This is a place to let our children sing out through their perfect art. It is also a chance to let us all enjoy their creativity, stories and talent.
“Art is never wrong; it simply is.”
The timing of this lesson for me is fantastic. I just spent the weekend in California and stumbled upon this exhibit at the Bowers Museum. Watch this video taken by Bowers President Peter Keller on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea that features the Fire Dance Mask Festival. Several of the large spirit masks seen in this performance were collected on behalf of the museum and can be viewed in the Spirits and Headhunters exhibition.
Spanning the geographic region collectively referred to as Oceania, this comprehensive exhibition highlights masterworks from the three cultural regions of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Particular focus is placed on New Guinea, land of the headhunter, and the rich artistic traditions infused into daily and ritual life. Submerge into a visually stunning world and come face to face with larger-than-life masks, finely crafted feast bowls, objects associated with the secretive Sepik River men’s house, beautiful shell and feather currency, magic figures and tools of the shaman, objects related to seagoing trade routes, and gorgeous personal adornments.
Our lesson will have the students create these masks on a small scale using paper plates, preprinted outlines to save time, markers and pastels. We are also using pipe cleaners on the top or bottom as the rafia adornment. Again, K-5 - easier than having them tie rafia during a 50 minute lesson. More fun too, because it holds its shape.
Symmetry is the running theme and objects found in nature such as shells, rocks, wood, fibers.
Many of you are familiar with the awesome statues at East Island in Polynesia.
This chair made us smile and then we read the significance of it and the role it plays in their democratic society:
You can learn more about it on the Bowers' Museum site and listen to their narration here.
Have fun with this. We suggest for younger students if you are short on time - pre-print the masks for them, cut the eyeholes and mouth. Punch the plates that you will mount them on. We used the Chinette type of plates for thickness, but not plastic.
In this lesson we're covering bark paintings, ceramics, Oaxacan wood carvings, Day of the Dead (dia de las muertes), serapes and huichol yarn painting. The production is a bit daunting for younger children. The adults testing this out were a bit tested as we attempted to make sharp corners out of yarn. We're opting to purchase wikistiks or Bendaroos for the younger ones to allow them to have more success.
The goal is to teach them about warm and cool colors as well as the entire Mexican folk art culture and traditions. We don't need them melting down over glue on their fingers and yarn that won't stay put.
Edward Eager June 20, 1910 Author of * Mouse Manor (1952) * Playing Possum (1955) * Half Magic (1954) * Knight's Castle (1956) * Magic By the Lake (1957) * The Time Garden (1958) * Magic Or Not? (1959) * The Well-Wishers (1960) * Seven-Day Magic (1962)