Bone Creek Educates Students
Agrarian Museum Provides Opportunities
by Jarod Ockander
August 23, 2008
"I didn't know I even liked art."
"I didn't know David City had an art museum."
"I didn't know that Dale Nichols was really talented, could paint at the age of 12, and had a very thoughtful mind."
These were some of the spoken and written comments of students when the David City Junior English class traveled to the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art. The root "agr" deals with farming; consequently, the term "agrarian" means "of or related to farming" or "pertaining to fields, land, or their tenure." The goal was for students to learn more about agrarian and understand methods of viewing and connecting to artwork. Additionally, the students gained knowledge about local artists' histories and interpreting the work of the artists.
Curator Mark Moseman indicated that the museum, "...is providing a much-needed national venue for artistic expression about both historic and contemporary issues associated with this change." The students were split up into two groups viewing different artwork. Then, they were asked a series of questions about what they saw. Many of the students learned to gain a new appreciation for the art and interpreted what they saw in different ways. One painting provided the various viewpoints:
"...the purple for the sky brings out the color of the tractor"
"...the darker color bring out the lightning"
"...the amount of color detail, with the texture expose the lightning better"
"...the blending of the colors brings out the bright yellow lightning"
Even though the students viewed the same painting, various ways in which we view our world provide differentiating perspectives of that painting. After viewing the artwork in one room, the students then switched to the other room to view other artwork until they had seen the museum in its entirety.
Some of the students even saw some story lines and recognized scenes from their own family life. In "Chicken for Dinner", "A lady is trying to catch one of her chickens to eat. It reminds me of my grandma." In "Alaskan Landscape" a student wrote that he saw, "...an elk on his long journey home looking for some food before a hunter shoots him down." In this experience, hopefully the students also learned that how we view paintings, just as how we view the world, is based on our differences in background, experiences, and attitudes.
