The Moken were craftsmen. I could see evidence of this everywhere. They carved out and painted their own totem poles. They made their own homes, their own boats, their own furniture, much of their own tools, and their own fishing equipment. The common element in all these things is that it was done by hand and it all took time to make.
I sat with a boat maker who spent his time slowly carving out his boat. As I talked to him he kept his eyes focused on his boat in a trancelike state. I could clearly see that he was enjoying his activity.
The African Mbuti pygmies are also artists and craftsmen who make many of their own possessions, as their ancestors made all of their possessions. This includes their clothes that they make out of the large leaves of fig trees. They find these thick supple leaves in the forest and then they bring them home to soften and alter so that they can wear these all year round in the warm weather. It looks much like short shorts or the bottom half of a swimsuit. They make these clothes with an elephant tusk hammer that allows them to beat the clothes into a flexible, comfortable soft fabric. The tusk hammer is used to make the loincloths.
The Bambuti males are archers that use self-made bows and arrows. They make the bows out of wood and string, which they also make themselves. The string is made out of a palm tree leaf fiber called rattan. The men create long thin arrows and then around a fire they harden the tips on the flames. Some of the women's cooking tools are often self-made out of hardened earth and clay. For smoking, they have handcrafted pipes that are made from bamboo and or hard-wooden gourds after the fruit has been taken out. The bowls of the pipes that hold the marijuana in them are made out of clay.
Their musical instruments are also created by hand. Their wooden drums are carved out of tree trunks and animal skin is usually placed on the top and stretched out in a tight way so that the skin will vibrate whenever it is struck. They also paint their faces with improvised designs with vegetable pigments from the plants that they find in the forest.
The Aborigine people of Australia, like all hunting and gathering societies, once made all of their own art and possessions from what they found in nature. They used wood, branches, stones, plants and whatever resource they could find to make everything they had. Earth itself was used to make much of the paint pigments that they used to paint sides of their caves. They built shelters from branches and tree bark. Animal hides such as the skin of a kangaroo were made into clothes, and sometimes they used the skin for their shelters as well, much like the Native Americans used buffalo skin for teepees. They are also known for their ingenious wooden boomerangs and their crafted didgeridoos.
The creation of the wind instrument called the didgeridoo has a long history. These are made from the bark of young sapling eucalyptus trees with slender trunks that are hollowed out naturally by termites. The soft inner wood left by the termites is then pulled out by the aborigine and all of the branches are pulled off. The sides were decorated and carved into abstract designs. Grass was woven into straw baskets that were used to contain gathered food. These were sometimes dyed with vegetable pigment that could be found in the desert or the subtropical regions.
The aborigines lived and live now in subtropical and desert climates so it isn't necessary to wear much clothing. Yet they make and wear a little clothing some times. Clothes are made from animal skin. In the south of Australia the climate is much cooler and therefore clothing has to be made. This includes Tasmania below Australia where the aborigines cover themselves with seal fat as well to keep themselves warm. Jackets are made from animals with thicker fur.
The Aborigines also make boats. In fact, that is how the people apparently first came to Australia 40,000 years ago. The aborigines made canoes out of trunks of large trees. With hand made stone axes they carved the shape of the canoe out. Today one can still find these types of canoes made out of tree trunks sitting along riverbanks.
Rafts are also made with the use of more thin and flexible trees. They then strap all of the small trees together and set them afloat. These can be used for fishing or for carrying loads.
Aborigines not only create their own possessions but they also create art for less utilitarian reasons. In some cases it is used for spiritual explanation and storytelling and sometimes just for pure decoration.
Cave and rock painting is one of these decorative artistic traditions. These old paintings were preserved and still decorate the desert outback cave walls to this day. The paint itself was often made from the desert orange and reddish ocher powder rocks and with this pigment they made their paintings. These aborigine artists also made cave paintings of "Dreamtime" Spirits, depicted as large human shaped beings.
A clan's or a person's totem is often represented in sculpture. A totem is usually an animal, but sometimes can be plants, or other natural phenomenon represented as a symbol of their clan. It is like having a mascot for modern sport teams.
The Inuit, sometimes called Eskimos, and Aleut Native Americans, are famous for making their own pullover jackets. In fact they invented the thick, fur-lined, hooded outer jacket called a parka for Arctic conditions. Traditionally, parkas are handmade of animal hides and worn by the Inuit and Aleut people.
They also invented the kayak. This was a traditional boat that is made for only one person. The frame of the kayak is made of wood, and the cover of different types of sealskin. The handmade tool used in construction is the adze, which is like an axe that was used for shaping the wood; they also used drills and knives. It was original because it was so light that one Inuit can carry it easily through the snow. It was also relatively easy to maneuver. This was a boat that they used to hunt seal. Inuit's could sit in these for long periods of time, waiting for a seal to pop up and breath.
Native Americans are known for using all of an animal that they hunt. It is true of their art as well; the Inuit, for example, will use the remaining leftovers of an animal that he hunts to make sculpture. Much of the more pure decorative art that the Inuit made and make is often in the form of sculpture out of ivory from whalebone or even sometimes deer antlers. There has been small sculptures found that were made more than two thousand years ago. Sculptors still today use small hand tools such as the same axes that they use to carve the Kayaks and knives just as they have been doing for millennium. The art depicts Arctic wildlife, and totem spiritual figures. Mythological and Shaman images also are represented in their art as well. Art styles range from realism to far out spiritual surrealism representing images of the subconscious.
Speaking of the subconscious, one of the oldest known pieces of decorative art is a small portable sculpture of a voluptuous large breasted, large hipped woman. It is called the "Venus of Willendorf" This figurine was found in Austria and it is dated as 25,000 to 30,000 years old. In fact there are many of these carved female figurines that were found all over central Europe. Stone Age portable art is not only found in stone but it is also made out of bone, deer antler, or it modeled in clay. Small, carved objects have been found in most of Europe, in Northern Africa, and eastern Russia. In a museum of St. Petersburg Russia, actually, there sits a 20,000 year-old intricate female figurine carved out of wooly mammoth tusks.
Chimpanzees will sometimes use an object as a tool. They are known for using blades of grass to manipulate termites to come out of their holes so that they can eat them. There has been video documentation showing them using stones to open nuts. Of course, birds create nests and beavers create dams. This is seen as instinctual versus a taught and culturally inherited form of art. Yet other animals can learn art, as elephants have been taught to paint with their trunks.
Among humans, stone tool making marks the beginning of art and craft history. It is a tradition that has been in place for millions of years. There is an abundance of art found in archeological records and archeologist Randall White of NYU says that art was a "critical part of our ancestor's survival" The beginning of craftsmanship was in the Paleolithic Era, which is the Stone Age. The oldest human handmade crafts were chipped stones that formed the first knives. These were used as the first cutting instruments and basic stone choppers, which are the beginnings of axes. One of the oldest archeological sites where tool artifacts are found is among the "Oldewon" sites in Africa, in Ethiopia. This archeological site proves to be around 2.5 million years old. Yet these millions of years old tools are found in buried layers of African soil throughout the whole continent. These stone tools were probably used for processing animal meat. Experiments have been done that show that these stone tools are efficient for this type of task, in which they would need to skin an animal and sometimes cut the carcass for easier dining. So the first hand made crafts were in essence steak knives. Tools made out of other mediums surely were made, but stone lasts long enough for us to find them. Stone was a significant medium for the crafting of tools for millions of years.
Relatively recently, within the last 40,000 years, or in the time period known as the "Upper Paleolithic", the art and craftsmenship became more complex. During this more recent part of the Stone Age, tools of animal bone, deer antler, and ivory tusks became widespread and common for the first time. These tools, often found in Europe, include needles, harpoons, and spears. The presence of eyed needles indicates the use of sewn clothing and/or skin coverings for tents or shelters, like the Native Americans lived in. In some carved figurine statues from the lower Paleolithic, human figures are illustrated as wearing hooded parkas, as the Inuit's wear now.
Like the Venus of Willendorf, decorative art also became a commonplace in the "lower Paleolithic Era" or within the last 40,000 years.
The Chauvet cave of Southern France contains paintings dating back 32,000 years, making them the oldest cave paintings. The French Chauvet paintings include as their subjects a wide variety of animals that include hairy wooly mammoth, lions, rhinoceros, bears, bison, and horses.
Nearly all animals in cave paintings are drawn in a flat profile style. In other words, they are made so you only see the side of the animal. Animals are a common theme in painting. Even up until recently that was the theme in cave paintings of the Aboriginal hunting and gathering culture. Most of the paintings of these animals are of adults of a recognizable species, but sometimes there were paintings of more ambiguous animals and in rare cases they painted fantasy creatures, such as the unicorn painting found in Lascaux. The Lascaux cave in France has hundreds of art pieces in it. There is even a human represented as a stick-like figure. According to the radio carbon dating of the pigment used for these paintings, these paintings are over 17,000 years old.
Pictures and symbols are engraved on stone surfaces in the open air outside of caves. There are Portuguese examples of this engraved art in which bulls, horses and mountain goats are represented as they are in caves. Apparently, our ancestors were fascinated by animals just as recent hunter/gatherers were and are. Of course they probably did not have too many subjects that they could represent in their art.
In some places, depending upon region, cave art often depicts horses and bison, although mammoth or deer dominate at other archeological sites. Fish, foible, laden, and birds are occasionally found in cave paintings or engravings, but are seen much more often in portable art. Representations of insects and plants have been found in only a few portable objects. In our Paleolithic hunting and gathering past, just before agriculture was invented, there was a renaissance in technology among humans. They invented an abundance of devices that helped man attain his food and just enjoy his life. Handmade spears, bows and arrows, boats, flutes, sleds, medicines all were part of the Paleolithic hunter/gatherer culture.
The cultural and evolutionary development of tool making and artistic creation had its adaptive purpose and now it's a therapy just to have an outlet for this genetic instinct.
Salvador Dali said "There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction." Many people who have created art have experienced a trance-like state or what is sometimes known as the "zone." This zone experience has been measured with biofeedback, and consistently artists have brain wave patterns that are similar to the patterns seen when monks meditate and nuns pray. These are alpha waves, which are generally found in relaxed mind states.
Art therapy taps into this therapeutic value of making art in mainstream psychotherapy; art therapy is a process of gaining insight and self- knowledge and to modifying behavior. Art Therapy, though, is also a diagnostic tool but this is not the focus. The focus is on the pleasurable effect the act of creating art has on the mind.
Many people find it hard now days with our busy schedules. The only way to get started though is to open up time in our schedules to do it anyway.
The action of beginning the art is the most important part of the process; to make the first physical movement, to make the first impressions in the clay, to paint the first brushstroke, or to compose the first sentence. Once this is done, it may become addictive and you may find that you have more time in your schedule than you realize.
Making art helps us to understand ourselves much more and to literally, physically see some of our dreams, thoughts, and emotions in the form of visual graphics.
Recording dreams by painting or drawing them is a powerful tool in understanding ourselves. After all, as Sigmund Freud once pointed out, "dreaming is the royal road to the subconscious." A great technique is to invest in a pencil and a pad of paper, and to simply record our dreams with writing and drawn visual illustrations. Carl Jung instructed his clients to use the circle in art therapy because it was an ancient symbol found in many cultures, often symbolizing unification and wholeness. The circle was used by tribal cultures in their shamanistic practices. The Native Americans used it in the form of the Medicine Wheel, and the Tibetans use it in their Mandala. When Tibetan Buddhist monks create Mandala, they spend hours creating their symmetrical design out of sand.
Really there are many creative directions that one can take in creating visual art. It can be done in many different mediums, including drawing, painting, sewing, photography, film, crochet web deign or even video.
Again, it's probably a good idea to create art in the same ways our ancestors created art to fully connect to our instinct. Because we were nomadic, our first creations were usually portable and could come with us anywhere. So the closest thing to creating tribal art is the crafting of jewelry, clothes, small musical instruments, or even decorative hunting tools. Our medium was stone, clay, ivory, paint, thread, and materials made out of plants. Lastly our first pieces of art often had important symbolic meaning, symbolizing what tribe or religious affiliations we may have.