Art and Design A comprehensive guide for creative artists - Aaltodoc

Exercise
1. Citing years of neglect, failure to meet standards and
misuse of public funds by local leaders. The people in
your area have decided to raise their voices by asking
you to make a pictorial design of a mosaic artwork
that will be displayed inside the town hall, to enable
them convey an awareness message educating the
community about one of these important issues:
• A good nutrition is a health body
• Coffee, tea and sugarcane are our cash crops
• Pollution of the environment
• The burdens of corruption
• Coping with disability.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ornaments
Ornaments are elegant decorations used for embellishing
our bodies. They can also be used on surfaces of useful
objects to make them appear more attractive—with their
extra ostentatious details.
Chandra (1979, 7) offers a rational explanation: “The study
of ... ornamentation and of jewellery ... does not only
disclose man's curious fascination for the unusual, the
rare, the shining, the colourful metal, stones and other
materials.” For all that, learning about ornaments also helps
us “to understand the beliefs, the customs, the economic
condition, the set-up of the society and its contacts with
foreign.” From this we can understand the apparent reasons
as to why we draw irresistible attention and interest to
ornaments. They reveal objective reality to elegant fashions
and they serve us in different ways for various purposes. For
the most part, ornaments display a good sense of style—
according to traditions and widely accepted customs of our
societies.
African tribal groups of people use ornaments in very
many ways. Craats (2004, 10) notes, “Maasai women ...
wear brass ornaments that coil around their shaved heads.
Head-dresses can be very elaborate. Only married women
can wear long blue beaded necklaces and beaded flaps
on their earlobes.” Surprisingly, some creative artists
find perfect sources of inspiration for elegant fashions
from ethnic groups of people like the Masai who make
ornaments to be worn by different classes of people.
In Tod's (2004, 288) A Companion to Roman Britain; “ ...
jewellery was frequently considered to be a female form
of ornament, while men wore 'functional' items such as
brooches, amulets and finger-rings that doubled as signet
rings.” Depending on our systems of knowledge and beliefs,
both women and men wear jewellery and ornaments for
various known for functions like displaying social status and
for beauty.
However, it is customary for various tribal groups of people
to wear or produce ornaments—find sources of inspiration
from local materials and found objects.
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