Candy Colours

I was a teacher, Head of Creative Arts at a secondary school in Kent.

The school is very lucky to be in a beautiful rural setting with extensive playing fields which are liberally sprinkled with waste paper bins. Despite this staff were constantly nagging students not to drop litter.

Every so often a craze appeared in school that seemed to take over everything. This piece is the result of one of those crazes.

It manifested itself as litter to start with. Suddenly everyone seemed to be sucking sherbet from brightly coloured plastic straws, and then dropping the straws all over the place. It got so bad that they were banned from school, but it didn’t work. Then I had the idea of asking the students to give me their empty straws, promising to make an art work from them. Strangely they were able to bring the straws to my one collection point in the art department, though unable to put them into one of the many bins all around school!

I had to solve the health and safety problem of straws dirty with sugar and the spittle of several hundred students (I did) and find a way to use such short lengths. Weaving and patchwork gave me the answers, though I’m not so happy with my use of staples.