World Art Day 2021 Assembly- "Pay Attention"

"...listening to Hockney I too have always known that I look at the world. I see things and I notice. In between photos of interesting cracks in the pavement, or a really big leaf, my phone is full of photographs of the fourth floor corridor around 7am. At that time, the sun hits the windows on the east and the light spills in through the windows of the classroom doors. And the warmth of that orange light is so beautiful, that a photograph never does it justice and I'll probably continue to be amazed by it every time I turn the corner. And a lot of you, are exactly the same! You see things, you notice. When Solaia in Grade 9 asks me to take a photograph of the soggy bit of paper she's been using to wipe her paintbrush on... that's her seeing something beautiful in the world. And when Rohan in Grade 8, spends the majority of the lesson adding paint to water droplets and watching it disperse and disappear, and grow into blobs, instead of doing the painting like I asked him to and then proceeding to giggle when he knows that I've noticed and still continues to watch the paint disperse in the water droplets... that's him seeing something beautiful in the world. And when Emil in Grade 7 notices that all of the objects that his teammates have collected for their group installation are all associated with childhood and that actually the temporary nature of their artwork could actually reflect the transient nature of their own childhood's... that's him seeing something incredibly beautiful in the world. So on World Art Day, pay attention. You don't have to change the world, for now just pay attention. Look at the light, look at the people, the buildings, look at nature and see something beautiful in the world.