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History In Our Hands
A two week residency at the Meadowview Elementary School in Milford Ohio
May 10 -21, 2010
This residency focused on incorporating the students into local history and local history into the students.
Before the residency I visited the Promont House Museum which houses the Greater Milford Area Historical Society’s archives. Photos I took in and of the museum, and of the “unidentified” in their archives together with photos of existing places of historical interest taken by residency coordinator, Mellenee Finger, were used in various ways through the residency.
The 6th grade core group worked with me to create scenes and sequence of the slide show, History in Our Hands that was the focal point of the final installation. Peripheral groups, small groups from each grade, worked on the painted plaster shapes that became panels on either side of the final projected slide show.
Our process layered natural history with human history. Natural history represented by images, colors and shapes of the ocean. We thought about how Ohio was once covered with ocean. Debbie Brod led with this concept during her visit on the first Tuesday of the residency. She brought wonderful large format books of the ocean and ocean creatures to show the students. I showed them details of the Promont House that echoed the spiral shape of many of the shells, snails, squid tentacles, etc. We talked about possible meanings of the spiral shape- how it is different from a circle, or other geometric shape. Students were intrigued with this comparison- one talked about the Fibonacci sequence and its relationship to the spiral.
Debbie showed us the plaster over wire process that the first week of peripheral groups worked with. The physicality of this process was a nice counterbalance to the more cerebral work of creating the slide show. Peripheral groups in the second week painted the plaster shapes.
Core group cut out and folded buildings and other shapes from color photocopies of Mellenee’s photos to create 3d versions in several sizes. We looked at my photos of the unidentified photos and talked about how were these images different from contemporary images. Divided into 3 teams the core group took turns working on and in our set with the 3d buildings, several light sources, various colors and textures of fabric, cellophane, plastic and paper versions of ocean life and a mixed bag of other props. Black and white transparencies of the two sets of photos were projected onto the surfaces of the set to add an additional layer using an overhead projector.
Mellenee brought in several friends of hers that are into historic costuming. They provided two wonderful costumes for an afternoon. Core group members wore the costumes in a larger version of our set. We projected the historic and contemporary site photos on and around them using a digital projector.
Students compiled the slide show sequence of images. on the last day the core group divided into small teams and each of them set up a show and tell in the hall way leading up to the installation. Each team demonstrated a different aspect of our work process to the visiting classes before they reached the big reveal moment of the final slide show.