Day 9 // March 14, 2013

Today is our last day working on the pieces. There is not much left to do, so only some of our class is in the art room working, while the rest of the class is back in the room starting a final paper on General Dallaire’s book, Shake Hands With The Devil. 

Here are pictures of us touching up the paint and attaching the mirror to the flag piece, and the heart and brain to the radio tower/body piece:

 

The last thing we attached was the heart, which in the words of Mrs. O’Keefe, was “perfect” for this project.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say that our History Through Film class is happy and relieved this project is over, but we are also very proud of ourselves for doing such a good job on the pieces and working together so seamlessly, and honored to be included in this exhibit. Some of us plan to attend the exhibition on April 6, and our entire class will travel to Brookdale May to hear Dallaire speak.

To conclude, here is our class with the front sides…

 

 

… and the back sides:

 

And shots of both sides together:

flag/church/mirror piece:

 

woman/radio tower/body piece:

 

Thank you for following our progress! We hope you have enjoyed the experience as much as we have.

Signed,

Mrs. O’Keefe’s History Through Film Class
Communications High School – Wall, NJ

Day 8 // March 13, 2014

We are really excited at the prospect of completing everything besides the 3-D portions of the pieces. That includes the 3-D heart and brain for the radio tower/body, and the mirror on top of the flags.

Here is a picture of one piece before we got started today:

Here are pictures of us finishing up the painting and adding details to everything:

    

Here are most of the groups that painted the front sides, along with Mrs. O’Keefe!

Thank you for reading!

Day 7 // March 12, 2014

Today a few of us came in during lunch again to work on writing quotes on the church and head of one piece.

During class we continued to work on the pieces themselves…

… as well as editing and revising our artist statement.

We are excited to be finished and view the final products!

Thank you for reading!

Day 6 // March 11, 2014

Today a few of us came in to the art room to work on the pieces at the end of lunch, and we were able to finish the flag side!

 

During the class period, we began to accomplish a lot on the second sides of both pieces.

 

We are excited to continue tomorrow!

Additionally, the artist statement was completed today.

Thank you for reading!

Day 5 // March 10, 2014

With the deadline for this project looming towards us, a group of people from our class came in to the art room during our lunch hour to continue work on the pieces.

When the class started, we spend the first half hour discussing the artist statement that we are submitting tomorrow….

… and then breaking into groups to answer the questions more efficiently.

The artist statements will explain our reasons for choosing the symbols we did for each side of both pieces, as well as share some insight from our personal experiences with learning about the genocide. Since the entire class worked on both pieces together, one document will be submitted that will pull from everyone’s answers and statements. (Special thanks to Mrs. Ortner for altering her classes’ artist statement questions for us to fit this project.) After the whole class getting started in the art room, the artist statement began to get compiled and typed up.

The following are pictures from our brief time in the art room. As you can see, we progressed rather quickly, and are making great strides towards finishing this project.

Today was very productive!

Thank you for reading!

Day 4 // March 7, 2014

The good news today was that we have until Thursday to finish these pieces, where we previous thought we only had until Tuesday. Nevertheless, we got right to work, finishing up the first side on the flag piece and continuing to add details to the first side of the other piece.

We also began to collect “artist statements” from everyone working on the pieces, which will be submitted in tangent with our final pieces once we finish the whole project.

Katie, who worked on the flag piece, said, “The flags represent countries that didn’t help [during the genocide].”

Jamie, who worked on the radio/body piece, said that they took a look at what influenced the genocide most, and concluded that the radio stations in Rwanda at the time did a lot to rile up the génocidaires (in French, refers to the people who committed the Rwandan genocide).

We plan to continue collecting statements from the class on Monday.

Thank you for reading!

Day 3 // March 6, 2014

Today is Thursday and we need to have the pieces done and dried by Tuesday, so we really cracked down in our work.

We started making and painting the 3-D parts of one piece, and continued to paint the flags on the other piece:

As the period progressed, we started adding details:

And the end of the period, this was what we had accomplished so far:

Thank you for reading!

Day 2 // March 5, 2014

Before coming to work on the project, we spent time discussing the readings we’d done from Machete Season, by Jean Hatzfeld (for more information on the curriculum for this class, please visit the “About” page). Then we dove right into the art aspect.

Here are some pictures of us planning what needs to be done:

 

…as well as working:

 

Here is a panoramic shot showing our workspace:

 

 

At the end of the period, this is the progress we made on one of the pieces:

 

Thank you for reading!

Day 1 // March 4, 2014

Our first art day started out sketching the outlines of flags, painting backgrounds, and researching how to write “Help!” in different languages, which will outline the border on one side of one of the pieces.

Here are pictures of the board before we started, and our first sketches on it.

Here are more pictures of our progress:

Here is a picture of what this one board looked like at the end of the day:

 

Thank you for reading!

Planning the Project

This project would not have been possible without the help of Mrs. O’Keefe, our History Through Film teacher, and Mrs. Ortner, an art teacher at our school, who generously allowed us to utilize her room and supplies. Prior to giving us this assignment, Mrs. O’Keefe and Mrs. Ortner attended a workshop at Brookdale Community College that explained the project to educators and allowed them to create their own piece. This is the piece Mrs. O’Keefe and Mrs. Ortner created:

While there, they were shown these pieces to garner inspiration:

Using these pictures as inspiration, our class broke up into three groups, and each group created their own rough sketch of a piece. Here are our rough drafts:

We decided to combine some of these ideas, so that in the end, we had a front and a back for two pieces.

The next step will be to create the pieces!