Young Artists Enter the Egyptian World

Posted by Mary Murray on July 30th 2012 | 0 Comments

Tags: School of Art, Art Box, Museum of Art

One of the School of Art’s popular classes for kids aged 9-12 is called Art Box, held on Saturday mornings during the school year and during the month of July in the summer.

This summer Art Box II Sculpture Teacher Paula Caruana has her students working on Egyptian-inspired projects, in conjunction with the Shadow of the Sphinx exhibition.

Paula created some instructive, very attractive posters throughout her classroom to set the stage for the young artists.

Summer 2012 Art Box II class enjoying Shadow of the Sphinx

After studying a bit and touring Sphinx, the students set to work and achieved amazing results. They were inspired, in fact.

For one project, the students created masks of a man, woman or a god, such as a cat mask to represent Bastet. These are remarkable, so bold.

I am especially fond of these animal sculptures. They are made of fired clay, then painted.

Art Box II Classroom poster

These pectoral necklaces are striking (they are made of fired clay and painted), and the artists successfully incorporated Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Classroom poster about necklaces

Here are some of the Art Box artists’ canopic jars, made of fired clay and then painted in acrylic. The artists created a giraffe, hawks (traditional god-animal for these jars that are buried with mummies), snakes, and there is one God of Bacon (center), a new entry into the ancient Egyptian world of deities, I guess.

Art Box Princess being honored.

And, of course, the snake is an important motif in ancient Egyptian art, so Paula and the students created these animated serpents. They are made with card stock cut to spiral around and have jeweled eyes. Wonderful!