This was the second Family Art Club session in this summer’s series that I was employed as Assistant Artist. I previously worked with Lead Artist Robyn Woolston. You can read the blog post for the first session here. On this occasion the Lead Artist was Claire Weetman and the other Assistant Artist was Hannah Bold.

I was already familiar with Claire’s artistic practice, having worked with her before and having seen some of her exhibitions. Her work involves innovative ways of drawing and I was looking forward to seeing what exciting ideas she had developed for this workshop.

As Assistant Artist I hoped to learn from greater experience of Claire’s practice and perhaps pick up some ideas and tips that I could use in my own work. In addition, I was keen to see how she had prepared for and how she ran the workshop throughout the day.

Claire’s theme for this Art Club session was mazes, streets and houses. We sometimes speak of a “maze of streets” and it is easy to get lost in the unknown streets of an unfamiliar city. I believe that the idea for this workshop initiated from Claire’s residency in Shanghai, China. Claire often found herself lost in the streets of Shanghai where the street signs were not only in a different language but using a writing system incomprehensible to a westerner.

For today’s session Claire brought along neoprene squares and wood blocks for people to make and design their own house stamps with which to print. We prepared a large maze on the floor of the workspace by drawing the maze onto paper using coloured tape. More mazes and labyrinths were projected onto another large sheet of paper fixed to the wall. There were also examples of mazes and stamps for the participants to look at and try out, along with lots of paper, coloured pens, stencils and inkpads for everyone to use.

As people arrived we showed them how to design and make a rubber stamp by drawing onto the back of the neoprene squares, then cutting out the design and sticking it to the wood block. They were encouraged to design their own mazes and use their stamps to make streets. After working at the tables on their designs they then added to the floor and wall mazes with their own stamps and mark-making ideas.

The children were very enthusiastic about making their own stamps and lots of the adults seem to enjoy it too. Some children went on unprompted to take the themes and ideas in new directions. One little boy decided to make the large maze into a game. He painted in a start and finish line and explained the rules to the others. Children began to make stamps of flowers, trees and animals as well as houses. One of the parents even made a Doctor Who Tardis stamp!

Many of the children were proud to have their drawings put up on the wall of the art space, while others wanted to take them home to show to parents and grandparents. Most of the children took their stamps away with them too.

It was an enjoyable day for artists and participants. It also inspired me to think about other methods of printmaking that I may use in my practice.