What color is happiness? If sadness were a shape, what would it look like? I asked these questions to a group of 3rd and 4th graders as part of a Studio Thinking Workshop at the Columbus Museum of Art. I wanted to get them thinking about visual metaphors for emotions. Together, we brainstormed about ways to represent emotion through color, line, shape and symbol.
I had students randomly draw the name of an emotion from a hat. Student selected the color that best represented their emotion to use as the background. Then, the students cut out pictures and shapes to collage onto their paper. This activity was inspired by the
Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique. Below are some of my favorites:
Confidence
Happiness
Nervous. I see it in the colors.
Regret. She made a collage of all the things she'd regret if she didn't see in her life.
Sadness. This collage features Maurizio Cattelan's La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour). (I guess the Pope would be sad if he were crushed by an meteorite.)
