September 26, 2001
Humanities class explores inhumanity
Students express feelings about terrorism through art symbolism
By LISA PERKINS
Herald staff writer
Students in Pat Weber's humanities class at Traverse City Central High School were learning about symbolism in art when the news of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. came on September, 11.
Incorporating the disaster and the feelings the students had to express about it seemed a natural way to demonstrate how symbolism can be very powerful in artistic creations.
"The students didn't really understand at first, how something so awful, could be expressed as art," Weber said. "They had to get past the idea that art has to be beautiful."
Weber shared Picasso's work "Guernica," which depicts the Spanish town of Guernica being destroyed by German airplanes in 1937, as an example of tragedy being played out on canvas.
The students were then given the task of coming up with ways to represent the current tragedy in terms of feelings, touch, smell, sounds and sight and how these could be expressed visually.
One group covered pillars in the hallway with news articles about the attack which had been burned around the edges. A snake was wrapped around the pole to represent evil, while white doves were wired on, to appear as if in flight, representing the innocent lives lost.
Another mural featured two tombstones, representing the twin World Trade Center towers. One tombstone was marked with the words, "Hear Lies...", noting that the phrase has two meanings, while "911" representing the date as well as an emergency, was on the other marker. Flowers surrounded the tombstones denoting the lives lost, while flames erupted from the colors of the Afghany flag at their base.
"I feel horrible about what happened," said senior Amanda Raczka. "I think the project shows how we look at what happened, and how we have to be united as a nation. I think we all feel more fragile."