We introduced students to the idea of Aboriginal art last week - explaining where it came from, about indigenous people, comparison/contrast to Egyptian hieroglyphs they learned about last week, about how symbols and the need to tell the story of one's origins and land is universal. Using Aboriginal art as our platform is a GREAT place to teach all of these concepts, ultimately driving home the idea that what you choose to include and NOT to include in your story is critical. Plus, we'll work in a cool service project this week - probably letter writing or some sort of activism around indigenous rights.
In explaining Aboriginal art and culture, we emphasize three key concepts with the students: that much Aboriginal art is about the land and 'origin stories' about people and animals, that it relies heavily on symbols, and we talk about why the Aborigines used 'dots' when painting so frequently, among the many theories being that it was to show perspective and the scope and scale of the land itself.
For our first project, students choose an animal that would represent them - we asked them to be able to identify specific characteristics in that animal that they saw in themselves (and, in fact, we'll do a writing activity on that this week...) and they then drew that animal and painted it in using the 'dot' style of Aborigines - we had them use Q-tips, which worked really well.
This week they'll be doing a piece inspired by Aboriginal work that shows their own 'origin story' - how they ended up where they are today. It should turn out pretty cool - the students really like the project...
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