Crane Art Six Meters Long...Brings Students Together

By Jim Harris, International Crane Foundation

In July, I felt excited to be returning to Xianghai Nature Reserve, home to Red-crowned Cranes and many other waterbirds. Thanks to the artwork of a fifth grade student, Farit, at Tower Rock Elementary School in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to work again with a student art club at Xianghai. Farit and his classmates had made notecards that they sold to raise money for conservation. I carried part of the money they raised to Xianghai and gave it to art teacher Ms. Shi Yanqiu to start a nature art club for students living near the reserve. With the money from the American students, she could pay for art supplies and field trips for the students to see wetlands and draw the cranes.

A year later, the club is still going strong. New York artist Val DuBasky -- founder of Art-in-a-Box, ICF’s partner for art education -- was returning with ICF to Xianghai and had suggested that the students develop an ambitious new project – a mural!

When I arrived, teacher and students were hard at work. They were excited, and a little nervous about art so huge. The nature reserve had already agreed to display the mural in the local museum.

The students paused to talk with us about their work and feelings. I had listened to them the same way in January. In winter, each student had talked about her own experience, each answer was different. This time, student after student talked about working together and how they could make something as a group that none of them could do alone.

That kind of thinking and confidence is how people solve problems in their community, or come together to protect their environment.

Val and teacher Shi Yanqiu helped the students through so many new experiences – scaling up from their original drawings to the full mural, including multiple perspectives yet still a main horizon line, and painting for an audience who will look from far away. The second to last morning found beautiful cranes and trees and the start of landscapes across the canvas. No one wanted to tackle the background, great expanses of sky, water too. For a year, these students had worked to make the cranes better and better, but doing a mural they could not overlook the empty spaces between the birds. Val gave them a special exercise that afternoon for skies.

By working late and getting up early the next day, to our delight and amazement, they finished before lunch and proudly marched the fully extended mural across town from the school to our summer camp hotel. A few townspeople came out to see, others ignored them. One student declared emphatically, “People don’t understand art!”

We had two celebrations. First, a surprise party after lunch, with cake that Val had ordered special just for the artists. Fourteen very decorous and honored students eventually found that frosting went well on faces, even Val’s face and Shi Yanqiu and old foreign men! What different personalities shown through student faces busy and intent with frosting us.

A couple hours later, faces all clean again, they were dignity once more and presented the mural to the nature reserve and the entire summer camp. They were eloquent talking about their art and what it means to love and protect nature.


Already, Val and Shi Yanqiu have another mural idea for autumn . . . and maybe a video . . . it is amazing what Farit and the students of Tower Rock School have started. How far will these students go?