D'art

Hannah has been taking art lessons for 4 weeks and has completed 2 projects. They study a geographical location for 2 weeks, along with art of the area and culture.

Sometimes I am intensely sad that I have no frame of reference for my culture. I'm a "mutt" I guess. I have no claim to a specific culture other than supposedly I am 1/16 Choctaw. I was born and raised in New Mexico, so many things about the Mexican culture (and some even Navajo) I identify with. That is the closest thing to having a culture, living amongst Mexican Americans for 17 years.

Anywho...though I have not traveled the world, I have friends who have! So here is our tiny collection of international pieces, if you will. LOL

All the things here came from Africa or South Africa except for 2 items, which Hannah recently made in art class. Can you guess which ones? I also have a beautiful woven basket with a lid that I forgot to photograph and a couple of misplaced South African pieces.

Some of my students at the Christian school had grandparents who served as missionaries in Peru, so each year I got something new for Christmas! These are all Peruvian hand-made items.

These coasters are handpainted. Some are almost identical but again, since handcrafted, there are subtle differences (slips of the hand while painting, etc).

I don't know what happened but I am missing entire Korean tea sets. I used to have a lot of Korean students at the school (mostly in K3 and K4). I miss those kids! Hannah used my tea sets and they have not yet returned.

You guessed it! Hannah made this African mask! They formed it out of clay and let it dry for week, then she put on 3 layers of glaze and they fired it. They told her to put the stuff around the face and she just did not like it but can't get it to come off. She is pretty irritated everytime she looks at it. It is very 3D. She did not feel like the color came out African enough after firing.

This is an African Gourd made from paper mache as you can probably tell. They studied so much about culture they only had 30 minutes to construct the gourd on a couple of weak layers. She wants to redo a really good gourd at home.

Something funny: she is always the last person out of class because she is perfecting details. She wants her art to look culturally authentic. She said all the other gourds were hot pink and white polka dotted, or Hannah Montana, or whatever. Two of the kids painted Dallas Mavs gourds....can you figure out why?