Subject Areas |
Art and Culture
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Folklore |
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Visual Arts |
History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - African-American |
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U.S. History - Women's Rights/History |
Literature and Language Arts
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American |
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Time Required |
| Lesson 1: one class period or less
Lesson 2: one class period
Lesson 3: one class periods
Lesson 4: one to three class periods |
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Skills |
| recognition of colors, shapes, and patterns
primary document analysis
graphic design
collaboration
presentation skills
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Date Posted |
| 4/29/2002 |
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Stories in Quilts
IntroductionQuilts and other cloth-based narrative
art are part of many cultures. Made by hand -- often collaboratively -- using
familiar materials such as scraps of clothing, quilts are both personal and communal
objects. Quilting continues to be largely a home-based form of women's artistic
expression. Quilts can be works of art as well
as stories through pictures. They also tell a story about their creators and about
the historical and cultural context of their creation (quilting bees, historical
and personal events) through the choices made in design, material, and content.
Heighten your students' awareness of how quilts tell stories that reflect the
lives of the people who create them, and that record the cultural history of a
particular place and time. Learning ObjectivesAfter
completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to: -
Explain what a quilt is and what a story quilt is.
-
Identify elements in quilts, such as colors, shapes, patterns, and symbols.
- Realize
that quilts can be objects of both everyday use and art.
-
Understand how stories are related through art objects such as quilts.
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Understand how quilts and other cloth-based art forms are used to preserve family
and community traditions.
- Recognize that
people of different countries and cultures use cloth-based art forms to pass down
their traditions and history.
Guiding Question:What
is a quilt? What is a quilt made of? What is a story quilt? How are quilts used
to tell stories? What kinds of stories can be told through quilts? How are art
and history connected through quilts that tell stories? How have story quilts
been used as part of our identities, families, and cultures? Preparing to
Teach this Lesson- Review each lesson and select
archival materials you'd like to use in class. If possible, bookmark these materials,
along with other useful websites; download and print out selected documents and
duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing. Prepare any necessary templates.
- Establish an anticipatory set when beginning each lesson
on quilts. Read aloud any of the books recommended below, display an actual quilt,
or invite a local quilter to demonstrate. Encourage students who own quilts to
share them with the class. However, because quilts can be valuable family heirlooms,
exercise care in allowing students to touch and work with quilts brought from
home. Sharing quilts offers a good opportunity for parents to come to class to
share family stories and to help monitor appropriate handling of quilts.
- If possible, obtain the book The American Quilt:
A History of Cloth and Comfort 1750-1950, by Roderick Kiracofe, Mary Elizabeth
Johnson (contributor), and Sharon Reisendorph (photographer) (Clarkson Potter,
1993; ISBN 0517575353), which contains many large photos of quilts of every kind.
Another book to use for background information a pictures of story quilts is Dancing
at the Louvre : Faith Ringgold's French Collection and Other Story Quilts,
by Faith Ringgold (Editor), New Museum of Contemporary Art, Dan Cameron (Editor).
- Review background material on Faith
Ringgold from the Guggenheim Museum, located on the Artcyclopedia
through the EDSITEment-reviewed website, Internet
Public Library:
- "Ringgold's vehicle
is the story quilt-a traditional American craft associated with women's communal
work that also has roots in African culture. She originally collaborated on the
quilt motif with her mother, a dressmaker and fashion designer in Harlem. That
Ringgold's great-great-great-grandmother was a Southern slave who made quilts
for plantation owners suggests a further, perhaps deeper, connection between her
art and her family history."
- "Tar
Beach, the first quilt in Ringgold's colorful and lighthearted series entitled
Women on a Bridge, depicts the fantasies of its spirited heroine and narrator
Cassie Louise Lightfoot, who, on a summer night in Harlem, flies over the George
Washington Bridge. 'Sleeping on Tar Beach was magical . . .' explains Cassie in
the text on the quilt, 'only eight years old and in the third grade and I can
fly. That means I am free to go wherever I want to for the rest of my life.'"
- For background on other forms of cloth-based narrative
art, review the following resources:
- Hmong
Storycloths: The Hmong and the Storycloth: How Traditions and Cultures Are Transmitted
Through Folklore and Art, available from the EDSITEment resource AskAsia::
- "The Hmong did not have any previous written language
until thirty-five years ago when Christian missionaries standardized and romanized
the Hmong language. Previously, all of their communication was oral and/or pictorial.
Many of the oral history traditions have been transcribed pictorially on a storycloth
known as pa'ndau. The pa'ndau, composed of applique, cross-stitches, batik, and
embroidery, incorporates Hmong personal family history, village life, the death
and disturbance of war and emigration, and life in a new land. Pa'ndau, as an
art form, reflects how the medium of an old tradition is also used to tell a more
modern story of Hmong history and culture" (from "Brief
History of Hmong and the Storycloth Tradition," available through the EDSITEment-reviewed
website AskAsia).
- African Kente cloth: the lesson plans: Fabric
patterns/African Peoples and Textiles
convey meaning through the use of pattern and color, both available from the
EDSITEment resource Art and Life in
Africa. Information on the history and meanings of Kente cloth is located
on the Index on Africa:
Ghana website at History
and Significance of Ghana's Kente Cloth, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed
website African Studies
WWW.
- Latin American arpilleras
(wall hangings made of cloth pictures that tell a story): Arpilleras have
also been used to chronicle political injustices in various Latin American countries.
Two books with pictures and descriptions of arpilleras are available at LILAS
Outreach K-12 and Community Resource Library (Chile
- Children's Literature and Holidays and Celebrations - Children's Literature),
found through the EDSITEment-reviewed website Latin
American Network Information Center (LANIC):
- Festivals
of the World: Chile by Gareth Stevens Publishing, Milwaukee, Wisc., 1998.
32 pp. (Grades 1-4) This book introduces Chile, its festival calendar, and its
specific festival rituals. It includes craft projects to make an arpillera.
- Tonight Is Carnaval by Arthur Dorros. Puffin
Unicorn Books, Penguin Books, USA Inc., New York, 1991. (Grades 1-4) This is a
story illustrated with photographs of arpilleras created by the Club de Madres
Virgen del Carmen of Lima, Peru.
- If
possible, obtain some selected volumes of the Festivals of the World (Milwaukee,
WI: Gareth Stevens Publishing) series, which you can use to introduce students
to the festivals and traditions of different countries and to the concept of family,
community, and national cultural traditions.
-
For Lesson 4, review background information on Harriet
Powers located at American Studies @ The University of Virginia, a link from
the EDSITEment-reviewed website Center
for the Liberal Arts. If possible, obtain Mary Lyons's book Stitching Stars:
The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers (New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997) to
read to the class.
Suggested ActivitiesLesson
1: What Is a Story Quilt? Lesson
2: Tar Beach: A Quilt That Tells a Story Lesson
3: Crown Heights Children's Story Quilt: A Quilt about Stories Lesson
4: The Story Quilts of Harriet Power Extending
the Lesson Lesson 1 What
Is a Story Quilt? If possible, introduce
this lesson with one or more authentic quilts in the classroom, to give students
the opportunity to see how a quilt is constructed and what the elements of a quilt
are. How might a quilt serve both practical and aesthetic purposes? How is a quilt
different from a blanket? A quilt is made up of scraps of material that are sewn
together. Quilts have two layers of material with padding in between. The stitching
that keeps the padding in place creates a pattern that invites further decoration.
This decoration can employ elements such as color, pattern, and symbols. The designs
on quilts can tell a story. If it proves impractical
to bring a quilt into class, use the image Sunflower
Quilting Bee at Arles from the Bayly Art Museum at the University of Virginia,
available through Artcyclopedia, located
on the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet Public
Library, or images from one of the recommended books. You
may want to introduce the following vocabulary terms to the class before or while
discussing story quilts and their elements and uses: quilt, story quilt, pattern,
symbol, stitching, padding, patchwork, community, tradition, festival. Ask
the class if anyone has a quilt at home. Encourage some discussion about those
quilts. How are they used? How many students use a quilt as a blanket? Take out
the quilt(s) or quilt image(s) students will observe. Allow the students to observe
the quilts as closely as practical. Ask students questions such as: How many different
kinds of cloth do you see on the quilt? Do you see some of the same cloth in different
places in the picture? What colors do you see? Do you see objects on the quilt
-- people, animals, flowers, baskets, etc.? How are objects arranged? What pictures
can you see in the quilt? Is this quilt telling a story, and if so, what is the
story about? Ask students to identify and describe
the following elements in several quilts or quilt images:
-
Colors
- Shapes
-
Patterns
- Symbols
In
addition to quilts, other cloth-based types of narrative art can be displayed,
such as Hmong Storycloths (The
Hmong and the Storycloth: How Traditions and Cultures Are Transmitted Through
Folklore and Art, available from the EDSITEment resource AskAsia;
Kente cloth in Africa (example lessons available at Fabric
patterns/African Peoples and Textiles
convey meaning through the use of pattern and color, both available from the
EDSITEment resource Art and Life in
Africa; and Latin American arpilleras (books with pictures and descriptions
of arpilleras available at LILAS
Outreach K-12 and Community Resource Library, Chile - Children's Literature
and Holidays
and Celebrations - Children's Literature, found through the EDSITEment-reviewed
website Latin American Network Information
Center (LANIC). The EDSITEment-reviewed
resource Odyssey Online includes a special
exhibit, Wrapped In Pride: Ghanaian Kente
and African-American Identity, which "traces the roots of kente in Asante
and Ewe cultures, in what is now central and eastern Ghana and parts of Togo,
and its widespread use in Africa as garment and ceremonial cloth; then it explores
kente as a meaningful document of dress, art, and identity in American cultures,
specifically within African American communities in the United States." The website
for this exhibit explains the role Kente cloth plays in the history and cultural
identity of both Africa and African-American communities within the U.S. Ask
students to compare the different forms of cloth-based artwork and discuss the
elements in each. Have students describe what they see, and write down their responses
on a chart. The chart could contain the following information: What colors do
you see in the quilt or other fabric art? What patterns do you see? What is being
represented? What kinds of people, animals, or objects do you see? Whom do you
think these characters or animals represent? Where do you think the story is taking
place? What are the events taking place in the story? What do you think the story
is about? What types of objects and stories would you portray in a story quilt?
Lesson 2 Tar Beach: A Quilt That Tells
a Story Faith Ringgold's quilt Tar
Beach 2 tells a story. The image of the quilt is available on her website
maintained in collaboration with Art in
Context, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet
Public Library. The images imply a narrative, while the creator has included
writing on the quilt that tells the story. Because the writing is too small to
read in the available image, students can suggest the story the quilt might be
telling. Have the class look at the image and
predict what the text may be. Together with the class, create a collaborative
text that describes the quilt images. You can also read aloud to students Faith
Ringgold's children's book Tar Beach, based on the story quilt of the same
name. Use the quilt image and the book Tar Beach, in addition to selected
books from the Festivals of the World (Milwaukee, WI: Gareth Stevens Publishing)
series, to address the concept of family and community traditions. Connect the
various festivals around the world that are mentioned in the book with festivals
and traditions that students are familiar with in the U.S. and in their individual
families. Discuss with the class ways in which quilts and other narrative-based
cloth art can express and preserve the cultural traditions of a family or a community.
Assign each student to design one square of a patchwork
quilt that is representative of her or his family or culture. Students can dictate
or write a descriptive paragraph about the square. The paragraphs can be organized
to create a story about the quilt. Lesson
3 Crown Heights Children's Story Quilt: A Quilt about Stories Ringgold's
Crown Heights Children's Story Quilt is adorned with pictures from 12 folktales
from the different ethnic groups that make up the Crown Heights area of New York:
"Anansi Stories" (Jamaican), "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "We Wear the Mask"
(West Africa), "The Ghost of Peg Leg Peter" (Dutch), "The Banza" (Haitian), "The
Winged Head" (Algonquin), "Bright Morning Runs East" (Mohawk), "Catherine the
Wise" (Italian), "The Rainbow-Colored Horse" (Puerto Rican), "Sea and Mountain
Spirits" (Vietnamese), "Which Is Witch" (Korean), and "The Lost Princess" (Jewish).
An image of the quilt is accessible from the New
York City official website, available through Artcyclopedia,
a resource of the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet
Public Library. Have students look at the various
squares and make guesses about the stories shown. Any guesses what the stories
might be about? Do any of them seem like they might be scary? Funny? In the upper
right-hand corner is a square about Anansi, the trickster figure originally found
in African tales, though drawn by Ringgold from a Jamaican story. What do students
see in the square? Read an Anansi story to the class. Three may be found at Afro-Americ@,
a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet
Public Library. This quilt represents children
from Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. You can download and print
out maps of New York and of the United States using the Atlas
on the EDSITEment-reviewed National
Geographic Xpeditions website, and a map showing Brooklyn and the Crown Heights
neighborhood on the
Brooklyn Neighborhood Map, located on Brooklyn
On Line, available through the New
York City Historycollection from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet
Public Library. In addition to showing students
the location of Crown Heights, you can provide background information on The
Crown Heights' Story Quilt through the UCSD
Visual Arts | Faculty section of Art
in Context Center for Communications, Crown Heights Children's Story Quilt,
located through the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet
Public Library. This website describes The Crown Heights Children's Story
Quilt as "featuring folklore from the 12 major cultures that settled Crown
Heights." In Flying
over the bridge: An interview with artist Faith Ringgold, the artist explains
her work: "I did a commission - a mural - on Crown Heights. ? It's about the twelve
cultures of people who have settled in Crown Heights and when they arrived. The
Koreans and the Vietnamese were the last two groups of people who arrived in the
'70s. The earliest groups were the Algonquin Indians, who arrived 3000 B.C.; the
Dutch; and the free West African and African slaves." Crown
Heights is an area in New York, and this quilt represents the children of Crown
Heights through the stories from different cultures that Ringgold has chosen.
Ask students what folktales, stories, rhymes, and images represent your class.
Present students with squares of paper and have them draw pictures for, or, for
more advanced grades, write the names of, tales and stories that relate to your
class and community. You can ask them to select images that represent their family,
class, school, community, city, or state. Lesson
4 The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers Background
for the Teacher: The EDSITEment-reviewed website
American Studies @ The University of Virginia includes information on Harriet
Powers and her quilts and points out that Powers combined African and European
quilting techniques and traditions: Born
a slave in Georgia in 1837, Harriet Powers created two quilts which are the best
known and well preserved examples of Southern American quilting tradition still
in existence. Using the traditional African applique technique along with European
record keeping and biblical reference traditions, Harriet records on her quilts
local historical legend, Bible stories, and astronomical phenomena.
An
essay on "Southern Quilting Traditions" on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American
Studies @ The University of Virginia describes the differences and similarities
between African-American and European-American quilting traditions: The
origins of the two major influences on Southern Quilting are very different --
originating on different continents and merging in America on slave plantations
where division between white and black culture was distinct. Yet, as can be seen
in the following examples, the differences of background and tradition, while
seemingly distinct, do little to stop the merging of the two traditions. Both
types of quilting are highly symbolic, both rely heavily on the process of story-telling,
and both rely heavily on the union of women to produce and pass them on. ("Southern
Quilting Traditions")
Share
with the class the image of Harriet
Powers's Quilt, available on The American
History Museum of the Smithsonian, a link from the EDSITEment- reviewed website
Center for the Liberal Arts. Ask students
to describe what they see. You can discuss with students how Powers's quilt combines
the African-American and European-American quilting techniques and traditions. Read
from Mary Lyons's book Stitching Stars: The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers
(New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997). Discuss the different characters/stories
on the quilts. Do the students recognize any of Powers' images? How would her
quilts help someone retell the stories she included? Harriet
Powers chose stories from one of her favorite books, the Bible. Students might
enjoy collaborating on a story quilt based on one of their favorite books, or
series of books. Individuals or small groups could contribute squares based on
their favorite story or nursery rhyme, or based on a book you have read aloud
in class. Let the class pick a familiar story and brainstorm the different parts
of the story. Can the students make a quilt
that would enable someone "reading" the quilt to retell the story? Spend some
time deciding on the important parts of the story or book. Have each student design
a picture for a class quilt retelling a familiar tale. The students' illustrations
can be assembled into a paper quilt and hung in the classroom or school hallway.
Invite another class to view the quilt to see if they recognize the parts of the
story. Extending the Lesson - Invite
a quilter to your classroom to discuss her or his quilts, or invite family members
of students to bring their quilts to class for "show and tell." Where quilting
is still a tradition, students can also conduct interviews about quilts in their
homes.
- Use the book The Keeping
Quilt by Patricia Polacco to introduce an activity in which students make
a 'keeping quilt' and hang it in the school. Read aloud from The Keeping Quilt,
and then ask students to write about a memory. For younger grades, the children
can talk about their memories, and the teacher can write down a list of memories
on the board. After writing/talking about her or his memories, each student should
draw a picture related to that memory. The picture is then traced onto vellum
paper and colored with fabric crayons, along with the child's name. Finally, the
drawings are ironed onto a large piece of material that can be stuffed and backed
as a 'keeping quilt' for the school.
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Use the poems and pictures in Pieces: A Year in Poems & Quilts by Anna
Grossnickle Hines as a starting point for having children write and illustrate
poems to form a "Fabric Storyscape" quilt.
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Through the EDSITEment-reviewed website American
Memory, students can view many additional images of contemporary quilts. Each
of the images is accompanied by the artist's explanation of the process involved
in the making of the quilt, as well as the quilt's meaning. This collection also
includes a glossary of quilting terms that could be useful for understanding how
a quilt is assembled.
- Students
interested in another unusual way of remembering family stories can read Knot
on a Counting Rope, by John Archambault and Bill Martin, Jr.; illustrated
by Ted Rand (Henry Holt & Co., Inc., 1987; Reading level: Ages 4-8; ISBN 0805005714).
- Teachers can use the children's book A Name on the
Quilt: A Story of Remembrance by Jeannine Atkins and Tad Hills (Illustrator)
(Atheneum, 1999, 32 pages, $16.00 Hardcover, ISBN: 0-689-81592-1, Reading level:
Ages 4-8) as an example of a quilt that preserves history and helps us remember
someone.
Selected EDSITEment WebsitesCarol
Hurst's Children's Literature Site Faith
Ringgold's Any1Can Fly Web SiteArtcyclopedia
UCSD
Visual Arts/Faculty
Latin
American Network Information Center (LANIC) Odyssey
Online Women
of the West Museum
Standards Alignment
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