Cheryl McGlocklin has been a classroom sixth grade teacher for nine years and leads an after-school art and drama club. Her Masters thesis examined the importance of teaching art in a multi-cultural educational setting. She developed a mask-making integrated in-service program which she has presented to the California Gifted Conference, the California Reading Conference and the California National History/Social Science Conference. Ms. McGlocklin is a Fellow in the California Arts Project and has worked with RIMS CAP for five years, as well as with a collaboration project between California Art Association and RIMS CAP. In her free time, Ms. McGlocklin paints murals, and does watercolor and collage.

Thoughts:

I tried to create a mask design to represent a "global" view of Africa. To depict Africa's diversity, I used aspects of the different cultures of this ancient land, the center of all humankind. I included hieroglyphics for Egypt, raffia for central grasslands, gold for Nubians, painted dots for the traditional tattooed faces, blue for the Nile, and tears for suffering. Finally, the feather is for the unique animal kingdom and how high the people can soar.