How is a ceramic mural made?

step one: Plan carefully The planning of the design is very important. The design has to include artworks by a few hundred children and also has to look like one big picture when you stand and look at it. Often Debbie has to make a grid of the design to match the measurements of the wall and make sure that everything is made to the right size. If you guess things it might look like a mess later. The animals are all from Victoria and so the artist has to do research to find out which animals are suitable to use. Debbie has also had some help from one of the parents - Trish who is helping with what these animals are. Here are some of Trish's suggestions: step two: Make artworks out of clay with the students We are making lots of artworks of the creatures that are coming out of Noah's ark. They are in pairs because Noah only took two of each animal onto the ark. Debbie has made an animal register and so when the students choose which creature they are making, it is recorded in the register so that we can keep track of how many of each creature and which creatures are being made. here is a picture of our register: step three: Fire the artworks in the kiln. Here is a photograph of the ceramic artworks being stacked into the big kiln. step four: Paint glaze onto the artworks and fire them a second time in the kiln Here are some photos of the glazing. This was on a friday when no-one is in one of the artrooms, I spread out the artworks that have already been bisque-fired and painted glaze onto them. They need about three coats of glaze. you can also see the grade five's tiles being glazed here too. everything is packed into boxes in an organised way after firing so that Debbie can easily locate the pieces she needs. The creatures will all need to be paired up ready to go onto the wall together. step five: Assemble the mural Debbie will draw the design onto the wall and think carefully about where everything goes. Part of this process will be pairing up all of the small creaures that were made. Here is a photo of the sorting. Debbie has organised a photo album of all of the pairs of animals. The children will remember me taking these photos in the workshops, so that I could find their pairs of animals later and re-unite them. Debbie also needs to sort out the mosaicing materials. Many tiles have to be smashed with a hammer into small pieces and placed in icecream containers ready for use. Here you can see the storage area with all of the tiles and broken pieces (known as tesserae) organised ready to begin.

She will begin to glue pieces on and fill the gaps in between the artworks with broken pieces of tile. Here is a photo of the mural partway through being glued onto the wall.

The larger animals are glued on in pieces. The year 8 students are working in classes with Debbie to make the larger animals. Here is one of the emus and some of the other larger animals glued onto the wall. Step six: Grout the mural Grouting the mural is one of the hardest jobs. It is hard to grout because of all the different ceramic artworks in it. Grouting is an important process because it holds the mural together better and it makes it nicer to touch and look at. Debbie will have to mix up a cement like substance and then rub it all over the top of the mural and then . . . wipe it off again! What a crazy thing to do, but an important one. The mural looks terrible when it is covered in grout, but beautiful when the grout is rubbed off. We began grouting the mural last wednesday and here is a photograph of Heather, a parent volunteer cleaning the wall after the grout has been rubbed in the gaps.

step seven: Celebrate Yay! the mural is finished. That's when Debbie likes to sit down with a cup of tea and have a look at the picture.