We found out that applying tissue paper smoothly over the lanterns was not an easy thing to do. Our hands got sticky, the paper got wrinkly, and the goop wasn’t exactly behaving. The Monday gaggle couldn’t get enough of the goopy goop! I think maybe goop is just a fun word to say!
Olivia: Mine won’t stick!
Rachel: Does it seem like too much goop, not enough goop, or just weirdness?
Olivia: Weirdness.
Jaiden: Both hands should be goopy!
Lainey: Both hands are goopy!
Tiggy: It feels like conditioner!
The playful energy in the room did not lend to perfection and meticulous finicking. The girls were all happy to quickly apply the tissue paper, wrinkles and all, and move onto studio exploration and free time.
***
Anna and Isabel approached their lanterns very playfully, spinning, tossing, and squeezing them as they paper mached the first layer of tissue paper colour into them.
Anna: This is icky!
Rachel: Think of it like hair conditioner!
Anna: But hair conditioner smells good.
Isabel: This feels worse than hair conditioner.
Anna: If you said that we were sticking this on as hair conditioner, I wouldn’t think it was gross.
Isabel’s lantern began as mostly blue, but a new idea, of making a globe brought green into the mix.
Anna: It looks like the earth, and that’s water.
Isabel: Really? Oh, I should make an earth! You know it’s weird, they call Earth Earth, because when you look at it, there’s so much water.
Anna: Thank me when it looks beautiful…
Isabel: It was all her idea, it had nothing to do with me.
Anna: Art cannot be ugly, don’t you know.. It can be, but that’s what you think… In general, art cannot be ugly.
Isabel: We went to the art gallery, with our class. I don’t know how things became art. They say, oh it’s great art! WHAT’S art?
Anna: It wasn’t even art! Well, almost everything is art, but still! It just wasn’t art.
Isabel: It’s just not art! Like anybody could do some of those.
Anna: There was something at the art gallery, like she took a picture of her hand one day and said “ooh I’m gonna put this in the art gallery”.
Isabel: And there was this one where she had a picture of her wallet, and she compared it to her dad’s wallet, and that was BEAUTIFUL! Oh, Oh! How beautiful!!!
Anna: I mean she had a duck shooting license, how is that beautiful?
Isabel: That’s NOT art! There was a section on portraits, and there was a hand with a rope tied all around it, be-aut-i-ful!!!
Anna: What? You call that art? That’s called a picture of a hand.
Isabel: It’s like they’re making fun of art.
Anna went with mostly purple and pink printed tissue paper, but the next class when they went for the splatter paint turned their creations into something else altogether.
I was thrilled by the beauty of the colours that they were creating in their splattering process. Always changing, always evolving as they added more and different colours. Each new colour would cover up the last, and the process was an adventure in itself. The floor itself became a work of art as the paint dripped and strayed from the lanterns. It was fun to watch the girls have so much fun, just letting loose and enjoying themselves with each colour they applied. They didn’t want to stop, and the lanterns became highly evolved globes of melting colour. And then the sparkles came out!!!
Lainey: Mine is VERY drippy. It’s raining COLOUR!
The trick to measuring and cutting all the lengths of ribbon came really easily to Finn. I let him do the necessary thinking about how to find the mid points between the ribbons, and it came very naturally to him. He was able to visualize the thick ribbon wrapping around the balloon, and understood how to space the 8 hanging ribbons right away.
Finn: Because it will connect to here! How many boys or girls have figured that out?