Marrickville High School's Archibull Adventure
We are blessed enough to have an extra week to prepare our Archibull for the competition. Currently, we are sewing our donated jeans into a new pair of socks for our bull and continuing to transfer our fantastic collaborative design onto the bull. The Archibull is coming together very nicely, it is vibrantly coloured and has been designed in a contemporary art style to demonstrate the 10 steps to turning cotton into denim. The patterns are coming together nicely to create a unique and visually pleasing piece rich in indigo, lilac, navy and an array of cool colours. Along the way we have changed some of our ideas to suit our colour palette more effectively. We have also repainted the legs black from yellow as it better suited our original idea.
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It's all hands on deck! Sorry for the delay with the blog, there's just been so much work to do at the moment and our herd hasn't had a moment's peace. Our progress so far has consisted of sketching, painting and laminating; working towards the final masterpiece that will be our Archibull! Our first plan of attack was transferring our designs onto the bull, so we could begin sketching them so we could begin the next process, which was painting. The colour scheme of our bull is blue: beautiful shades of indigo, navy and sky blue. As each section of the bull has its own unique design, we had to ensure that the bull was not all just a massive blob of blue paint, so we came up with an ingenious plan! We're making denim pockets consisting of vital facts about Australian cotton and it's industry. The facts add a pop of colour to our Indigo bull whilst educating our audience of statistics, solutions to problems that have been faced over the years and other amazing occurrences within Australia's cotton industry. The fact pockets also made our bull interactive and '3D' which engages the audience into absorbing the information. When brainstorming ideas together, we agreed on making our bull denim themed as a lot of Australian cotton is used to make Australian denim. We created artsy posters to inform the school community that we are desperate for some denim for our Archibull! Gladly, our questions were "herd" as many people donated the jeans they didn't need anymore toward a good cause. With the donated denim, we reused it to create denim socks for our Archibull the wear, using the pockets of the jeans to hold the fact cards and we are also going to use the denim in part of our design on the bull. Good morning, Viewer. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves the unveiling of the prized item designated "Archibull." You may select any two team members for this mission. You have thirty-six hours to recruit your team members and go to room 309 to receive your assignment. As always, should any member of your team be caught or harmed, the Institution will disavow all knowledge of your actions. And Viewer, the next time you go on our blog, please be good enough to subscribe for further instructions. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep... All jokes of missions aside, it was quite an eventful day in VIA today. It was time to unveil our bull. As a class, we unwrapped the Archibull (and probably had too much fun with the bubble wrap while doing so) from it's packaging and started the beginning stages of sketching and designing on the fibre-glass sculpture. Although there was a minor mishap with the box cutter, our Archibull emerged almost unharmed in the end, just in time for our Young Farming Champion, Casey Onus. *The crowd goes wild* She is an Agronomist, which in its simplest form means that her jobs involves visiting farmers and ensuring their crops are healthy and pest-free. Casey has been in the industry for 5 to 6 years and is extremely passionate about all things agriculture. It was an engaging and informative visit, as Casey presented a PowerPoint showcasing her motivations for entering the industry, as well as a brief summary of her experiences in growing cotton and the process of cotton making. In return, we got up in groups of two or three and presented or design for our section of the bull. We also had to give a brief explanation of why we chose that particular design. After that, we played around with a drone simulator and GreenSeeker, which measures the amount of nitrogen in the leaf. Today, the Year 10 Commerce class was introduced to the Archibull competition. They were assigned to the task of completing the theory work of this competition - information for our blog - and we were all fired up to begin straight away. Our Commerce teacher, Mrs. C. Lloyd, informed the class of what was to come. Mahsa and I also helped our teacher in explaining the blog and what exactly we needed them to complete. We were separated into groups of 4 or 5 people and were assigned a topic - climate change, bio security, careers in the industry and healthy communities - to research. At the end of the period, everyone had typed up a report on the various topics and, pending some edits, are ready to be published!
We are now underway with completing our final Archibull design. The Visual Arts students have voted and the results are in. (Special recognition goes to Tony whose design won!) Our design will be composed of; the process it takes for a cotton plant to grow, how it is harvested, and finally, how it is manufactured into denim and other fabrics. Using the Archibull cow-planning templates, we were paired up to design our section of the bull. So far our Visual Arts class has explored and discussed many big ideas, using them to creatively express their understanding of agriculture and the cotton industry. By researching cotton and its importance in the world, our class has gained an understanding of the significance of farming and sustaining natural resources. It's interesting to see how far we have all grown; from being naive citizens that did not fully grasp the challenges that farmers face, to being assertive young adults that have the insight to understand that clothing a nation is everyone's responsibility. Here are some visuals that showcase our progression thus far: We were all super pumped about doing the presentation. After numerous hours of research, planning and enthusiastic discussion, the groups were finally ready to present their Archibull design. There were a lot of fantastic proposals and ideas flying around - maps, pockets, diagrams, process charts, denim jeans - that is was difficult to choose just one.
After the presentations were done, we decided to combine the various designs and make them into our own. We determined that our Archibull would have a blue colour scheme - shades of indigo, teal, denim, cobalt, azure, sapphire - in the design. Each student was given a blank template of the Archibull to draw their final sketches, which the class would then have to rank their favourite. Here are a few examples of the amazing designs that the students have come up with: It was time for us to pull out the big guns! We had to bring up the Archie from the office to the Visual Arts classroom, which was unfortunately on the third floor. So four of us - Sophia and I included - volunteered as tributes and headed downstairs. There were a few issues with Archie fitting through the doors but we managed to power through and introduce him to his new home. P.S A hint at what next week's post will bring! We'll be presenting our ideas to the class and learning more about the cotton industry. Here are a few photos:
Holy Guacamole, we finally got our bull! We're so lucky to be part of this wonderful learning experience and it's all thanks to our amazing Visual Arts teacher, Ms. J. Hall (legend). It was a regular Wednesday morning when we got the news that our Archie was on the premises. We rushed downstairs to the office, cameras at the ready, to be greeted by the sight of our Archie being escorted by two burly tradies. Our group was in awe of the size. It was massive! Covered in bubble wrap to protect its delicate physique, it was an impressive sight.
Below is a snapshot of Sophia, being her weird self, next to our Archie. |
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