March 15, 16, 17
The Kinship of Rivers team was invited to do a workshop in Susan Fredrickson’s sixth grade classroom at St. Anthony Park Elementary School for a few days in March. We were excited to conduct our first River Flag making workshop. We had been toying with various methods of printing on fabric and we had just launched the website that would provide input and inspiration for participants in the project.
The main idea we wanted to impart to the students was that we all have stories to tell about our lives along the river; storytelling takes many forms—poetry, pictures and especially the ethereal—that part of a story that can catch a breeze and rise above barriers of language, land and water.
The workshop involved a session of poetry writing with Wang Ping. She brought a River Flag banner made up of photographs and poetry printed on silk. Wang’s photos and poetry from the Yangtze River were mingled with photos and poetry from the Mississippi. She opened the session by telling students about her inspiration for the Kinship of Rivers project. She shared some poetry written by children. Her own poem, written that morning, about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan (which had taken place just four days previously) was especially moving.
For Japan
The earth is broken
Sky falls into swelling sea
Oh silent mother!
In the throat of fire
In the eyes of my father
A crow cries and cries
We are your children
Sendai, Fukushima, please
Take our blood, our prayers
March, you cruel month!
How many burning suns can an island take?
How long can trees last in the dark?
What alms from us would quench your wrath?
--Wang Ping
She asked students to close their eyes and find images for the haikus. She suggested a focus on things and actions. It seemed as if everyone wanted to write about the haunting and powerful disaster in Japan. Ping guided students through the steps of gathering images and words and weaving them into the syllable pattern for a haiku. Students were invited to write and draw pictures to go along their compositions. We collected their haikus and drawings for publication on the Kinship of Rivers website, www.kinshipofrivers.org
The next two days were River Flag making days with Lisa Steinmann and Wang Ping. We talked with students about pictographs, the most ancient human writing. We looked at pictographs along BWCA waterways and we looked at the characters of the Roman, Chinese and Tibetan alphabets that evolved from pictographs. We encouraged students to create an original pictograph for their River Flag.
We looked at the eight basic strokes used in creating Chinese characters. Students used their bodies to show the vertical stroke “Shu.” They stretched out one leg and bent one foot to make a hook, "Gou.” Using their arms they created various diagonal lines, such as "Ti" and "Pie."
Students chose pieces of muslin dyed in five different colors: blue, green, red, yellow and white. We provided tools for students to try at least two methods of creating a pictograph on fabric. One method involved tracing a character on freezer paper that was then ironed on the fabric like a stencil and painted over to achieve either a positive or negative image. Another method used simple paste (flour and water) to trace a pattern on fabric. Once dried it could be cracked and painted over for a batik effect. Some students also painted their design directly on the flag with fabric paint.
The finished flags were washed, ironed and stitched on string so that they could begin their journey. The first stop is St. Anthony Park School where students can share their art in the hallway and at an outdoor site, to be determined, near the school. Photographer Lucy Steinmann documented the entire process.
The flags will continue their journey as they flutter from the deck of the Jonathon Padelford during an all night art event called ‘Mississippi Megalops – A Floating Chautauqua’ June 4/5. For more information, go to:
The flags will also be a part of the a unique and very special River Flags celebration on Sunday, July 24 at the Great River Road Learning Center in Prescott, Wisconsin. For more information, go to: http://www.freedomparkwi.org/
--Lisa
