Elephant Bells

It's hard to imagine losing an elephant, but a common practice among elephant owners--'mahouts'--is to let their elephants forage freely at night in the jungle. This leaves the problem of how to find the creatures the next day. Elephants wear bells so they can be found. Elephant bells tend to be large, and ornate.
Kids enjoy making 'real', useful objects in art, and an elephant bells project would fit nicely into several different kinds of units. It would be fun to make large bells out of clay, with a hole inside the bell body, as well as in the separately made 'clapper' (the piece inside), that could be attached later using wire or string. Include a hole or handle on top so the bell can hang from something. Use the sgraffito method to scratch patterns and designs on the outside before firing.  Alternatively, it could be a fun challenge to make bells out of found objects, silverware, bowls, cans, etc. these objects could be used as forms for paper mâché or embossed tinfoil, painted (add glue to paint to help it stick), or strung together as is. 

Terra Cotta Horses Mural Project

These large horses were created by villagers in Tamil Nadu so that the protector Aiyanar (the guardian of the fields) could ride them at night to chase away evil demons, thereby ensuring good luck for the town and harvest. Different horses from different areas were decorated with different types of objects and creatures. Smaller sections were created on the wheel, fired separately, and then attached to make these life sized creatures.
In an earlier post I mentioned ideas for individual projects responding to these giant horses, but I just learned about this website, that turns images into large scale half-tone pictures that can be printed out on multiple sheets of regular paper to create an enormous mural. It could be fun to run this image, or a picture of a regular horse, through this process, and invite kids to decorate the different horse sections using either red or brown paint on day one and detail brushes and black paint on another day, or any other material, like black marker for the decorations and pastels for everything else. This is also in keeping with the manner in which the actual sculptures were pieced together by members of the community, so there's a nice symmetry to doing it this way.

Clay-relief Sculptures of Sarguja

Every year after harvest there is a big festival called Chherta where every house is repaired, whitewashed, and freshly decorated with clay reliefs...women try to outdo each other to make their houses the most attractive. These become incredibly vivid 3-D murals with characters half on/half off the wall, other materials like string and wire are added as well. Whitewashed backgrounds have radiating and/or swirled-line grooves that the women make using their fingers.
For individual project panels, children could create backgrounds using white paint on cardboard, swirling their fingers in smooth strokes to create a similarly textured canvas...(tempera or acrylic paint could be thickened with cornstarch or gel medium to hold the texture). In a subsequent class they could create characters using a theme like 'playing with friends' or 'climbing a tree.' Construction paper collage would work but shouldn't be glued down to the background all the way, as some 3-D effect best captures the real thing. True 3-D with paper mâché pulp or model magic would be great. Either way, found elements like string and wire should be incorporated.
This would make a great mural project as there can be multiple work areas, and everyone doesn't have to be standing at the mural at the same time. Real whitewash can be used, its lack of true opacity and its affordability, not to mention its authenticity, would be great. A collaborative mural wherein children from different classes and grades contribute their 3-D objects and they are attached to the wall by a teacher or by an older class would work nicely.

Click here for a video tour of the mural:

Maru Potters of Rajasthan

The Maru potters did not believe, as some cultures did, that deities reside in stone but rather in clay because of the nature of its elements. They believe a pot is like a person in that there is a birth and a death (the inevitable break), and that a broken pot will eventually return to nature, as people do. Likewise, they believed that a good potter perspires when he kneads wet clay which means potter and clay permeate each other and become one. The clay becomes infused with the potter, the potter takes on elements from the clay as well. In some villages the potters are also priests, taking the respect for this profession and its proximity to the life and death cycle to another level entirely.

This is not an art lesson idea as much as an invitation to rethink how clay is presented. In every clay program children are taught to pound and work the clay in a rough manner in order to prevent air bubbles which could cause items to explode in the kiln. The kneading is billed as being necessary in order to prevent something bad from happening, not as something beneficial in its own right. I think it would be a great visual for clay-workers of any age to have when conditioning their own clay--imagining that the true goal is to become 'one with the clay' through the hard work of kneading and pounding. In fact, now that I know this reason for wanting sweat to mingle with clay, it seems like a wasted opportunity if a potter's only goal is such a mechanical one.
Here he is in action, mixing lots of sand into the clay, as well as mica. The clay is fired in a outdoor kiln at about 650*F.

Scissors

There are a lot of fascinating artifacts in the Museum of Everyday Objects at Sanskriti Kendra. For centuries Indian artisans have found clever ways to decorate their utensils and tools. I thought that these ancient scissors look a little bit like bird faces, but I have to admit I was surprised that they weren't a bit more playful, since on a wall nearby there were faucets with animal heads, nut crackers carved to look like people, locks that looked like birds, etc. (see pictures below).
Make your own pair of scissors using cardboard and a brass fastener. Look at a pair of scissors.  What would you do to make this pair of scissors more interesting? Brainstorm clever ways to design your own pair of scissors, consider things that open and shut, two things that might be joined together? Opposites? Things that come in pairs? Sketch an idea first so you can visualize each section. Draw the two sections side by side on shirt or recycled cardboard, remembering to leave a finger/thumb hole at the end of each section, then cut out carefully and assemble with a brass fastener. Scissor parts could be paper mached before they are attached with fastener, for a more involved project.

Terra cotta Horses of Aiyanar

These enormous (larger than life) horse sculptures were created by villagers so that the protector Aiyanar could ride them at night to chase away evil demons, thereby ensuring good luck for the town. Different horses from different areas were decorated with different types of objects and creatures. These horses are made, in pieces, on the wheel, seams are hidden under decorations. If you were in charge of designing your own village's horses, what sort of decorations and patterns would you put on them?
Cut a large horse out of red or brown paper, draw it first in chalk, making sure to have tips of ears, tail, nose, and hooves touch the edges of the paper. Decorate your horse using black or white marker, crayon, or chalk. Or use white or black paint and detail brushes. Would be a great clay project as well--once horse has been created, use coils and small balls of clay for all sorts of decorations. Another approach would be to collage decorations onto a painting of a horse.

Gujarat Birdhouses

In the Jain faith it is believed that ancestors come back as birds and other animals, so to create elaborate bird houses for living birds is an important part of caring for your departed loved ones. Making bird houses, either functional, 3-dimensional, or paintings or drawings of imagined birdhouses, with this particular energy as a motivation—that you are providing for your loved ones--would be a beautiful project for all ages but especially good for pre-adolescents because they usually need projects to have some immediate importance and/or function. There’s a classic ‘design your dream house’ project for this age group, but the case of ‘design a bird house for your ancestors’ has the added benefit of not being so obviously self-interested and could be a good way for children of this age group to combine their own interests with some amount of compassion and care for others.

Materials and project suggestions: Pre-adolescents are generally quite content making elaborate drawings using pencils or permanent markers. Permanent markers are preferred because it discourages erasing, and challenges children to jump right in and deal with accidental marks or errant lines. This would be a beautiful project with younger children and a variety of paint or maker colors. A collage, using colored paper, hand-painted paper, newspaper, cardboard, etc. would look great and encourage children to think about ‘building’ the bird house, and if 3-dimensional projects are possible, it would be great for children to work with cardboard squares, paper towel rolls, toothpicks, and white glue.