Haniwa Project

In preparing for my art lesson on the terracotta warriors of China, I came across other ancient cultures that put ceramic sculptures at their burial sites.  In Japan, these pieces are called "haniwa" which means ceramic cylinder, which was how they began. Later, ghost-like figures, soldiers, animal and house forms were made.

My distance learning students used Sculpy oven-bake clay to create animal or house sculptures. My students who were physically present in class could work on larger pieces to be fired in the kiln. Some students choose to paint their final pieces, while others left the terracotta color. It was a lot of fun to work with the slab roller and use hand building techniques and everyone took a lot of pride in their finished piece.

Koinobori

 Koinobori are Japanese koi kites, or windsocks that look like koi fish. As a member of the carp family, these colorful fish are strong, determined, and as legend has it, one managed to swim up a giant waterfall and become a dragon.

As we started wrapping up our Japanese unit in Art class and entering the month of March, which ushers in kite flying weather, my students made koinoboris from bulletin board paper.  Traditionally, these are hung for Boy's Day in May. Girls Day is March 3rd, though and these are fun decorations any day of the year. We hung some a couple on the patio outside my art classroom and when the wind blows it looks like the paper fish are swimming against a current.

To make, just fold a large piece of light paper in half, draw a fish on the folded side and cut it out. Use tape to reinforce mouth, decorate, glue top edge, then punch a hole on center of each side along the tape to tie the string. Hang and enjoy on sunny, breeze day!

Japanese Relief Prints and Haiku Lesson

Printmaking and Japan are both very dear to my heart, which is why I was surprised when I realized that I hadn't taught this lesson on Hiroshige wood cuts for five years. I read my favorite Japanese counting book, "One Leaf Rides the Wind" as a way to introduce my students to haikus and Japanese culture. I lead a slide discussion and offered students artifacts from Japan to handle before letting them dress up in a kimono and posing in front of a backdrop of a rock garden, Mount Fuji, and cherry blossoms. Then we looked at the 180 year old ukiyo-e (floating world pictures) .  Edo (now Tokyo) was becoming a growing city as merchants were moving up in class and had money to spend on night life. Hiroshige documented women in kimonos, koi fish wind socks, and fireworks in his well composed wood cuts.

I used hot glue to make the reproductions tactile.  One student thought a geisha was wearing roller skates instead of okobo shoes.

I passed around large block of carved wood, brayer, and ink before doing a demonstration of a relief print.  We drew into foam for our prints, but the idea is the same: ink sticks to the top part and the printed image is a mirror of the original. After students wrote (and Brailled) haikus, created and printed several of their own images, these were mounted and shared.  One student, who is about to graduate, is missing a friend who would have been in this graduating class had she survived cancer as a middle school student. She reflected on that friend for her project.  This poem and print will be framed and placed on an empty chair at graduation in a couple weeks to remember LaStacia. Her mother will then take it home and hopefully understand that we remember their family at this time. This is the power of fine arts: they make it possible to teach so many subjects (ie. social studies and language arts) while also allowing for personal expression and a means to touch the hearts of others.