Is that felt? ... Now it is.

I was lucky enough to join my collaborative teacher for a "professional development" workshop today. These PD workshops have proven to be ample times to acquaint myself with the "higher ups" of school divisions. I am like a tick in that I am infiltrating the system and allowing myself to be noticed and scratched by the host, commonly a dog. But in this case the dog would recommend the tick for salary-paid jobs within the education system, particularly an art related job.

I happened to join part three of a four-part Inuit Art session. It was an interesting experience and I was able to see the neat-o Inuit Art exhibit at the city's art gallery. A topic came up that has sort of tweaked my "bother" system. One teacher (of the twelve) told us a story in how a tribe which lived in the deep jungles of Africa had troubles perceiving and conveying depth, mostly because they were constantly surrounded by giant trees for the majority of their lives. When they were introduced to the Serengeti and saw, for the first time, elephants which were standing waaay off on the horizon the tribal people were said to have scoffed, "That is an elephant? We would need to eat dozens of them to get full! They are so small!" This teacher remarked that the artwork that this particular tribe created was very flat-looking and lacked any devices which conveyed depth. He continued to wonder why Inuit people, with such a vast and open environment, would also create such flat depth-less art, and noted that it was not until the influence of European settlers that their art would hint at depth. The rest of the teachers said that it was the infiltration of the Euro-centric worldview that had tainted Inuit culture and the science-wrought methods of observation caused their art to change. GEEZ, maybe they started to convey the third-dimension BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THINGS LOOK.

I kept my mouth shut (note: first paragraph)

This is what I made during the session: