It was interesting to see how many of the third grade textile stories were related to war. Boys and girls created epic battle stories with ultimate destruction and rebirth, historical war references, or man versus some destructive element (robots, aliens, fires, etc).
Good versus evil is a part of any good storytelling, but I was struck by the number of stories dealing with death and destruction coming from my lovely third graders! I thought perhaps that this might be a way for some of them to process what they might be hearing or seeing on the news, in the media, etc. I thought of ways to relate these battle story weavings to the way another culture might retell their own battle stories in their textile art. While pondering these thoughts via a little googling, I found some interesting information. Athena is both the Greek goddess of war and weaving. Neith is the Egyptian goddess of war who wove all of existence with her loom. Or how about the Norse story of woman weaving on a warp of human guts and using arrows as a shuttle!
How amazing to think that this war and weaving relationship is so ingrained that it has become an intuitive part of human expression. These third grade war weaving stories are a primal retelling of our human story.
And one more connection to share, I found this video on the Penn Museum website featuring information about its show: Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan.
Notes from Afghanistan: War Rugs from Penn Museum on Vimeo.
