Students interested in art have the option to take a Creative Crafts course. In this class, students will be exploring the world of hands-on craft and folk art and will work with multiple mediums outside the world of traditional visual fine arts. Students will develop skills that will enable them to respond critically to their own pieces as well as the pieces produced by their peers. Students will develop an appreciation and understanding for a variety of artists and ways to create different types of folk art and traditional craft.
One of these practices is that of shibori. Shibori is a Japanese method of resist dyeing traditionally used with indigo. In Creative Crafts, art students mixed up their own indigo vat and after tying and folding, dipped their fabric pieces into the indigo vat. While modern Shibori is done with lots of colors and different fabrics, traditional Japanese Shibori on cotton was mainly done with indigo. The contrast of the blue and white can give bold contrast or subtle shades depending on the technique used. Indigo is a natural dye process using indigo plants and fructose to create something called "liquid gold". After many careful dips into the vat, students were able to rinse and open their shibori pieces to reveal the pattern they created.