Australian Aboriginal Art

To kick off a yearlong appreciation of visual arts from around the world we first looked at the word “continent.” What is a continent? How is it defined? We soon discovered that people around the world do not all learn that there are seven continents. Some places teach there are 5 continents with North America and South America combined as a single continent called the Americas. We also discussed how if we believe “a continent is a large, discrete land mass separated by large bodies of water” there are only four continents:  Antarctica, Australia, Americas and Afro-Eurasia.  We discussed how many people consider geography, politics and history when deciding how to split our world up into continents.

Our first stop is the continent of Australia. Here we looked at the art created by aborigines, most notably their amazing dot paintings rich in color, pattern, and symbols. Children, in grades Kindergarten through 8^th grade, created their own dot paintings using dowels of different sizes and tempera paints.