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Home
Arts in EducationArtist in Residence Artists Roster: Folk
Keith Bear
Robin Carlson
Additional Cultural Kaleidoscope residencies include:
The Cultural Kaleidoscope
Meridee Erickson-Stowman
Contact Kevin:
"I love teaching, interacting with people, and creating art projects. I want to inspire students to extend their horizons and experience learning with artistic projects. This will hopefully make them globally aware of another culture and forever remember the new concepts introduced using a novel art form." Nandini Katti, Fargo, ND
D. Joyce Kitson
Debi Rogers
Margreat Sam
Judith Simundson
Paul Taylor
*A virtual artist residency with Mary Louise Defender Wilson may be found in Learn with Guest Artists on the web site of Local Learning, http://locallearningnetwork.org/guest-artist/mary-louise-defender-wilson/meet-the-artist. These residencies feature National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellows and allow students to learn about these master artists, their regions, their art forms, and their legacies.
Mary Louise Defender Wilson |
Keith is a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara). In a residency, he teaches children about Native American traditions through songs, stories, and hands-on experiences with beadwork or quillwork. Older students have the option of learning Native American flute carving and basic playing techniques. In both cases, students learn about color and symbolism.
Robin is a Viking and maintains her heritage by living and teaching Norwegian traditions. She is an apprenticed Norwegian weaver who emerges the students into a world of Norwegian culture through folk arts and folk tales. Projects include Viking card weaving, Norwegian Dream Catchers, and learning the "secret code" of the Rune alphabet.
Sergei Shaphoval, dressed in a traditional Russian folk costume, begins by pinpointing Russia on a world map and noting its relationship with the United States and the former Soviet Union. A full-color slide presentation offers a kaleidoscopic look at Moscow. A short video highlights a traditional folk dance. Participants experience the Cryillic alphabet. A live demonstration of Russian folk instruments - the Garmoshka, Balalaika, flutes, and Bayan/button accordion - gets students participating in folk dancing and playing authentic musical instruments.
A graduate in art and education from Valley City State University, Meridee Erickson-Stowman has apprenticed in the art of Wycinanki (Polish Paper-Cutting) with Leona Wojcik Barthle. Wycinanki involves designing, cutting and gluing colored paper to a silhouette. Students will learn about the history, colors, and symbolism of Wycinanki and other forms of paper cutting. The variety keeps students interested and each student takes home a finished paper-cutting.
In his school assembly program, called The Hoop of Life, Kevin Locke brings together three aspects of traditional Lakota arts: music, dancing and storytelling. Kevin uses the legend of the Eagle to teach about the nobility of the human spirit, Native sign language to show how to bridge communication barriers, and his world-renowned Hoop Dance to convey the interconnectedness of all the world’s peoples. The assembly is at once a depiction of Lakota heritage and universal values. It’s all packaged in a fun, dramatic, athletic, visually-stimulating presentation that also features audience interaction, when Kevin invites students to join him in "Hoop Dancing 101." Kevin has presented this program to over one million children worldwide. It’s targeted for K-8, and is appropriate for high school with some modifications.
Nandini Katti is a Veterinarian and a folk artist from India trained as a Science teacher in the US. She finds creative ways of immersing students in folk dance, sand drawings, henna painting and batik printing in the school curriculum. Whether it is science, math, languages or social studies her catchy projects will teach difficult concepts in a fun and creative way.
D. Joyce is a gifted Lakota traditional artist from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who learned beadwork from her grandmother and hide tanning from an elder relative. In a residency, she introduces children to traditional beadwork techniques, materials, and supplies. She can also teach hide-tanning, parfleche, and rawhide painting with natural pigmentation. High school students enjoy instruction in porcupine quillwork. D. Joyce emphasizes hands-on experience in design, stitching, color, and symbolism.
Debi’s enthusiasm, creativity, and humor shine when she shares the love of her Scottish-Irish heritage. An apprenticed Gaelic harpist, Debi uses Celtic music, stories, and creative dramatics to teach her heritage. Activities include Irish sing-along, creative dramatics through Celtic folk tales, learning "The Book of Kells," and Celtic Knot works.
Margreat Sam carries and shares the essence of India through her residency work. She maintains her heritage by teaching elaborate henna painting and Bharatanatyam, a traditional storytelling dance of India where every hand gesture, facial expression, and dance step conveys parts of a traditional narrative. Margreat wishes to immerge her students into a world of Art, Culture and tradition. Growing up in the midst of the traditions of celebrations and dance, she is graciously and enthusiastically willing to share her culture with others. Margreat’s greatest wish is to pass on to others the vast knowledge she has and inspire them to keep artful traditions alive. 
Drawing listeners into tales of long ago and far away, Judith Simundson brings out her masks and models of mythic troll creatures then weaves a story first as a narrator who then shifts to Grandma instructing children, to a young huldre girl in a meadow longing to be fully human. All the while students will hear the old Norwegian dialects from the Prairie, see variations of bunad costumes, touch the papier mache creatures. Her school instruction is peppered with Norwegian singing, folk harp and lyre, as well as a phrase or two of Norwegian, “Og vær så god!”
An acclaimed Australian performing artist, Paul delights in sharing the culture of his homeland. His work has been endorsed by the Wyoming, Texas, Utah, North Dakota, and South Dakota arts councils. Paul performs nationally and presents "Matilda and the Dreamtime" - an exciting blend of story, song, dance, and drama featuring the mesmerizing didgeridoo - and "Land of the Lightning Brothers" - which features creation stories, rock painting slides, and the didgeridoo - to all ages. Paul, who is mentored by Aboriginal custodian Yidumduma Bill Harney, presents residencies are multi-disciplinary featuring story, song, dance, and painting. "Paul has the deep integrity that makes for great community connections," says Sharon Benson of the Salina (Kansas) Arts Council.
Mary Louise is an award-winning Dakotah/Hidatsa traditionalist and storyteller of national renown from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. She is interested in helping students, teachers and their families become more knowledgeable about home, especially our home of North Dakota. She will introduce students, teachers and the community to Dakotah folk culture and North Dakota history through storytelling, music, and language. Hands-on residency projects focus on helping students and teachers learning about natural elements in North Dakota such as gumbo hills, places of cultural significance such as Standing Rock and Pyramid Hill, as well as traditional stories and song resulting from the Dakotah experiences with nature. Students will learn to write and perform stories based on places near and dear to them and how to ask their parents and elders about place-based stories from their lives. She will also introduce people to “Spider Man” (Unktomi) stories. Spider Man, in Dakotah belief, represents all people in an earlier time- he’s greedy, eats too much, etc. It is believed that we humans still have of some of those characteristics. He’s a model of what not to be, but he’s also us. These stories are told so we humans would learn not to be like him. |