How does the Sculpture Balance?
By Paula Briggs
This resource explores how we can encourage ourselves or our students to take more risks when thinking about making a sculpture balance. The session purposely encourages students to throw their sculptures out of balance, to create the opportunity to make more exciting work. The session takes inspiration from the abstract paintings created by Ben Nicholson, working with collaged cardboard shapes to explore colour and composition. Suitable for all ages of children from ages 7 upwards, and adults.
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Sheila Ceccarelli
March 24, 2014 @ 3:20 pm
What a brilliant workshop Paula! Lucky children!
Sharon Gale
April 22, 2014 @ 3:37 pm
I love this workshop! It’s so exciting not quite knowing how all the ‘juggling’ and rebalancing will shape your sculpture. I definitely want to try this with my students.
Paula Briggs
April 23, 2014 @ 9:51 am
Hello Sharon, Pls do let us know how you get on! And congratulations on your Star! /see-the-accessart-stars/
Wendy Bal
December 4, 2014 @ 10:31 pm
At Crompton Primary School we have really enjoyed experimenting with some of the ideas on your website. We linked this lesson idea with Year 2’s Great Fire of London topic, using the colours we associated with that alongside shapes reminiscent of Ben Nicholson’s work. Children worked in pairs to produce a wonderful variety of sculpture and they loved the process of balancing line and shape and experimenting with joining techniques. We will look again at our sculpture this week and focus on composition, producing abstract paintings. Thanks for the inspiration.
Paula Briggs, AccessArt
December 5, 2014 @ 9:16 am
Wendy – what a terrific focus for this resource – thank you so much for telling us! Wonderful sculptures and by the sounds of it absolutely fantastic facilitation! well done – pls let us know how it develops in painting and show us more images if you get the chance. Pls pass on our congratulations to the children (I’m sure their work will inspire many more)..
very best wishes
Paula
AccessArt
Sheila, AccessArt
December 5, 2014 @ 5:19 pm
I agree with Paula! This is wonderful work – really! So great to see pupils being able to work ideas through sculpturally! Fabulous! Please do stay in touch.
Sheila
Wendy B
May 22, 2020 @ 11:02 am
Hi Paula/Sheila
Next year we will be doing this session with Year 5 after looking at ideas in your exemplar plan. Building on the idea of taking risk and ‘juggling’ the sculpture to make it more exciting I will be sharing the work of Yinka Shonibare as well as Ben Nicholson for the children to take inspiration. He has some exciting precariously imbalanced sculpture. We might add Dutch wax resist pattern to the shapes available in the ‘elements’. I would love to see you do a session which incorporates his work.
Paula Briggs, AccessArt
May 22, 2020 @ 11:05 am
Hello Wendy and thank you – I will send you an email about this – thanks for getting in touch and good luck!