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For my final enquiry I looked to blocks- more specifically in my instance a piece of driftwood. I wondered when thinking about wood blocks and exploring them as an artefact -these are construction tools, not really art or so I had though. My final pice from this is a drifwood shelf which I have hung in my room above my bead. I needed – Nails, Stain, the driftwood, a drill and sandpaper.

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I had a piece of driftwood I found at the beach which I dried out which I had been wanting to turn into a shelf for some time. I thought why not inquire and explore that now as it is listen in . I felt wood was not really that creative – anywho I continued on and boy was I wrong. Before drilling it, I sanded the edged – as I did so I saw the beautiful patterns and texture in the wood, I wondered what where you many years ago – A tree yes, but a building instruments, a tree on the beach, a fence pailing  where did you come from are you from this beach or did you travel futhur , what storys do you have– This s where I started to change my opinion. As  Pacini – Ketchabaw, Kind and Kocher (2016, pp.87) discuss moving away from that headspace of – What should I look at, how should I look, what is happening and rather to just be and in being is where the art happens.

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Implications for your practice as an ECT

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Implications for your practice as an ECT

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Post exploring the element of Blocks through the form of driftwood, I now look at wood differently and the story attached to it and see it for what it really is – not just what is physically is. I will reconsider how I set out blocks, sticks and wood elements in play and not just focus on building structures traditionally but allowing creativity free flay and engagement with these materials. I would love to incorporate stick play in the loose parts craft table – I believe children would come up with a multitude of things to do with them- Paint, join, sand, break, create etc.

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Drawing back on inspiration for an inquiry into light by the Ipswitch Art Galley, 2017 I was inspired to explore light. Something I had not done before. I didn’t initially know what how or what but feeling inspire I thought start simple – Light itself is of course in simplest form beautiful – then in turn why not add as I have throughout - a natural element. This left me with my phone torch a protea flower and a wall. I played with moving the flower closer to the wall and then futhur, spinning the flower and capturing the shadow on the wall and how light created the shadows on the wall.

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As displayed in the Ipswitch Art Galley, 2017 exhibition when things are placed in light they are so intriguing, brighter, more detailed more depth more curiosity invoking, at least this is how I felt. With my artefact it was not the brightness but the detail I saw on the wall the intricate shadows the flower made, the experimentation of what it meant and what the result was of me spinning the flower and moving it closer and further away. I believe it was an interesting inquiry as it provokes questions for me personally it did. Even the presence of the camera and how a camera captures light but at the heart again I was humbled in the simplicity of nature and art. Light/Flowers and a camera. How simple. How thought-provoking materials do really have a life of their own waiting to be explored.

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I love the simplicity or working with light and as my own mind wondered with so many extension questions and thoughts I can only imagine where the wonderful mind of children would take this. I will be incorporating more light into my practice as I see it is a very valuable resource and inquiry for children. From this one activity I can imagine using light boxes, shadow drawings, window drawings, leaf on window tracings, puppets.

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For this piece I went for a walk to the beach. I found some shells, sea glass and was hoping to find some bits of drifwood which I did not. I collected what I could from the beach and sat down with them, with the initial thought of making a wind chime – Coming home with no sticks I was still going to do this. I then realised I had nothing to tie them together and no sticks so settled for putting water in glasses and using a billy button plant from the garden as a makeshift drumstick to tap the jars and listening to the different sounds they make – I got this inspiration from table  8.1 of Wendalls chapter III music studio proposals, 2016 (pp 92).To add the natural element – I added a bowl of shells and loose beach bits to allow experimentation with sounds and adding different elements. Despite it not being anything near my initial idea of music I loved the outcome and had lots of fun experimenting and hearing the sounds.

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The topic of music as an artefact challenged me but once I stopped trying to control the process, I realised music is everywhere particularly in nature and the focus on purchased musical equipment was not necessary, I had overthought music as an artefact, and this was a good re-grounding process for me. Just using simple, natural elements – That is what art is for me in its most beautiful form not the most creative or complicated equipment or materials.

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Implications for your practice as an ECT

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Implications for your practice as an ECT

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For me as an ECT, this unit has really been a lightbulb moment and one of much reflection. I would love to start to implement inquiry into music with the children again – With adding in that natural element. I can see the class loving this inquiry into water and its not an expensive or complicated one, It will peak interest in so many things – Shells, water, Plants, Sea glass, sound music, glass and that is what I love about open ended nature linked art – It is that every individual will connect in a different way. There is no one way to hear music from this layout but an open-ended option e.g. – Will the child tap the glass with the shell or the plant, will they be interested of the sound of the shell dropping in, will they play it like a xylophone, will they enjoy touching the water.

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Charcoal drawing using leftover ashes from the fire place

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Charcoal drawing using leftover ashes from the fire place

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My inquiry into charcoal challenges me as does Pacini – Ketchabaw, Kind and Kocher (2016, pp.41-51) statement – begetting us to inquiry and not prescribe or predict a particular outcome. To encounter and just be with the materials, In this instance Charcoal. So off I went. Not having charcoal in my house and wanting to explore the natural/recycle components importance in ECEI grab a hunk of coal from the fireplace and off I went. I moved it on recycled paper moving It around to what lead to my art creation – It isn’t anything but for me was more about the emotions I experienced whilst creating exploring.

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For me it was a very sensory experience, the charcoal smell reminds me of my childhood of sitting by the fire in winter and the comfort associated with that. Then also the freeing experience of it being on my hands and the texture. Usually when thinking about charcoal I would have thought to have a specific prescribed outcome - I need to create a picture of flowers or of XYZ for example but in reflecting and using this encounter mindset I again felt free and connected and felt something, I truly felt I was encountering and sitting with the pieces in awe and admiration and connection

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Implications for your practice as an ECT

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Implications for your practice as an ECT

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What I love most about the inquiry into charcoal for me is the freeing element to it and the sensory connection to nature. I love that for children in ECT they may also relish in the freedom to connect and feel something emotional and deep sensory element from the charcoal – Be that a smell, a touch, a visual, a emotion, a memory this could lead to so much more inquiry. What other things can we use to produce charcoal like texture, what other natural elements in our world can we bring to the art table its honestly endless.

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Recycled paper collage utilizing odds and ends of paper from my home

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Recycled paper collage utilizing odds and ends of paper from my home

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To create my artwork, I looked around my home for bits of paper I could use. I found – White, brown and some dried-up paper which I used for watercolour practice years ago stuffed away in a cupboard. As Pacini – Ketchabaw, Kind and Kocher (2016, pp.30-40) in their chapter on paper and its relationship with movement where they discuss the connection and various means of movement it holds, I started to explore the movement of the paper scrunching it up then tearing in up and flattening it out again with no real motive of what on earth I would do with this paper. I then begun gluing it down in a collage like manner watching it bend and crinkle as it dried. I started with no real set expectations. I layered the paper just tearing scrunching and gluing the paper with no set intention of an outcome, as I added layered it started to somewhat resemble a landscape of sorts, possibly even a mountain and sunset? I found it so easy to create and explore with not having a set responsibility of outcome, a real mediative process.

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After working through this process, I felt I had started off with a somewhat useless ordinary scraps of paper ready for the bin and now I had somewhat of a piece of artwork, the paper itself did ask to be invited to play with other materials such a glue and paints. I loved the idea that this paper had a life of its own – Old dusty birthday wrapping paper, old book pages, old trials of watercolour learnings, white paper for shopping lists all things connected to me but things I had not seen with the same eyes before, I came to have a whole new appreciation between the connection to the materials I was working with.

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Overall what I learnt is that as a educator that I look too closely at the ‘destination’ of the art and need for expensive equipment/materials but in reflecting on these artefacts I see the wonder and expression that can come from natural materials and through not being product driven art but by being process driven and that the opportunities for children and adults alike are so much greater when you just sit with the artefacts themselves. I am looking forward to bringing this new perspective into my pedagogy and how i look at myself as an artist and also how i use art in my rooms.

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Pacini-Ketchabaw, V, Kind, S & Kocher L 2016, Encounters with materials in early childhood education, Routledge, retrieved 25th May 2023 < https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vu/detail.action?docID=4649662>

Wendall, H, 2017, The childrens Music Studio : A Reggio- Inspired Approach, Oxford University Press, Incorperated, Retrieved 19th May 2023 < https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vu/reader.action?docID=4747980>

Ispwich Art Gallery 2017, ‘ Light play: Education resource’, Viewed 18th May 2023 < Uh oh ... (ipswichartgallery.qld.gov.au)>

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Natural Watercolour painting with stems from flowers

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Natural Watercolour painting with stems from flowers

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After exploring the artefact of paper, I feel more connected with paper and feel I have reignited my passion for paper and the beauty of it mostly for me it was the fact the paper was re-purposed. Particularly I think I have been de-sensitised working more recently with at work using freshly purchased brightly coloured paper right out the packet which felt too sterile to ‘pretty’ to just rip up and explore. I wonder too now if the children I work with feel this. If they would feel more free to have odd bits and bobs – newspaper collections, old book pages, wrapping paper, shopping paper, recycled that they too kind be free with to explore and find the little nuances and connections with in the paper.

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Paper, water, and natural homemade watercolour where the tools I had on hand for artefact. I used the stems of lily leaves to stain water and used that as my paint trying to incorporate the natural element into art and I really had no prescribed outcome of colour or visual image having not done this before. I simply just let the paint and brush do its thing. As unsophisticated as it sounds, I dabbed, spread with my fingers, wiggled lines, and watched how it interacted with the water, the paper and how it changed as it dried.

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For me in this experience I really loved the pure experimentation of what paint does all on its own and what amazing things that can create (Not saying my artefact is anything amazing) but I did see beauty in its simplicity. The ability as Pacini – Ketchabaw, Kind and Kocher express’s(2016, pp 2016 – 62-59_) its ‘ability to dry and solidify, its slickness, how it spreads, layers’ and how sometimes it disappears – As I saw with my own piece as certain parts of the dye from the flower stem had not interacted and mixed strongly with the water it left a brighter orange tone and then also a grey/purple tone within each stroke it truly did ‘ invite forces to interact and interfere’ as I dabbed, dotted, smeared and wiggled my brush I also saw  some kind of abstract version of gum leaves and wattle appearing which I thought was pretty cool considering it was not intentional but that I also saw nature reflected in the artefact which was a product of what I was using.

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Implications for your practice as an ECT 

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Implications for your practice as an ECT 

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I believe this opportunity would provide children with a rich multidisciplinary learning experience for the children using the language of natural based paint to connect with nature. My artistic learning where that watching how the paint dried, and the colours created was an awe and wonder like experience being a part of the process and just being with the raw natural products and creating with no intention, I also loved the surprise element that the colour the dye forms the Lilly stem and seeing how that reacts with paper. I feel children would benefit from this kind of painting with natural resources as it further connects them to their product and their world – E.g. – The green is from the trees in the yard, the brown is from the dirt we play in, the pink is from the flowers that grow over the fence. I love this romantic idea of seeing the beauty and awe of our natural world and how that flows over to physical creations of art.