Kids will be harnessing the power of the sun at Aratoi’s Easter school holiday programme, with Tina-Rae Carter taking them through the process of ‘solar powered printing’, and other interesting printing processes.
“I like the medium of printing because in a way it takes the image out of your hands, it changes what you have done, and there is that excitement of peeling the paper away and seeing the transformation,” says Tina-Rae.
She thinks the children will enjoy the “magical” science behind the solar print process. They will be using light sensitive paper imported from America that has been treated with chemicals so that it retains the image placed on top of it during exposure to the sun. Any number of objects, from string, wool and lace to leaves and metal parts can be laid down on the paper. After a set time, the paper is rinsed in water and a unique trace of the object is left behind.
It was a technique used by American artist Man Ray who was a photographer in the conventional sense but turned to creating what he called ‘rayographs’ without a camera, just as the children will be doing. A number of Man Ray’s works are held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and his images were hugely popular with the Dadaist poets, with their unexpected combinations of objects and other-wordly atmosphere. They also ‘pointed the way to the dreamlike visions of the Surrealist writers and painters who followed’.
The workshops are suitable for children aged seven to 13, and over three mornings they will also be exploring collagraphs and dry etching. Collagraphs are prints taken from an inked block of wood or card that has had different materials applied to it. Hardened PVA glue can make particularly good effects. ‘Intaglio’ printing is where images are cut or carved into a surface, which is then inked, and children will be trying out etching with a sharp point onto a Perspex plate.
DATES - Tues 14th, WED 15th & Thursday 16th April, 10am to 1.30pm. Bookings essential on T: 06 370 0001. Cost $75 per child, with all materials provided.
Exhibitions at Aratoi: Settling the Land – Ord[er out of Chaos?; John McLean: A Gathering; Hong Kong Song – Photographs by Madeleine Slavick, all until 10 May. Four Hundred Shades of DMC: Margaret Milne, until 3 May. Te Matatina Mauri, until 11 May.
