Don't forget that our panel discussion on Mandscape takes place tomorrow, Wednesday 11 November, at 4pm at The Ark. Everyone is welcome to attend. Two members of the panel are Mandscape artists, Mhairi Sutherland and Jole Bortoli, and have written in to tell us about the workshops they developed and led for Mandscape at The Ark.

Workshop designed by Mhairi Sutherland.

I facilitated a series of workshops for children based on drawing with light, using darkroom photography processes. Each child created an individual photogram, firstly by making a negative using drawing and collage with natural and man made materials, and then used this to create a positive print in the fully equipped darkroom, constructed by the team at The Ark

Beautiful detailed, hand crafted and highly individual photographic images were made by everyone, to shouts of "lethal!" "deadly" and "this is one of the best times ever" as the participants watched their black and white images appear in the dim glow of the red darkroom lights.

This was a completely new activity for all of the children involved, and it was a very powerful experience to guide them through this strange, unfamiliar process and see them take ownership, with excitement and growing confidence, of their quite amazing images...!

Framing and rubbing workshop designed by Jole Bortoli

The weather was on our side last week and the children had the chance of doing some very interesting drawings of The Ark's surrounding Mandscape bathed in sunlight!

Looking through paper frames they selected a portion of buildings, rooftops, pavements and anything that attracted their attention and drew it with black and white pencils.

Later on, after visiting the Mandscape exhibition, they got going on experimenting with different natural and manmade textures, from bark to metal grids, making rubbings onto paper and creating their very own personal Mandscape.

If you would like to attend the Mandscape panel discussion, please call Jeanine MacQuarrie, Box Office Manager on 01.6707788.