This past week we worked with our partner Art with a Heart in Lakeland Elementary and Middle School, Monteverde Senior Center and Restoration Gardens, an interim housing site for young homeless adults. Using the project first developed with CMOM, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM), we helped citizens from 7 to 70+ create Gratitude Plates that expressed what they’re thankful for as they approach Thanksgiving.
We hoped that participants would find the activity engaging. We brought plenty of supplies and gave schoolchildren paper and plastic plates and our adult artists glass plates to decorate. After introducing the exercise with a short discussion about the meaning of Thanksgiving and our country’s early experience with physical and political survival, participants drew, and pasted, glued and painted, and thoughtfully composed their amazing gratitude creations.
What surprised me was how absorbing the activity was for everyone regardless of age or setting. A good art activity should be as appealing as a pool on a hot day. Participants plunged right in.The noise level rose in every space as participants laughed, talked about what they were doing and cheerfully shared supplies and ideas. “You should put the dolphin here.” “Look! I found a great turkey for you!” “ How about this color green?” “You know I’m a pink girl!” The concept seemed to hit people where their hearts are and gave them a chance to connect the holiday with a symbolic object that made sense to them: it represented how (we eat) and why (we’re grateful for what we have) we celebrate Thanksgiving .
My assistant Tanya and I also took the project on Friday morning to Baltimore’s Kipp Ujima Village Academy where 100 5th graders made plates after doing their own version of the Freedom’s Feast Thanksgiving ceremony. There we had the same experience I had at the other sites. An hour just wasn’t enough. Once our artists got involved and committed to the idea it was hard for them to stop. They laid out designs and began to search for the colors, words and embellishments that would best represent their theme. Family was popular at Kipp with family pictures enhanced in thoughtful ways while others were grateful for music, food, friends, teachers, their school, the dream of a career. “I am thankful for a roof over my head” was accompanied by a picture of a nice house with a prominent roof. Another was grateful for “A mother’s power.”
At Restoration Gardens, Mone̕, a 19 year old resident created a stunning plate and wrote: “I am most thankful for living in the ghettos of Baltimore city because it carried me to struggles and without those struggles I wouldn’t be as strong as I am.” On the front of her plate she added a book. The book, she explained, will tell her story in images and symbols.
I am about to launch into my three day annual frenzy of Thanksgiving preparations. I have shopping lists that get re-edited, boxes of table decorations and seating plans that go back ten years. Almost everyone knows their food assignments. It will still be frenetic but everything will get done for our crowd of 25. On Thursday we will sit down to a beautiful meal and a meaningful experience as we do our version of the Try A Slice ceremony and inside of that tuck the Memory Harvest with 7 stories about family members who are no longer with us. Gratitude Plates will sit on our table and trigger more stories. This is our nation’s story. These are our stories. When else will we tell them? What I am grateful for going into these few days is that we can do this. But I am also grateful for the lessons these talented artists taught me this past week. The children at Kipp and Lakeland, the young adults at Restoration Gardens and the seniors at Monteverde reminded me that it is such a blessing to be able to create, to have a family, to have a roof over our heads, a good school, teachers we love, trials that test and strengthen us, friends we trust and special moments when we can stop and celebrate US. Enjoy your Thanksgiving wherever you are!
No comments:
Post a Comment