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23 November 2010

Fall for the Arts 2010

Hosted by the Brevard Cultural Alliance, the third Fall for the Arts was held in the heart

of the Eau Gallie Arts District to once again celebrate all arts and cultural expressions in Brevard

County. As a free outdoor event, Fall for the Arts attracts many different people and many

different artists from the community. This year the event included “seventy-five arts and

cultural and historic groups from throughout the area with approximately 20 performing groups

. . . on two stages. [The] featured performances [included] ballet, classical and pops music,

modern dance, harmonizers, a brass quintet, animal encounters, and much more. . . .This year’s

Fall for the Arts also [featured] exciting live sand sculpting demonstration by Jill Harris and

Thomas Koet of Sandsational” (Space Coast Blog). On the first of October I was there with my

five-year-old daughter to experience all that and more.

First stop: the stand of the Space Coast Weavers and Fiber Artists (SCW&FA) Guild. “The

guild represents a wide array of interests and activities in the

fiber arts and complementary art forms such as spinning,

dying and weaving; . . . knitting, crocheting and quilting;

basketry and paper making; . . . [to name a few]. Members

demonstrate, exhibit, and teach their art form in addition to

being active in the guild, and participate at the local, state, and national level. [SCW&FA] are

members of the Florida Tropical Weavers Guild, Inc. as well as The Handweavers Guild of 

America, Inc. . . . [and their] members are excited about sharing their knowledge and love of 

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the fiber arts with the community!” (BCA Programs).

My daughter was mesmerized by the spinning technique used by the ladies who were

demonstrating how to turn wool sheared from sheep into yarn. She did not know that spinning

fibers was the technique used in the past, and still today in

much smaller scale, to make yarn. She had only seen a

spinning wheel in books such as “Sleeping Beauty” and the

same was true for me. That experience made us aware of a

group that still does spinning and prompted us to learn a

few things about that art. For example, we learned that

spinning “is an ancient textile art in which plant, animal or

synthetic fibers are twisted together to form yarn”

(Wikipedia). “The natural fibres available fall mainly into

two classes, animal and vegetal, though there is a smaller third group, mineral, which includes

gold, silver, brass strips and asbestos. The animal group comprises on the one hand all the hair

fibres, which include wool, and on the other the continuous filaments of silk. There are several

sources of vegetable fibre, each from a different part of the plant, the fruit, stems, leaves or

seeds.” (Hecht, 16).

“For thousands of years, fiber was spun by hand using simple tools, the spindle and

distaff. Only in the High Middle Ages did the spinning wheel increase the output of individual

spinners, and mass-production only arose in the 18th century with the beginnings of the

Industrial Revolution. Hand-spinning remains a popular handicraft” (Wikipedia). Those were

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amazing facts that we just read about because we saw that demonstration. My daughter,

Melissa, helped one of the ladies for a little bit and that made her feel ecstatic. She wanted to

stay there, but after 20 minutes it was time to move on and go see more.

Next, we stopped at the Brevard Art Museum. The museum “was established March 8,

1978 as the Brevard Art Center and Museum, Inc.” (BAM History) and in June 2007 it acquired

its current name. We went in to see the exhibition called “ANALYZE THIS: Scientific Art from

MIT Museum and Artistic Science from Florida Tech.” We walked around for a few minutes, but

that did not catch Melissa’s interest too much. Then we saw that there was a girl playing

acoustic guitar in one of the art galleries and that really got her attention, buying me some

more time in the museum, just enough to appreciate some of the art at display.

After that, we proceeded to the museum’s art school

called the Renee Foosaner Education Center Museum School,

right across the street from the museum.

That was the best stop ever!

Melissa painted a box, drew a picture

using charcoal, and worked with clay.

We also went in the school and she did

some more drawing and tracing in

there. The school has loads of activities

for kids and during the event was no

exception.

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It is always fascinating to see how excited Melissa gets for doing art and how proud she

is of her work. As Joan Koster says in her book, children “enjoy manipulating the many

materials that they find around them and expressing their creative power to change a piece of 

their world” (2). I see that clearly in my daughter’s smile.

When doing art, and that can involve any kind of material, she is happy; messy as any

child of her age, but happy. She is a serious artist

eager to learn from the grown-up artists. She

concentrates on what she is doing; she listens and

follows the steps laid out by the leading artist, but

she decides on the theme to be used in her

creations. Her personality shines through her work and, in her book, Koster confirms that each

child brings her own personality, as well as that of her family and cultural heritage, to her own

art.

At this event Melissa used paint, charcoal, and clay without any restriction from me.

Paint was messy and covered her outfit and shoes, but I guess she enjoyed that

mess and I did not mind her ruining her outfit; it was for a “good cause.“

Charcoal was a new material to her; that was the first time she used it to

draw a picture. She did a great job drawing her

swing set. As Nancy Beal states, “drawing is

the most expressive of mediums, providing as

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it does a direct route outward from a child’s heart” (47), and that is true. The swing set is

Melissa‘s favorite thing at the moment.

Clay was next and I think it was the one she had most pleasure in manipulating. As

almost every child, she loves to touch and work with clay.

This was a little different, though; the piece of clay was

rotating on a wheel and she used her fingers to make a pot,

 just like Egyptians have been doing for centuries. At the same

token, like Egyptian craftsmen, my little potter was delighted

to work to an audience and magically transform a blob

of clay into a pot. What a wonderful learning experience

for her, and what a wonderful thing for me to witness!

Our last stop was to see the sand art. The couple

from Sandsational, Jill Harris and Thomas Koet, was hard

at work building a huge sand sculpture that made any passerby stop and speechlessly admire

the work. On Sandsational’s web site they describe that reaction simply as a “Wow!” and that

couple has been provoking that reaction in many audiences around the world for over 15 years.

In his book, Ted Siebert states that nobody knows exactly when the first sand sculpture

was created, but we know that ancient Egyptians used sand to prototype their monuments,

building sand replicas much like engineers today use cardboard models for their projects. Sand

art “became popular in the United States in the late 1800s” (Siebert 9) and artists like Jill Harris

and Thomas Koet are responsible for maintaining its popularity.

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Works Cited

Ammoun, Denise. Crafts of Egypt . Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 1991. Print.

Beal, Nancy, and Gloria B. Miller. The Art of Teaching Art to Children: in school and at home.

New York: Farrar, 2001. Print.

“Fall for the Arts.” BCA Programs. Brevard Cultural Alliance, n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.artsbrevard.org/docs/fall-for-the-arts.html>

“Fall for the Arts: Set to Premiere Upcoming Arts and Cultural Season.” Space Coast Blog.

Florida’s Space Coast, 21 Sep. 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2010.

<http://spacecoast.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/fall-for-the-arts-set-to-premiere-

upcoming-arts-and-cultural-season>

Hecht, Ann. The Art of the Loom: Weaving Spinning & Dyeing across the World . New York:

Rizzoli International, 1989. Print.

Koster, Joan B. Growing Artists: Teaching Art to Young Children. 3rd ed. New York: Thomson,

2005. Print.

“Organizational History.” BAM History . Brevard Art Museum, n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.brevardartmuseum.org/about/history.php>

Siebert, Ted. The Art of Sandcastling. Seattle: Romar, 1990. Print.

“Spinning (textiles).” Wikipedia. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010.

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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_%28textiles%29>