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While most people celebrated the 49th UAE National Day with families and friends, art teacher Rashida Adil was busy inspiring her students to be creative in an eco-friendly way.
The Sharjah Indian School teacher worked six hours every day for the last five months converting thousands of recyclable material — wooden pieces, beads, recycled paper, ribbons — to create patriotic artworks.
Her hard work and eco-friendly tribute to the country has been displayed at Sharjah’s Safari Mall to inspire others to go green and think out of the box.
“I started working on this patriotism themed artwork from June onwards and finished it by November 24, just in time for the UAE National Day celebrations, said Adil “My aim as an art teacher has been not only teaching art but educate children about the importance of reducing, reusing, recycling waste and creating beautiful things. Everything can be used and doesn’t have to be thrown. Through these beautiful artworks, they create with scrap materials, they are learning to reduce and reuse waste. They also get to learn to be economical as they make beautiful pieces of art with zero cost involved,” she said.
Adil believes that in order to inspire children, one has to lead by example, and therefore she would make artworks at home and show to the students online. “Usually, I would do these projects with my students at school but due to distance learning I could involve them; however, I would show them my artworks in the online classes and many even got inspired and made some unique artworks using eco-friendly material. One student – Joel Jacob — made a UAE map with around 800 toothpicks UAE flags along with his younger brother Abel Jacob at home in their free time.
Another student made a UAE flag model using 128 empty coconut shells that he painted in the flag colours. “My love and tribute for the UAE, a place I have called home for the last 28 years, is in the form of eco-friendly artwork and my achievement is to see my students get inspired and create beautiful and meaningful art,” said the head of the art department at her school.
“I love the UAE because it is an inclusive and tolerant country which invites people, regardless of their race, religion, or their culture, from all over the world and welcomes all with open arms. Long live the UAE,” she added.
Recently on the UAE Flag Day, Adil had created a giant, eco-friendly flag using 5,000 ‘I Love UAE’ stamps.
Four art pieces on display
>30X24inch heart in flag colours made of 2,500 handmade satin ribbon roses
>35X25inch frame titled ‘Spirit of the Union’ that is made up of thousands of grain size used wooden and glass pieces, beads and buttons and shows the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan along with six other rulers standing together with the background of the UAE flag
>18X25 inch frame done by her has 1,500 paper strips that she rolled and glued together – called art of paper quilling - to make a unique portrait of UAE’s founding father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan
>A huge wooden UAE map frame and decorated it with 7,000 beads of UAE flag colours.
saman@khaleejtimes.com
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