Week 2

My second week at Oak Hall centered around a carver form the Andros Island in the Bahamas. Andros Island is the largest Island and the least inhabited. Mr Wallace is an amazing individual that only uses hand tools to create his beautiful, traditional wooden sculptures. He came to visit to do some demos and work with the students, not to mention the opening of a show at the Coffrin Gallery featuring some of his work.

I hung out with Mr. Wallace as he was carving a Bahamian man carrying a fish and a conch. Fish and conchs are staples in Bahamian cuisine. Mr Wallace though is a Rastafarian and only eats fish on occasion and depends on who's cooking. I watched him carve with different kinds of chisels: flat, half round, and angled. The rubber mallet that he was using was one that he purchased new thirty years ago. The bottom of the mallet head is worn to fit the top of his hand. We both agreed that they don't make things like they used to. I asked him how he treats the sculpture; as a whole or concentrating on different parts. He said that he moves around on different areas and treats it as a a whole trying to keep the entire sculpture on the same level of work. That means to keep up work on all areas of the sculpture. He said that if you get to far on one area, the rest will not fit together or make it complete. The areas will be different. He is a very wise man when it comes to sculpture and carving. The wood that Mr Wallace recommends is mohogany because it has a tight grain and it is easier to carve. Gary is going to have his HS students work with Mr Wallace to learn a little about carving. I will be sitting in this week as well. I thing it would be great to have an asset such as Mr Wallace to come in and do demos for my future classes. This wil take a lot of coordination and networking on my part.

I watched Ponz introduce a project to his HS students. They have to communicate with Turkmenistan and develop a discourse with students at their sister school. Ponz introduced this topic from a historian point of view giving the students information and history about the country and the surrounding relationships with bordering countries and our own. This approach makes sense when dealing with countries and developing an understanding of their customs.