These posters are part of a project I am working on with the sixth grade class at Jackson Middle School, a Bernstein Arts School. As their Artist in Residence, I put together a week long experience-based-project based on the cultivation of civilization through food.

The first day’s activity includes a Taste Station Rotation. Six stations around the room are going to be set up based on the six tastes of the tongue: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent. Each poster (24×36) has a newly drawn map by myself, images of the tastes in their original form, and a geographical component where students would have to locate where that food was grown based on the coordinates given. The students are then going to be asked to locate the country of the foods origin, to taste each item on the table, and reflect in the Notice Wonder Feel chart. The other activities include an exploratory categorization of foods based on taste, smell, touch, and color; a maza-plate party where students would help with simple activities in putting together foods to make a “plate” such as a couscous salad, a cilantro chickpea yogurt salad, hummus and mixed olives on crackers, and pomegranate seeds sprinkled over blood orange slices; and a metaphorical cookbook of the student’s life, relating the projects experiences around taste, touch, smell, and color to their own lives through writing, poetry, collage, drawing, painting, all pages then being bound into a book by myself. This should be really fun! My friend Leela Ross has so graciously offered her assistance in photographing one of the days for me, so I will post those pictures as well. Cheers!