Visual Arts Trip to Bagamoyo, 20-22 September, 2007

The IB 1 Visual Arts class “laid down their burdened hearts” during the recent arts trip to Bagamoyo. Nine visual arts students and one teacher, Ms Graham, went to Bagamoyo for an exciting weekend of arts and crafts. The first art task started off on Thursday evening with some watercolor landscape painting on the beach, and later on an interesting and fun game of Squiiiiiggle.

At 7:30 in the morning Ms Graham woke up to some grouchy faces as we prepared for our beach walk/run, and used this time to put our photography skills to the test. Afterwards we had the chance to do observational drawings on the beach while waiting for our tour guide for the day to arrive. Once he did show up we left for the Kaole Ruins, which was a great place to start off our tour of the historic town of Bagamoyo. We ended up visiting ruins from about the 13th century, the German fort as well as the fish market and sculpture schools. Overall it was a great tour, and we learned a lot of history, as well as the art styles common in Bagamoyo.

After lunch we experimented with oil pastels, while waiting for a local artist to join us and teach us how to create African wood carvings. Spending roughly 2 hours hacking away at wood, (some students seizing the opportunity to take out their anger) we finished up with some interesting “rough,” make it “very rough” mask carvings. We also realized how tough the work is, and began to understand the work required to create a wood sculpture and the pricing of their products.

Dinner followed, as well as some more oil pastel work, where we learned to use a type of turpentine to give smudge effects, as we practiced our drawing skills by creating portraits of one another.

The last day began with another walk down the beach to take photos, and afterwards a continuation of our wood carving practice, which a lot of students really got drawn into. On our way home, we passed by the Bagamoyo Arts College, which was really amazing, some of the paintings we saw looked like photographs which could have been printed from a computer. After spending some time looking around, we departed for I.S.T, with the wonderful voice of one of the students singing solo.

The trip to Bagamoyo gave all of us visual art students an opportunity to connect with the arts of Tanzania, while having solid time to work on developing our own skills. We were each able to create some amazing pieces of art, which will soon be on display, along with our photographs, around the IST campus. Thanks to all who helped make this trip possible!

Written by Cid Schuler and Maura Van As