphazard array of colours!
Students from the group Anger chose energizing, vibrant colours to represent their assigned emotion.
When the time came for the students to present their final artwork, we were truly impressed by the high level of skill and creativity reflected in each piece- each group had created masterpieces in their own right! Speaking for myself, it was amazing to see what these teenagers could do with a blank canvas and the freedom to create without having to worry about getting ‘graded’ on their work.
All good things must come to an end, and at the stroke of noon, the 'art jam' ended with a photoshoot and de-briefing session. After exchanging goodbyes and well wishes, our guests took their artworks home with them. It was definitely a fun experience, and we are looking forward to welcoming more young creatives to our studio!