1. Tom Phillips
Learning Objectives:
To be able to select and rearrange words to create a found sentence.
To be able to compose a picture that relates to your found sentence, using a medium of your choice.
Teacher's Notes:
This print is by English born artist Tom Phillips (1937). Phillips employs a variety of media: painting, printmaking and collage, intermixed with poetry and writing.
In this artwork, the artist uses a book as the starting point for his print. By covering up most of the text and only leaving particular words behind, Phillips organises and thus develops a new found meaning within the
text that is highly emphasised by his well-considered choice of image
and colour.
Phillips' process can be a useful starting point for demonstrating to children how words
and images can complement each other and have equal significance in
expressive art.
More importantly, children might readily relate to this artwork, for they
are constantly exposed to books and more particularly picture books which use images to illustrate written language.
Key Questions:
What's on the picture
1. Ask the children to have a quick look at the picture. After, ask them to shut their eyes and think about what they saw. Lastly, ask them what they can remember from the print.
Twilight of the Planet, 2010
Thinking within the picture
2. Why do you think that artist might have chosen to focus on those particular words?
3. Do you think that the individual words relate to what the page is about or
do they create a different meaning? Why?
Making Connections outside the picture
4. If the artist had used your book as the source for his inspiration, how would the picture be different from this one?
Key Vocabulary:
*Printmaking * Symetry between words and images * Experiment * Collage * Painting * Original * Medium * Process * Found Sentence*
The Lesson as Part of a Sequence:
Phillips' work should be used as a stimulus for children's own artwork in Lesson 1.
The teacher should briefly model the process of selecting words that have meaning to them and suggest how they would illustrate these. After the teacher can discuss with the class how they could differently emphasise and bring these words/messages to life using colour/pattern/picture. It is is important to note that, the teacher should explain their thinking behind selecting the words and illustrations.
The teacher can photocopy pages from random texts or use ones that the children are familiar. Children should be encouraged to independently select words to create original phrases that they can then illustrate using their chosen medium/s. Teachers might choose to do a mini-plenary after the children have chosen their words; children's phrases can be discussed and appreciated.
EAL children can use pages from books written in their mother tongue. The fact that the children can use mediums of their choice is inclusive as they can use processes and tools that they are comfortable with.
Reference:
http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/shop/from-a-humument/item/5646-a-humument-p363-twilight-of-the-planet
