Sunday, December 12, 2010

Palm Frond Masks







About 5 months ago I found a pristine palm frond base while walking my beloved mutts. As any art teacher I am always looking for ideas to use different materials. (Dumpster diving is not out of the question for me.) This looked like a great canvas for a primitive mask. It took me all these months to find enough fallen palm fronds for my 3rd thru 5th graders to create their own. (Only to find out last week that one of my student's parents is a landscaper and could get a boatload :D )


I love primitive art and have a small collection of masks from Africa and Indonesia I shared with the children. We kept our palettes limited and I encouraged repetition of shape. But I didn't over direct this lesson.


More to come...

10 comments:

  1. Wow These are amazing. I thought they were real examples until I read the post. What an amazing idea for palm. . . too bad we don't have palm in CT or I would totally do this!

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  2. Totally fantastic, and I agree with Erica, they look like the "real thing". But here in northern NY we don't have palm fronds, we have freezing rain and nasty ice. The closest I could come would maybe be some birch bark...

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  3. At the first "big wind" after summer our teachers start combing the neighborhood around school where palm trees line the streets. It's always a race to see whether we get the fronds before the City sends out trucks to pick them all up. I always love the masks that the kids create. Yours look GREAT!

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  4. These are absolutely AMAZING> I wish I had palm trees where I live.

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  5. Thanks very much for all your nice comments.

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  6. Mary these are wonderful. I bet the kids loved doing this project. It's so cool the way the masks have hair sprouting out like they do. I wish we had palms, but all we have today is snow.

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  7. Mary you should sell this palm stuff to art teachers:) I've been thinking about how cool these are ever since you posted.

    There is a person in Maine who hunts for mushrooms and sells them to my husbands restaurant. It's kind of the same thing right?

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  8. bayıldım masklarınıza.ne güzel ve özgün olmuşlar.tebrik ederim...

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  9. How did you cut them? I have a few branches. Do I need to use a saw?

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    1. I actually found these as is, so I didn’t do any cutting. We just had a big wind last night so it might be a good time for me to look for more and try this project again.

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