Parent and Teacher Resources

In our last session of Art Academy for 6-10 year olds, we focused on folk traditions from around the world. This lesson is inspired by well known American folk artist and quilter, Harriet Powers. Powers was born into slavery in 1839 in rural Georgia. She was a wife, a mother of nine, and it is speculated that she earned a living later in life as a seamstress. Only two of her quilts survive, both of them traditional applique and piecework. They are bold and skillful examples of so called story quilts, an art form which extends back to ancient African textile traditions. Each panel uses symbols and figures to tell a story. Powers' stories are an interesting mix of the mythical and religious and the personal and local.
 

Description:
During our 2020 Summer Camp series, Art and the Ologies, we paired up two fields of scientific inquiry and explored the various ways that artwork illustrates and aids human understanding in those particular fields. From our week with "Entomology and Botany," we offer this particularly successful lesson about how, why, and with whom trees communicate. This is a fascinating topic that held the attention of our 6-9 year olds, as well as our 10-12 year old cohort. At the heart of this lesson is learning, appreciation, discussion, and something akin to shared wonderment.

In September, Prairie Arts Center was asked to contribute a video tutorial of an art making project to the Annual Youth Conference put together by the Oklahoma Department of Health. This year, the conference is focused on student mental health and emotional resilience. The resulting video features a project that combines self reflection with the fun and easy DIY scratch art medium. The technique of scratch drawing can be enjoyed by kids as young as 6 on up to high school.

In the fall of 2019, our partners at the OSU Museum of Art had an exhibition dedicated to the history and artistry of stop motion animation (see Resources for link). The following project was inspired by one of the featured artists in that exhibition, Gabrielle Tesfaye, and her beautiful work The Water Will Carry Us Home, a work that features watercolor and ink puppets in a narrative about men, women, and children being transported on slave ships (see Resources for link). If you wish to show your student(s) this film for inspiration, we recommend watching it yourself first so you are prepared for the difficult content and questions. We had some great conversations and, as usual, were impressed with the students' keen observations and understanding.