Sand drawing (or sandroing in Bislama) is a ni-Vanuatu artistic and ritual tradition and practice, recognised by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Another form of art which implies drawing in the sand is sandpainting, but this process also implies the coloring of sand to create a colorful environment on a small or a large scale. This form of sand art has been heavily recorded amongst the Navajo people of the American south west.
Sand drawing is produced in sand, volcanic ash or clay. It consists of "a continuous meandering line on an imagined grid to produce a graceful, often symmetrical, composition of geometric patterns". The artist's implement is a single finger. [1]
UNESCO describes sand drawing as:
A rich and dynamic graphic tradition [which] has developed as a means of communication among the members of some 80 different language groups inhabiting the central and northern islands of Vanuatu. The drawings also function as mnemonic devices to record and transmit rituals, mythological lore and a wealth of oral information about local histories, cosmologies, kinship systems, song cycles, farming techniques, architectural and craft design, and choreographic patterns. Most sand drawings possess several functions and layers of meaning: they can be “read” as artistic works, repositories of information, illustration for stories, signatures, or simply messages and objects of contemplation. [1]
Artists such as Pablo Picasso were known for drafting their visual ideas in the sand. Norman Joseph Woodland, inventor of the barcode, came up with his invention by drawing it in the sand. [2]
Sand drawings are associated with the Indian sand mandalas because of the geometry-driven shapes it delivers through the manipulation of sand. The work of making patterns in the sand with a rake is also evocative of the Karesansui practice in traditional Japanese rock gardens, and of the large scale Nazca Lines in Peru. [2]
The Sand Painting of the Navajo people is a well-known example of using different colors of sand to create imagery. These paintings are made by a Navajo Medicine Man and the creation of the images is often accompanied by a ceremony. In one such ceremony called the Yebatchai, family and friends come together to construct a new hogan (home) in which they aim to heal a sick member of the community with the help of the Medicine Man. On part of the floor they lay out locally derived yellow sand and invite the Medicine Man and his assistants to begin their process of creating imagery using colored sands over the yellow background. [3] The creation of this sand painting must only begin once the sun has risen in the morning and the painting is traditionally destroyed before sundown after it has been "used" within the healing ceremony. [3] During the nine day ceremony, three to four sand paintings may be created and destroyed and at some points the sick person may be placed on top of the image. Various sands are then placed on and around the individual. [3] During the destruction of the sand paintings, some of the various colored sands are taken by the Medicine man and spread in the four directions as a prayer is said.
Due to the temporary nature of Navajo Sand imagery in the ceremonial sense, they are not a com modifiable art to trade and sell. In response to increasing demand for Navajo art from White Americans in the 20th century, some Navajo weavers created blankets that resemble sand paintings. In order to cater to the demand while avoiding the blasphemy of saving the sand images after sundown, weaving artists have often intentionally changed details of original sand paintings. [4]
The Vanuatu Cultural Centre has noted that the spirit of sand drawing tends to disappear, only a few practitioners still master the special techniques of sand drawing. Nowadays, this form of art is mainly used as a graphic layout for advertising or tourism ends, and its original sense and purpose is getting lost. A National Action Plan for the Safeguarding of Sand Drawing has been initiated by the centre, together with the Save Sand Drawings Action Committee; the programme is sponsored by UNESCO. The project notably led to a National Sand Drawing Festival, as from 2004. [5] [6]
The Turaga indigenous movement based on Pentecost Island write using Avoiuli, an alphabet inspired by designs found in traditional sand drawings. Sand drawing is interpreted as a key visual medium in a country where more than 100 languages are spoken. [6]
Since the traditional art of sand drawing is so precisely geometrical, academic research is being led to associate the (ethno-) mathematical patterns held in this art, and correlate it with modern mathematics to get a sense of the potential scientific knowledge carried by the builders of the civilizations practicing it. [7] The ancient Greek mathematician studying geometry by drawing figures in the sand also leads to the idea that traditional Sandroings convey much more than a pleasing visual effect. [8]
In the Pitjantjatjara dialect of North Central Australia, the word Milpatjunanyi means "the art of telling stories in the sand". In this culture, the storytellers, often women, have a ritual approach to the process, using a stick that is first pressed against the body to create a connection, and also used as a drumstick to bring musical rhythm to the story. The sand drawing communication technique is also used in schools. [2]
In 2015, the Disney corporation launched the BeachBot, a robot designed to make large-scale sand drawings. The robot fills a 30-square-foot with drawings from Disney's most popular movies. [12] [13]
Sand art is the practice of modelling sand into an artistic form, such as sand brushing, sand sculpting, sand painting, or creating sand bottles. A sandcastle is a type of sand sculpture resembling a miniature building, often a castle. The drip castle variation uses wet sand that is dribbled down to form organic shapes before the sands dries.
Indigenous Australian art includes art made by Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, including collaborations with others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, bark painting, wood carving, rock carving, watercolour painting, sculpting, ceremonial clothing and sandpainting; art by Indigenous Australians that pre-dates European colonisation by thousands of years, up to the present day.
Sandpainting is the art of pouring coloured sands, and powdered pigments from minerals or crystals, or pigments from other natural or synthetic sources onto a surface to make a fixed or unfixed sand painting. Unfixed sand paintings have a long established cultural history in numerous social groupings around the globe, and are often temporary, ritual paintings prepared for religious or healing ceremonies. This form of art is also referred to as drypainting.
Sand mandala is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of mandalas made from colored sand. Once complete, the sand mandala's ritualistic dismantling is accompanied by ceremonies and viewing to symbolize Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.
Kolam, also known as Muggu, Tarai Alangaram and Rangoli is a form of traditional decorative art that is drawn by using rice flour as per age-old conventions. It is also drawn using white stone powder, chalk or chalk powder, often along with natural or synthetic color powders. Its origin belongs to the ancient Tamil Nadu known as Tamilakam and has since spread to the other southern Indian states of Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. It can be found in some parts of Goa and Maharashtra. Since the Tamil diaspora is worldwide, the practice of kolam is found around the world, including in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and a few other Asian countries. A kolam or muggu is a geometrical line drawing composed of straight lines, curves and loops, drawn around a grid pattern of dots. It is widely practised by female family members in front of their house entrance, although men and boys also practice this tradition. The similar regional versions of kolam with their own distinctive forms are known by different names in India: raangolee in Maharashtra, aripan in Mithila, alpona in West Bengal and hase and rangole in Kannada in Karnataka. More complex kolams are drawn and colors are often added during festival days, holiday occasions and special events.
Navajo music is music made by the Navajos, mostly hailing from the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States and the territory of the Navajo Nation. While it traditionally takes the shape of ceremonial chants and echoes themes found in Diné Bahaneʼ, contemporary Navajo music includes a wide range of genres, ranging from country music to rock and rap, performed in both English and Navajo.
Joe Mangrum is an installation and multiple-medium artist who is particularly known for his large-scale colored sand paintings. He resides in New York City. Using a wide spectrum of components, his work often includes organic materials, such as flowers, food and sand, in addition to deconstructed computer parts, auto-parts and a multitude of found and collected objects. His installations often include mandala-like forms, pyramids, maps, grids and mushroom clouds and the Ouroboros.
The Navajo are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
Hosteen Klah was a Navajo artist and medicine man. He documented aspects of Navajo religion and related ceremonial practices. As a traditional nádleehi person, he was both a ceremonial singer and master weaver.
The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medicine man.
Marmotinto is the art of creating pictures using coloured sand or marble dust and otherwise known as sand painting.
This article presents an overview of the culture of Vanuatu.
The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes Central America and Greenland. The Siberian Yupiit, who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yupiit, are also included.
Maud Van Cortlandt Oakes (1903–1990) was an ethnologist, artist and writer who published her research into the cultures of indigenous tribes in the Americas, including the Navajo of the American Southwest and the Mam of Guatemala. She is best known for her books recording these tribes' ceremonies, art and stories.
Drip painting is a form of art, often abstract art, in which paint is dripped or poured on to the canvas. This style of action painting was experimented with in the first half of the twentieth century by such artists as Francis Picabia, André Masson and Max Ernst, who employed drip painting in his works The Bewildered Planet, and Young Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly (1942). Ernst used the novel means of painting Lissajous figures by swinging a punctured bucket of paint over a horizontal canvas.
Klah Tso was a Navajo painter. He is considered a pioneer Navajo easel painter, and was one of several proto-modern Navajo artists.
Navajo medicine covers a range of traditional healing practices of the Indigenous American Navajo people. It dates back thousands of years as many Navajo people have relied on traditional medicinal practices as their primary source of healing. However, modern day residents within the Navajo Nation have incorporated contemporary medicine into their society with the establishment of Western hospitals and clinics on the reservation over the last century.
Andres Amador is an American artist, known for his large-scale organic sand drawings.
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Apie Begay was a Navajo painter and artist in the early 20th century who resided and created art near the Pueblo Bonito trading post in the western part of present-day New Mexico. He is considered the first Navajo artist to create works with European-style materials such as crayons and colored pencils. Begay's work has been published widely and is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum of New Mexico and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.