Resources
Narrative Art
Assemble a Story
Explore how images and words contribute to the meaning of a story.
Helpful Links:
Educators
Tennessee Social Studies Standards
Tennessee English Language Arts Standards
About
ARTWORK
Iruka Maria Toro. The Invisible Life of Small Things, 2011
Iruka Maria Toro is an American artist who creates colorful paintings and collages about her life. These artworks often explore events from her childhood in Puerto Rico, where she spent much of her time caring for exotic pets and visiting the island’s rainforests. When she was ten years old, Toro and her family moved to southern Florida. As a child, Toro liked exploring her new home’s swampy landscapes and native wildlife.
The Invisible Life of Small Things shows the artist diving from the sky into a dreamlike underwater world. According to Toro, this painting depicts her thoughts and experiences during the first year of her marriage while living in rural upstate New York. Although this artwork was painted, Toro was influenced by collage and mimicked the layered style of collage in her painting.
IMAGE CREDIT: Iruka Maria Toro. The Invisible Life of Small Things, 2011, Acrylic paint. Museum Purchase: Funds provided by an Anonymous Donor. 2013.56. Collection of The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC. © Iruka Maria Toro.
Activity 1
Students will write and illustrate a short story based on Iruka Maria Toro’s Invisible Life of Small Things.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Review the elements of a story before showing Iruka Maria Toro’s Invisible Life of Small Things. Discuss how Toro’s paintings often depict stories from her life.
- Have students look for visual clues in the painting that can help them determine what is happening. You can use the discussion questions to encourage conversation and close looking.
- Once students have had the opportunity to talk about the painting, have them write a story. Students should write a story based on the figure in their painting. Their story should describe who the figure is, what the figure is doing, where the figure is, and what is transpiring in the painting. Students can be as creative or imaginative in their story as they like as there is no single correct interpretation of an artwork.
- Have students make an illustration to accompany the story. This drawing should depict an important event from their tale.
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I wonder... Does this look familiar to you?
Many of George Washington’s portraits and profiles look the same Take a look at a selection of George Washington’s portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Washington, Washington Everywhere | National Portrait Gallery
Why do you think so may artists would use the same image over and over again? How did this contribute to new Americans learning about the founding of the United States?
Think of other portraits you have seen and look at other images below—what does each one tell us something about the person featured? What has the artist shared with us about the subject of the painting?
SSP.01 Gather information from a variety of sources
SSP.05 Develop historical awareness by: Sequencing past, present, and future in chronological order and Understanding that things change over time
SS.4.08 Determine the importance of different groups to the American Revolution
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Located in Gallery 1
Pencil
Paper
Crayons, Markers, or Colored Pencils
Activity 2
Students will create a collage depicting important events from a story they read in class. Students should think about how images help us understand stories.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Review the elements of a story before showing Iruka Maria Toro’s Invisible Life of Small Things. Discuss how Toro’s paintings often depict stories from her life.
- Have students look for visual clues in the painting that can help them determine what is happening. You can use the discussion questions to encourage conversation and close looking.
- Discuss how this picture might help us learn more about Toro’s life. Explore how pictures in storybooks also help us learn more about a story. Ask students what can be learned from the pictures? What can pictures tell us about a character in a story?
- Read a story to the students or have them read a story independently.
- Encourage students to pick their favorite part of the story they read.
- Using pre-cut images from magazines, ask students to create a collage about this event in the story on a sheet of paper. They can add details with markers. Their collage should depict the characters and setting of the story.
Located in Gallery 1
Located in Gallery 1
Not on view
Something to consider: STEM Connection
Artists were key players in documenting conflicts both to share with the public and to create a record of events. Do some research about the methods used in the artworks from the Hunter Museum. How would an etching or lithograph reach a different group of people than a painting? How would these inventions (and others like photography and film) affect the ways in which Americans learned about and responded to conflict?
SSP.01 Gather information from a variety of sources, including media and technology sources
A Story/Narrative
Construction or Manilla Paper
Markers
Pencil
Scissors
Glue Sticks
Old Magazines
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Located in Gallery 4
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Art can be an expression of identity and culture. Some communities have had these important personal representations threatened because they were different or were in opposition to new ideas being brought by expanding frontiers.
Look at the following 3 artworks that respond to the impact on the people and the land during the Westward Expansion of the United States.
Consider: what emotions do you see represented? Can you find examples of how it felt to lose something very important? Can you also find examples of resilience? What symbols, colors, and details did the artist use to share these emotions?
SS.3.22 Examine how American Indian cultures changed as a result of contact with European cultures, including: decreased population, spread of disease (smallpox), increased conflict, loss of territory, and increase in trade.
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Located in Gallery 5
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Cities also expanded rapidly during the mid 19th century. People came to the United States from all over the world! In cities like New York, many diverse groups of people lived very close together. Trains, trolleys, and streets showcased the many ways lives overlapped.
Look at the images below: Find people who are working, resting, excited, nervous, and confident. What are they doing? Where do you think they are going?
SSP.03 Organize data from a variety of sources in order to: Compare and contrast multiple sources, Recognize differences between multiple accounts, and Frame appropriate questions for further investigation
R.1. Cornerstone Read closely to determine what a text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
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Listen to the song Poor Old Joe by Paul Robeson, a renowned singer during the early 1900s and the Harlem Renaissance. During the Great Migration, many African Americans travelled to cities in the North in search of new opportunities and equality while others remained and worked in agriculture in the South. How do the lyrics connect to the artwork?*
*This is an artwork about migration by someone who was an immigrant (rather than a migrant) but has overlapping themes for both experiences as discussed above
Left: Hung Liu (1948-2021), I Hear Their Gentle Voice Calling, 2017, mixed media, multi-layer resin, 82 x 82 in. Toledo Museum of Art. Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey.
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Immigrants have been crucial in shaping American history and culture. Many of America’s most celebrated artists were immigrants or the children of immigrants who chose to build their lives in the U.S.
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Look at the artworks above and at left: Think about how these two artists combine images from American culture with historical Japanese and Korean art to create something new.
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Activity: Mimi Herbert left half of the work Celebration Flag blank, suggesting an opportunity for viewers to add their own ideas to complete the flag. Flags are used to identify a place using colors and symbols—The United States flag uses 50 stars for the 50 states, 13 stripes for the 13 original colonies, blue for justice, red for valor and bravery, and white for purity and innocence. Use the blank space provided in the activity below to share how you would complete Mimi’s flag.
Download activity
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Contemporary art continues to address themes of identity, conflict, movement and our changing world. Contemporary can be defined as “right now.” All artwork is contemporary at the time it is made and reflects the social, political and personal impacts of the artist’s environment. Look at the works below. How do these artworks reflect on history as well as the “right now”?
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Not on view
Not on view
