Project ProcessThe purpose of this project was to learn about the history and paintings of the Lascaux. First, we had to do some research on the Lascaux cave, and then fill out a web quest with the information we learned. Next, we did the process of learning about the paintings where we would research on an actual french website called La grotte de Lascaux. After that, we did group work for the creation process. To create a cave wall look, we sprayed big gap filler called Great Stuff on a piece of plywood, then patted it down so it has the textured look. After it dried we used power sanders to make all of the bumps smaller. Then Ms. Drago spray painted the walls with a beige and rock color called Make It Stone. The last part of recreating the caves is painting the images on the cave walls. Finally after the walls were completed, we had our exhibition. I was a tour guide who lead people into the caves and made sure they had a good time.
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The Story of the Lascaux Caves |
A cave in France, now called “Lascaux” is located in the Vézère Valley next to the Vézère River in. September 8, 1940, four teenage boys, Marcel Ravidat (a young apprentice from Montignac), Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, Simon Coencas and a dog named Robot discovered the cavern. When Robot wandered into it, Marcel had to cut away vines that covered the peculiar opening of the cave to rescue his mutt. After they saved Robot, they found a dead donkey deep inside the cave. They didn’t know how how far below the cave was, so they dropped a stone into it. It had not made a sound in a while, so they decided to come back later with the right equipment to investigate. Four days later, they noticed they unearthed a cave, not knowing how important is was. The Lascaux cave has been in existence for over 17,000 years, untouched and unknown. Lascaux was open to the public in July 14,1948. Roughly 1,800 tourists went into the cave each day. The air was so thin down in the space that people started passing out. To help this situation, they put an air circulator to filter out the oxygen. But what happened was the filter blew all of the mold, fungi, and pollen on to the walls, so it started growing in the cave. This was destroying the cave paintings, so they decided to close Lascaux in 1963, forever. Since many people still had not seen this amazing discovery, they made Lascaux II, but only containing The Hall of the Bulls, and the Axial Gallery because together they are a third of the cave. This replica was built only 200 yards away from the original Lascaux.
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What I learned |
The Magdalenians are important because they were the first humans to create art to express their emotions and to believe in a spiritual world. Several elements that make us human or things that separate us from animals are the ability to love, solve challenging math problems, believe in a spiritual world, and think creatively. I learned some new vocabulary such as paleolithic which means of or pertaining to the final Paleolithic culture. During the web quest, I learned that there are 2,000 images in the Lascaux cave. During the exhibition, I practiced skills such as memorization and patience.
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Reflection |
I enjoyed this project because I felt that I did a great job recreating the Hall of the Bulls in the Unicorn Panel. My favorite part of this project was spraying theGreat Stuff on the piece of wood because the texture of the foam felt funny. My least favorite part of the activity was painting the back round because I accidentally spilled the cup of paint on the table and the paint was watery. I think I did well on this project because I put all of my effort into it and worked hard. I am happy with my performance on this project because when I toured people they said that our paintings were very professional. One thing I could do better next time is painting my small stag antlers because I felt like I rushed them and did not paint them correctly. I am most proud of everything because the director of all of the high tech schools came and said he was training college students and wanted a copy of each of our writings and a picture of of all of our walls. I would not do anything to change this project because I thought it was amazing as is.
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