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Artists such as Dorica Jackson and Walt Thies incorporate natural materials in their creations. Through their work, we can see how important the selection of the right materials can be in the final product. This section explores the use of natural materials in art and encourages you to take advantage of those resources in your own artistic creations.
Activity: Art Adventure
Pressed Leaf and Flower Art
Start collecting leaves and small flowers when you are going to school, walking your dog, or hiking on a nature trail. Just watch out for poison ivy! Click here to open step-by-step instructions, in pdf, provided by Ruth Pestorius, an artist who has worked with pressed flowers for more than twenty years. TIP: If you are not sure what some of these plants look like, search online or refer to a field guide on plants in your region.
Click here for a list of plants and flowers that will work well for this activity.
Activity: Writing Project
Using Field Guides to Explore your Environment
A field guide is a book that helps you identify things in the natural world. There are field guides for many things such as birds, plants, trees, and even mushrooms, as well as for specific climatic regions, such as the Pacific Northwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Desert Southwest. Enature.com has a searchable online field guide to wildflowers that might help you learn more about the plants around you.
Borrow a field guide from your local library and see if you can identify some of the plants you have collected. You can create your own field guide to plants in your community by pasting your dried flowers or leaves on paper and then writing an entry for each different type. Your entries should include:
• The common and scientific name of the plant
• A written description of the way it looks
• A written description of the habitat where it was found
Activity: Writing Project
Writing a Riddle
This riddle dates back to the 15th century. Can you guess what it is about?
"I was alive in the forest. I was cut by the cruel axe. In life, I was silent. In death, I sing sweetly."
It is the life cycle of a lute (a stringed instrument like a guitar). First it was a living tree that was killed when chopped down. But then the wood was used to make an instrument that could play beautiful music.
Choose an item nearby that is made from natural materials, and try to write a riddle as if the object itself is speaking. What would it say about where it came from, how it was treated and processed, and finally what it is now?
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