The supreme purpose of history is a better world.~ Herbert Hoover

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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Mosaic projects

The mosaic is a very special historical artifact of the Byzantine
Empire and soon the world. The legacy was a powerful and simple one
so that us kids as a class can make one also. The student mosaics were made out of everyday materials. The class brought in many examples like some made of stones, tile, glass, paper, felt, and marble. In the Byzantine time they used mosaics for religious purposes. Now mosaics are used for home decorations, parties, pools, and hallways. They will continue to be used this way for 1000 years or more thanks to the very simple and powerful legacy that Emperor Justinian put for our world today.
-David
The Byzantine Empire created an extraordinary art style that has remained popular throughout the generations and still is today. This art form, called a mosaic, is a picture made by other smaller pieces of things, usually glass or quartz. In this project, we were to create a mosaic of anything we wanted. The purpose of creating our own mosaic was to better understand and appreciate the art form. We thought it was very fun and the finished products looked really cool. Although, it definitely requires a lot of patience to create the pieces, getting each piece to a respectable size, then fitting them all together into the desired shape or design.
Mosaics are very beautiful works of art, I recently saw some at a church I visited. Also looking at some really famous ones like in the Hagia Sophia, makes me really think about how much time, effort, and hard work it must have taken to produce such a magnificent and lasting impression that this kind of art has.
-Samantha

It has been three years now that Mr. Shulman has been presenting mosaics as part of our understanding of the Byzantine Empire. It is a well known fact that mosaics were an important part of Byzantine culture. Although the mosaics did not originate with the Byzantine Empire, we have learned that the Byzantines created great art and architecture. We had a marvelous turnout of mosaics this year. Mr. Shulman did us the honor of demonstrating his craft with mosaics and really got the seventh graders motivated to go above and beyond their aesthetic skills. Thank you Mr. Shulman for giving us the inspiration to keep the legacy alive.