nori & chiii: Reflection of Seminar1

I researched traditional Mexican handmade crafts for this project. In Mexico there are many kinds of interesting handmade crafts such as masks, ornaments, embroidery and so on.
Mexico's artesania tradition is a blend of indigenous and European techniques and designs. This blending, called "Mestizo" was particularly emphasized by Mexico's political, intellectual and artistic elite in the early 20th century after the Mexican Revolution.

I focused on a traditional ceramic handmade craft which is called "tree of life". Tree of life is a kind of traditional clay sculptures created in central Mexico. These sculptures was originally for the teaching of the Biblical story of creation to natives in the early colonial period. Because of this, traditional these sculptures are supposed to consist of certain biblical images, Adam and Eve, but some recent tree of life sculptures have specific themes completely unrelated to the Bible.

A lot of images are included in tree of life like Adam and Eve, flowers, animals, and humans. The Color used in tree of life is very vivid and colorful that I can feel Mexican culture. I'm really interested in the color and the images included in tree of life. I think I would like to express the inspiring colors and 3D structure of tree of life using knitting techniques.