created by Amelia16431 in Grade 1 at
Stevens Cooperative School
from school project "1st Grade MD - Ceramic Alebrijes"
art id #108292849
About this School Project (1st Grade MD - Ceramic Alebrijes)
Alebrijes are brightly colored sculptures of fantastical creatures. As the origin story goes, they appeared to Pedro Linares in 1936 during a feverish dream while he was in the hospital. Since then, they appear in parades in Mexico City and are a huge woodcraft industry in the state of Oaxaca, and are now considered a national folk art form. The students began by drawing their own colorful creatures, adding details of animals to signify the elements of aire (air), tierra (land), agua (water), and fuego (fire), and decorating with intricate patterns. Then they used ceramic clay to sculpt their alebrije as dimensional sculptures. They observed how the malleable soft medium transforms into hard fired clay and then finished the artwork by applying colored glazes.
