LifeShards @ The Mississippi Museum of Art

Lifeshards will meet at the Mississippi Museum of Art in the Donna and Jim Barksdale changing galleries Saturday, April 4 from 9:30-11:30. Amanda Cashman will led a gesture and line drawing activity inspired by the works of Raoul Dufy.

The Crossroads Film Festival will be conducting workshops though out the entire Museum this Saturday - there will be signage for Lifeshards and a sign in sheet. Hope you will join us.

Picking up the pieces: LifeShards participants put hearts into art
By Sherry Lucas
slucas@clarionledger.com:
Excerpt from: Special to The Clarion-Ledger - April 25, 2006

In LifeShards, families created mosaics that symbolized community.
Broken bits come together in LifeShards, forming mosaics that represent the cohesion of community in more ways than one.

There's the community pictured in tiles of jaunty frame houses, lined up and looking like a neighborhood. Blue shards form skies and green pieces make yards and bits of patterned china form curtains or blossoms or a butterfly's wings.
And then there's the community that formed Saturday mornings in the studio gallery at the Mississippi Museum of Art, a gathering participant Phyllis Watts Morris describes "like family."

The gist: taking broken pieces and making them into cornerstones for a new life.
LifeShards got its start from a panel of local artists drawn together for input on the art museum's future space. Hurricane Katrina had just hit, and the museum was collecting shards from the Mississippi Gulf Coast - broken dishware, lost china, destroyed heirlooms.
Enter Ask 4 More Arts, a school-community partnership of Parents for Public Schools, Jackson Public Schools and others with specific arts education and family goals. With the museum as a home base, a collaboration of artists and Ask 4 More Arts took the project to the streets.
A $50,000 Ford Foundation grant funded a series of 14 workshops where kids, parents and instructors worked together to create both public and personal art.

Two works, a 1-by-5-foot triptych on communities and a 4-by-4-foot swirl piece incorporating shards of personal pottery and dishes, will be installed in the art museum's new space. "The windows all have mirrors in them," Elizabeth Robinson, the project's artistic director, pointed out. "We did have some displaced families working on them. We wanted the kids to see themselves when they looked in it."
In the swirl piece, a hurricane image spins out around a central "eye": the broken bottom of a Peter Anderson (Shearwater Pottery) family salad bowl, donated by Mary Anderson Pickard.
Another public work depicts an owl and is bound for the state Department of Education. The 30 to 50 people who gathered weekly also worked on light switch plates, birdhouses and personal tiles, keepsakes to take home.
The first set of workshops wrapped up last Saturday, but LifeShards plans to start more projects with gatherings at the museum the first Saturday of every month, beginning in June. Visit lifeshards.org for information.

The experience was a revelation for Morris, who brought her daughters, Zaliya, 11, and Zamari, 4, to the workshops.

"I'm coming from a place where I may have played around with arts and crafts, but for them," Morris said of art instructors Jerry Hymel and Ginger Williams and Robinson, "art is the same as breathing." She was a bit intimidated at first. "They tell us we're going to do a piece for the museum and I think, 'Us? You're kidding, right?' " Her kids just thought it was cool. "They get to play with glass and glue. C'mon!"

Encouragement, love, learning, creativity and connections produced lasting pieces, bringing beauty out of broken bits left behind. Just as people found new communities that welcomed them.

"It's not so much a place that makes a home. But people welcome you, that makes a home," Morris said. "You take that destruction and make something beautiful. You gotta see God in it."

What is LifeShards 1st Saturdays?
A community mosaic program, LifeShards was inspired by the "shards," or broken pieces left behind by Hurricane Katrina. You are invited to take part in hands-on workshops that will take place the first Saturday of each month at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Come meet other families in the Jackson area, make a mosaic item to take home, and add your artistic touch to a large mosaic that may be on permanent display in our community!

Who may attend?
Families and individuals of all ages may participate. Children ages six and under should be accompanied by an adult. Newcomers to the Jackson area are welcome!

When are the workshops?
The first Saturday of each month from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. beginning June 1, 2006. If you can't come every month, just come when you can.

How much does it cost?
Ask for More Arts, a school-community-arts collaborative which includes the Mississippi Museum of Art, Parents for Public Schools of Jackson, Jackson Public Schools, and others with specific arts education and family goals, are offering this program at no charge to the participants, thanks to a generous grant from The Ford Foundation (New York, NY).

Where will the workshops take place?
The workshops will take place in the studio gallery at the Mississippi Museum of Art, (ground floor). The Museum is located at 201 East Pascagoula Street in downtown Jackson. For driving directions, go to www.msmuseumart.org or call 601-960-1515.

For more information:
Contact Stephenie Morrisey, program coordinator, at smorrisey@earthlink.net or Ivy Alley at the Mississippi Museum of Art at 601-960-1515 / ialley@museumart.org for more information.