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 looked at photographs of her work and then practised representing proportion in faces and bodies correctly. Then we used what we had learnt to create our clay sculptures. Finally, we painted our sculptures with metallic paint as she used to do.
We learned that it is much more difficult than we thought to create life-like figures with the correct proportions and we gained even more respect for Augusta Savage’s talent. Also, unfortunately, as you can see, some of our clay work is just as fragile as hers!
Making the Clay Models were so fun . I enjoyed making it . Augusta Savage inspired me by how she says that she takes no credit but her students , In their art will be her credit and how she made life height figures .
I had LOTS of fun making our Augusta Savage figures! The only tricky part was that the clay was so crumbly !!! My figure lost his right foot, left leg and head !!!!
Your clay models look so amazing.I bet it was worth staying in at playtime so your master pieces would look awesome.
Love your clay models! ❤️
What lovely sculpting
I can’t wait to do this in year 6
Your clay models are great Year 6!
Mine fell apart -I messed up last second….
The clay models were very fun to make even though most of them crumbled and broke after they dried but we were having lots of fun being inspired by Augusta Savage.
I loved making these models and I would love to have another crafty lesson.
I loved it when we did sculpting because it was super fun.
I had lots of fun sculpting the clay and it was really interesting learning about Augusta Savage.
I enjoyed making the clay models. Mine broke but I still enjoyed it.
It was super fun and mine only fell apart at the end but I am ok with that.
I loved making clay models even though it got quite messy and under my nails and I loved to learn how Augusta Savage made her master pieces.😂😊
I loved this project and I hope that we can do something similar to this in the future.
I wish I could have been there to do it. It look so fun
I loved making and painting the clay sculptures. I would love to do it again.
i loved this lesson it was so much fun
This was very fun although my model broke and I hope we can make more clay things.
I LOVED MAKING THESE MODELS BUT I WISH MINE STUCK TOGETHER BETTER.
This was a really fun art creation to do. Even though my clay did not look so good, I managed to make it stand up and look like a person.
The clay sculpture making was very enjoyable! My sculpture stayed together as I used pipe cleaners.
I loved doing this lesson it was so much fun I wish I could do it again.
This was so much fun. If I had to choose between making a figure or a berlin head I would choose a berlin head.
I loved making the clay models it was very fun! my model was nearly falling but stayed together. Augusta Savage was very inspiring.
We had so much fun making our sculptures in this lesson. We hope we can do this again soon! At the end mine – Constance – was headless and legless. Mine – Sophia B – lost their arms and legs!
my hands got messy
It was so fun and we all voted for no play which meant we did 3 whole hours of clay!
I loved the clay making and i hope we do it again
My clay model broke completely!😎
This is my favourite lesson so far in Year 6 apart from the stream walk in Sayers Croft!
I really enjoyed doing clay and I learnt so much about proportion!
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