Authors and Artists: Flowers to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

For our April installment of Authors and Artists, we made brightly colored Dahlia flowers-Mexico's National flower in celebration of Cinco de Mayo (the holiday commemorating the triumph of a small Mexican army over French forces in the 1862 battle at Puebla).After Norte Maar's Director, Jason Andrew, read a short story illustrating the vibrant and festive history and traditions surrounding Cinco de Mayo, artist and project assistant Andrew Szobody lead an instructional workshop on the making of the Dahlia flower out of folded and cut crepe paper. We discovered that the Dahlia Flower is used to decorate parade floats and dances and now we have our own decorating our own homes!Authors and Artists is a free monthly program that invites local professional artists, musicians, dancers, craft makers, architects, etc, to teach and explore books and the arts with the children and families in our neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Authors and Artists is presented in collaboration with the Bushwick Library and is sponsored in part by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc. (BAC).[one_half][/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]