Hello all and Welcome back to the blog! In our latest and last project of the school year, we explored the history and current status of First Nations in Canada. It was called lies and Incongruencies.
Turns out the word Incongruencie does not actually exist. I’m sure that the true intention was a plural variation of incongruence, the lack of consistency or appropriateness, as in inappropriate affect or as when one’s subjective evaluation of a situation is at odds with reality.
The project aimed to demonstrate how art and text can reflect our society’s truths and realities, as well as connect to past events. Our final product was an art collage representing the theme of truth and reconciliation, which could be created digitally or physically. I chose physically because I thought it would have a more profound impact than on a screen.
For Keystone 1, we read “The Marrow Thieves” by Cherie Dimaline, a dystopian novel set in a future where Indigenous people are refugees due to the historical residential school system in Canada. Throughout the reading, we kept weekly journals to share our thoughts and ideas, as well as created contributions related to the themes of the book.
During Keystone 2, we focused on connecting art and text. This milestone involved three parts: exploring the intersection of history and art, examining contemporary issues and art, and delving into civil disputes and art. For each part, we researched topics of interest and reflected on them in relation to art.
Outside of the classroom, we participated in the “blanket activity,” an educational exercise designed to teach about colonization in Canada. This activity had a profound impact on me and helped me make connections to the issues we were studying.
Crafting our final art collage required significant critique and revision, but the effort was worthwhile as I feel like it resulted in high-quality, sophisticated work.
I decided to make my collage about indigenous water rights, as I had researched it for my cicil dispute. With my already apparent background knowledge, I did some further research into how indigenous community view water. They see water as life, the root of all creation. The root of creation… the tree of life… hmmmm.
I had the idea to cut out pieces of blue in magazines. Didn’t matter what shade the blue was, didn’t matter how big, didn’t matter what it was a picture of. I took these photos and plastered them all over my canvas, that I had wrapped in black construction paper. Onece i had created a little gradient from dark blue to light blue, I had to figure out how to but a tree up. I wanted to do an inverted tree so the canvas would stay black except for the tree which would show the cutout scraps. I had no idea how to do this part, because the drawing had to be huge, so I couldn’t print it out, and I am horrible at drawing and trees are especially my n my teacher had the great idea to put up a photo of the tree on the projector and size it to the canvas. Sure enough, it worked like an absolute charm. Now I needed to cut it out. After some stress ful and tenuous cutting. I plastered it on to the canvas and it looked good, but not great. I decided to use some blue paint splatter to maybe add the effect of rain drops on the canvas, because after all it was water. That went alright. It made it look more colourful and I liked it. Some people didn’t but that didn’t matter to me, it was art. When I was taking photos of it for this blog I made a super cool discovery that I totally did on purpose. When looking at it from a flat angle from the bottom. The two surfaces sort of look like a river bank and the tree was a river leading off into little streams which were the branches. It’s amazing how much metaphors could be created from such a simple art piece.
Overall, this project was enlightening, and I gained a deeper understanding of Canada’s troubling history. The reading was engaging, unlike typical school novels, and I particularly enjoyed the plot. I’m really proud of the art I created and it definitely will be up there in Coltons greatest hits.
Thank you for reading!
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