Barbara Hepworth

Not so long ago, a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth was stolen from a South London park. My children had seen this sculpture and couldn't understand why it had been taken. This lead to  discussions about scrap metal thieves. Recently, I found The life and work on Barbara Hepworth from the Heinemann first library. This seemed an ideal time to find out more about Barbara Hepworth's work.

Barbara Hepworth was a famous sculpture of the twentieth century. She was inspired by the natural world but after the 1920s, her sculptures were abstract.  There are collections of her work in St Ives and Wakefield as well as sculptures in cities around the UK as well as a large number of sculptures in the US, Canada and the Netherlands.

Having read the book, we decided to go to see one of the sculptures, in another London park, Battersea Park. We found it quickly. It was easily identifiable with a fence around it and notices to say that there were CCTV cameras. This sculpture is known as Single Form and is a smaller version, of that of the same name, outside the United Nations building.

Barbara Hepworth's preferred media were wood, stone and bronze. I chickened out of trying these with the children and ordered air drying clay. The children were very pleased about this as they really wanted to make pots. It seemed mean to insist on abstract sculptures so they made pots.

Having done pots, Miss Belle was keen to have a go at a model in the style of Hepworth.

At a different angle

Barbara Hepworth moved to St Ives, Cornwall in the Second World War. She lived there until her death in 1975.
Cornwall is famous for its cream teas so we decided to finish off by making scones and having a cream tea, well actually dessert, for the end of the half term. Of course, the scones had to be served with strawberry jam and cream.

This is linked to Kids get arty