Christmas card making - SANTA GOES EVERYWHERE!
Updated: Jan 19, 2018
When I got the uni project making a Christmas card, I thought this sentence first, "SANTA GOES EVERYWHERE!" I know Santa Claus is from Christianity so not every kids will believe in Santa, but I think Santa is just hope of children so I wanted Santa to go to the kids who are really difficult to reach. And I came up with nomadic kids around the world.
I really admire nomadic life style. Traveling, nature and self sufficiency. I think because I was born in big city and my early life has been so urban I got sick of everything in city.
So I watched documentaries about nomadic life (Nenets) in Tundra, northern arctic Russia. Nenets people totally rely on self sufficiency life style making their own houses, clothes etc. Reindeer is the most important thing in their life, they eat and drink reindeers' meat and blood and sew their own cloths and tents with its leather. But every time they have to kill reindeers they have ceremonies thanking their gods and appreciating the lives. No one start eating before they finish their ceremony.
The children there grow up with reindeers since they are born. They just run around the field with animals and bugs just being part of the nature. They do not need televisions or smart phone. But they have to go to school when they are aged 3 to 13, they are taken by helicopter from their homes on the tundra to spend 9 months in a boarding school every year. They spend summers with their families, living a largely nomadic life herding reindeer. The boy in the video above just started boarding school and is struggling with different life style. He just wants to go back to Tundra and do whatever he wants not having to take shower and brush their teeth everyday. Apparently, quite a lot of children go back to Tundra after their graduation because they do not like the life in the city.
As a result, I painted the kids in front of the nomadic tents with watercolour.
And then I changed the colour a bit, got rid of some dirty spots and changed the colour of the sky.
And put this words..."Santa goes everywhere!"