Earth Arts November 21, 2010

Explore creative techniques once used by our ancestors. Travelling back across 30 thousand years of human history, we will revisit the dawn of creative expression. Working with clay, bone, pitch, shell, stone, wild fibers, natural pigments and gourds, we will explore how our ancestors created art from the most basic materials. We will share how to make rope or "cordage" out of wild plant fibers, how to make pigments out of crushed stones and dye plants, how to make pine pitch glue, and how to work with natural gourds. These skills were once central to the physical and cultural wellbeing of all people. After surveying a few techniques, we invite you to begin a small project of your own inspired by the earth and by the arts of our earliest ancestors.