Who is Coming to Dinner?

The Project | The Artwork | The Visiting Artist | The Sponsors | Contact

This project will involve students in the creation of dinner plates that will be put unveiled at a school level event “Who’s Coming to Dinner”. Where the dinner plates will be displayed in a similar fashion to Judy Chicago. The plates will then displayed at two galleries in Saskatoon. After the Sasktoon gallery displays they will be packed up and shipped to Ottawa to be displayed in museums for the Amuse festival in 2012. AMUSE is a new festival that combines culinary experiences with museum experiences.

Ceramic artwork for the AMUSE Festival will be created by grade 6 and 7 students at Georges Vanier school and clay workshop studios in Ottawa.

The students will be creating platters using slump molds with the assistance of artist Charley Ferraro. He will spend two half days with the students creating wall hangings from clay. The artwork will be displayed in Saskatoon (at Centre Galleries and the Saskatoon Airport). The creations will be inspired by the viritual museum websites.

The students will also decorate a second pre-fired dinner plate with an image that they find on the virtual museums sites in Ottawa. The students will re-glaze the pre-fired palter with their image. The students will do research on the museum websites to find facts and images that interests them. The websites of all of the museums are full of images to inspire the students. They will then transfer these images in their own creative way to a plate. The plates will be re-fired and then put on display in Ottawa and Saskatoon. The students will be asked to write an artist’s statement for their plate explaining why they were inspired by the image and how they chose to artistically interpret the image from the website.

We are going to focus on the First People’s Hall at the Museum of Civilization as part of our TreatySmarts initiative. The online resources are absolutely incredible. The children will be able to explore the museum and the history of the aboriginal culture easily from this site. There will not be a native elder coming to teach the children an aboriginal art form but it will expose the children to some amazing artefacts and excellent portrayal of the aboriginal culture.

The beehive kilns used at Medelta pottery in Medicine Hat will also be focus of the instruction. This production pottery factory is historical to our province and an excellent way to understand the workings of a ceramic factory.