Children Work with Inspirational Sculptor Gregor Kregar

This is an article Room 13 students wrote about working with Gregor Kregar in March of this year:

Dream Houses with Gregor Kregar

In March, twelve senior classes in Year 4-6 at Elm Park School collaborated with Gregor Kregar who was working on a sculpture installation for an exhibition at Te Tuhi Art Gallery.  Before we went to  Gregor's workshop we looked at lots of examples of his sculptures. His work is famous all over the world. We also looked at amazing houses, built of geometric shapes, in America, Canada, The Netherlands, Israel, and New Zealand. These were part of educational materials sent by Jeremy Leatinu'u who coordinates the education programme. We were all pretty excited when we finally got to Te Tuhi.

When we walked into the Te Tuhi school studio we met Gregor who soon set to work inspiring us with Platonic and Archimedean 3-d shapes. He showed us some of his work and it was very exciting. He showed us the pre-cut cardboard equilateral and isoceles triangles that we were going use. We worked in pairs to make fantastic buildings with the cardboard shapes, hot glue and tape. It was fascinating to see the buildings take shape.

When we finished our imaginative  Dream Houses we felt fabulous and lucky. We thought that it was one of the best things we had ever done in our lives. We can't wait for the opening when we can see how our small scupltures have become part of Gregor's sculpture exhibition.

We found out that Gregor is from Slovenia but now lives in New Zealand. He really loves making sculpture and he has been constructing shapes since he was a young boy. 

Voyager Maritime Museum Trip

Last week we also visited the Auckland Voyager Maritime Museum to find out about the early voyagers to New Zealand. We did not know a great deal about the early migrations to Aoteraroa/New Zealand but we soon did.

The voyaging waka (ocean going boats) are a remarkable part of New Zealand's early history. The class will write about what they have learned and post it to the blog in the next couple of weeks.

The Dream Houses Exhibition Opening at Te Tuhi

Last week many Rm 13 students and their parents went down to Te Tuhi Contemporary Art Gallery for a special celebration of the Dream Houses opening.

When we walked into the foyer we were met by an incredible sight! Gregor had built a vaulted "room" out of thousands of pieces of wood in different colours. He had used 5 truck-loads of demolition timber to create this amazing structure. It was a truly mind-bending experience.

After we had listened to the speeches by museum director James McCarthy, art teacher Jeremy Leatinu'u and Gregor Kregar we went to view our creations which were displayed in one of the gallery rooms. They looked amazing on the wall,  and ceiling jutting out with all their weird angles.

We all agreed that working with this wonderful artist has been one of the highlights of our year.

Room 13

Look at some of the photos of this memorable event...

The extraordinary vaulted ceiling

Some inspired R13 students

Children's designs

We found our design!!

More creative artists...

                                               
Our student creations looked amazing on walls and ceiling 

Gregor and some R13 students

Crowded in to celebrate the awesome structure

THANK YOU GREGOR AND THANK YOU TE TUHI FOR THIS FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY TO BE PART OF THE DREAM HOUSES EXHIBITION!