Our Creative Arts department have been busy working with Upper Fourth pupils, who study the full range of Creative Arts disciplines on offer at Downe House, to create a beautiful display of poppies. The installation sits outside Wakefield House which is at the heart of the School campus so it can be seen by our whole community and any visitors.
The inspiration behind the piece was the 2014 Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red installation at the Tower of London which commemorated the outbreak of WWI in 1914. This installation used 888,426 ceramic poppies to represent the number of British or colonial servicemen killed during the war.
Each creative discipline used a different approach to make their poppies.
In Art, the pupils made their poppies from ceramic. The poppies were spray painted before the girls added hand painted acrylic detailing.
Our Textiles students used pleated and gathered muslin which they hand-coloured. These were backed with fabric which was free machine stitched, with the black centres being hand stitched after.
In 3D Design, the girls used their CAD (Computer-Aided Design) skills to design their poppies. Then, laser cut polypropylene was heat formed and the petals assembled using laser cut centres.
Meanwhile, our Remove (Year 7) to Upper Four (Year 9) Creative Arts Award Holders have been making mixed media poppy pictures on a background of reproduction wartime newspapers. These art pieces are on display in the Murray Centre.
