Our Alebrijes
We talked about The Linares Family of Mexico and their spectacular art of paper mache. Here is a link chock full of information and links to some of their works. http://www.driftwood-dreams.co.uk/learn_papier_mache/history.htm
The Linares Family is well known for the mythical like beasts they create known as alebrijes. Popular artists like the Linares are known as cartoneros. Most cartoneros make fanciful paper mache objects for major celebrations during the year, most notable Day of the Dead and Easter week. I didn’t know this when I planned out six weeks worth of our Unschooling Co-op art lessons but it ended up perfect timing that we made these the week before Easter! After looking at some of Felipe Linares Mendoza’s work we created our own little beasts out of foil, covered in newspaper and masking tape.
They were then covered in strips of newspaper moistened in a slightly watered down glue mixture.
We left them to dry until the following week when we painted them. We talked about the style of painting and the patterns used by the Mexican artists and the kids were encouraged to paint their alebrijes in the style of the cartoneros work we looked at.
I LOVE them!! They turned out great!! I would really like to try out more paper mache activities.
