The Cave

There was a cave at the School today, complete with "ancient" paintings. Ms. Kitty's high school art classes have been studying the early art found in caves, including Chauvet Cave in southern France. In order to get a good understanding of what it was like to produce art in the Paleolithic period, the students made paint and brushes from scratch. The paint was made using burned wood (they crushed it into a powder and then added vegetable oil), and the brushes were made with yucca leaves.

The students then used their paint and brushes to create "cave" paintings in the former art room (although they painted on paper, not the walls!) For extra authenticity, they covered the glass opening on the door with black paper, closed the door, lit a few candles, and painted in the semi-dark. Their paintings were quite impressive, considering the circumstances they had to work under!

Ms. Kitty invited the younger students to tour the cave; I went to see it with the first grade class. First, Ms. Kitty explained the history of the cave paintings, and told us about how her students had made the paint and brushes. Then, we crawled into the cave (literally, on our hands and knees) and walked through to see the paintings. It was an educational and fun way to spend part of the morning!

You can learn more about the Chauvet Cave at these links:
Wikipedia page on Chauvet Cave
French cultural site - this one is in French, but includes an interactive map of the cave with pictures of the paintings.