In Art in Year 6, we have been learning about the artist Augusta Savage (1892–1962), who overcame poverty, racism, and gender discrimination to become one of America’s most influential 20th-century artists.
Augusta grew up in a poor family in America. She discovered as a child that she enjoyed making small sculptures and had a real talent for art. To make her sculptures she used red clay that she found around the area where she lived.
As an adult, Augusta Savage became known for creating amazing sculptures of people. Although they look as if they are made of metal, she couldn’t afford expensive materials so she made her sculptures out of clay and then painted them. Unfortunately, as the clay was fragile, most of her work no longer exists and there are only photographs to remind us.
In 1940 she retired from creating art and moved to a farm in New York where she taught others to create art instead. She said, “I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work.”
We have created our own sculptures, inspired by Augusta Savage’s work. First we explored photographs of her work and then learnt how to represent proportion in faces correctly. Then we used what we had learnt to create our own clay sculptures.
We learned that it is much more difficult than we thought to create clay models with the correct proportions and we gained even more respect for Augusta Savage’s talent. We will have to wait until our clay models dry to find out if our clay work is just as fragile as hers!
I love your clay sculptures Y6! Looks like so much fun! I’m sure you all had fun while sculpting your sculpture. Great work Y6!
It was very FUN and a little bit messy💦
Even though it was quite hard I still loved my art sculpture!!!!!!!!!!!
I learnt that clay can’t last very long as it is very fragile.
I learnt that you can’t make the same thing that you thought because it has with all the details-it’s really difficult.
I have learnt how to sculpt with clay and to use the technique of Augusta Savage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was a good experience because it was my first time to use clay.
it was cool to sculpt many shapes
I learnt that it is harder than it looks to connect clay.
I really liked learning new techniques to mould clay and I really enjoyed it SINCE ITS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I LAST DID CLAY!!!!!
I really loved making these sculpters of our selfs. I learened that if you whant to stick things together you need to do a hach stich ,put water and put the to pieces together.
It was so fun making the sculptures .
To stick the head and the body you have to make a hatch shape and then put water and then stick them together
It was fascinating to learn about how to make sculptures. My favourite thing that I learnt was learning about Augusta Savage. I can’t wait to take them home!
This was so much fun but I also learnt that to stick something to your base such as the head to the neck you have to make a couple lines landscape and a couple lines portrait on the top of the neck and on the bottom of the head- where the neck and head connect in real life.Then make the lines wet- but so you can still see the lineson both pieces-and connect the clay head and neck and make sure there is no gapes.
Best lesson ever! I love clay.