Treeline 2012 Kicks Off at River School Maleny

Treeline 2012 is focused on education and working with young people. Artists  will be be working within selected schools on the Sunshine Coast.
Yesterday the first part of the 2012 Treeline programme got underway when  Renata Buziak and I spent a day at the River School in Maleny.

Renata and I are working with the Year Seven students from the River School on a collaborative project that incorporates cyanotypes (which we did yesterday) and a digital component which we'll do next Monday. John Waldron from Sunshine Coast Council did us the honour of coming to officially start the project and tell the children at River School about the objectives of the Treeline project.

To make the cyanotypes Renata had the children collect natural materials from the bushland and gardens surrounding the school. These were arranged on cloth treated with light sensitive chemicals. When exposed to the sun it turned blue in the parts exposed to the UV light.

The children were encouraged to think about their arrangements and to make work that reflected their feelings about the school's wonderful natural setting.

Then the arrangements on the cloth were laid out in the sun and we waited 10 minutes or so for them to develop. It was a really hot, sunny day and it was only the excitement of the process that kept us from wanting to be indoors or swimming in the creek.

Then it was time to take the cloth inside and wash it under running water for quite a long time. A great activity on a hot day. You have to be quite quick about keeping the sun off the cloth after you remove the objects, so we carried it inside in a black bag.

After a long time washing it was time to hang up our masterpieces. What an amazing thing to see how they turned out.

Cyantotype is quite a simple process and was one of the forerunners of modern photography.
Next week we are going to take our creativity one step further and see what we can do with digital manipulation of images of the cyanotypes. Watch this space to see how it turns out.