Students from Penrice enjoy a day of Art! (click image to enlarge)
Year 10 Art students from Penrice Community College have been to Cornwall College St Austell this week to create a traditional double sided African mask.
Their visit was organised as the school and college continue to work closely together on curriculum content and to try and highlight the enormous employment potential from studying Art and Design.
The students worked in two groups to create one large Janus mask, the African masks are part of traditional ceremonial costume. They are used in religious and social events to represent the spirits of ancestors or to control the good and evil forces in the community.
Student Luis Mitchell Da Silva, 14, from Penrice said: “It has been a really good day, I am keen to study art in the future and today has given me a really good insight into a lot of the different artistic areas.”
The students learnt many new techniques creating the mask including 3D sculpture in creating the frame of the mask, textiles using batik technique to decorate the mask and graphic design where students manipulated images of the mask and added text so they had a real 2D representation of what the mask meant to them.
Lucy Elliott, art teacher at Penrice said, “The day has been great for the students, it is brilliant to see them using different techniques and having to work in groups. They really love it here and I know a lot are planning to come in the future.”
The mask will now be assembled at the college and will be presented to the school in the coming weeks to have on display. Trudi Port, programme manager for the arts commented: “The day was fabulous and I believe the students took away an enormous amount. They worked incredibly hard for the whole day and the mask is going to look great.”
