Bookmaking with the Maestros/Maestras

We're doing another round of book-making here at Palo Alto with the international program scholarship teachers in Group 4. Everyone is writing and illustrating with photo collages their own "me books," as models and to take back to their schools as examples when they return to the classroom. The creativity is exciting -- and everyone is enthralled withusing copiers and photo printers -- technology not necessarily at hand back at home. But, as the digital world gets broader, as tools become more accessible, these teachers will return with the knowledge and experiences to dream with their students. And, the basic book-making and writing and illustration exercises can be done with low-tech supplies and tools, too.

 

Chihuly Tower Workshop

Here's a few pics from the workshop this past weekend at the San Antonio Public Library. I almost forgot to take any, so these are from the last hour, after most of the hoards had departed!

The circles are clear plastic plates collaged with tissue paper and gel layers. When dry, the tissue can be peeled off and becomes a transluscent light catcher. We also painted "sea form" underwater murals (inspired by Chihuly's work and photos of jellyfish, sharks etc.) and made lookers (that's what's around the girls' necks below) with insulation tubes and sparkles and colored cellophane. And had Chihuly's Hot Shop video running, too. 

 

Color at the Edge

Come along on a color adventure! My recent trip to Central America was, obviously, a trip through the lands of color. In both countries (as in much of Latin America) a ride through any city, a walk through any market, an exploration of the arts and crafts takes one straight into the heart of color.

Since I consider color as one of my strong suits -- where I start most of my work -- this trip was like visiting the guru on top of the mountain (volcano is more appropriate, I guess) -- a trip to my own Mecca. Working with color is where my heart goes when I work, and I consider myself a pretty masterful color craftsman, and my work is bold and brave in its palette usually. Now, I like more subtle palettes, too, and sometimes use their "rules," and I certainly love the work of artists whose palettes aren't as bright as my own.

Even so, when I stop and look at some of the photos I took on this trip, (many of them snapped out of the van window as we speeded by) my eyes are amazed. Certainly "what works" takes on an entirely new set of parameters. For example, just what doe s that little stripe of reddish orange do for the blue house in the photo at the top of the blog?

As I plan my next El Cielo workshop on COLOR (coming up in November with new exercises in dye and paint, fabric and paper) I am finding some interesting new exercises inspired by some of these photos. I'll use some interesting software web-based color tools (more later) and provide some parameters for some fabric collage mini-quilt assignments. If you'd like to join in for the LIVE and UP FRONT experience, sign up for the workshop -- or just follow along on this blog for some every-once-and-a-while color updates. You will be able to find the exercises when you click on the KEYWORD COLOR on the sidebar, OK?

Here's the first assignment:

1. Take any solid color of tissue, construction or other art paper. Choose a color you like, but not one that you use all the time, just to stretch the eye muscles. Cut twelve 6" by 6" squares of the same color.

2. Cut 18 different solid color strips each 1/2" wide and 6" long from different papers -- or paint some papers with any bits of tempera, acrylic or craft paint. Just work randomly with favorites, or with what ever you have around you.

3. At the bottom of six of the squares, about 1" above the bottom edge, glue one of the 1/2" strips of a different color. On these six squares, try to find the absolutely most interesting, most pleasing, most shocking combinations. Don't play by any presupposed rules at this point.

4. Now, cut 1 1/2" strips (6" long as well) of the SAME colors you chose. Glue those 1" above the bottom edge. What happens when the AMOUNT of color contrast changes? Which do you like the best?

5. Now look at your squares with a color wheel in hand (or on the screen). What "rules" for your color choices can you deduce? Did you choose complementary colors, split complementaries? analogous? What did the different amounts of the secondary color show you about your choices? Try cutting some 3" wide strips of the secondary color and see what they do when the amounts on a square are equal... (You may need to make some more 6" squares at this point.)

6. And now, just for fun, combine all your squares into a pieced quilt pattern on your design wall. Since the predominant color will still hold dominance in quantity, you may find that the design is wonderfully striking and interesting. A starter for a small wall quilt, perhaps? 

Near (but not so near) Totonicapan, Guatemala

Sensory Alphabet Workshop in Juana’s School, October 7, 2010

Up the mountain looming over Totonicapán we traveled in our loaded van with Cesar, guided along the path by our CASS teacher Juana Ixcoy Leon (or as we knew her in San Antonio – Juanita). We started about 6:30 a.m. We traveled. And traveled. And traveled. First a paved two-lane highway, then a one-lane paved road, then a rock-paved road and across the river and up, finally, a dirt road to a corn-growing agricultural village bounded by strips of forest. We passed corn fields, vegetable and potato fields, small stockades of small horses and donkeys, pine forests – some with their lower branches stripped , evidence of the deforestation issues in this area. Past traditional clay-tiled and adobe walled homes and new “remesa” homes of concrete block. A patchwork of agriculture, forest, villages and people.

This is the trip Juana travels daily to and from Totonicapan where her family and she live – about an hour each way in the communal van that she and the other teachers at the school hire for the commute. (And then she returns home to work for 3 to 5 hours at an importing and exporting business as an office worker.) We laughed as she described each leg of the journey as “un otro canción, ” as roadways grew progressively rougher and switchback curves more frequent.   As we progressed up the divide and down to another set up mountain peaks we passed three  other communities and schools a bit closer to Totonicapan and a bit further down the mountain from her community of Rancho de Teja. “Just a little more,” she said each time, as if we might chicken out and demand to be taken back to the secure pleasures of the Hotel Totonicapan.

When we arrived, the school was in full celebration regalia, with parents and 200 children eagerly awaiting our arrival – all of the women and many of the girls dressed in the traditional traje and headwear of the region – a complex ikat weave of skirt and huilpil, with elaborately embroidered aprons.  All the boys and men wore “western” contemporary clothing. We talked with the school director, visited Juana’s and another teachers’ classroom (Juana’s was especially a delightfully rich environment for the primary students she teaches, with word walls and alphabets, number charts and pictures –evidence both of her training in the CASS program and of her extraordinary energy and dedication to her school and its Quiche community. She is a Quiche teacher, as were all the other staff, save the director. (A situation we found common in all the Guatemalan schools we visited.)

Juana and her fellow teachers had organized student presentations for us – folkloric dances, a poem read, the national anthems of both countries and blessings and gratitude expressed for our visit, on both sides. The children were wonderful, the dances touching, especially one that depicted the planting of the fields by the “men” and the visit by the “women” with lunch balanced on their heads – accompanied by the blessing scent of copal  carried by one of the very young and serious dancers. Another dance was the traditional dance of the elders – the viejos- with costumed children depicting old men and women in a formal procession and dance. This dance is one that our CASS teachers from Guatemala often share with students and school groups when they are in San Antonio. After the more than hour-long program we went to Juana’s room to set up our presentation – about a half hour with each grade doing a simple version of our Sensory Alphabet Workshop, starting with the youngest pre-primaria group (4-5 year olds). All of the children and parents here are Quiche speaking, and one of the schools’ primary tasks is to teach them Spanish, but since they are still learning, Juana and the country coordinator Florinda (who arrived shortly after we did) translated my Spanish into the local idiom.

The sixth grade girls (principally) were our helpers throughout the morning – and parents often stopped in to watch and enjoy when their children were working. The girl helpers kept us organized as they pinned up puppets, helped with the tile walls and helped keep materials in order.

It was a wild ride! A couple of dozen children made shape puppets with Julia and texture and color tiles with me – happily digging into a plethora of materials – a real treat for these kids. They seemed both material-starved and very careful and conserving with the tools and materials, including the markers, glue and recycled scraps of fabric, beans, colorful magazine pages, yarn and other materials we had trekked into the community. Outside on the playground, Art taught groups the Turtle game and other movement activities relating to the Sensory Alphabet, then worked with some of the older kids with magnifying “lookers” and had them draw the lines, shapes and forms they “collected”—the results were carefully rendered pictures of ordinary objects, a testimony to the children’s visual literacy.

At the end of our work session, I handed out four digital cameras (the $20 Polaroid 2 mp plastic cameras we brought to raffle later at the teacher workshop) and sent groups of kids to search for Sensory Alphabet photo images – we printed some of their images out later for Juana to return to the school. (See one of the photos below, more on the blog site).

 

After the workshop (ending about 2:30) we joined the teachers for a communal lunch of traditional vegetable and beef soup and banana-leaf-wrapped tamales. The meal had been prepared and was served by parents – another instance of gratitude and generosity from a community that wanted to share what it had with the visiting “teachers of their teacher.”

We then made the return trip, leaving the remaining art materials with the school, as well as a wonderful mural of texture, shape and color “tiles.” We left with much more – an immersion into this community that lives somewhere between its traditional roots and the “modern” world, a place where many of the parents (especially the men) spend several years working in the U.S. and sending money, dreams and desire for a better life back to their families at home. The traditions are honored, but the bigger and wider world is knocking on the door.

There's more about our educational conclusions and reflections on the What Can School Be? blog, link below:

For additional photos see the school blog at http://escuelacass.posterous.com/case-study-6-a-mountaintop-school