GIANT, MIXED MEDIA TIGER - UNIFIED IN OUR DIVERSITY

November 21, 2016

GIANT, MIXED MEDIA TIGER - UNIFIED IN OUR DIVERSITY

Tigers - United in Our Diversity

Years ago I was at a speech competition in Dallas, Texas. The students had made a giant, mixed media collage of all sorts of found and ordinary objects. I loved the idea and decided that I had to try creating our school mascot, a tiger, using unusual objects with students.

We started this daunting project years ago. Each panel is a section supported with an 8" x 10" canvas board and each panel was created by one or more students over the years. This piece actually has been stored, unfinished in a closet in my art classroom but we recently dragged it out and got it finished.

Since we first began this piece, our school has drastically changed. We have gone from a very White student body to one of the most diverse in our whole region. My current students decided they wanted this piece to celebrate our multi cultured population so they titled it "Tigers - Unified in Our Diversity.

Close of the tiger ear created as a relief with nails

We used all sorts of media and objects in our project - some traditional art media and others are found objects. The goal was to create the correct, dark and light values of a simplified, tiger face. The piece is made of (1.) Mosaic, Glass Tiles, (2.) Yarn, (3) Nails, (4) Acrylic Painted, Aboriginal Dots, (5) Glass Beads, (6) Curled, Telephone Wire, (7.) Black Ink Text, (8) Wax Relief Scratch Art, (9) Fabric Batik, (10)Collage, (11.) Bathtub Caulking with Acrylic Wash, (12) Embossing Tin, Dr Peppar Cans and Bent Silverware, (13) Glass Marbles with Tiger Images Glued to the Back, (14.) Sharpened and Cut Colored and Charcoal Pencils and (15.) Sequins.