By Shari Kaplan
The sun shone warmly upon the Santa Cruz mountains Jan. 12 as Lexington School students spent the day foraging among their sylvan surroundings, listening to stories and music and darting excitedly around each other as they created larger-than-life artwork on the pavement.
Under the guidance of Native American artist Sara Bates, the children worked together on an "honoring circle," a term Bates coined for her signature pieces, which are composed of natural materials painstakingly arranged using color, form and patterns influenced by her Cherokee heritage. Her honoring circles have appeared in many local, national and international museums and exhibitions.
Bates holds a master of fine arts degree from UC Santa Barbara and is former director of exhibitions and programs for the American Indian Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, where she resides. Later this year, she will travel to Tahlequah, Okla., to work with her tribe in the capital of the Cherokee nation.
Her appearance at Lexington was made possible through the guest artist workshop program sponsored by the Art Docents of Los Gatos Inc. This new program is dedicated to bringing professional Bay Area artists into classrooms to provide a variety of art experiences to the children.
Not limiting herself to the show-and-tell approach, Bates gave each child a hands-on chance to create his or her own section of the honoring circle.
As the Lexington students worked on their honoring circle, Bates said that whenever she creates a circle of her own, she hears the songs and feels the dances of her ancestors.
"I've been creating these forms for about eight years now," Bates added. "I don't seem to tire of them.When I make these in museums, I could do it for 13 hours. I don't even know what's happening; I lose track of the time."
The students, whose time was more limited than Bates', had made brown and white clay chips earlier in the week to use in outlining and dividing portions of the circle. Some brought zipper bags from home loaded with seeds, beans, seashells and other small treasures.
Others collected berries, rocks, sticks, feathers, flowers and pinecones from the neighboring wilderness, but with the understanding that they gather only what is plentiful and not disrupt the harmony of living things.
"When I get something from the earth, I ask permission first from the beings of that particular land or space before I take it," Bates explained at the end of the day, when the entire student body reconvened around the circle.
"If it doesn't feel right, I don't take it. We are all caretakers of the earth, and we need to take that responsibility seriously, or we won't be able to survive here."
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 24, 1996.
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