In order to renew my teaching certificate, I need 15 credits or 150 clocks hours every five years. My certificate is expiring in June, 2012 so I need to take classes. A class offered at the University of Washington for teachers caught my eye: "Visual Art of East Asia: Art History of China and Japan." Perfect! I love China. I enjoy art. Should be a fun class. It was a fun class, but it was VERY hard and VERY intense. Most of the other teachers in the class taught at East Coast high schools that feed into Ivy League Universities. ALL of the teachers were either world history or Asian history or art history teachers. Except me. I had heard of the Ming and Tang Dynasties and that was about it. In addition to all the art history reading and FOUR papers I had to do in one week, I had to give myself a crash course in Chinese and Japanese history. I also had to give myself a crash course in Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Shintoism. I have never worked this hard for a teacher class before. I had very little sleep last week. I ended up learning a lot. Our teacher was fabulous and extremely knowledgeable.
Our end project included analyzing art at the Seattle Art Museum. I took a few pictures to include on my blog because I have nothing else to show for this week.
This was one of the pieces I analyzed. I thought it was so beautiful...especially the way it was displayed. It was in a display case in front of a window so the light shone through the dragon. Notice the smaller dragons on the larger dragon's back.
I've always been fascinated by ancient Chinese pillows.
I'm sure I'd get a good night's sleep on this pillow....
Or this pillow.....
I think I'll just stick with my pillow. I wonder if my pillow will ever be in a museum 2,000 years from now. I wonder what people 2,000 years from now would say about my pillow?
I have never thought about it, but the Chinese Zodiac has been around for a long, long, long time. These figurines are from 366-585 Northern Wei Dynasty. That's a long time ago...
I'm a monkey.
Rachel is a snake.
Erin Joy is a ram.
I'd like one of these scary looking guys to guard my tomb too!
When I saw this picture of a woman playing polo from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), I was excited. Perhaps women were valued and could even play sports.
My excitement was short-lived when I read the placard that went with this beautiful vase. I'll let you read it for yourself.
The vase was full of this boy....wishing for male offspring.
I love Landscape Paintings so I stuck one in just for fun...
And now for the glorious conclusion of the otherwise meaningless post....
....my girls performing their own choreographed version of "Splish Splash."
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