Leather puppets from Andhra Pradesh

These often jointed puppets are made using colored inks on perforated goat skin leather. They are beautifully detailed and colored, and when light shines through the holes (there are many--if you look closely at these pictures, every dot and circle is a hole), they look like jewels. They are used as shadow puppets, and because of the translucent nature of the goat skin leather the colors end up showing. The elephant on the top of this blog page is also one of these 'puppets'--though it doesn't have jointed parts.

In the spirit of using the goat hide, it would be good to use an upcycled or recycled material to make our own puppets. Ironing together plastic bags (instructions below*) creates a great translucent surface that could easily be cut with scissors, punctured using a needle, or a hole punch, and colored sharpies could be used to decorate these. Recycled cardboard boxes (cereal boxes or cracker boxes, etc) could be used, if translucency is not desired. Alternatively white paper could be glued to something like rice bags or lightweight cloth bags ahead of time (using watered down white or pvc glue) to create a durable and flexible material that would retain some translucency. Joints are attached to the main body with knots of thread, but 'brads' or brass fasteners could be used as well.

Encouraging children to think about what moves, what bends, and what doesn't bend can be a great way to begin this project. Have a child put left hand on right wrist and feel the joint as it moves up and down, next put left hand on right elbow and feel that joint as it moves, then shoulder, etc. show children how to draw separate parts so they fit on one sheet of 'paper' so there isn't too much waste. Color, then cut and assemble.

Children could choose different characters from a familiar story or play as a prompt--in which case it should be considered which movements would be crucial to the story (ie if someone's main action is chopping wood he might not need legs that bend). They could also work on their own individual animals, after some lively discussions about animal actions and unique features.

Detail, showing perforation

A lamp shade, made using the same materials and techniques

Puppet show, in action

 

*to iron plastic bags, trim off handles and bottom of bags, layer four bags together, smoothed out, between two larger pieces of paper, iron (on medium) continuously, no stopping, until bags are fused together. Do this outside or in a well ventilated area as there will be fumes.

 

Tile Mural by Khemraj, Rajasthan

Potter Khemraj combines contemporary imagery with traditional technique in a 'stacked' bas relief mural showing a village being consumed by the modern aspects of a larger town. This could be a fun subject for a mural for children, showing some new aspect of technology impacting life as we know it...each child works on a different tile but makes sure that horizontal lines match up for consistency. Children work on square slabs, using coils and clay 'buttons' and other basic hand building techniques to create their scenes. To achieve this raw, weathered, feeling, bisque-fired tiles can be dipped in black glaze, then scrubbed so glaze only lingers in the grooves and edges, before the final firing.

 

Terra cotta horse mural project

 

These large horses were created by villagers in Tamil Nadu so that the protector Aiyanar (the guardian of the fields) could ride them at night to chase away evil demons, thereby ensuring good luck for the town and harvest. Different horses from different areas were decorated with different types of objects and creatures. Smaller sections were created on the wheel, fired separately, and then attached to make these life sized creatures.

In an earlier post I mentioned ideas for individual projects responding to these giant horses, but I just learned about this website, that turns images into large scale half-tone pictures that can be printed out on multiple sheets of regular paper to create an enormous mural. It could be fun to run this image, or a picture of a regular horse, through this process, and invite kids to decorate the different horse sections using either red or brown paint on day one and detail brushes and black paint on another day, or any other material, like black marker for the decorations and pastels for everything else. This is also in keeping with the manner in which the actual sculptures were pieced together by members of the community, so there's a nice symmetry to doing it this way.