Mountains and Rocks

Teacher: Pilar Sesén

Artist: Maider López

Language: Basque

With the aim of finding new ways of looking at the landscape and the environment, the pupils were asked to find answers to questions like the following: What are the closest mountains to us? How is the landscape transformed? What rocks can we find in the surroundings? What are rocks like?

Most schoolchildren in the area can see the Peñas de Aya massif from the school windows or from home. This project encouraged them to take a closer look from various standpoints, and then draw the mountains on color cardboard. Then, based on magnified images of the mountains, they were asked to draw the mountain profiles in large scale. The pictures were brought together on big banners to create a mountain range and add motion. As they advanced their work on the banners, the students generated a single image. Working together and collaboratively, the kids recreated an animated, motion version of nature. In the process, they had to adapt their works so that they fitted those of their classmates, thus building a common image out of individual pictures. Based on concepts like scale and interaction with the environment, attention was drawn to the value of coexistence, cooperation and being part of a group. The project showed how the whole was the result of the sum of individual parts, requiring each and every one of them.

To analyze a common element in their natural environment–rocks–the pupils were asked to recreate the texture of some of them in painting, covering a whole page. How could they make the paper look like stone? By crumpling it! Then they could shape it into a rock. This is how they made their little rocks, while experimenting with materials and techniques.

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