Museum holds arts integration workshop

Museum Arts Integration Workshop with regional art teachers was held last week at the Union County Heritage Museum and the Museum Art House in New Albany. Taught by teaching artist and Blue Mountain College Instructor Gail Morton, she shared the art of creating a Kurinuki Box, a Japanese style of pottery with a lesson plan for various ages of students.

Along with teaching the new pottery project to share with students, Morton introduced the concept of wabi sabi. This is the Japanese Art of finding beauty in the imperfect. A classic example of wabi-sabi is the art of kintsugi, where cracked pottery is repaired using gold lacquer as a way to showcase the beauty of its damage rather than hiding it.

Morton explained to the teachers that in working with pottery failures sometime happen whether in firing or glazing or in breakage. Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese method of celebrating the imperfect. While “wabi” refers to the beauty found in asymmetric and unbalanced items, “sabi” describes the beauty of aging and celebrates the passage of time and the wear and tear and mending. When scars and breakage happens there is the beauty in mending the broken pieces with a gold leaf glaze that highlights the mended areas, she told the participants.

Teachers from Lee, Monroe, Alcorn, Lafayette, Pontotoc and Union Counties attended the two-day workshop where they earned CEU hours and learned new techniques in teaching.

Union County Heritage Museum Director Jill Smith said that this is the first of more such workshops to come for regional teachers.