Week of October 6^th and 8^th: Presenting our Projects and Discussion    

            In class on October 6^th, we turned in our “Unsung Hero” Project. For this assignment we were given a name from a list in our textbook of rarely spoken of or “unsung” figures in our history. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I was assigned Dolores Huerta. She worked closely with Cesar Chavez and helped create the United Farmers Workers or UFW. She has worked tirelessly for causes such as immigrant, farm workers’ wages and women and children’s rights. For this project I struggled to think of a creative piece that could capture all the work she has done, and the impact she has had on minorities and women’s lives. I finally decided that the best route for me to take would be to create a piece that could symbolize the work she put into Delano Grape strike of 1965. During this protest she helped organize the workers into a protest that peacefully demonstrated for minimum wage for their labor. Keeping this in mind, I began to work on my piece. Using a green poster board, I shaped it to the shape of a dollar bill. I then put the dollar sign in the middle of the dollar, with drawings of grapes on either side of the sign. Then I lined the boarder of the dollar with the cut out figures of various male and female workers. They all had a protest sign, and were left faceless to symbolize how mistreated they were by the labor system. To me this had the effect of making them seem voiceless, when in actuality they were quite willing to fight for their fair wage.

 This is the final look for my unsung hero Project. I broke Popsicle sticks in half to make the picket signs. This was a fun project to research and make an art piece for. I think this is a great and fun way to introduce students to facts and people about various aspects of history.
 Below is what my memory water color project ended up looking like. For some reason, when I used some of the techniques- such as the alcohol trick- it did not end up working on my paper. Perhaps it was because of the texture of my paper? Either way, this was also a fun project to do in class, and it could be used in other classrooms for a nice icebreaker.