Kandioura Coulibaly, center, a visiting artist from Mali, helps Haley Blossey, 8, left, and Caleb Ellison, 8, students in Mary Wever’s second grade class at Red Cedar Elementary, 1110 Narcissus, paint pieces of cotton cloth with clay from Mali at the school on Thursday. Coulibaly was helping to show the students the traditional textile technique from Mali, called Bogolan, as a partnership with the Residential College of Arts and Humanities which brought visiting artists from Mali to MSU and the elementary school as well as the materials to teach the children.
Students in the East Lansing Public Schools are getting a crash course in art.
In an effort to expose children to global artists, the schools have joined with MSU’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, or RCAH, to bring in artists to visit with the students. The program has operated for about a year.
“A year ago, MSU had a visiting artist who came in and was doing a lot of work with RCAH,” said Donna Kaplowitz, an assistant professor at RCAH and overseer of the partnership.
“We facilitated bringing that artist into the East Lansing schools’ classrooms.”
Since then, the program has organized two more visits. The second of those was Thursday at Red Cedar Elementary School, a school with a student population that hails from 50 countries.
“We’re the recipient of a wonderful opportunity for our children,” Red Cedar Elementary Principal Mindy Emerson said.
The school was chosen to host Thursday’s artists, Malian mud-cloth painters, because a student shared a common heritage with the artists.
“I have a student in my class that’s from Mali, and she’ll be moving back after the school year,” said Mary Wever, a second grade teacher at Red Cedar Elementary. “In our school, a lot of the kids are from many different countries. It’s nice to have the children experience some familiarity.”
The class was selected to host the artists after the mother of the Malian student attended an RCAH presentation on Mali and its art. At the presentation, professors talked with the student’s mother and learned of the child’s background.
Christine Worland, a teaching fabric artist, helped bring the mud-cloth painters to RCAH and Red Cedar Elementary after heading a study abroad program in Mali.
There, she heard about the artists.
Kandioura Coulibaly and Boubacar Doumbia, members of the Kasobane art group in Mali, who specialize in Bogolan mud-cloth paintings made with plant dyes and clay.
“The first thing is to make them understand the technique,” said Doumbia, using the assistance of an interpreter. “They’ll learn the meaning of some of these signs that impart moral lessons.”
Aside from the symbolic lessons, Coulibaly said he was interested in the children learning about Malian culture.
“Today the world has become one village, and all our life we’ve only know our own cultures,” Coulibaly said. “If we know the cultures of others and if we respect each other, then the world will have harmony.”
Although the partnership is running smoothly after its initial year, Kaplowitz has ambitions to better the program.
“I hope that we have ongoing short-term and longer-term, sustained relationships between MSU and partnering schools within the region,” she said. “What I would like to see is more opportunity to expand partnership. I would like to see more artists going from MSU into public schools.”
A variety of Coulibaly and Doumbia’s mud-cloth art also can be viewed at the MSU Museum’s main gallery. The exhibit will run until Aug. 20.
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