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Activity

CLIMB THE MOUNTAIN

Create a colorful mountain collage of words and images

One of the goals of the Dream book is to encourage visual literacy. Each artist chose to participate because they believe not only in the power of dreams, but in the power of art to inspire us to achieve those dreams.

The artistic styles in Dream range from the realistic and cozy baby's room done by Brit Christian Birmingham to the highly symbolic mountain illustration done by Australian Shaun Tan. Mediums used in the book include watercolor, pen-and-ink, colored pencil, oil, chalk pastels, plasticine, acrylic, collage, and digital.

The Shaun Tan mountain illustration was done using a combination of acrylic, oil, and collage. The mountain's collage texture is made up of bits of maps, symbols, and text in different languages, suggesting culture, history, learning, and experience.

Explore your artistic side and create your own mountain collage using words and images you draw/paint and clip out of newspapers and magazines. This is an activity anyone, of any age can do. The challenge for your mountain though is to make it a mountain of obstacles!

Whenever we have a dream or goal, it's important to try to think ahead, to be aware of the possible obstacles and problems we may encounter. We can't think of everything, but we can try to be as prepared as we can.

What is an important dream or goal you have? What are the potential obstacles and challenges you might face in pursuing it? Use words and images to create your mountain of obstacles. Possible obstacles might include money, experience, skills, knowing the right people, fear. Use color and texture as effectively as possible to evoke the right mood for the mountain.

Once you create your mountain, brainstorm ways you can climb and conquer it (i.e. overcome the obstacles). Put those ideas in brightly-colored words on your sheet, all around the mountain.

© SV Bosak, www.legacyproject.org

Materials
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Large sheet of paper
Newspapers and
  magazines
Scissors
Glue
Colored pencils or
  markers

Connections
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Families
Schools (art;
  social studies)
Youth groups