Mommio: Art Class

This week in art we are learning about medieval tapestries.  A tapestry is a work of woven fabric art that was typically hung on the walls of castles in 15th century Europe.  Tapestries were used for various reason- they were not permanent art and could be rolled up in scrolls and changed based on the season or the liking of the lord and lady of the castle.  They were also thought to be used to warm up the cold, dark castles.  To learn about how tapestries were made, the kids and I are watching/reading a great demonstration that I found on the website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We are also studying two famous tapestry series, The Hunt of the Unicorn and The Lady and The Unicorn.

The Hunt of the Unicorn is a 15th century tapestry series from the Netherlands which is now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The tapestries depict the story of a unicorn hunt from beginning to end.  We are using the Met site again to study this series.  Here are two examples:

 The Lady and the Unicorn is a 15th century tapestry series that was found hidden away in a French castle.  There are six in the series- five of them depict the five senses, the meaning of the last one (or first) is a bit of a mystery.  We are learning about the series from The National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris.  Here is the one that depicts the sense of smell.  In this tapestry the lady is making a flower chain of roses and there is a monkey behind her who has stolen a rose and is smelling it:

 

Our project for the day is to make a faux tapestry (no, we won't be weaving with giant looms) by drawing on fabric with oil pastels.  I am encouraging the kids to work together to make their own series of unicorn based tapestries, but as always they are free to depict anything they would like. 

We started off the class by sharing our fresco homework.  The kids always enjoy sharing their artwork with each other.

Then we had a discussion about the series they would make and chose what each person would work on.  The kids decided that the focus of their series would be a monkey and that they would each pick a sense to portray using monkeys.  Here's the list of choices:

Then we pulled out the oil pastels and colored our tapestries.

 

Next, to help the colors set we ironed over the top of our designs using wax paper.

Here are the final tapestries. 

"Sight" By Lily

"Smell" By Marney

"Touch" By Gabe

"Taste" By Avery

"Hearing" By Kiki

"Sadness" By Mason (the unknown sixth part of the series)

"The Minotaur's Lair" By Connor (not included in the series)

For "homework" the kids will each be sewing a fabric border around their tapestry and then we will roll them like scrolls and tie with a ribbon to save for the next art show.