You can find stories wherever you look. This past March, I visited Canyon de Chelly National Monument near Chinle, Arizona, on Navajo tribal lands. The history of peoples in the canyon, Hopi and Navajo, goes back thousands of years and countless images remain from each of these cultures. Their stories are told through petroglyphs (carved or pecked images) and pictographs (painted images). We don’t need a written language to interpret them—the image is enough. Telling stories is how we understand our lives. What stories will your students tell through art?
As docents at the Indian Arts Research Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, part of the School for Advanced Research, we bring the collection to life through stories during our tours. Every pot, weaving, painting, or piece of jewelry in the 12,000+ piece collection has a story to tell.
There is one pottery olla (bowl) that I always start with. It dates from around 1680 and is from Zuni Pueblo. Though we can’t touch it to check, there is a number 1 written on the bottom as it was the first piece in the collection. In 1922, it was broken during a party attended by artists and others interested in Native American art and culture in Santa Fe. Its breaking inspired those present to begin a collection of Pueblo pottery to preserve best examples and serve as inspiration for future generations. The broken pot was, thankfully, glued back together to become the first piece in the collection.
You can find stories wherever you look. This past March, I visited Canyon de Chelly National Monument near Chinle, Arizona, on Navajo tribal lands. The history of peoples in the canyon, Hopi and Navajo, goes back thousands of years and countless images remain from each of these cultures. Their stories are told through petroglyphs (carved or pecked images) and pictographs (painted images). We don’t need a written language to interpret them—the image is enough.
In This Issue
At the early childhood level, in “Inspirational Creatures” by Julia L. Hovanec (p. 18), students listen to a book, investigate the work of a contemporary artist, and are inspired to create clay creatures and share their stories.
After learning about Native American storytelling traditions, students create their own unique, fantastical drawings of nontraditional storytellers that feature tellers and listeners in “Storyteller Drawings” by elementary art teacher Melanie Robinson (p. 34).
For the middle-school lesson “Mixed-Media Marionettes” by Jessica Provow (p. 15), students make distinctive puppets and share a story, song, poem, graphic novel, or video from the marionette’s point of view.
In the high-school lesson “Silhouette Storytelling” by Bethany Walter (p. 32), students explore positive and negative space while telling stories with cut paper, inspired by the work of artist Béatrice Coron.
Telling stories is how we understand our lives. What stories will your students tell through art?
Art teachers encourage students to tell stories through their art. Young students listen to a read-aloud and create clay creatures inspired by the book, elementary students illustrate influential figures in art history, middle-school students juxtapose natural and human-made elements through narrative compositions, high-school students manipulate images to create imagined landscapes, and more.
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