Today I was out of the blistering wind and cosied up at Chaffeur’s Cottage (behind the Town Hall) at a Metal Peterborough workshop.
What workshop? Masterclass #11 Pop-up Paper Architecture with Hilary Powell (From film and book production to performance and print Hilary Powell works with overlooked processes, materials, people and places in unexpected ways.) https://instagram.com/hilary_powell
So, I’m no artist, but you don’t have to be either, to join in on any of them. On arrival we were welcomed with tea, coffee and biscuits and provided with all the materials we would need to come away with something creative.
Hilary took us through the history of pop-up art; how it began and showed us some of the creations of people through the ages from concertina scenes to rotating paper children’s books to Alice in Wonderland arches and lots of 3-D pop-up cities which looked fabulous. Every one of us was obviously hopeful of creating something to be proud of. We also watched a short film on the creation of Hillary‘s book ‘Legend’. 📖
So onto the creativity. Hillary started with the very very basics; getting used to folding and cutting paper and glueing it down the correct way in order to not make a complete mess where the item either won’t stand up or get squashed when you close the book. So you have to listen carefully when she gives the explanations as to what to do and where to place it. All of us managed to create our first pop-up pocket! Yippee…. moving on…
We then started on making bases for other items, which were a basic table. Again it’s the basics that help you to build the page up, adding piece by piece. We moved on to making an item girate which helps when you want to keep the fun form of something flat as it pops up on the page because then it turns slightly as the book is closed so it lays flat.
We were left to our own devices to work on something we had an idea to create. I was sat next to Peterborough artist Charron Pugsley-Hill Artist and Environmentalist 😳 so I had some pressure to create at least one thing that was recognisable!!!
All 12 of us had our heads down in full concentration cutting, folding and gluing.
Charron created a concertina scene from a copy of her fabulous Peterborough artworks depicting all our famous places: The Cathedral, NVR, Milton Bridge, The Lido etc etc… and that was just magical, like a mini theatre scene. 🚂 ⛪️ 🌳
Lee created an amazingly detailed building and made it a complete work of art. Julia showed off her basic work of the page pocket and grass. All great stuff.
I ended up with a set of table and chairs, a pocket and a girating flower and my finale piece: I’m sure you’ll guess all the bits but based on the basic pop-up: Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough Cathedral, The Guildhall, housing, the River Nene with the swans and a We 💖 Peterborough boat. 😉
All in all the day went really quickly. The masterclass was from 10am-4pm and cost £20. Hilary trained it up from London very early this morning to definitely be with us, (due to the train canc yesterday she was worried she wouldn’t make it) so thank you for getting here. What an enjoyable day.
Watch out for any of Metals future workshops coming up…
#WeLovePeterborough #WeLoveLearningSomethingNew #WeLoveArt#WeLoveCreativity #WeLoveRecyclingPaper
#PaperCraft #PopUp #PopUpArchitecture #WeLoveWorkshops
