Three White Cranes Exhibit Opens at ICF

Are you looking for something fun to do this summer? Starting next week the "Three White Cranes, Two Flyways, One World" art and education exhibit will open at the International Crane Foundation's headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The exhibit highlights the achievements of the Three White Cranes project and includes artwork created by students in the United States, China and Russia, along with information on our project activities, education resources developed through the project, and a video focusing on the Xianghai Middle School Nature Art Club (click here to learn more about the Xianghai Middle School). The exhibit will open on June 20, 2009 and will show at ICF through October 31, 2009.

The ICF Conservation Education Department is preparing a traveling version of the exhibit to show at project schools and other public locations this fall. Please contact Joan Garland, ICF's Outreach Coordinator, for more information and how you can involve your school.

Artwork Connects Us All

Art is an important communications and education tool for the Three White Cranes project, as we strive to share information and experiences between three different languages and cultures. Recently we've received news about two art projects completed by Three White Cranes schools in the United States and China:

Each year Jan Weiler's third grade class at Golda Meir School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin learn about cranes through classroom activities, art projects and a class field trip to the International Crane Foundation (ICF) in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Jan recently emailed us images of her top three "craniacs" - students whose crane artwork were chosen as best in the class (the students and their artwork are pictured below). Thank you, Jan, for sharing this news, and congratulations to your student winners! Photos by Jan Weiler

We also would like to celebrate the students in the Xianghai Middle School art club in northeastern China. The students painted a new mural this fall in their village (click here to read about the first mural that the students painted last summer). The mural is entitled, "Build our home, hand in hand," and shows the Xianghai village past, present and future. ICF is sponsoring a video about this project, focusing on how the Xianghai students are learning about their environment and its problems, and how they are taking action through art and example to bring solutions to their community. We look forward to the student's next project and thank the Xianghai art club for sharing their inspiring story! Photos by Shi Yanqiu

Classroom Art Projects

Earlier this year we introduced you to the Xianghai Middle School art club in northeast China and their summer mural project (check out our story, Crane Art Six Meters Long...Brings Students Together). The Xianghai students worked with artist Val DuBasky, founder of Art in a Box, to design and create the mural. Art in a Box has recently introduced their Young People's Online Gallery, which showcases artwork from the Xianghai students and other students that they work with throughout the world. Click on the following links to view the Three White Cranes artwork in the gallery:

Xianghai Middle School mural project

Chinese and Russian student notecard project
These notecards were created by students from the Xianghai Nature Reserve and Muraviovka Park in southeastern Russia. You may purchase a set of six notecards featuring this artwork through the ICF Gift Shop.

Chinese student field guide project
This artwork was created by students during the 2008 summer environmental camp at the Keerqin Nature Reserve in Inner Mongolia, China.

We hope that after viewing this online art that you and your students are inspired to design your own classroom mural or wetland art project. To get you started, click on the link below to download a template for creating your own Siberian Crane flock. Each sheet is designed to make two Siberian Cranes. To create the cranes, simply make copies of the template and cut out the five pieces for each crane. The two sides for the cranes' body and legs can be glued or stapled together. Note that for younger students we recommend adding a quarter inch of white space around the legs before they cut out these sections.

This paper crane template was designed by the Iranian National Coordination Unit of the UNEP/GEF Siberian Crane Wetland Project (SCWP), an international project to conserve the Siberian Crane flyways in Eurasia.

Siberian_Crane_template.pdf

Crane Art Six Meters Long...Brings Students Together

By Jim Harris, International Crane Foundation

In July, I felt excited to be returning to Xianghai Nature Reserve, home to Red-crowned Cranes and many other waterbirds. Thanks to the artwork of a fifth grade student, Farit, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to work again with a student art club at Xianghai. Farit and his classmates had made notecards that they sold to raise money for conservation. I carried part of the money they raised to Xianghai and gave it to art teacher Ms. Shi Yanqiu to start a nature art club for students living near the reserve. With the money from the American students, she could pay for art supplies and field trips for the students to see wetlands and draw the cranes.

A year later, the club is still going strong. New York artist Val DuBasky -- founder of Art-in-a-Box, ICF’s partner for art education -- was returning with ICF to Xianghai and had suggested that the students develop an ambitious new project – a mural!

When I arrived, teacher and students were hard at work. They were excited, and a little nervous about art so huge. The nature reserve had already agreed to display the mural in the local museum.

The students paused to talk with us about their work and feelings. I had listened to them the same way in January. In winter, each student had talked about her own experience, each answer was different. This time, student after student talked about working together and how they could make something as a group that none of them could do alone.

That kind of thinking and confidence is how people solve problems in their community, or come together to protect their environment.

Val and teacher Shi Yanqiu helped the students through so many new experiences – scaling up from their original drawings to the full mural, including multiple perspectives yet still a main horizon line, and painting for an audience who will look from far away. The second to last morning found beautiful cranes and trees and the start of landscapes across the canvas. No one wanted to tackle the background, great expanses of sky, water too. For a year, these students had worked to make the cranes better and better, but doing a mural they could not overlook the empty spaces between the birds. Val gave them a special exercise that afternoon for skies.

By working late and getting up early the next day, to our delight and amazement, they finished before lunch and proudly marched the fully extended mural across town from the school to our summer camp hotel. A few townspeople came out to see, others ignored them. One student declared emphatically, “People don’t understand art!”

We had two celebrations. First, a surprise party after lunch, with cake that Val had ordered special just for the artists. Fourteen very decorous and honored students eventually found that frosting went well on faces, even Val’s face and Shi Yanqiu and old foreign men! What different personalities shown through student faces busy and intent with frosting us.

A couple hours later, faces all clean again, they were dignity once more and presented the mural to the nature reserve and the entire summer camp. They were eloquent talking about their art and what it means to love and protect nature.


Already, Val and Shi Yanqiu have another mural idea for autumn . . . and maybe a video . . . it is amazing what Farit and the students of Tower Rock School have started. How far will these students go?