This past spring, the curator of Seymour Art Gallery called and asked if I would be interested in running their summer art camp. Her idea was to incorporate the exhibit that would be showing at that time into the theme of the camp.
We were both quite excited to realize it would be focused on the artwork of artist Ben Lim, as he was an extremely kind and generous artist that we both knew would be a perfect match with the children. The curator spoke to Ben and everything was arranged to have him speak to the children about his processes and work, alongside a gallery tour by the curator.
My job was to come up with projects that would correspond with the work and processes to inspire the kids to make their own unique creations.
Unfortunately Ben passed away before the camp started, I remember hearing the shocking news and just feeling numb. Such a great loss to our local art community, the kids who would now never know just how special a person Ben was and of course, his family and friends.
Luckily the curator was lucky enough to count Ben among her close and personal friends and so once the exhibit was hung, she was able to not only walk me through the art piece by piece but also share pinpointed details to Ben's processes in the tremendous amount of work shown.
One of those processes was his unique style of printmaking on clay tablets.
Ben Lim
They were a unique process that I knew very little about other than I knew it was important to figure out a way to share this process with the children at camp. I wracked my brain at some way to simplify the process for a wide age range of children that would give them the sense of creating prints with this method in an engaging way that was age appropriate for them to do independently.
I thought about plaster and semi-hard air dry clay but knew they would be too porous to hold the ink. I studied endless videos online of artist using clay tablets for printmaking, along with reading lots of different online articles and still I was stumped.
Then I did a collograph printmaking project in the fairy themed art camp and I had an "ah ha" moment watching how much enjoyment the kids got out of building their plates.
What if they kids built up a printing plate using modeling clay? My thought was the oils in the clay would resist the ink in order to allow a print to be pulled.
I gave it a try.
I took two golf ball size balls of modeling clay. The first one I rolled out flat to about a quarter of an inch thickness. Then I rolled out the other ball of clay to about the same thickness and began to cut out shapes to create an animal and adhere to the first slab of clay.
I had noticed in all of Ben Lim's work that he had spent a lot of time taking animal forms down to shape, so I knew this was something I wanted to have the kids work on during the week's camp anyway. Once I had the basic shape of the animal on the modeling clay plate, I began to carve into the shape to create a design, adding bits of clay as necessary and then carving again.
Finally the moment of truth, would it work when it came time to pull the print?
It did! In fact it worked even better than my expectations. I was so excited that I could hardly wait to share the project with Seymour Art Gallery's curator and sent a picture of the sample to her. She also shared in my excitement that we had a project that was a child friendly version of Ben's printmaking process. I'd like to think that Ben was also smiling down on us too.
I gave the project a try with the four day animal camp I was currently running that week.
They loved it.
Just like the kids in the fairy camp when building their collographs, creating the plates was a huge hit.
They spent over two hours making the plates and then pulling prints, far more engaging than I had ever anticipated! Unfortunately I ran this project on the last day of camp so my pictures are less than ideal from the animal art camp but needless to say I was even more excited about doing the project in the upcoming camp at the gallery.
Ben Lim
The curator actually had one of Ben's clay plates to share with the kids. She went over the fine details with them he had carved into the plate. The kids were completely engaged and shared their own observations with her. Then they each created their own plates to use with the same method I had done earlier when testing out the project.
Once they were happy with their plate, they painted on the inks with a large paintbrush.
Then myself and the other artist who was working with me gave them a piece of damp cotton paper to hand rub over the plate. We did ask the kids to let one of us also give the paper a final rub prior to them pulling the print- just to make sure the image was on the paper.
And of course just like with any printmaking process, the kids were mesmerized with the aspect of surprise that only printmaking can provide as they discovered what was on their papers as they pulled the print.
The best part was that they could add or take away clay as they wanted based on what they discovered on their pulls, which opened up a great dialog on artist proofs.
"springtime birdie", 12 year old
I had each child start out by creating one print they were happy with in black.
Once they were happy with their black print, they were free to add touches of color to aspects of the plate for printing. As you can see from the above prints, there was a lot of printmaking going on, what with artist proofs and then the number of final prints created.
And some kids discovered in the end that their proofs were one of their final favorites.
"hummingbird", 7 year old
Thankfully I had cut A LOT of paper in anticipation after watching how engaged the children were in the project the week prior.
crane, 9 year old
To my delight, the children were not only adding details to their animals but had also taken to heart what the curator had shared in regards to the details Ben had added to the outside areas of the clay.
How awesome is this crane? The artist completely captured the essence of Ben's animals after being inspired by his work.
"the flaming enfurance", 8 year old
The biggest challenge for the kids was finding just the right amount of water to add to the ink in order to paint it on their plates. Too much water and it just beaded up on the plate.
"bird of the rok" 7 year old
Not enough water and the ink would be too thick. These were mistakes I let each child make in order to really understand the process and I'm happy to say each child quickly found the "sweet spot" rather fast on the perfect amount of ink for the plates.
"no necked bird" 8 year old
I am a firm believer in letting children make mistakes with their artwork and trusting in their abilities to find a solution on their own. These two pieces are a case in point. Unfortunately her first AP is missing but when she had finished carving all her details into her bird shape, the neck of the bird was much lower than the rest of the body. Although I knew upfront this would leave a gaping hole in the print, I let her make this discovery on her own.
So she added more clay to the neck area and carved again, creating the above print called, "no necked bird". The title obviously inspired by the first print where the bird was in fact missing a neck. She was still not happy so added some more clay and tried again. This time something magical happened.
"bird with a bow" 8 year old
Her bird print looked like it was wearing a bow tie! Not what she was expecting, but a brilliant surprise that she was happy with and yet again a lesson in embracing mistakes and letting them take you down unexpected paths to greatness. We had such a fun time giggling at different stories about why the bird was wearing a bow around his neck. She was tickled pink at her final results.
"turtle" 7 year old
"turtle" 7 year old
It was hard to pick just two of this artists' prints. He created some really beautiful color arrangements during his exploration of a turtle.
bird, 8 year old
8 year old
I found it interesting that this artist chose to present her final prints in more than one direction. The color print was an afterthought at the end of the project. When she was finished with all her prints, I suggested she add the remaining white ink on her palette over all the colored inks left from prior prints that were still on her clay plate. When she pulled the print, she deemed it her very favorite.
whale, 6 year old
whale, 6 year old
And if you think this project might not be great for the younger age set, this six year old will prove you wrong. Fiercely independent, he listened intently to suggestions but refused any help whatsoever, taking what myself and the other adult artist said and then processing it in his own way. One of the things the curator had pointed out in some of Ben's artwork were the 'dinners' in some of the animals' tummies. An observation this little artist processed into his own work with the fish in the whale's stomach. He also obviously had been listening intently when the curator was discussing the edges of Ben's clay tablets as this boy also cut away some of his outside edges and scratched into the outside area to create a sense of water.
Pretty amazing stuff for a six year old.
And finally, (I swear there is an end to this post), you might of noticed there is an additional signature by each child created with their own unique chop. During the gallery tour with the curator, the kids had a great time finding Ben's chop in each of his artworks which was wonderful since their first project of the week was to create their own chops to sign all their artworks throughout the week with!
Simply created with a bit of scrap wood, some craft foam, scissors and strong glue, each child created a symbol they felt most represented them to use during the week.
It was easy to also carve into the foam with a dull pencil for added small details. To say the kids loved these chops would be an understatement and each child thoughtfully figured out how to incorporate it at the end of each project.
flamingo. 12 year old
Look at how this artist incorporated it into her print?! It has to be my favorite of all the applications during the week.
12 year old
The best part of the project? The clay tablets were works of art by themselves at the end of the project. Although it was decided early on to recycle the clay, in the future I will probably mount them as a final artwork for the kids to take home too.
But if you wanted to reuse the clay for future projects, you simply need to wash off the ink and store it for another day.
I could not be more happy with this technique. The kids enjoyed this process immensely too and I cannot wait to find new applications to try with future classes inspired by what happened in these two camps while exploring this art form.
And I'd like to think the person tickled the most with the success of this project would be Ben. How fitting that the children would find such joy in a project inspired by a man who always had a warm smile on his face.
And silly me for initially thinking the kids would not realize what a marvelous man Ben was just because they would never have the opportunity to meet him. Nothing could of been further from the truth as each child got to know Ben well during the week through the lasting legacy of his art.
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