Children make friends across international boundaries - Art To Art

Arts & Activities, Jan, 2004 by Yvonne Greene

International awareness in my art room began in October 2000 when I was fortunate to be one of 600 American teachers selected that year to participate in a Fulbright Memorial Fund (FMF) trip to Japan.

I returned from that three-week trip with an abundance of cultural experiences stored away in my memory. From these memories, I have continued to process art activities to expand my K-4 students' understanding of their place within the rich variety of our planet's human family. I also returned with school and personal contacts that made an exchange of children's art possible.

One simple but potent art lesson I first observed in a firs-grade classroom in Ogaki City, Gifu, has proven to be a versatile catalyst for the art exchange that developed between Akasaka Elmentary School in Ogaki and my elementary school in Slaton, Texas. I call the lesson "San Shozo," which means "Three Portraits."

In Ogaki, a large class (38 youngsters) folded large sheets of paper into three parts. Each student drew a single head and body of a child in the central panel, then drew the bodies again on the other two fold-over panels. The top portions of the two outer panels were cut off so the first figure's head on the central panel was visible for all three figures. The young artists drew the clothes and actions differently in each panel to give three views of one person, which were revealed by folding the flaps over one another.

In Japanese schools, most art supplies are furnished by the students' families, so choice of drawing tools came from their individual supplies in their desks. Many chose to draw with oil pastels, while others used markers of a form of wax crayon. Drawing large was encouraged and they completed the tri-part drawings with the exuberance and spontaneity typical of first graders. I understood nothing of what was spoken between teacher and children, but understood completely the 45-minute-long art lesson taught that day.

Because the lesson was a universal one, not necessarily culture specific, I could incorporate it into my curriculum without much adjustment as soon as I returned from my journey, it would serve in numerous ways as a transition to some of the more inherently Japanese-culture lessons that I eventually developed for my students at several grade levels over the subsequent two years.

My first- and second-graders were intrigued by the lesson they saw initially in slides taken of the children in that Japanese classroom. We used 12" x 18" drawing paper to create our San Shozo, a size somewhat smaller than the paper used in Ogaki. As in Japan, where I lent assistance, with their teacher, to the students in that huge class, I helped my students with folding the paper into approximate thirds and drew a straight line with a ruler across the two outer flaps. The lines indicated where the top portions needed to be cut off in order to expose the one head that would serve all three figures.

I chose to teach the lesson so the children illustrated three of their identities in the combined drawings. In the first drawing the child drew a full-length portrait of him of herself dressed for school, with details showing a favorite class or activity. Folding the first flap over, the child then drew the figure again, dressed for his of her favorite play activity. In the third view, the child drew Iris of her body again, with details in clothing and background to show a special occasion, such as attending church, a wedding, or dinner at a nice restaurant.

We used water-based markers for our lesson. Although the Japanese youngsters completed the lesson in one session, my students spent two 45-minute production sessions and one self-evaluation session.

I laminated the San Shozo pictures that were displayed in the hall so viewers would be encouraged to touch the pictures to fold the paper for all three views. Children and adults alike enjoyed the interactive aspect of viewing the art.

A similar lesson proved a perfect vehicle for our art exchange with Akasaka School in Ogaki. The fourth-grade students were intrigued by Japanese holidays. As part of our exchange of student-made art postcards for every fourth-grader at Akasaka and an exhibit o- about 30 pieces of art (paintings, drawings, block-prints, collages and paper masks) from our school, we requested an explanation of favorite Japanese holidays.

To stimulate the mutual exchange of ideas, my fourth-graders used the three-panel portrait lesson to illustrate three American holidays with many descriptive details--no words--to show how Americans celebrate special events throughout the year in our country.

Students drew the names of three holidays from a hat to ensure that the widest variety of special occasions would be included in the group of drawings selected to go to Japan. Celebrations from which students selected three by chance were seasonal holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween and Independence Day, but also more personal occasions such as weddings, birthdays, and family barbecues. This time the San Shozo pictures showed drawings of children on the tri-part folded picture with details appropriate to three holidays.