skulls, skeletons and...hockey sharks?

Things have been quiet on the intern-front after the Sandcastle Classic took place at the beginning of the month. We spent the last few weeks gearing up for a joint project with SomArts and their annual Day of the Dead exhibition. Day of the Dead is a tradition that is deeply rooted within the Mexican culture that celebrates and remember deceased loved ones. Each year, SomArts hosts an exhibition where artists are invited to create art installations as altars that represent their feelings about a personal loss or local and global issues. Schools from across the Bay Area are then encouraged to visit the exhibit to learn more about different cultures and experience an art show.

This year SomArts and Leap partnered together to create a meaningful, fun, and creative art activity for the students who visit the exhibit. Using Mexican tin art as an inspiration for this project, the Leap teaching artist led the class in creating a memorial piece on sheets of aluminum decorated with permanent markers. She encouraged them to draw inspiration for their artwork from the Day of the Dead exhibit. The students created elaborately decorated tin pieces that memorialized someone that they love. The art didn't have to be specifically aimed towards someone who was deceased, but could have been made to honor someone who was still alive, such as their moms, dads, siblings, cousins or even family pets. The goal of the project was to be able to give the students the opportunity to draw meaningful connections between the Day of the Dead and their own lives in expressive and imaginative ways.

It was exciting to be able to sit in on a few classes and help the students with their work. The classes that I worked with were 4th graders, and were incredibly enthusiastic about the art project. They really took this activity to heart, creating pieces both for loved ones that were still alive and those that had passed.

My favorite artwork was done by a boy who sat staring at his piece of aluminum for a long time. I went over to him to see if he was stuck and needed help finding inspiration. He had quickly drawn a large shark to honor his father, but couldn't think of anything else that he wanted to draw. To help him along, I asked him lots of questions about his father: What did he like to do on the weekends? Does he like polka dots? Does he like to watch TV? Does he like to dance? What's his favorite food? What's his favorite color? Does he play sports?

We went through tons of different questions when suddenly his eyes lit up and he started drawing furiously. I figured that he had found his inspiration and kept moving around the room to help more students. When the class had finished their pieces, I collected them for display. As I came to collect this particular boy's piece, he smiled and handed me the aluminum to show me what he drew. His artwork was a picture of a shark, holding a hockey stick and eating an ice cream cone in a yellow ocean. He had taken all of his father's favorite things and incorporated them into a single, cohesive picture. The hockey shark was the most original and innovative drawing that I had seen all day.

We collected the art from all of the classes that participated in the activity and they will be hung all together on a special altar. These memorials will become a part of the Day of the Dead show until it closes on November 4. The pieces represent something that each student loves and cherishes. Together, they will form a dazzling and vibrant wall of color that will be seen by everyone who visits this extraordinary exhibit.

Sandcastle Classic 2008!

The Sandcastle Classic is a fund raising event for Leap...imagination in learning. Leap is a private, non-profit arts education organization. The mission of the program is to stimulate imagination and creativity in Bay Area children by bringing visual and performing artists and architects into the classroom for extended residencies. Leap's 25th Annual Sandcastle Classic took place on Saturday, October 4, 2008 at Ocean Beach.

This year's Sandcastle Classic consisted of 24 teams. Each team included an architecture firm, a construction company and elementary school students. The teams spent a few weeks before the contest coming up with a theme for their sandcastle which also translated into: a small plaster model of the finished sandcastle, a logo, a t-shirt and a banner. They all worked collaboratively on the planning process and all rallied together early Saturday morning to create their sand sculptures.

I arrived at 7am to help the program director and the events committee set up for the event. This process involved lots of carrying tables, huffing and puffing for air and getting rained on. Once all the booths were set up and the plots of sand were marked off for each team, a few hours had whizzed by and teams had started arriving to set up their spots and check-in. I worked registration, making sure that each team donated a few team shirts for us to sell, turned in all student permission forms for the event, and were situated in their proper site number.

I spent most of the day watching the event from my little perch in the parking lot while selling small snacks and t-shirts to anyone and everyone who wanted one. People began trickling in after the drizzles disappeared and soon the beach was filled. The quiet, empty beach had turned into a swarming mass of people. The sand also started to shift, slowly but surely being stomped, molded, watered and sculpted into fantastically awesome sand sculptures. I walked around the sites on breaks, mesmerized by the hard-work and devotion of each and every team member. Not only were the architects and construction workers hard at work on the sculptures, but the kids were energized and excited about making their own giant sandcastle.

The Sandcastle Classic was one of the most amazing fundraisers I have ever seen, not because of the spectacular castles that were built, but because the children that were involved were so engaged and so excited about being a part of something that was so big. This event wasn't about raising money to them, or even about the organization, it was about being a part of a team and creating something that they had envisioned from start to finish. I think they were able to not only have some fun on the beach, but also inadvertently gain some experience working in teams to accomplish something much bigger than themselves. The children all left the event with huge smiles of accomplishment on their faces, bursting with pride at the sculptures that they had created.

After the sandcastle building was done, I stood and watched one team furiously digging a canal towards their castle. Their sandcastle was made of mounds of sand with small towers on them with a large, deep moat. The canal that they had created was long enough that it reached the edge of where the waves washed up onto the beach. We all stood and watched as the next large wave crashed up onto the shore and the water flowed through their canal into their moat. It was the first time that the water had reached the castle and filled their moat. The kids began screaming and shouting for joy, and overcome with excitement, they all jumped into the moat and began splashing and playing in the water. They completely forgot about the judging that was still taking place or that they were smashing their castle by sliding down the sides of the castle to get into the moat; all they cared about was the fact that their hard work and determination had paid off and that their sandcastle was now complete. The scene brought tears to my eyes because of the overwhelming excitement that the moment had caused for those kids.

It made me realize that THIS is what it was about...giving kids a chance to accomplish something that they are proud and excited about. I stood there watching them run around their sandcastle laughing and splashing in the water, thinking to myself that this is exactly where I want and need to be.

Photos courtesy of Kellie Kawahara