The Beaning of Life, Volume 1: Animals on Walls

Humans have been putting animals on walls, using natural pigments, for a very long time.

The students studied the cave art of Lascaux, France as their masterwork for this project. The experience included entering a nearly-dark classroom lit only by a few candles, with ambient water dropping and other recorded cave sounds playing. The students lay down beneath their desks and drew animals with chalk on the undersides by candlelight.

The project is beans. When describing it to people, most of them seem to picture some sort of kindergarten-level macaroni art. They scoff and roll their eyes. How cute that the kiddies get to do a little art project. This is so much more than that.

The wall was carefully plotted. Some design constraints were readily apparent. The wall is flanked by two classroom doors, both of which open toward the wall. The doorstop for one of those doors was on the floor. The other was on the wall, with no way to remove it.

Two electrical panels graced the middle of the wall. Obviously, we couldn't seal those shut. I carefully planned the pieces to avoid the panels. Art could go on the doors themselves, as long as they could open. We found out later that the wide metal edges of the panels couldn't be permanently covered either, in case the entire panel had to be removed someday.

Good thing the panels are metal. Art pieces that partially covered a panel edge were screwed to the wall on one side with hinges, and strong magnets affixed the panel to the metal.
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In the picture above, #30 is glued to the door of one of the panels. The larger box around it represents the edge of the panel housing, with large bolts holding it in place. Pieces #23, #31, #29, #36, and #37 all have hinges shown with triangles. 

The large light grey square in the middle is a large center piece that will have the title of the overall work. The empty black box is the other electrical panel, with hinges on #26, #27, #33, #41, #40, and #39. The door of the second electrical panel will have a paper explanation of the project.

​Students were assigned a numbered section from the image above, and given a pre-cut piece of wood in the correct dimensions to paint black.

Keeping their dimensions in mind, the students each selected an image of their biome project's focus animal and I simplified each image to a few key colors for them.

Using the limited range of colors available in beans, students planned which beans would represent which colors on their design with varying degrees of difficulty depending on the animal—there are no blue beans.

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