Teaching in a Jewish Day
School provides opportunities to explore curricular,
cultural, and historical
subjects that are not necessarily
covered in public middle school art
curricula. So, when my administrator approached me with a request to
have a group of students create an
installation piece for the community wide Yom HaShoah (Holocaust
Remembrance Day) commemoration, I was intrigued.
The Experience
A surprise came when the bust
armature students selected arrived.
They were startled to discover that
it would be necessary to fashion
ears, eyes, nose, and lips to fill in
the empty sockets on the form.
They calculated facial measurements to sculpt features, giving the
bust its human form.
While some students sculpted
the human head, others engineered
the mirrored wall they intended
to stand behind the sculpture. The
three-part mural of mirrors would
appear in stages of brokenness,
symbolizing the progression of a
world shattered
by the events
of Kristallnacht (Night of
Broken Glass)
towards repair
and wholeness.
The students selected photos,
cutting them out and making decisions of where to place them on the
head. After applying a coat of white
gesso, students painted the sculpture with a dull silver acrylic. After
the paint dried, students arranged
the photos on the head and attached
them with tacky glue. Silver candy
wrappers, symbolizing the sweetness lost from devastated lives, were
molded between the photos. The
entire bust was then sealed with
several coats of Mod Podge.
With amazement and just a bit of
circumspection, I discovered I had
two boys enthusiastically exploring
the most successful way to shatter mirrors. With an impressive
commitment to safety, they experimented with a variety of tapes on
the backs of small mirrors, prior to
hammering, in order to compare
the resulting cracks. Once satisfied
that they had developed a technique using duct tape, this intrepid
duo set about smashing mirrored
squares. A low-temperature glue
gun was used to prevent the broken
glass from dislodging.
With the help of our school
custodian, students constructed a
hinged wood, self-standing, tri-fold
structure. The mirrors were held
securely in place on the wood panels using carpenter’s glue. When
standing upright, this background
reflected all elements of the sculpture, incorporating the viewer as an
inescapable part of the entire experience. The group completed the piece
by adding bits of broken glass (
windshield safety glass and colored glass
mosaics) and made the bust appear
to be silently weeping.
The Art Problem
The parameters for this project
required that it be created by students and engage viewers from
multiple angles. The learning
experience would need to expand
students’ current expertise with
techniques and media and establish
a connection between my middle
school students, the viewers, and
the Shoah victims.
The participants were seventh-and eighth-graders, willing to
relinquish two lunch periods and
recess periods weekly, for six weeks.
Each session included twenty-five
minutes of lecture/discussion followed by twenty-five minutes during which students worked on their
commemorative art piece.
The Completed Work
The portraits of victims, rescuers,
and resistance covers the head,
which was framed by the trio of
mirrored panels. The first panel is
fractured, as was the shattered glass
of Kristallnacht; the center has
three pieces;
The parameters for this project and the third
required that it be created by is whole and
extends beyond
students and engage viewers the framework,
from multiple angles. signifying that
the experi-
ence of the Shoah extends beyond
geographic, cultural, and temporal
boundaries.
The Plan
The lecture and discussion component chronicled the rise of Nazism
as seen through photographic art of
the time, pieces recovered from the
work of artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
along with artwork from the children of the Theresienstadt Ghetto,
and the Holocaust experience as
documented through art made subsequent to World War II. We used
teaching resources provided by the
United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
With the actual history component of the class so intense, the original dozen or so students dwindled
to a focused cohort of eight artists.
This diligent group made the determination to sculpt a large bust to
cover with photo images of victims,
partisans, and rescuers. They also
envisioned a three-panel display of
mirrors as a background, with the
intent to bring the viewer into the
experience.
Evaluation
Beyond the artistic accomplishment
and level of learning, these students
were inspired, realizing that any
historic era can be represented and
experienced through their art skills.
The sculpture won a community
award for its designers and the
learning has extended to our entire
school through the sculpture and its
creators.
Laurie Bellet is an art specialist at the
Oakland Hebrew Day School in Oakland,
California, co-chairperson for the Art Network of the Coalition for the Advancement
of Jewish Education, and the author of The
Reluctant Artist (Torah Aura Productions).
LBellet@ohds.org
Students use subjects, themes, and
symbols that demonstrate knowledge of contexts, values, and aesthetics that communicate intended
meaning in artworks.
