Saturday Art Workshop: From a Sketch to an Object and a Sculpture / for the exhibition: Ivan Meštrović (1883–1962) Sculptor and Citizen of the World

During the art workshops we will be inspired, in terms of both form and content, by the artist’s work, style and handwriting – especially elements of the Art Deco style, figurative motifs and themes. The core workshops will concern working with ceramic clay and other sculptural materials. We will take a closer look at the theory and practice of sculptural work, explaining traditional techniques and methods. In connection with the video presented at the exhibition, we will focus mainly on the principle of casting and the creation of moulds and casts – we will explain the whole process and demonstrate it using examples and models. We will also be designing small objects inspired by the artist’s work, which we will then place virtually in public space while applying the use of new media and projection with a data projector as well as by the means of playing with the scale. We will fire some of the selected models of ceramic clay sculptures to become a permanent part of our haptic educational activities for blind visitors, and we will create moulds for some of the models. We will also draw designs of objects for public space into reproductions of photographs of metropolises the sculptor visited on his travels. One of the main motifs will be cosmopolitanism, related to the artist’s extensive international and travel experiences. For example, we will try to gradually create together a fictional, creative, giant-sized map – an experimental collage inspired by his travels. We will also implement so-called “living sculptures” – visitors will stylize themselves into the compositions of his sculptural works and create different variations and paraphrases thereof, with the emphasis mainly on the expression of gestures. We will also deal with drapery – using reflective foil, we will enrich the living sculptures with compositional and spatial experiments. We will also use giant sheets of paper to try to outline the silhouettes of the bodies of the workshop participants in different positions, and then layer them over each other. The results of all the transformations, phases and versions will be documented in an interesting way.  It will be possible to complete reproductions of photographs of individual sculptures with drawings, to place these reproductions in new contexts, to shift them to the present time, to look for parallels in current situations of political and social life, and to add various attributes characteristic of the present to the reproductions. In the form of collages and photomontages using these reproductions, we will interconnect figures and combine themes, linking themes that seemingly cannot be connected. But we will also focus on sketching interesting and enlarged details of the sculptures which, in some cases, will approach abstraction. We will also involve mobile apps and use them to transform the photographed fragments of sculptures in various colours and shapes.