Dragons for Chinese New Year

Every Chinese New Year Parade ends with a Dragon Dance. The parades start on New Year's Day and continue for the next fifteen days until the end of the festivities with the Lantern Festival.

The Dragon Parade is a highlight of the festivities. The Dragon represents wisdom, power, and wealth and a very important aspect of Chinese Culture. It is also said that the Dragon Dance performed on New Year's Day scares away the evil spirits and all the bad luck with them...

During the Dance, a dozen or so performers hold the dragon up on poles. They raise and lower the Dragon making him "dance" as they wind through the masses to the sounds of horns, drums and gongs. (from http://www.china-family-adventure.com/dragon-dance.html)

Here is a Dragon Puppet the was used in a Chinese New Year parade.

First and second grade artists looked at many examples of Chinese Dragons and then drew their own using construction paper crayons and oil pastels. 

Cherry blossom paintings for Chinese New Year

Vermont Art Teacher's Association Conference at Shelburne Museum

This year's keynote speaker was Nacy Walkup. She is the editor of SchoolArts magazine and leader of art teacher professional development that focuses on social justice and international folk art. She shared several examples of humanitarian based art projects, some of which I have explored with students in the past.  I feel strongly that art is an effective medium for helping students feel connected to their world and feel that they can make a difference, so this presentation spoke to my passion for this. Click here to see Nancy's write-up of the conference on the SchoolArts Blog.

The first workshop I attended connected nicely with the work that Katie Babic and I are doing with a small group fifth and sixth graders around mindfulness.   This workshop was lead by artist Gowri Savoor.  She taught about the Indian art of Rangoli, which is traditionally a mandala-type pattern created from chalk dust on the ground during the holiday of Diwali.  We created our own Rangoli designs using colored rice.  The process is meditative and calming and the art is ephemeral- it only lasts for a short period of time.  I enjoyed working with other people to create a group Rangoli design. Click here for more examples of Rangoli art.

 

The second workshop I attended was about the Panamanian art of Molas.  Click here for more information about Molas. During this workshop, we used colored felt to create our own Molas. 

 

Spending a day at Shelburne Museum in the fall in such a treat!  In addition to enjoying the beautiful grounds and exhibits, I visited the European Art collection to see paintings by Monet, Cassatt, Manet and Degas. It is quite an experience to be up close and personal with such famous works of art!

 I also enjoyed an exhibit of contemporary and mostly local art called "Eyes on the Land." This is a collection of works that explore how our landscape can be viewed using a variety of arts media. This display is a collaboration between the Vermont Land Trust and the Shelburne Museum. 

Mandalas!

In celebration of International Dot Day, all classes will create different types of "Dot Art."  Fifth and sixth grade artists will create circular artwork called Mandalas.  

Mandalas are created in many cultures as a support for meditation.  They can be drawings or painted or made from sand.  

What is a Mandala?

The word "mandala" is from the classical Indian language of Sanskrit. Loosely translated to mean "circle," a mandala is far more than a simple shape. It represents wholeness, and can be seen as a model for the organizational structure of life itself--a cosmic diagram that reminds us of our relation to the infinite, the world that extends both beyond and within our bodies and minds.

Describing both material and non-material realities, the mandala appears in all aspects of life: the celestial circles we call earth, sun, and moon, as well as conceptual circles of friends, family, and community.

(from The Mandala Project)

Mandalas have Radial Symmetry:  the condition of having similar parts regularly arranged around a central axis 

Examples of Mandalas:

How to Grow a Mandala Video:

Video of the Dali Lama creating a Sand Mandala

Plum Blossoms for the Chinese New Year

First and second grade artists learned about some of the traditions of Chinese New Year.  One of the traditions is the display of fresh plum and cherry  blossoms to signify new life and new beginnings. We used brown liquid  watercolor paint and straws to make the tree branches, using our breath to spread the paint across the pages. We used cotton swabs to paint the flower blossoms. 

Sochi Olympic Games celebrates Russian culture with patchwork quilt design

Sochi games’ press release: ”The Olympic patchwork quilt, developed by Bosco’s creative department and given to the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee, will be the official Look of Russia’s first Winter Games.

Our goal was to represent a diverse range of emotions and feelings, connecting concepts like Motherland, Family, Culture, Time, Olympism, Peace, Nobility, Friends, Memory, Honour, Dreams, Beauty, Freedom, Pride, Warmth, Happiness, Greatness, Reliability, Victory, Creativity, Hospitality, Creation, Future, Russia, Planet Earth.

Every region in the world is proud of its unique origins, and it is no different in Russia. That is why there are so many different local traditions, songs and crafts that highlight the individuality of their creators, each valuable in its own right. Bosco had a wealth of choices to represent Russia’s rich diversity, but in the end we settled on something familiar, warm and welcoming: the patchwork quilt.

In the concept design, every patch was infused with the history and personality of traditional crafts from each of Russia’s 89 regions: in a single tapestry we combined Uftyuzhskaya painting and Vologda lace, Gzhel and Zhostovo painting, Kubachi patterns and the flowers of Pavlo Posad shawls, Mezenskaya painting and Khokhloma, Yakutsk patterns, fabrics of Ivanovo and other distinctive Russian patterns. That is how we arrived at a modern, distinctive and unmistakeably Russian Look of the Games.”

click here to learn more about the different designs featured in the patchwork banners

From www.graphicart-news.com

Dia de Los Muertos- Day of the Dead -

First and second graders learned about the Days of the Dead, celebrated on November 1st and 2nd. This is NOT Mexican Halloween! This is a very important holiday in Mexico when they celebrate loved ones who haves died. One of the traditions on the Day of the Dead is to create an altar to memorialize a loved one. These altars are often decorated with colorful sugar skulls. First and second grade artists looked at pictures of sugar skulls and created their own using colored pencils and construction paper. They loved this project!