Waverley

Primary & Intermediate Students

with Artist Nellie Gossen

Intermediate Students

with Artist Shamina Senaratne

This year, my residency led intermediate students at Waverley Elementary School on a journey of thinking about the human body through the practice of costume making. Together, we used the classic narrative of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as our guide. As a text written by a teenager in 1818, we collectively explored the central themes of the novel and what they mean to young people today, more than 200 years later. 

Each class introduced students to new sculptural techniques, materials and the work of contemporary artists making wearable art. Reflecting on the different experiences of both the creator (Dr. Frankenstein) and the creation (Frankenstein’s Monster), we used costume practices as prompts to consider the human body and the limits of the human body, how artists reshape and reimagine the human form, our relationship with technology and new life forms, and the ethics of scientific creation. 

Towards the end of the residency, students brought together the different techniques they learned to imagine and create a new life form of their own. Together, we asked: what are the needs of the present moment, and how might we adapt the human body to skillfully meet those needs? 

From the addition of wings, limb extensions, and resistance to disease to the pure fantastical (including ‘Squidbard’, the anthropomorphic squid-poet), projects creatively addressed the many ways our bodies engage with technology and the world around us. 

Students at Waverley Elementary had the opportunity to reflect and think about what personal qualities help us thrive and support our resilience and growth; and that as we become stronger in our good qualities, we create a more supportive and resilient and beautiful community.  Using onion skins and teabags contributed by all the students’ homes, we created a connected community supported by our families as we dyed fabric we all used for this project. Students conducted research in teams, and individually contributed a stitched “prayer/inspiration flags” to a 6-class installation which holds their labour and their intentions for a welcoming, caring and inclusive community they can play a part in growing. It is installed both inside the school and spreads outdoors into the courtyard.

Some of the questions we asked: What nourishes us? What can we learn from the plants and trees in our school yard? What are the best characteristics we see in people? And that we wish to have in our community? What if we could grow them in us? Can we communicate without words? Could our good wishes be signified in the flags we stitched so that the wind could share them with the community of plants and trees in the neighbourhood?