Day 17: An Art Piece

Ordinarily, I would have struggled with this post. Certainly, I have seen and appreciate some great art, but to me NOTHING (as in NO artist anywhere!) can compare to the canvas that God creates for us everyday. In my opinion, A picture window is the best art frame one can own. Granted, I have zero artistic ability and I may feel drastically different if I had talent.)

Anyway, on Thursday, Jenna was asked to be a host at an art show at The Plaza. For the last couple of years, the school system has partnered with The Plaza to host an art show at The Plaza. This is no school art exhibit, folks. This is a REAL art show featuring REAL art. This year, we are featuring the sculptures of the Shona tribe from Zimbabwe.

SOme interesting facts about the Shona are that years ago some fancy smancy art collectors/ curators (someone) decided to gather some great art and travel to remote parts of the world to share these great art pieces. They wanted to share the culture with these lesser known people. Well, when they got to the SHona tribe, they found that the Shona had quite impressive art themselves. Turns out, on their quest to culture the Shona, these great art people (cause I don't know their titles) got cultured themselves. I love a story like that!

The students from the school system have worked hard to present this exhibit. The students in my class took a virtual field trip to Zimbabwe (thanks Google Earth and Tori), wrote persuasive essays for the exhibit, studied 3 of the sculptures, voted on one to represent our school, and wrote captions for the sculptures. Some of my students also went to other classes to share what they learned.

There was one room fo the real Shona art. See pictures below of a few pieces. Then, there was a bigger room of student created art inspired by their Shona studies. If you can name the artform, the students had some on exhibit. I was so proud, and the students were, too. Below are two of my students who had learned some Shona music for the xylophone. They were SO excited.

Jayda and Jenna were asked to hand out programs and greet guests to the performances. There were only 2 students from her school asked to participate/ help and she was one of them. Makes me so proud.

There were some really great performances in the theater. We had a video message from the Consulate of Zinbabwe...who actually mentioned Putnam County. We had a LIVE message from a Shona tribesman. He was interesting to me because he was SO honored that his people were being studied, recognized, and appreciated. We had a video piece that HS production team made, dancers from the middle school, and a choral production from the high school. Such talent! I have no pictures from that part of the show because a very special 2 year old was acting horrible and I had to stand in the back with her.