Two Irish animators at Smithsonian Folklife Festival impress young visitors

"What about his feet?"
"What about the mouth?"
"What about the skin?"

The children visiting the Smithsonian Folklife Festival are inquisitive. And in a tent labeled "Animation," two Northern Ireland artists are doing their best to keep up with the rapid pace of questions. For the past three days, Gary Rosborough and Tomás Ó Maonaigh have been demonstrating the process of molding claymation models. And though they've grown accustomed to curious young onlookers, this Sunday afternoon crowd seems particularly interested.

"Can you make a snowman?" asks a boy in a Washington Nationals baseball hat. Maonaigh puts down the small, clay human model he's working on and ponders the question.

"Oh yeah," he says in a casual Irish accent. "But it's a little hot for a snowman, isn't it?" The kids gathered around the demonstration table crack up in laughter.

The annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, now in its 41st year, celebrates cultural diversity by showcasing performances, exhibits and demonstrations from around the world at the National Mall. Rosborough and Maonaigh are two of more than 160 Irish natives who traveled to Washington D.C. to participate in the festival's Northern Ireland program.

But of all the performers descending on the nation's capital, few interact with children quite like the two Irishmen who play with clay. Most famously used in the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit short films, claymation is a type of stop-motion animation that photographs plasticine modeling clay figures frame-by-frame. The tedious workúú involves adjusting models a fraction of an inch between shots, with thousands of shots needed to produce an entire animation.

Both Rosborough and Maonaigh work for the Nerve Centre, a community-based arts center in Derry, Northern Ireland. In Maonaigh's words, the nerve center allows "youth of the town to express themselves through music and film using new technologies." As part of the Nerve Centre, they travel to schools across Northern Ireland and teach the claymation process to children as young as six years old.

Rosborough, who has been leading such workshops for 12 years, is more experienced, having traveled to Thailand, New Zealand, and the Middle East to work with children. Early on in his career, he attended a film festival in Montreal, where he met John Wright. Wright, one of the lead clay animators from the Wallace and Gromit shorts, shared his knowledge of the art, providing more guidance in a few days than Rosborough imagines he could ever have mustered by himself. But more importantly, Rosborough realized how "these [models]Š brought a lot of joy into the schools."

Maonaigh, who was mentored by Rosborough over four years ago, has learned the importance of gaining children's trust. "Once the trust has been established the creativity can begin," he writes in an email interview.

As Rosborough says, working with children "is a different art," which requires patience, compassion and understanding. The two animators display all of these abilities at the Folklife festival, where dozens of children, some as young as 3 or 4, crowd around the demonstration table to see the cartoon-like models' bulging eyes and wide smiles. Assorted packages of plasticine clay, wood rollers, pairs of scissors, paint scrapers and pipe cleanersú are also scattered across the wooden table. A few feet away in the tent's corner, a laptop and a video camera are set up to demonstrate how the claymation figures become moving characters.

Serena Thapa, an 8-year-old festivalgoer from Baltimore gave the Irish animators a rave review. "This is the best part of the festival, I think," she says. Her younger brother, Michael, nods in agreement. In his hand, he reverently holds a small yellow clay head of Homer Simpson, a souvenir from Maonaigh.

Bertha Hall, a volunteer at the Folklife festival since 1990, has seen Rosborough and Manoaigh's effect on children firsthand. She recalls seeing a young boy spend an hour making a clay ant with the two artists' encouragement. "[The boy's] motherúú ú-- she said she had not seen her son that focused on one thing for that long," Hall says.

The enthusiastic children in today's crowd are also focused, their eyes fixed on Rosborough as he molds his latest piece. The artist eggs on his youthful fans, playfully asking whether the model should be smiling. A mob-like chant emerges. "Smi-leŠ Smi-leŠSmi-leŠ"
"Make him smile and stick out his tongue!" one child shouts. Rosborough nods and with a few quick hand movements the claymation model is wearing a goofy grin.

"Make him pick his nose!" the same young boy says, laughing. The young onlookers giggle and watch expectantly.

"No, he's far too polite for that," Rosborough responds, looking down at his hand-sized creation. Noting his crowd's disappointment Rosborough quickly takes some purple clay and gives his creation a more hefty backside. He smiles to himself and then turns the model over to show his audience the modified creation. Shrieks of laughter echo throughout the tent.

Clearly, the animators from Ireland know that potty humor is a hit with kids everywhere.

David Fegley