Tag Archives: Epiphany

Epiphany Tunnel Books

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Oh my gosh…not a lot of writing is going to happen here, but I have to archive an activity that I’ve actually never practiced before and had opportunity to try today.  I have to say that the most difficult aspect of teaching a grade four class how to construct a tunnel book was teaching them how to fold creases as valleys and mountains…or let’s face it, how to fold creases at all.  Do my readers remember, as children, folding fans?  That’s all that’s required, really, but folding a fan seemed, at times, insurmountable.

All other concepts…near and far…background, middle ground, foreground…no problem.  I don’t know.  I’ll have to think about just how to make the folding easier.

What I DID do…I created a template and copied it twice for each student, providing, once folded, for the two sides of the tunnel book (accordion-like).  I marked out a series of lines, dotted from one side to the opposite side.  At some point, I’ll photograph my template and share it here, but, not tonight. What’s a tunnel book, you ask?

Tunnel books can be as sophisticated OR as simple as you wish. The book collapses flat, exposing a single composition.  Once pulled, like an accordion, a three dimensional sensibility is revealed. The Epiphany tunnel books that the grade fours created after I shared the story, The Gift of the Magi, were very basic.  Take a look at these.  These illustrate the more complex tradition.

Wim de Vos is a bit of a character…but, I like that he demonstrates the kind of artistry possible where a tunnel book is concerned.

I found the following photo on Amanda Watson-Will’s site and because there is no other photographer credited, I will assume this is her archive.

Wim de Vos

This is more like it.  I only wished I had seen this one before I began my lesson.

So, after the  story of the Epiphany star and the fine art of gift offering…I got the students started on a background panel, deciding that it made sense to work from the back up to the front OR the background to the foreground.

These are a sampling of the tunnel books made by these awesome, open and enthusiastic students!  Love them so much.

Requirements for their compositions:  A guiding light, a figure, gifts, foreground, background and middle ground.

Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 006Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 013Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 005Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 003Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 001Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 015Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 012Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 017Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 008Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 014Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 002Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 007Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 010Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 004Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 016Kath's Canon, January 7 2015 Gr 4 Epiphany Tunnel Books 018

Thank you, Colleen, for your class!  What beautiful children!

Epiphany

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I will light up the Nativity this evening…and tomorrow evening, will tuck it away for the year…but, I will not forget the message of hope and the gift at the manger as I go forward into this year.  Epiphany.

e·piph·a·ny

noun, plural e·piph·a·nies.

1. ( initial capital letter  ) a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelfth-day.
2. an appearance or manifestation, especially of a deity.
3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
4. a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

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Gorilla House LIVE ART: December 5, 2012

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I knew there was going to be a twist to this evening of painting, for a few reasons.  Our MCs were going to be three of the ladies (three muses) who have consistently supported the Gorilla House over the last several months.  I also knew that my friend Rylan was going to visit the House for the first time.  The themes for the night had been pre-selected and so we were able to consider subject matter in advance.  The topics were 1. Epiphany 2. Xanadu and 3. Kubla Khan

In my mind, the painting that came to life in my head would not be something that I could sell or market, but it was something I wanted to try to paint.  Based on some of my reading, I wished to explore what makes for an Epiphany.  In the end, I’ve decided that epiphanies (magic) comes from observing, and I mean REALLY observing,  ‘the ordinary’.  To experience an epiphany is a gift.  It is a gift from the self to the self.  It is the Divine within us.  The poem I chose to exemplify this concept was written by American Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser.  And it is called Epiphany.

From the Poetry Foundation.

An Epiphany

By Ted Kooser

I have seen the Brown Recluse Spider
run with a net in her hand, or rather,
what resembled a net, what resembled
a hand. She ran down the gleaming white floor
of the bathtub, trailing a frail swirl
of hair, and in it the hull of a beetle
lay woven. The hair was my wife’s,
long and dark, a few loose strands, a curl
she might idly have turned on a finger,
she might idly have twisted, speaking to me,
and the legs of the beetle were broken.

“For the french philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, epiphany or a manifestation of the divine is seen in another’s face.” 

I painted my face-to-face.  Thank you to Belinda who generously purchased this piece at auction. “I Am Talking to Myself Again.”  And I’m proud of daughter Cayley for making art in the battle and selling her piece at auction.  Desere’s daughter, Amélie, also painted for the first time in an art battle.  So…that was double-fun!

Desere Amelie

Here, a selection of my random photos from the evening including Gorilla House schematics and Bruce’s demonstration of image transfers.  More to follow as people post.

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From Wikipedia…

Kubla Khan is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. According to Coleridge’s Preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan.[1] Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by a person from Porlock. The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, on the prompting by George Gordon Byron, it was published.

These are the lines and the analysis that most struck me.

The subsequent passage refers to unnamed witnesses who may also hear this, and thereby share in the narrator’s vision of a replicated, ethereal, Xanadu. Harold Bloom suggests that the power of the poetic imagination, stronger than nature or art, fills the narrator and grants him the ability to share this vision with others through his poetry. The narrator would thereby be elevated to an awesome, almost mythical status, as one who has experienced an Edenic paradise available only to those who have similarly mastered these creative powers:[57]

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise. (lines 48–54)