Birmingham Museum of Art
Art Camp

This summer, the BMA’s Museum Studio School is offering youth entering Grades 1-9 the opportunity to learn about the role of art and design in problem-solving. Students will be challenged to brainstorm, prototype, and test their own artistic solutions to some of the challenges of their worlds - a great way to keep their brains working during the summertime!

artcamp@artsbma.org

Adrinka Printmaking

I love combining cultural practices in an art lesson.  This art project does just that.  In this lesson, the Chinese process of printmaking is combined with the cultural symbols of the Ashanti of Ghana, Africa. 

Adinkra are visual symbols, originally created by the Ashanti that represent concepts. 

The symbols are carved into calabash gourds and then mounted onto sticks.  Bark from the Kuntunki tree is boiled with iron slag to make a black paste.  The carved symbols are then coated with the pasted and stamped onto the cloth in a linear pattern.  Historically, Ashanti royalty wore the cloth during times of mourning.  However, it is now becoming increasingly fashionable to wear them at non-funerary events.

Following an Adinkra power point, students chose a symbol that was meaningful to them.  They drew  their symbol on a square of styrofoam.  After printing six prints, students created a background to frame their symbols.  The background was supposed to compliment the symbols, using a line of shape that was found in their symbol.

Fish!

Fourth grade students made clay fish, forming a pinch pot to serve as the body or as a base. How cute are these?