Treeline at Caloundra City Private School -Session Two

Since the rain kept on coming I brought some cuttings from my garden so the students could experience making a virtual plant from photographs of a real plant. We spent most of the day photographing and learning how to manipulate images in Photoshop, extracting them from a background and pasting to build up bushes and trees.
Taking photographs for textures is an art. You have to forget most of what constitutes 'good' photographic practice and take an image with no background, little variation in tone  and light, with the subject floating in the middle of the image.
It was a very intense session with a lot of learning of quite complex skills. The students, and the school, can be proud of the participants in this project.
The build is progressing. Below are a few images, the first two showing some of the plants made from photographs. And the third showing a beautiful tree created from a painting by one of the students.

The garden we are building on Imagination sim in Inworldz is a fantasy garden full of colour. Many of the plants are imaginary, and even those built up from photographs sometimes bear little resemblance to the real life plant. In making these plants, building up the images, and seeing how the garden is progressing we are learning something about plants, about how they are constructed, their sizes, shapes textures, and the place of plants in landscapes and in our psyche. If we had to populate a new world (even a virtual one) we would want to have plants around us.

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.

RAG Randt-Virtual Treeline Artist

RAG Randt's work usually has a touch of whimsy with a serious message. I smile every time I see one of his pieces. He has a wry sense of humour and a very finely balanced and well honed sense of graphic design.








For the first Virtual Treeline exhibition RAG (Illustrator/Designer from the USA) shows a series of visual messages that link human desires and activities with the natural world, through the use of trees as easily recognised visual symbols.
His small 3D installation hidden at the end of a pathway in the sand dunes is a delight for all the senses. On can almost hear the jungle animals celebrating their colourful fall setting.....and what's that smell?

RAG says:
"Trees are a major symbol for me. My concepts tend to be humorous visual statements broadly interpreting a given topic. I have found trees to be wonderfully rich and flexible in symbolism whether I am making a statement about Hope, Networking, Communication, Finances and many other ideas. As trees are a vital part of the earth's ecosystem, they are also a vital part of my visual problem solving vocabulary."



RAG also says in his profile information:

The global environment is a subject I care deeply about and I would like to leave the world a better place.

Can art make a difference?