Yesterday, was the first day of the coiled clay art program at Southwest High School. This is the second half of the coiled clay art project grant that we received from the Imperial Valley Community Foundation. For the next eight weeks, the SAVAPA Art Club will be working with clay and investigating the shapes and styles of ollas in the museum's collection.
I took examples of the ollas in our collection to show to the art students. This was the first time in about twenty years that collections were taken out of storage and into into the classroom.
After the eight weeks, we will be mounting a traveling exhibit of the work: developing viability as a cultural institution. This is modeled after a project I developed in the Turks and Caicos where were trying to get a foothold on a larger island where the museum did not have a presence. Here, it is nearly the same issue. The larger town of El Centro is 26 miles from the Imperial Valley Desert Museum, which is in fact in the middle of the desert. Hopefully, the high school art project will result in a dozen or so quality pieces of work that will make stops at three or four places over the next year.
The art project that we displayed in the TCI can be seen here in an old post called Hanging Around Provo.
I think that everyone should just remember that post, but that was two years ago now, crazy.
Today, the Imperial Valley Press covered our program as the front page lead article. You can see the article "Students learn Kumeyaay Way" here. There is also a very good photo gallery where you can see a great picture of Lucas looking at the ollas.
But I have to warn you, if film ads twenty pounds, then pictures must add twenty years. The photo gallery looks an awful lot like my dad teaching a high school class.
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