A Thousand Paper Cranes - Week 3

Today is World Mental Health Day, the hospital entrance is filled with stalls and staff raising awareness about mental health needs and services as well as promoting open discussions about mental health problems. World Mental Health Day was first celebrated in 1992 and is held on 10 October each year to raise public awareness about mental health issues across the globe.

For our session today Rozi and I reshuffle the dining room layout and push everything to the sides, creating a large open space on the floor that we cover with giant paper and stretch it up the wall. Today the humble OHP will help us transform the dining room into something different which an emphasis on process.

We bring coloured acetates, translucent objects, lenses, mark making tools, sequins, periscopes, kaleidoscopes, net and feathers.

We explore the process of sprinkling, scattering, layering, stacking the items onto the OHP, which are projected large onto the paper in a magnificent array of rainbow hues. On the paper we trace and follow casted shapes and lines with thick graphite and coloured felts, crease and bend the paper to create undulating 3D landscapes spreading across the floor. The surface of the paper is changing, growing infront of our eyes and we are on the floor making it happen, each mark is a little bit of us. The tiniest adjustment on the OHP has dramatic shifting effects on the wall. We take it in turns to be composer, drawer and photographer.

With an ipad we explore ways of capturing the colours and texture of the walls and floor through different settings on the camera. What kind of things are we looking at through the lens? Layers, colour, texture, juicy rainbows, light and shadow, soft edges, hard clear lines, cross overs, intricate close ups, far reaching landscapes.

The OTs and other ward staff join in with the photography too. We’ll be using these photographic images in future sessions together.

One of the ladies compared looking into the OHP like a witch’s cauldron

“I feel like a witch casting a spell!Throwing things into my cauldron.”

We watch the wall change, a spell emerging of sprinkled stars and colour!

To finish, we create fixed compositions by heating textures between laminating sheets, which create surprising layered effects. We left the dining room windows filled with colour and texture.

Things that emerged from the session:

·       There was no perfect solution or image

·       We allowed ourselves to think big

·       We let go of negative thoughts

·       We put our whole body into an immersive space

·       We embraced the accidental discoveries

·       It allowed us to be curious

·       We found our own way in – either through drawing on the floor, photographing or rearranging the OHP composition, or just watching the changes happening

·       We tried something different, which might be working low on the floor or using an ipad

·       We came together as a group to share an experience

·       Our minds were focussed on the present and not worrying about the future

Bryony

A Thousand Paper Cranes - Week 2

This week we tried tie-dying.
We started with natural cotton tote bags, a good strength that will give a good quality product.
The tables were pushed together to create 2 work stations – one for tie-ing, the other for dye-ing! The tie-ing table soon became covered in glass beads, buttons, wooden beads, poly-balls, pebbles, string, elastic bands and clothes pegs.
Then the tie-ing experiments began.

Some bags were folded in a concertina pattern, and pegged together. This would give a neat, straight line effect. Others were filled with buttons and beads and pebbles, each one tied into place with an elastic band. This would make the fabric crease and fold in a bunch, and give a starburst effect.

Some of the thin cotton fabric (left over from last week) was also tied, to see how the effects of the same techniques would vary when using a different type of material.

Once the bags and fabric pieces were tied they took on the appearance of weird little alien life-forms.

So, now to move over to the dye-ing table.

This table was covered in pots containing dyes in a variety of colours, and brushes of several different sizes. The dye was brushed onto the fabric, wherever it could reach. In the past, some of us have tried dipping the fabric into large bowls of dye. It was interesting to compare the 2 different methods. Dip dyeing covers large areas of the fabric more quickly, but is a less controlled method. Painting the dye on with brushes takes longer, and allows for more choice of which colour to put where. This can lead to more intricate designs.

Also, it’s a less messy technique, and the fabric dries much more quickly. Dip dyed fabric can take several days to dry out. Our brushed bags were dry before the end of the session.

And the results could be revealed!

The thin cotton fabric looked great and had the expected tie-dyed look. 

The fabric of the bags hadn’t absorbed the dye as much, so the colour had only taken exactly where it had been painted, and hadn’t soaked in to the folds.

One bag that had been tied with many buttons and beads had fantastic starburst effects spotted over the white background.

And another had dried quickly enough so that it could be worked into with fabric painting skills learnt last week.

A Thousand Paper Cranes - WEEK 1

Today it is the first day of a new block of 10 sessions at the Eating Disorders Unit in Seacroft Hospital.

In case you are wondering, the title of the project comes from an ancient Japanese legend. ‘A Thousand Paper Cranes’ translates to a special Japanese word ‘senbazuru’. The legend goes, if you can carefully fold ‘senbazaru’ - 1000 origami paper cranes you will be granted one wish. Today in Japan, people prepare ‘senbazuru’ as good luck wishes and presents at weddings and births. Often, they are given to loved ones in the hospital, to wish them a speedy recovery.

Myself, and Rozi have been planning lots of playful and large scale activities for the women on the ward, informed by Rozi’s previous projects over the past 2 years. In this project we hope to offer a creative sanctuary, supporting the women to have time to escape and transform the space through playful and imaginative open-ended ways.

Rozi and I reshuffle the dining tables and chairs for the workshop, keen to create a welcoming environment –which is calming and relaxing. Three young women and an OT join us today. They are looking forward to learning new creative skills, escaping their negative thoughts, and trying something different over the series of sessions.

We begin by sitting around a table covered in a huge piece of white fabric, which we collectively start working onto - exploring the technique of wax resist using oil pastel and wax. Rozi has brought an amazing CD with film soundtracks, which triggers lots of discussion!

With ease, the women pick up the coloured oil pastels and white candle wax and make their own marks. The colours are so expressive and vibrant and I enjoy observing the vast array of individual mark making approaches from everybody.

Either pressing onto fabric with careful consideration, or quickly scrunching, folding, thumbing through the folds of the material with the pastel. I find myself trying out others’ approaches and discovering something new and exciting. With jars of bright brusho dye, splatting brushes, sprinkling salt and brusho powder, we discover how the oil, wax and dye merge, blend, resist or interact.

One participant commented how nice it was to spend time with her OT in a creative way. We all admire the rainbow of blends and the unique differences and similarities in our approaches.  “These could be our new curtains in the dining room?!” This process gives us lots of ideas for things we would like to try in the future sessions. The group is certainly not short on ideas! I look forward to seeing how we can develop these ideas together over the next few weeks. 

Bryony