Treeline at The River School - Treeline Opening Caloundra Regional Gallery

The collaborative residency at the Ananada Marga River School in Maleney is represented in the Treeline exhibition by a hard cover book 'Treeline at the River School'. Visitors can also read an electronic version of the book on a large screen.

The cotton cyanotype squares made by the children are on a table in the main gallery and images of these squares are used in a kaleidoscope projection that has been a great hit as part of the exhibition.
There has been general fascination with the process of cyanotype and the beautiful imagery that has been produced by students from both River School and Kawana State High. I particularly liked the way the projection inadvertently became another sort of artwork (below)  during the artist talks last week. It was the sort of thing we played with in collage at River School, and happening right there by chance, making an amazing outfit for one of the visitors.

It was great to see teachers from the school Joshua Boldt and Tracey Lewis (above) there at the exhibition, seeing the end results of the days we had spent with the children.
They are holding some of the free tree seedlings that were handed out to everyone who attended the opening, courtesy of Coolum Native Plants nursery.

The book 'Treeline at the River School' is available online in hard and sfot cover and as an ibook, from the Blurb bookstore.

Print version:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3185823

ibook version:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3186276


Treeline continues at Caloundra Regional Gallery until July 8th.

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.