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23 November 2010

Fall for the Arts 2010

Hosted by the Brevard Cultural Alliance, the third Fall for the Arts was held in the heart of the Eau Gallie Arts District to once again celebrate all arts and cultural expressions in Brevard County. As a free outdoor event, Fall for the Arts attracts many different people and many different artists from the community. This year the event included seventy-five arts and cultural and historic groups from throughout the area with approximately 20 performing groups . . . on two stages. [The] featured performances [included] ballet, classical and pops music, modern dance, harmonizers, a brass quintet, animal encounters, and much more. . . .This years Fall for the Arts also [featured] exciting live sand sculpting demonstration by Jill Harris and Thomas Koet of Sandsational (Space Coast Blog). On the first of October I was there with my five-year-old daughter to experience all that and more.

First stop: the stand of the Space Coast Weavers and Fiber Artists (SCW&FA) Guild. The guild represents a wide array of interests and activities in the fiber arts and complementary art forms such as spinning, dying and weaving; . . . knitting, crocheting and quilting; basketry and paper making; . . . [to name a few]. Members demonstrate, exhibit, and teach their art form in addition to being active in the guild, and participate at the local, state, and national level. [SCW&FA] are members of the Florida Tropical Weavers Guild, Inc. as well as The Handweavers Guild of America, Inc. . . . [and their] members are excited about sharing their knowledge and love of

the fiber arts with the community! (BCA Programs).

My daughter was mesmerized by the spinning technique used by the ladies who were demonstrating how to turn wool sheared from sheep into yarn. She did not know that spinning fibers was the technique used in the past, and still today in much smaller scale, to make yarn. She had only seen a spinning wheel in books such as Sleeping Beauty and the same was true for me. That experience made us aware of a group that still does spinning and prompted us to learn a few things about that art. For example, we learned that spinning is an ancient textile art in which plant, animal or synthetic fibers are twisted together to form yarn (Wikipedia). The natural fibres available fall mainly into two classes, animal and vegetal, though there is a smaller third group, mineral, which includes gold, silver, brass strips and asbestos. The animal group comprises on the one hand all the hair fibres, which include wool, and on the other the continuous filaments of silk. There are several sources of vegetable fibre, each from a different part of the plant, the fruit, stems, leaves or seeds. (Hecht, 16).

For thousands of years, fiber was spun by hand using simple tools, the spindle and distaff. Only in the High Middle Ages did the spinning wheel increase the output of individual spinners, and mass-production only arose in the 18th century with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Hand-spinning remains a popular handicraft (Wikipedia). Those were

amazing facts that we just read about because we saw that demonstration. My daughter, Melissa, helped one of the ladies for a little bit and that made her feel ecstatic. She wanted to stay there, but after 20 minutes it was time to move on and go see more.

Next, we stopped at the Brevard Art Museum. The museum was established March 8, 1978 as the Brevard Art Center and Museum, Inc. (BAM History) and in June 2007 it acquired its current name. We went in to see the exhibition called ANALYZE THIS: Scientific Art from MIT Museum and Artistic Science from Florida Tech. We walked around for a few minutes, but that did not catch Melissas interest too much. Then we saw that there was a girl playing acoustic guitar in one of the art galleries and that really got her attention, buying me some more time in the museum, just enough to appreciate some of the art at display.

After that, we proceeded to the museums art school called the Renee Foosaner Education Center Museum School, right across the street from the museum.

That was the best stop ever! Melissa painted a box, drew a picture using charcoal, and worked with clay. We also went in the school and she did some more drawing and tracing in there. The school has loads of activities for kids and during the event was no exception.

It is always fascinating to see how excited Melissa gets for doing art and how proud she is of her work. As Joan Koster says in her book, children enjoy manipulating the many materials that they find around them and expressing their creative power to change a piece of their world (2). I see that clearly in my daughters smile.

When doing art, and that can involve any kind of material, she is happy; messy as any child of her age, but happy. eager to learn from the concentrates on what she is follows the steps laid out by she decides on the theme to She is a serious artist grown-up artists. She doing; she listens and the leading artist, but be used in her

creations. Her personality shines through her work and, in her book, Koster confirms that each child brings her own personality, as well as that of her family and cultural heritage, to her own art.

At this event Melissa used paint, charcoal, and clay without any restriction from me.

Paint was messy and covered her outfit and shoes, but I guess she enjoyed that mess and I did not mind her ruining her outfit; it was for a good cause.

Charcoal was a new material to her; that was the first time she used it to draw a picture. She did a great job drawing her swing set. As Nancy Beal states, drawing is the most expressive of mediums, providing as

it does a direct route outward from a childs heart (47), and that is true. The swing set is Melissas favorite thing at the moment.

Clay was next and I think it was the one she had most pleasure in manipulating. As almost every child, she loves to touch and work with clay. This was a little different, though; the piece of clay was rotating on a wheel and she used her fingers to make a pot, just like Egyptians have been doing for centuries. At the same token, like Egyptian craftsmen, my little potter was delighted to work to an audience and magically transform a blob of clay into a pot. What a wonderful learning experience for her, and what a wonderful thing for me to witness!

Our last stop was to see the sand art. The couple from Sandsational, Jill Harris and Thomas Koet, was hard at work building a huge sand sculpture that made any passerby stop and speechlessly admire the work. On Sandsationals web site they describe that reaction simply as a Wow! and that couple has been provoking that reaction in many audiences around the world for over 15 years.

In his book, Ted Siebert states that nobody knows exactly when the first sand sculpture was created, but we know that ancient Egyptians used sand to prototype their monuments, building sand replicas much like engineers today use cardboard models for their projects. Sand art became popular in the United States in the late 1800s (Siebert 9) and artists like Jill Harris and Thomas Koet are responsible for maintaining its popularity.

It is curious how sand sculptures are made and how the sand holds together. Part of what holds sand sculptures together is the surface tension created by mixing sand and water. . . . Most sand consists largely of silica . . . [and] the shape of the sand grain and the silt contained in the grain cause it to act like a sponge, absorbing and holding water. . . . A very high silt content will cause the sand to retain too much water, and it will not be able to support as much weight. [However, sand] sculptures require a lot of water to keep the sand, and therefore the structure, sticking together. Sea water is ideal bonding agent [because] as sea water in a sculpture evaporates, salt crystals remain, . . . help[ing] to preserve the piece (Siebert 18).

On the driveway of the Brevard Symphony Orchestra House, the three tons of sand were transformed into this giant sculpture right before our eyes. The end result was awesome: like Roman busts, the artists heads made the top of the sculpture, and then, lying in front of them at the bottom, there was a plaque with a Greek column of the Ionic order that read Art of Sand. What a great piece of work! It is a real shame that after all the time spent that kind of work does not last more than a few days...

Our first Fall for the Arts was a great success. Not only we had loads of fun but we also learned about and became aware of different forms of art. The main reason why I took my daughter to the event was to get out of the house, go outside to enjoy a day of gorgeous weather. What we both experienced in the end was much more than that. Fall for the Arts 2010 was our first, but it will not be our last.

Works Cited

Ammoun, Denise. Crafts of Egypt. Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 1991. Print.

Beal, Nancy, and Gloria B. Miller. The Art of Teaching Art to Children: in school and at home. New York: Farrar, 2001. Print.

Fall for the Arts. BCA Programs. Brevard Cultural Alliance, n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.artsbrevard.org/docs/fall-for-the-arts.html>

Fall for the Arts: Set to Premiere Upcoming Arts and Cultural Season. Space Coast Blog. Floridas Space Coast, 21 Sep. 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://spacecoast.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/fall-for-the-arts-set-to-premiereupcoming-arts-and-cultural-season>

Hecht, Ann. The Art of the Loom: Weaving Spinning & Dyeing across the World. New York: Rizzoli International, 1989. Print.

Koster, Joan B. Growing Artists: Teaching Art to Young Children. 3rd ed. New York: Thomson, 2005. Print.

Organizational History. BAM History. Brevard Art Museum, n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.brevardartmuseum.org/about/history.php>

Siebert, Ted. The Art of Sandcastling. Seattle: Romar, 1990. Print.

Spinning (textiles). Wikipedia. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_%28textiles%29>