Narrative Drawing, Collage and Sewing with 1st Grade: Part 1

"A picture is worth a thousand words." What exactly does that mean? 1st graders are on a mission to find out as we delve into our Narrative Art unit- looking at artwork that tells stories. We are studying the works of Harlem Renaissance and contemporary artist Faith Ringgold. Ringgold is best known for her "story quilts," large scale paintings sewn into elaborate quilts, that are also embellished with paint. Her quilts tell stories about her life growing up, her family, neighbors, her dreams, and her heroes. One of her most famous quilts, "Tar Beach", was published as book in 1991, and tells the story of a little girl growing up in Harlem that dreams of flying over personally significant landmarks with the goal of owning them, in an attempt to create a better life for her family.

After looking at the book and watching an animated version of the story, students thought about what places or things they would want to fly over to own and drew themselves doing just so. We used colored pencils to color in the drawings, and talked about craftsmanship- attention to detail- and to remember that the sky reaches all the way to the ground, and that we must give color to all of our details. 

We will use these drawings to complete a class story quilt. Each student will create their own quilt square, using the drawing as the central image, and collaging a boarder of patterned papers and textiles around it. We will also include a few sentences about each drawing in the square, just as Faith Ringgold writes the story of every quilt on the quilt itself. The squares will then be sewn together to create the class story quilt. Stay tuned!