Exploring the amazingly magical Iceland this week on the Children’s Storytelling and Art Course, where an elf expert is consulted before routing a new road through rock piles that may be elf habitats, and trolls are everywhere in the landscape if you know where to look.
Elf Queen by Bethan
Troll by George
Trolls by Theo
Elf Ship by Iolo
Satlech by George
Ghost Mazes by George and Caius, and poltergist by Paddy.
Travelling back in time to Ancient Greece this week, the children of the Storytelling and Art course heard about the many chimeric creatures that inhabit the myths: Minotaur, Satyr, Harpy, Sphinx, and Chimera. Inspired, they created their own hybrid monsters, cutting up old magazines to produce these fantastic collages.
In their passports, participants of the Storytelling and Art from Around the World course inserted a picture of themselves as a character of their choosing complete with name, magical attributes, and planet of origin.
Using coloured acetates, windows were made to look in upon various characters created in response to folk stories. This week: Il Gatto Mammone, or The Tale of the Cats in which a girl tugs up a cauliflower revealing a large tunnel into the earth that leads her to a house of cats and adventures therein.
![20181016_165905[1]](https://sarahjfeatherstone.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/20181016_1659051.jpg?w=672&h=328 "20181016_165905[1]")
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For the past five months, I’ve been a creative practitioner in a primary school, working with a storyteller to produce a record of the stories about the local area surrounding the school. We have covered a vast time period, from the Bronze age, right up to the mid-19th century. I have been using printmaking with the children to produce flags and banners to decorate a structure in the grounds now known as the ‘Tŷ unnos’, or ‘One-Night house’. In old Welsh law, it was stated that anyone who could build a house on common ground in a night, with a fire in the hearth by morning could own the land as a freehold.
Banners and flags are interspersed all around the Tŷ unnos, drawn and printed by the children and myself in response to the tales. The map below is a record of traditional Welsh myths that Lowri shared with the children.
![20180131_153529[1]](https://sarahjfeatherstone.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/20180131_1535291.jpg?w=383&h=480 "20180131_153529[1]")
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Some stunning paintings made in response to two stories from Africa today on the Children’s Art and Storytelling course that I am running at Llanover Hall Arts Centre. ‘Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky’ – a Nigerian folktale, and ‘The Lion’s Whisker’ – an Ethiopian Folktale.
Elements by Jim age 9
African landscape by Paddy, age 9
Camouflaged Lion by Iolo, age 6
Sun by Paddy, age 9
Witch Doctor by George, age 7
Witch Doctor Dance by Jim, age 9
Elements II by Jim age 9
African Landscape By George, age 7
Preliminary Drawings:
Lion, by George; Winged Lion with Horn by Paddy, Mask by Paddy, Compound of Sun and Moon for the Water by George, Sun and Water by Iolo.
Here are some of my favourite art works by children I have been working with over the past months. They have been responding to old folk stories from many cultures.
The Lady of the Lake (Wales)
Maui’s Magic Fishing Hook (Maori)
The Fox Maiden (Korea)
Guardian Totems (Korea)
Medusa (Greece)
Gelert (Wales)
Baba Yaga (Russia)
Blodeuwedd and Twm Carnabwth (Wales)
Aztec Gods (Mexico)
The Bird with Two Heads, and Ganesha (India)
Huitzilopochtli (Mexico)
As part of my role as creative practitioner at Ton yr Ywen Primary school, I arranged for two groups of Y2 children to visit Cardiff Print Workshop as part of the Lead Creative Schools Project. As we have been using cyanotype printing to create banners and flags from drawings of the Welsh folk stories the children have been hearing from Lowri, I wanted to show them the magical cyanotype process, and let them have a go at making some pictures.
First they arranged a selection of objects onto the specially coated paper and we put them under the UV light for a few minutes.
When the pictures were ready, the children could watch them come magically to life in the water.
Voilà! The finished work.
