Art Camp has been at three-ringed circus of crafting so far this week! We have started lots of marine-based art projects.During last week’s hiking we collected a bunch of murre eggs that had been predated by foxes. Making mosaics can be a slow and somewhat time-consuming process, so it was important to get started on day one. In the end our fishes will all school together in one mosaic art piece. We took a short field trip on Wednesday to find a suitable piece of driftwood to mount our school of egg-shell fishes.
The process of making paper mache eggs also takes several days so we started by applying several layers of messy paper strips to balloons. This will give a good murre-shaped egg. The many layers took two days to dry and we have started painting our eggs various shades of blue and green. We will use them for a relay race on Friday.
Carl Lekanof visited the classroom and told us about his days working in the fishing industry and the history of murre egg collecting on St. George that included egging Village Cliffs and Murre Rock out near Sea Lion Point.
We continued the paper mache construction of the Marine Connections Game. This is basically a simple marine food chain version of the classic game “Connect Four.” Instead of chips we will use figures of fish and seabirds to play. The Marine Connections game is going to need A LOT of small figures, so we got started on sculpting with Model Magic air-dry clay. We make the fish and seabirds out of black and white clay to paint later in the week.
After discussing Bering Sea fishing techniques, both subsistence and commercial, we started POP-UP cards—color, cut and construct. The cards show a couple fishing techniques as well as a variety of marine wildlife. Each card is a unique original and the inside elements pop to life as the card is opened.
We continued painting the “Across the Bering Sea” mural. The design features people and wildlife above and below the surface of the sea and is full of symbols of human connects with the natural resources around us.
We can’t do crafts all day long! It has been fun to get out and play some halibut and minnow freeze tag. In this simple game the wearer of the halibut head has to eat as many forage fish as possible withing the time limit. And boy, can that halibut gobble down the minnows!