I did intend to keep a blog on my Visual Arts Research Project here in Samoa.
In the end it was such a short time frame to conduct the research that I scrapped the blog, so I thought I would show you what I found.
These wearable art pieces were created by boys in a school which includes the words "Welcome to the Jungle" on their school sign. The boy below did an impromptu Siva dance to display his wearable art for me.
The boys also carve blocks, this was used to print the uniforms of the teachers for the Independence Day march.
Visual Art is a male dominated subject and all the art teachers I met were male.
I found much evidence of sustainable art making such as this coconut caterpillar.
A Bamboo and Coconut boat.
Stencils cut from hospital x-rays
Mosaics made from louvres painted with house paint on one side, broken or cut into shapes and glued with PVA onto a wooden board.
The student work was impressive and the teachers were generous with their time.
Thank you for sharing these wonderful pics, it is interesting that all the art teachers were male, is that a cultural thing, where all the art was produced by the males of the community ?
ReplyDeleteThat green and blue fabric is just beautiful,there is allways something special about hand made textiles.
It is a cultural thing, the artists were traditionally men who were held sacred in the village, I am used to a predominantly female cohort in my fellow teachers and students in Australia, so it is great to come here and find males In art. I wonder where I would find a balance of both?
DeleteThere is a plethora of hand printed textiles here, the printing blocks are works of art on their own.
I have seen print blocks from India and they too are hand carved works of art.when I was visiting Malaysia we saw Batic printing, but the print blocks were made from tin.
DeleteThe patterns of the green fabric are very close to Maori designs, it would be interesting to trace the migration of the Pacific peoples, what amazes me is you can see the same design of head dress in the monks of Tibet,some South American tribes (Incas) and some Pacific people. Mainly limited to priests,they had a big "mohawk" type of profile, running from front to back.
Fascinating stuff anthropolagy. :)
Anthropology....sorry
DeleteMaybe these designs are intrinsic to people, particularly those near ocean.
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