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.