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Zart Extra Term 4 2010

Artist in Residence: Arts Programme 2010

Newhaven College

Newhaven College had an exciting start to 2010 as we were celebrating our 30th year as an educational institution on Phillip Island. Each year the Art department organizes a visiting artist to work with students from year 7-11 as part of our artist in residence program.

This year I was lucky enough to secure a chainsaw artist by the name of Angie Polglaze, who by her incredible reputation as a professional artist, is usually overseas competing for a good majority of the year. For the entire month of March, she worked closely with the year 10 students brainstorming ideas associated with the 30-year history of the school as well as its overall educational philosophies and direction for the future. Students looked at symbols such as the school house system and their emblems, the school song, our values such as Respect, Excellence, Responsibility, Honesty and Empathy and finally, the fact that we are a school on an island surrounded by the sea.

Angie started with an enormous trunk of Macrocarpa pine, cut from a local farm and showed students how she had to clean dirt and bark off it before she attempted to draw the final designs on. It became evident early on that this trunk was going to become a throne like seat and many ideas changed during the early carving process.

Animals depicted our natural marine life near the school, a large book representing learning, became the main seat and the House emblems began to entwine themselves around the entire seat. Each day meant a fresh look at the overall design and although no student was permitted to use the chainsaw, each group engaged in robust discussions on how the final seat would look. Once completed students where then given a range of Vipond Paints and painted sections of the seat to highlight surface texture and fine detail of some of the animals. To date it is one of the most used objects on the school grounds and is a feature that sits between the junior and senior schools.

No sooner had Angie dusted the sawdust from her clothes, she was asked to also be involved in a collaborative initiative between Phillip Island Nature Park and our students. Each year PINP donates around $5000 to our school to encourage our senior students to become involved with the creation of large sculptural pieces for our region’s public spaces. This particular project saw five of our year 9 students from the environmental campus, work closely with Angie to create a long bench ‘Love seat” for the grounds of Churchill Island, a small heritage farm not far from Newhaven College. Again students brainstormed ideas that would reflect the history of the Island and the farming practices used by the first settlers to the region. Because the group of students was small, Angie was able to allow each student to use her small chainsaw under close supervision, for the fine detail work. This was a definite highlight for many and a challenging one at best.

All along the bench seat there are images of apples, corn, peas and vegetables intertwined around the carved bucket seats, to represent the first hand sewn garden in the area. At one end of the seat boasts the bust of a woman whose design was used on the bow of the largest ship to enter Westernport Bay in the 1800s, The Lady Nelson. At the other end in contrast is the magnificent sweeping tail of the Peacock, a feature bird of this Island. Finally the chunky Clydesdale hooves that support the entire bench represent the original workhorses that helped the settler’s farm and plough their crops. The bench again was carved from Macrocarpa pine, which is readily found on the Island, primarily planted to provide wind breaks for livestock.

Sian Adnam
Head of Visual Art

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