Zart Extra Term 3 2011
Nepal Adventure
Beaconhills College, Village Campus
Can I interest you in a trip to Nepal... Kathmandu... Everest... Sherpas... hiking? To put it politely - NO THANK YOU! Well how about Nepal... Kathmandu... Everest... artists... art classes? YES PLEASE!! How much? When? Where do I sign up?
Check out this website www.internationalartworkshops.com and learn all you need to know.
In 2010 I tried very hard to get enough students together to visit Nepal, but unfortunately was not successful. Having spent so much time and energy planning the trip and getting so excited at the idea of visiting a country so different, I decided to go anyway! ! Two other staff members decided to join me and spend 16 days in Nepal over the first term holiday. I hoped to get more information and lots of photographs as well as firsthand experience, then come back and talk about our experiences to all our students in the hope that that would generate more interest and we would get a group of students together to make the trip in 2011. Our plan worked and in April of this year, 8 students and 2 staff left Beaconhills for Kathmandu for the experience of a lifetime. This is what we got up to in the ten days we were away:
Day 1 Friday: Arrived Kathmandu Airport 12 noon, bus to Hotel, unpacked and settled in.
Day 2 Saturday: Patan is a wonderful maze of courtyards, tiny tiny alleyways, hidden shrines, temples and people’s homes. We were taken through the streets with our guide Sanjaya and everybody had the chance to take interesting photos of the architecture and the many people in the streets going about their daily lives. When we arrived at the main square, Ilsa and Sanjaya asked the local people to volunteer to pose for us whilst we all made quick gesture drawings in our visual diaries as well as taking photos of the wonderful faces of our models.
Back in the studio in the afternoon we created a ‘first impression’ painting involving words, symbols and colours laid down in our diaries using pens, markers and paint; colours and found symbols from our morning adventures were also used to create an expressive painting.
Day 3 Sunday: Seven Nepali Art students from 4 different art colleges in Kathmandu joined us for the day. We visited Swayambhunath, often referred to as the Monkey Temple, a particularly interesting Buddhist as well as Hindu site. Being fairly high up it provided a wonderful view of the city in the valley, as well as being a very busy market place for a spot of souvenir shopping! Our students paired with the Nepali students to learn about the place and went off with the task of drawing portraits of each other.
In the Studio later that day our students paired with the Nepali students and spent time looking for common ‘sayings’ in each other’s cultures. Once they found a saying that was similar in both cultures they wrote the saying down on the other’s canvas and then developed a painting based on the saying.
Day 4 Monday: Lokta paper, handmade from the bark of the Lokta bush, is very popular in Kathmandu and broadly used in all sorts of ways. We visited a local factory and were all given the opportunity to make a piece of paper for ourselves, as well as learning how to make a notebook using the lokta papers.
Back in the Studio we created abstract paintings on lokta paper, using different leaves, found in the hotel grounds, as masks.
Day 5 Tuesday: Woollen felt is very popular in Kathmandu and is crafted to make beautiful slippers, bags, toys and accessories. We visited a factory a short drive away and were shown how the process was carried out and how to make different designs. We all made a felt purse and then some of the students helped make the cushions that were being made that day. A very damp and soapy experience was had by all!
Using the soft edges, strong colours and simple shapes we had seen in the felting factory as a basis, we worked from portrait photographs to simplify the forms and shapes and come up with a strong composition of blocks of colour and soft edges similar to the felt images.
Day 6 Wednesday: An hour’s drive from Patan, is a small country school with 120 pupils, 3-16 years old, from the local community. They are self-funded and poorly resourced so we had made badges as a fundraising activity back at Beaconhills and had $300 as a small donation for this school. We actually bought a computer for the senior students and presented this to them just before we left. We had also made a badge for every student in the school as well as taking lots of souvenirs to hand out. Our students ran art activities with small groups of their students, which was just the most amazing experience for our students. Each student created a postcard size aboriginal style drawing of an Australian animal. We took all the materials and equipment with us and left it all behind for them to use to set up their new art room. I taught the teachers how to make paper mushrooms so that they could work with the younger students and be a part of the ‘Spore Project’.
We left the school on a real high and headed back down the very narrow dirt road to Kathmandu. Ilsa Brittain (the artist who runs the workshops) had an exhibition of her artworks in the Siddhartha Art Gallery in Thamel, so of course we needed to make a visit. The exhibition, titled ‘Female Substantive’ consisted of beautiful figurative pieces in oils, with a strong abstract element. The students were very impressed with the many paintings and drawings, which created much food for thought and some great discussions as we travelled back to the hotel.
Day 7 Thursday: We spent the day working with a master Thanka painter, Sudarshan Suwal. Everybody learned about the very strict and symbolic art of Thanka painting, how to grind pigments from their original mineral sources, and then produced a mini Thanka painting of their own with the pigments we had ground. This was a very exacting and time consuming task, where everyone gained a great appreciation of the traditional Thanka paintings we had seen on our travels to date.
Day 8 Friday: Bhoudhanath is the religious centre for Nepal’s considerable population of Tibetan exiles. We walked around the Bhoudhanath Stupa – one of the largest in the world, in a clockwise direction three times. Once, to make sure we had seen everything, then twice more to make all our purchases from the many shops and stalls. A lot of bargaining took place and many purchases were made, in a very short space of time. There was time to visit one of the few places in the world where students learn the authentic and sacred art of Thanka painting. They must learn the exact proportions of every deity, each colour with its precise meaning, and the correct approach to undertake their work with purity. It takes six years to complete the course. We purchased eleven Thanka paintings as mementos of our time in Nepal in this Thanka painting School.
In the afternoon we visited Thamel for more shopping, then headed to Kathmandu Durbar Square – the traditional heart of the old town, full of beautiful Nepali architecture and the courtyard of the living goddess. After a short wait in the courtyard we were rewarded with a rare glimpse of the living goddess, who is so beautiful, so tiny and so young! No photos were allowed of the goddess, but we made up for that by purchasing the official photographs to bring home with us.
Day 9 Saturday: A trip back to where we started this adventure – Patan Durbar Square! This time though, to take a really close look at the architecture, both at ground level ... and from on high!
Our final time in the Studio was spent creating collaborative art pieces that proved to be a lot harder than you would think. Initially, it was hard to let go of your own piece and allow others to work on it, and equally, it was hard to work on someone else’s piece because you didn’t want to ‘wreck’ their work! Eventually, we got into the task and started to enjoy adding our own ideas to the works. The final results were amazing and were added to our visual diaries with pride.
Day 10 Sunday: Easter egg hunt, pack up, farewells then head to the airport and home.
From the moment we stepped off the plane in Kathmandu, our senses were bombarded. The sights, sounds and smells of Nepal were at times overwhelming, but always fascinating, new and so different from anything we’d experienced before. The art works and architecture were stunning, beautiful and amazingly colourful. The cities were busy, noisy, dirty, alive with people, traffic and animals and in direct contrast to the quiet beauty of the countryside and small villages we visited. We experienced many amazing places but it was the quiet dignity, amazing courtesy and wonderful humour of the Nepalese people that was the highlight of the trip for me. Their willingness to allow us into their private lives, to try to communicate with us and above all to have fun with them was what made the trip so special.
Lesley Light
Beaconhills College, Village Campus
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