Jeff Pigott and Julia Warin

I wrote to Jeff Pigott to find out more about the space mission project, I thought maybe it could help me when doing my space theme with the children.
This is the email I wrote to him.

Dear Mr Pigott,
I am a student at Bath College completing a recycling project very similar to your Space Mission Project.
I would appreciate if you could give me some information on who got involved in this and how, and whether it was successful and some tips on doing this myself.
Thanks very much,
Katherine Howes.

This is the reply I received.

Hi Kate, Thanks for getting in touch.

The rocket project was a commission by Bradford-on-Avon town council to celebrate the anniversary of the moon landings. It was to be a centre piece for their display at the West Wilts Show. It was made by 3 artists - myself, Julia Warin and Keith Wright and with some help from others. It took about a month to build and is based on a children's climbing frame which we were given for free. The legs and struts are cardboard tubes and the main rocket is clad in thin mdf and then dressed with scrap materials. The hatchway is the lid of a wheelie bin! The point of the rocket is an Ikea lampshade on an exercise ball.

Making something like this would not have been possible as a community or group project without a lot of co-ordination and management. The whole rocket comes apart so that it can be stored. Do you want to buy it????

Hope that helps. If you want to know more, then send me some specific questions. And best of luck with your project.

Regards, Jeff

From this I realised I would need to make a very small scale rocket ship and look for materials such as cardboard tubes and silver paper.

This is information retrieved about the rocketship from the website:
Rocket
Height - 4.6 metres
Base width - 3 metres
Materials – Recycled metal, cardboard, paint, paper, found objects, wood, imagination.
Astronauts – 2 m and 1.4m tall
Materials: recycled wood, tents, pillows, paint tins and found materials.
Artists/tech - Julia Warin, Jeff Pigott, Keith Wright, Holly Pigott, Karen Pigott
Brief – to create a spectacular object to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landings as a centrepiece for a marquee at a County Show.
Research – NASA rocket and moon lander images, footage and recollections.
Collected designs, imagery and music circa 1969. Sci fi, fantasy and comic book imagery.
Construction method - Wallace and Grommit, in ”A Grand Day Out". The deconstructivism of Ikea. Looking at collected, found and leftover materials on the studio floor.

This particular project is very relevant to my project and I took a lot of information from this to help me in my project, for example I took some inspiration from the materials they built their spaceship from and tried to find similar items when looking for materials to build my spaceship. The spaceship they build was very tall and streamlined. It had very futuristic colours and complicated detail to give the impression of sophisticated technology. As I am working with younger children they will not be able to create a vessel as detailed but they have the basics to create something outer-worldly.



Julia Warin worked with young teenage girls at the girls group run by Barnardo's, this was called the mural project. Over 10 weeks they worked with collage, paint, drawing and words to create the elements, which went into the finished mural panels for Barnardo's offices. Looking at colour combinations, words of popular songs, retro 60s and 70s graphics, textiles & design elements and considering positive, active images of girls, they generated a mass of material. All this was then combined to create the final piece, reflecting the bubbly excitement of the group and the diverse identities and interests of the girls. The final piece had lots of interesting colours and tones. The shape was fairly basic but combined with the tones made an interesting piece.



Together with another artist Jean Edminston, Pigott and Warin created a project called Journeys to the edge, this was to explore the urge to visit the sea. They created a collection of photographs, paintings, ceramics and sculpture to present the artifacts and objects found on their creative journey. I enjoyed looking at the collection, which told a story of 'Journey'. There were different textures, which gave you an idea of the places they visited, and the variety of colours show a variety of areas.






Another project Warin and Pigott were involved in was commissioned by ‘Envolve’, also involved was Keith Wright. This project was commissioned to highlight issues around waste and recycling during national waste month. The sculptures are situated in a shop window in Bath to be seen by the public, it encourages us to think twice about what we buy, consume and throw away.





Pigott, accompanied by artist Shelley Wilson ran three public art workshops in a shopping center in Boscombe. To promote waste knowledge customers were given a 'bag for life' in exchange for the typical carrier bags which get thrown away and take a vey long time to decompose. Instead the customers were encouraged to create a quilt square from the carrier bag and use an 80-year-old sewing machine to combine them. Most people found this extremely enjoyable. The resulting wall hanging 'please use this bag!' made of 286 squares of plastic carrier bag was displayed as part of the PLASTIC! Exhibition at the Russel-cotes art gallery and museum, this artwork was very bright and bold and could be seen from far away and was eye-catching, I believe this was done on purpose to raise awareness of the issues of plastic bags. Jeff also worked at Kings-park primary school with over 100 students to create a second wall now hanging on the wall of the school. There were also workshops at the neighborhood nursery, where children under 5 played with scrap and coloured gel to create stained glass type artwork. The outcomes were very creative and similar to the project I did encouraging children to manipulate and create things with scrap.