The leaves of the sycamore gradually turn yellow, the chill of late autumn also sneaks into the window, and the new electric kiln in the Songjiang Sixth Middle School Shang plastic pavilion emits the unique residual temperature after the clay bath. A group of children who are keen to "play with mud" surround the electric kiln, looking forward to the moment when the clay sculpture comes out. Ke Chen, the instructor of the community, patted the old electric kiln that had "retired" next to the new electric kiln, and sighed: "Over the years, the small Shang plastic pavilion has carried the clay sculpture dreams of nearly a thousand sixth middle school students, opening a window for children to feel beauty. ”
Clay Sculpture Classroom "Through a Thousand Autumns"
The kiln door opened, and the children carefully took out the clay sculptures they had made three weeks ago, as if they were holding treasures. "They've been waiting for this moment for a long time!" Ke Chen said that after the clay sculpture works are made, they need to be naturally air-dried for about two weeks before they can be fired in the kiln for seven or eight hours, and they need to be cooled for nearly two days after molding. In order to make the work more expressive, the molded embryo also needs to be glazed, and then re-installed in the kiln to calcinate and cool down again, so that the work and the glaze are integrated and fixed, and any link is urgent. Take the cooling out of the oven, the cooling is not in place will be abandoned, "the cooling is too fast, the clay glaze fired will be damaged, and sometimes even the sound of the clay sculpture cracking can be heard."
Surprisingly, firing and glazing is not the most time-consuming. In the storage room of Shang plastic pavilion, a bucket soaked in clay shows the difficulty and cumbersomeness of carrying out clay sculpture club classes. "The softness and hardness of clay is related to whether students can successfully complete the shaping in just 40 minutes." Ke Chen said that clay sculpture classes are only held every Monday afternoon, and it often takes a week to prepare the materials used in the class, and the pieces of clay need to be broken and dried first, blistered and soft, and then formed into a ball with the mud, and then dried twice after reconciliation, until the softness and hardness are moderate.
Although the work before and after the 40-minute clay sculpture teaching is time-consuming and labor-intensive, the clay sculpture course is not limited to completing these tedious tasks. "To establish a correct view of art for students, it is especially important to have a deep teaching design." Ke Chen introduced that although the content design of clay sculptures in the middle school stage does not need to be too difficult to start from, it is still necessary to grasp the core of art and give each student the confidence and space to create with stepwise homework requirements. In order to overcome the modeling difficulties of "analyzing and summarizing the shape", Ke Chen often uses various image metaphors to explain the scientific body knowledge in teaching, help students quickly find breakthroughs from complex modeling, cultivate the overall situation of creation, and cooperate with students to explore the aesthetic connotation of modeling from small knowledge points such as "texture change".
Dream keepers in one lesson a week
Such a time-consuming and laborious thing, Ke Chen insisted on it for nearly ten years. Since joining Matsue No. 6 Junior High School in early 2011, he has spent most of his energy on the design and teaching of the club's clay sculpture course. Although Shangsu Pavilion was only opened in 2016, he had been looking for ways to integrate clay sculptures more into the classroom.
"Dream and emotion, I feel that this thing is not only for the students, but also for their sense of accomplishment as a teacher." I hope that in addition to mastering modeling skills, students can pay more attention to their own artistic expression ability, and can integrate their understanding of modeling, self-examination and even appeal to the outside world in their works. Ke Chen introduced that art teaching attaches special importance to the cultivation of modeling ability, and clay sculpture is one of the important types of plastic arts, which gradually matures with the birth and development of human civilization, enriches people's spiritual life for thousands of years, cultivates people's sentiments, and embellishes and beautifies the living environment. For students, the study of clay sculpture involves more spatial thinking and scheduling, the processing and use of materials and tools, three-dimensional production and practice, etc., so in the expansion of artistic vision and the cultivation of hands-on ability, and the improvement of students' comprehensive quality and ability, clay sculpture shows the irreplaceable unique role of painting.
In Shang plastic pavilion, each class of students will try mud plate curling, clay plate inlay, kneading and other modeling methods, and experience the joy of making clay sculptures in hand kneading techniques such as dough, pressing, pinching and rubbing. Today, pushing open the dark red Chinese wooden doors of Shang plastic pavilion, the dazzling clay sculptures on the display cabinet often make the viewer mistakenly think that they have entered a art exhibition hall, and those works rich in artistic atmosphere are from the hands of the students of the Sixth Middle School. With the change of seasons, clay sculptures are accumulating more and more, due to the limited space, many works have been packed into storage boxes. "Two or three thousand pieces are definitely there." Ke Chen said that in recent years, the school has invested a lot of money in order to achieve children's interests and hobbies, and the fully automated electric kiln currently in use has just been purchased this year.
The blossoming and fruiting are amazing
Kung Fu pays off. Over the years, the school's special clay sculpture club class has made many students who like clay sculpture creation, and Ke Chen is impressed by the 2018 Class of Fan Shiqi students. "Clay sculpture creation needs to think far, sit still, and play well, and there are not many children who can develop and enjoy it." Ke Chen said that Fan Shiqi is a good seedling, her works have won awards in the Shanghai Student Art Single Competition Pottery Special, open limbs to embrace hydrangeas, exaggerated and interesting expressions, cute little lion mud shaping can always attract the attention of the viewer.
As a guidance teacher, Ke Chen has also won many honors for his persistence over the years. In 2018, based on the clay sculpture curriculum of the Sixth Middle School, he participated in the compilation of the "Basic Requirements for the Teaching of Fine Arts Disciplines in Junior High Schools in Shanghai", responsible for the second theme "Sculpture". During the epidemic period, the online aerial classroom has become the first position for primary and secondary school students in the city to learn, as a representative of the art discipline of Songjiang District Middle School, Ke Chen moved the characteristic clay sculpture class of the sixth middle school to the municipal "air classroom".
"Education emphasizes the 'five educations' of morality, intellectuality, physical fitness, and labor, and teachers are both flower-waterers and guides." Ding Yu, principal of Songjiang No. 6 Middle School, introduced that although the hardware equipment of No. 6 Middle School is not the best, the school combines the characteristics of the student system and operating conditions to open a clay sculpture course that is deeply loved by students. Since 2011, in addition to carrying out the "Basics of Clay Sculpture" school course in the student club class every week, it has also integrated the teaching content of clay sculpture into the regular art class, which not only cultivates the students' practical ability of the discipline, cultivates the students' sentiments, but also achieves young teachers.
■ Reporter Wang Meiwen photographed by the interviewee unit
■ Text editor Li Xiang Lu Jia
■ Column Editor Yang Lu ■ Column Editor-in-Chief Chen Yali