Meet the Craftsperson



Mosaic workshop

On Thursday 24th November the 5th and 6th year students were giving the opertunity to go to two workshops with professional craftspeople.

The first craftperson was a ceramics and mosaic artists, Orla Kaminska, who creates artwork for public spaces and peoples homes. Her website ia http://www.orlakaminska.com/ She showed us examples of her finished work and where she got her inspiration from. This was very interesting as we could see where her ideas came from and how she turned them into mosaics. She explained the different types of mosaics, and even had small example for us to pass around.
We then go the opertunity to make our own mosaic , helped along by our artist obviously! Everyone enjoyed working on the project together.

Silk fibre paper making workshop

After the mosaic workshop we went to anoth one called silk fibre paper meking. None of us know what this would be about. We thought paper making might be a bit boring but it deffinately wasnt.  Our artist showed us examples of cvery colourful fabric and paper all made from waste silk fibres. She explained how silk is made by silk worms and even showed us a silk in a cocoon!

2nd yr van gogh sunflowers

2nd Year Van Gogh Inspired Painting Project

Last May I helped my 1st year class plant sunflower seeds. I thaught them how to nurture them over the summer in the hope that we could bring them into school in September and paint them, just like Vincen Van Gogh did!

In September the girls arrived in with these fantastic sunflowers!!

Support Studies

As a class we looked at and discusses two Van Gogh Paintings. Stary Night and Sunflowers. 

Students described what they saw in Van Gogh's work, they looked at the subject matter, media, style and techniques hes used.

Looking at starry night and other Van Gogh paintings student used a viewfinder to select an area of interest to them. Using Oil pastels they drew their selected area mimicking the techniques used by Van Gogh.

Once they had completed this task they began a larger drawing in Oil Pastel of sunflowers.

1st yr Mural Project

Open Spaces Project

Fun Day at Dublin City Council.

Our Ty art class went to visit Dublin City Council arts officers in Civic Offices. The idea of the day was to see how DCC works, how they plan for open spaces and also how they are used. Open Spaces are public areas like St Stephens Green, promenades, parks, empty areas between buildings and train stations.

We met our artists Tara , Joanne, & Michelle. They talked to us about our project and showed us the room where we would be doing our presentation at the end of the project. Next we were split up into 2 groups. Ist group went to the planning office where we were told how people apply for planning permission. We also saw the large books that were used for planning permissin before computers. We also learned how the system works and how you can object to plans. The 2nd group went to the traffic control office. There are 180 cameras all around the city center and on the M5o. That's what they use to control and manage the traffic. During rush hour they can change the times of the traffic lights to help ease congestion. They also showed us the new Real Time Bus system - it's a GPS system which tracks the bus and how long it will be to reach its destination.



Afterwards we went to the conference room, where we had different speakers give us presentations. The first person was Anne O'Brien who is the play officer for DCC. Her job is to listen to the voices of young children and teenagers to see what they want to have in their area, and what they think of their area. Anne asked  us about publc space near where we live. We told her that the park closes early and that there is nowhere to go after that.



Killian who is an architect for DCC looks after buildings that DCC owns. He talked about the spaces between buildings and about transport that was purposed like the underground metro, and also new luas lines. He talked about projects he's been working on in and around Grafton St.

Jeremy who works on the Designing Dublin project  http://www.designingdublin.com/ spoke to us about a project he is working on in Clongriffin which is located near Manor House School. The point of his project was to get people thinking about public spaces and empty buildings in Clongriffin. For example a post-it notice board and turned a hoarding into a blackboard where people could leave there opinions. They also used an empty office space as an art gallery for local children and created a sitting room outside for people to come and chat outside and give their opinions.

We enjoyed finding out how traffic control works and seeing the cameras in action. We were interested in the projects they did Clongriffen because they were different and it was relivent to us because we live near by.

1st Year Graphic Design

     At the beginging of the school year 1st year students learned how to lettering constuction. They gained an understanding of balance, weight, spacing and variations in font. After completing several tasks in lettering construction the students were capable of hand constructing differnt fonts. Each student  then choose a lettering/ logo design and copied it out as best they could. Below are some examples of their work.