Wave your Flag!: Teens Create Flag Books in Honor of The Big Read
As a program of The Big Read in LA, 2016, I taught a flag bookmaking workshop at Verduga Hills High School. The Big Read book is Ray Bradbury‘s “Fahrenheit 451“, in which firemen light fires to burn books, instead of rescuing them from the flames. Although published over 60 years ago, the book remains uncomfortably relatable to present day issues. Even prescient at times.
Conducting the workshop with the teens was great. I loved it, the students loved it, the school librarian loved it, and the classroom teacher loved it. Here are a few images of what the students made.
Students had a choice of “flag” pages: rectangles of uniform size, cut from tagboard in an array of bright colors, repurposed library return cards offered up by the school librarian (treasures!), pieces of sketchbook covers, and one off items such at the card above, painted in black chalkboard paint and adorned with red letters and numbers.
Students used a variety of materials to create layered meaning through text and image.
They mixed it up, playing with pattern, visual texture and color in their compositions.
A curated selection of quotes from the book were available, and a number of students used them in their books.
These young artists had the passion!
They spoke their hearts.
“Meaningful elements remind us to live”
“Pura Vida” = Pure Life. Setting the intention?
The color combinations were striking, and students had the chance to see first had how the red accordion spine looked different pared with green….
and blue. This ambitious young artist reassembled the words that had been cut from this sketchbook cover, to striking effect on his book.
The Flag Book is a potent vehicle for personal expression, allowing for visual and verbal content on its numerous surfaces, places and spaces, in the form of writing, drawing, collaging, note taking, photographs, and combinations of any and all of these.
Once makers see and experience the possibilities, they are off to the races, their creativity limited only by time and space.
Let the flags of your own creativity, ideas, thoughts and feelings wave! Ray Bradbury did.
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