{"id":1290,"date":"2017-03-21T17:26:08","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T17:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.spelman.edu\/honorsprogram\/?page_id=1290"},"modified":"2017-03-23T14:17:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T14:17:59","slug":"githii-honors-collaborates-diasporau-day-story-folk-telling","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.spelman.edu\/honorsprogram\/githii-honors-collaborates-diasporau-day-story-folk-telling\/","title":{"rendered":"Githii Honors collaborates with DiasporaU for an afternoon of Story and Folk-Telling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo credit: \u00a0Collette Hopkins<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Githii Honors collaborates with DiasporaU for a day of Story and Folk-Telling<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you are visually curious<\/strong> then you may have paused at the unusual sculptural formation on the Spelman College side lawn, adjacent to the Olivia Hanks Cosby Academic Building.\u00a0 Collette Hopkins of DiasporaU<\/a>, is responsible for the proliferation of blue bottle trees in Atlanta\u2019s west side communities.\u00a0 But Spelman is the only place where you can wonder and wander in a forest of blue bottle trees.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Spelman\u2019s \u00a0Bottle Tree Forest is a lesson in African American history, culture, <\/strong>says Dr. Hopkins.<\/p>\n

R. Paul Thomason, assistant professor of drama and dance at Spelman College, was commissioned by Hopkins to fashion the bottle trees from reclaimed steel and blue, or indigo, bottles, and install them at the College. \u00a0The 24 trees, which are built to scale, are not merely a garden installation. The site is intended to evoke a space of creativity, history, meditation and play.\u00a0 Bottle trees are not exclusively associated with African American communities.\u00a0 However, indigo blue is specific to Africa and evoke specific meanings, practices and associations within African diasporic communities.<\/p>\n

Honors Program Director, professor Opal Moore, was intrigued with the appearance of the \u201cforest,\u201d and considered it the ideal space of imagination and play for the final Honors Program colloquy on the children\u2019s book, Flossie and the Fox<\/em><\/a> (McKissick & Isadora).\u00a0 The collaboration between Honors Program and DiasporaU came together quickly with Dr. Hopkins\u2019 offer to connect a storytelling afternoon performance as an experiential colloquy with the Honors class of 2020 book title and well-known storyteller Mama Koku<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>who will “tell” both Flossie and the Fox<\/em> and The Glass Bottle Tree<\/em> by Evelyn Coleman (illustrated by Gail Gordon Carter).<\/p>\n

The storytelling event will take place between 2 and 5pm, this Sunday, March 26, with activities in the Olivia Hanks Cosby lobby and story performances in the Bottle Tree Forest.\u00a0 (In the case of rain, all activities will take place in Cosby lobby.) Honors students will host local school children and all will enjoy Mama Koku\u2019s enactment of the original tale by Patricia McKissick and Evelyn Coleman.\u00a0 Dr. Hopkins will provide interactive and docent training for<\/strong> students who wish to gain community service credit. <\/strong>\u00a0The training will take place on Saturday, March 25, at 1pm (Giles 101).<\/p>\n

The Honors Program motto \u201cRead Everything\u201d is brilliantly dramatized in McKissick\u2019s book. \u00a0McKissick\u2019s tale offers a perfect story model for how communities must convey and deploy their most salient communal values.\u00a0 \u201cThe first act of reading was not a reading of the page,\u201d says Moore, \u2018but a reading of the world around us. We need to make sure that our children do not believe that reading, or literacy, is one-dimensional.\u201d<\/p>\n

About Dr. Collette Hopkins and the history of the Bottle Tree<\/strong>\u2014<\/p>\n

Dr. Collette Hopkins created DiasporaU <\/strong>to\u00a0 \u201ceducate[s] children, families and communities about the arts, cultures and belief systems of the African Diaspora.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopkins did not first intend to create a bottle tree forest. She planned to develop a DiasporaU curriculum around indigo, the plant yielding the deep blue dye which was once South Carolina\u2019s most valuable crop after rice, and shaped the state\u2019s plantation economy. The harvest of this \u201cblue gold,\u201d as indigo was deemed, depended on enslaved Africans\u2019 labor, many of whom were from the area now known as Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n

Bottle trees are not always blue. \u00a0DiasporaU deploys blue, or indigo, bottles in honor of these enslaved Africans. Blue is also considered a protective color among the Gullah-Geechee, who are the descendants of the Africans enslaved to work indigo and other crops in the coastal southeastern United States.<\/p>\n

Bottle tree art is not a new practice, according to Hopkins, who has researched and taught about enslavement for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cBottle trees and their accompanying legends were embraced by many ancient cultures,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the United States, the practice was preserved by enslaved Africans and their descendants throughout the rural American South.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopkins was introduced to the bottle tree tradition during a conference at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston. Some years back, local artisan Arianne King Comer erected and led attendees in the decoration of a massive bottle tree on the Center\u2019s front lawn.<\/p>\n

Hopkins once spotted a front yard filled with blue bottle trees while traveling with a tour group to The Penn Center on St. Helena Island, S.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made the bus driver pull over on the side of the road,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n

The homeowner informed her that the bottles were all blue for protection, and are symbolic of rebirth. The spiritual belief is that the trees attract and trap evil spirits known as \u201chaints\u201d in the bottles at night. The spirits evaporate in the next day\u2019s morning sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized a forest would be more powerful than one tree,\u201d says Hopkins. \u201cThere is strength in numbers. Walking through the trees and looking up into the canopy of indigo bottles, it becomes a space of not only history and culture, but also renewal.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Paul Thomason, and collaborative art<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>R. Paul Thomason and Hopkins have collaborated on a number of past projects, including a child-sized replica of the birth home of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. \u00a0\u00a0Thomason is a well-known Atlanta artist and artist collaborator.\u00a0 He once designed and created a cosmogram<\/strong><\/a> detailing the transmigration of African cultural practices to the Americas for the Children\u2019s Education Village of the National Black Arts Festival. (Follow the link to the Schomburg Center for \u201cwhat is a cosmogram.\u201d)<\/p>\n

DiasporaU<\/strong> often partners with other cultural institutions and organizations in communities across the country to present its interactive education modules for children; curriculum opportunities for science, social studies, mathematics and language arts educators; and community engagement offerings, including lectures, performances and docent-led tours.\u00a0 Find Dr. Hopkins at Diaporau.org.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo credit: \u00a0Collette Hopkins \u00a0 Githii Honors collaborates with DiasporaU for a day of Story and Folk-Telling If you are visually curious then you may have paused at the unusual sculptural formation on the Spelman College side lawn, adjacent to the Olivia Hanks Cosby Academic Building.\u00a0 Collette Hopkins of DiasporaU, is responsible for the proliferation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":1288,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\nGithii Honors collaborates with DiasporaU for an afternoon of Story and Folk-Telling - Spelman College<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.spelman.edu\/honorsprogram\/githii-honors-collaborates-diasporau-day-story-folk-telling\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Githii Honors collaborates with DiasporaU for an afternoon of Story and Folk-Telling - 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