tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-296800422024-02-06T23:54:05.853-06:00Ms. Miller's Art Blog!Art is Everywhere!
Welcome to my Art Blog! This year I'm teaching Art I, Art 2, Pre-AP Art 2, Sculpture 1 and Pre-AP Sculpture 2 to 9th & 10th grade high school students. There is never enough time in class to cover all of the art I want to, so this Blog can keep you in touch with the adventure I have outside of class. Check it out and follow the path...Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.comBlogger192125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-2465650913163805202012-09-30T17:44:00.003-05:002020-10-28T18:31:29.852-05:00Check out my new site: Christine K Miller - Fiber Artist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitOtAfy4nmuxwZ_SwzdiPqsRlUFnTLzbefXa7ab6uVtFJ9xaW6bxSolOe2r-MqHl45EKazwjS8KJVz84HW5CamA-kN9e9z3z5maHNArFBiOGIsueGk2kOIDZ7EdRsYtGIgzcOZ/s1600/Far,+far+away.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitOtAfy4nmuxwZ_SwzdiPqsRlUFnTLzbefXa7ab6uVtFJ9xaW6bxSolOe2r-MqHl45EKazwjS8KJVz84HW5CamA-kN9e9z3z5maHNArFBiOGIsueGk2kOIDZ7EdRsYtGIgzcOZ/s320/Far,+far+away.jpg" width="246" /></a></div>
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I am migrating! I have a new website and blog in one at <a href="http://ChristineKMiller.com">ChristineKMiller.com</a>. My other website through Apple's me.com went away, so I made a bold move to incorporate both together. If you have enjoyed my posts, please come visit me there and see the new artwork I have been creating! Thanks for following me!</div>
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Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-56264690513820615652012-03-25T13:27:00.002-05:002012-03-25T22:18:05.978-05:00Aesthetics in the Classroom: The Power of Visual Culture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">image from http://campestre.edu.glogster.com/visual-culture/</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Visual culture - it's a topic that I am really interested in. I can't say I'm thoroughly informed about it from an art education standpoint, but it is a topic that I want to delve into more deeply. I'm currently in an art education graduate degree program. My professor and I are having a lively debate about this topic, looking at the pros and cons of this subject. Visual culture is a small part of our study of curriculum and instruction this semester, and after reading about it yesterday, I find my inquisitive juices flowing - where do I REALLY stand about this topic? One of my texts, <i>Rethinking Curriculum in Art</i> by Marilyn Stewart and Sydney R. Walker (2005, Davis Publications) says when delineating between fine art and visual culture... </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Purpose matters. In general, consumer and material culture is created for purposes of commerce and entertainment. Artworks are generally created for more substantive expressive purposes."</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One point I am making to my professor is that these lines between visual culture and fine art are becoming more blurred in contemporary art. Because of this blurring, I am having some issues with visual culture being incorporated into my students' art projects as well. I'll save that story for another time, but t</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his post is an entry point for me into this controversial subject. I welcome your comments and feedback about my observations.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Artist of the Day - this is a video warm-up in my classes, I show my students short (3-5 min.) videos about contemporary artists and art making. Sometimes I will have a theme for the week, other times it's a potpourri of artistic expression. I put together a selection of diverse videos recently and I asked my students to vote on a paper ballot for the artist they liked the best. Here was the lineup for the week (it was a 4 day week...) in the order I presented them:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thijme Termaat - I Paint - a stop motion animation video of this young Dutch painter - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozc6t4KwEko (3:11 minutes - 868,913 views)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Timothy Allen - an audio slideshow of this photographer's work for a BBC show, Human Planet - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12618167 (7:28 minutes - # of views not available)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jennifer Maestre - a video about this sculptor's work made from sections of sharpened pencils - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ynv59AJqs (2:51 minutes - 3,936 views)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rymdreglage - 8-bit trip - another stop motion animation video using legos to recreate scenes from video games - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qsWFFuYZYI </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(3:50 minutes - 11,554,184 views)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I asked them several questions about this lineup of videos. I see approximately 170 9th and 10th graders daily. My survey methods I'm sure wouldn't measure up to proper research standards, but I do find I get an accurate snapshot of what my students are thinking and feeling about art.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Which Artist of the Day was your favorite? </b>In order of preference:</span></div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rymdreglage's 8 Bit Trip - 56%</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thijme Termaat - 21%</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jennifer Maestre - 14%</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Timothy Allen - 9%</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Do you think comparing artists that are really different from each other is a good thing or a bad thing?</b></span></div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's a good thing - 65% vs. it's a bad thing - 35%</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Do you think people take the art of painters and sculptors more seriously than photographers?</b></span></div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes - 69% vs. No - 31%</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Do you think people take art made out of toys and colored pencils less seriously than bronze or stone?</b></span></div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes - 40% vs. No 60%</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looking back on my wording, I realize in the last two questions I asked them what "people" think, not what <i>they</i> thought. I obviously need to study how to write survey questions to get the most accurate responses. But their responses still speak very loudly about our young art viewers.</span></div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They overwhelmingly selected the video that has a strong link to their culture through video games, though many of the video icons predated their generation. Visual culture, in this instance, carries a tremendous amount of weight when it comes to their aesthetics. Certainly, the sound tracks to these videos also contribute to their selections, but in this case the sound track reinforces the video game preferences. And, the fact that this video has been viewed over 11 million times is nothing to sneeze at! This is an astounding number of views. (I just googled <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_of_all_time.php" target="_blank">"videos with the most views on youtube"</a> - they number in the hundreds of millions. Interesting.)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since I made a random selection of videos (before I came up with the questionnaire), I was interested in knowing what they thought of choosing a favorite when I was offering apples to oranges. They had many comments about this, but essentially said it was good seeing a lot of different art; they were not as concerned that the comparisons be amongst similar art methods or styles.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fine art photography continues to struggle for fine art respect, which is interesting and personally disappointing to me. Their common comment was that painters and sculptors "made" their art, while photographers just took a picture. I am surprised that they can't see the tremendous amount of effort that took place looking at this particular body of work by Timothy Allen. At times I think their thinking is just skimming the surface, no matter how hard I try to foster deeper thought.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then here is another surprise! 60% think people don't take art made of toys less seriously than work made of bronze or stone. Wow! Here they thought it didn't matter about the medium, but about the effort that went into it, which I suppose correlates to their thinking that photography requires less effort than painting or sculpting. </span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps the order of preference does have some deeper meaning when it's viewed through the lens of visual culture. Timothy Allen's work, though stunning, documents other cultures that are remote from our American student's experience. The toys, video culture, painting and even pencils are things they have more tangible experience with. And even though Mr. Allen narrates his work in the slide presentation, it is not enough to reach our students. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is from my reading this weekend from Marilyn G. Stewart and Sydney R. Walker's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Rethinking Curriculum in Art</i>, (2005 Davis Publications) pages 124-126:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kevin Tavin and other art educators contend that artworks alone are not sufficient to develop students' understandings of contemporary culture. Tavin notes how 'numerous postmodern theories describe a new social order in which visual representations help mold and regulate social relationships, politics, race, gender, sexuality, and class'. Without the inclusion of visual representations beyond traditional fine art forms, art students would not be fully equipped to understand the contemporary world in terms of social relationships, politics, race, gender, sexuality, and class - all aspects of cultural understanding. Obviously, whether to draw on visual culture in choosing art content is a decision that will be made at the local level and will vary a great deal. Tavin notes that 'while art educators place art from the museum realm at the center of their curriculum, their students are piecing together their expectations and dreams in and through popular culture' He thus strongly supports the view that popular culture, as a major influence in the formation of values and beliefs, should be at the heart of students' experiences in art education.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I agree with Tavin. I have experimented with including videos featuring art and artists from the canon, but my students are not nearly engaged or interested in the work. As I have played around with Artist of the Day, I have noticed they prefer art and artists that are on the frontier of contemporary art making, and some of those incorporate visual culture in a big way. They respond to imagery related to their culture, and why wouldn't they? The challenge for me, as a former AP Art History instructor, is how to blend the past with the present. I haven't resolved this dilemma just yet, but do think I can find some solutions. If you, anonymous reader, have some insight into this topic, I would be interested in your views. </span><br />
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<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-53902813977585963282012-03-03T16:43:00.000-06:002012-03-03T17:06:58.410-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - The Power of Animation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Sunrise by the Ocean, </i>Vladimir Kush, 21" x 25"</div>
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I just discovered Vladimir Kush, Russian surrealist painter. The artist explains this painting's meaning on his website:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 14px;">The egg symbolizes the rising Sun and the beginning of life. In many myths about the creation of the world, a cosmic egg is laid by a giant bird in a formless, ancient ocean. The egg splits into two and the sky and the earth appear from the halves of it, while the sun is seen in the yolk. You can see in the picture that the newborn Sun still hasn't taken its final shape yet. Shreds of primary matter continue to stream from the burning sphere rising over the ocean. According to Polynesian myth, the Hawaiian Islands were born from such an egg.</span></blockquote>
His work is evocative and interesting - to my thinking, he crosses the mental games and optical illusions of Magritte, with the virtuosity of Dali. His website says his works are oil on canvas, watercolors, etchings and drawings - he is very skillful. I am delighted to have stumbled upon him - which is exactly how I found him - through <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/" target="_blank">StumbleUpon</a>. There are many videos of his work on YouTube, so I sorted through and found one I wanted to show my art students for Artist of the Day. I thought they would enjoy his clever work, and it would give me an opportunity to talk to them about divergent thinking. Kush takes simple ideas and blends them together into intriguing paintings.<br />
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<i><a href="http://vladimirkush.com/fauna-in-la-mancha" target="_blank">Fauna in La Mancha</a>, Vladimir Kush, 30.5" X 43"</i></div>
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The first <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJbOK2EGWXA" target="_blank">video</a> of his work that I showed my students was great - they were engaged and interested in seeing his art. When I went back to the search page, I noticed another video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omd_q511Aa4" target="_blank">Vladimir Kush Metaphorical Voyage Trailer</a>. Hmmmm....let's check it out (can't get too much of a good thing!). Wow! This video was super cool - his static paintings were transformed into moving images through animation! (This 30 minute DVD is available through <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vladimir-Kush-Metaphorical-Voyage/dp/B0030FSWVG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330811177&sr=8-2" target="_blank">Amazon</a> - I ordered one today!) I thought this would be interesting to show my students as well, so I showed this video the next day, making sure to point out to them that these were many of the same paintings they had seen in the first video, but now they were shown as animations. The handout I gave to them went like this:</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">How Does Animation Change an Artwork?</span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">We saw 2 videos about Vladimir Kush's surrealistic painting. One video showed his paintings as a static (or still) images - the other video showed his paintings as animated images. His own art studio produced the animation video (it's not someone else's work).</span></b></div>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">Which do you like best - the static images or the animated images? Why?</span></b></li>
<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">Why do you think he made this video animating his own paintings?</span></b></li>
<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">Do you have any ideas about how he did this - what kind of software he might have used?</span></b></li>
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I was curious to see how many of the students preferred the animated version, and it was an overwhelming majority! 80% of the responses I got preferred the animated video! I wasn't too surprised about that preference, but I was surprised at the percentage. What were their reasons? Here are a few of their responses:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><b>Which do you like best & why? Animated (80%) - </b>it had more drama, made the images look more real, brings life to the painting, is more interesting and gives movement to the art, video gave more expression, it was more like a movie, it draws my attention, it looks like a recorded dream, it's magical, it felt like we were actually going deep inside the artwork, more imagination, the animated video gives more insight into what the artwork means.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><b>Static (20% overall) (Note: 39% of my Honors Art 2 students preferred the static images. I consider this class to have a higher percentage of serious art students. What might that statistic imply?) - </b>the animated video trivialized the art work, you have a better chance seeing the artwork in the static image video, it had a more calming effect, the movement distracted me from the art work, you could take your time looking and them and understanding them. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><b>Why do you think he made this video as an animation? - </b>to bring his ideas to life, so people could understand his work better, to show people how realistic his paintings are, to entertain the viewer, to add more excitement to his work, so his work would appeal to a broader audience (video set up like a movie trailer), to see what goes on in his (the artist's) mind, so he can bring his surrealism to life like a movie, his paintings could be used in a video game.</span></blockquote>
Interesting! I am beginning to understand the power of animation! As the quality of animation becomes more realistic (think about all of the 3D movies that have come out lately!), it appears that the large majority of the general public, at least in this informal sampling of 14-16 yr. olds, prefer more dynamic imagery. I know when I select something for Artist of the Day, it <b>HAS</b> to be a video, not a static website! As I started playing around with my class opening Artist of the Day activity last year, I would sometimes include a website because I couldn't find a video, but I thought the art was cool so I'd show them the website. Ho hum, went my students! It was a dramatic difference when I showed a video - 90% or more of the class would be engaged in the video, so I moved into video only selections.<br />
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The last question I threw in because I wanted to get them thinking about technology and see what they would come up with as far as the tools he used to animate his paintings. I, myself, am clueless, but am very interested in finding out more about how he did that to his art. Here are their guesses:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><b>Do you have any ideas about how he did this - what kind of software he might have used? - </b>some kind of "flash" application, Adobe Flash, IDK (for those not with current truncation of the English language, that means I don't know ;-), Photoshop, Autodesk the engineering design software, Sony Vegas, iPad software, Windows 7, Adobe Premier 10.</span></blockquote>
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The surrealists began an interesting investigation of what reality is to our conscious and subconscious minds. It's exciting to see contemporary artists continuing the dialogue. And, as we move into realms of hyper-reality and virtual reality, the conversation becomes even more interesting. Why are we more interested in the animation versus the static? What is your opinion of the question? Where do <b>you</b> think this is leading us? </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf2LvyhEJp-BaOBDUmZkxX_FG4HQJt14CpO-XIg6TNCL5zKF4_XWkh07Ueiys83brspHF4ijOEMW4KHEuiswn_Mnfp06Sh91zz7CY_R0lhQEIt9x3Rew1F9j9koHJ6dB4edjN9/s1600/vladimir-kush-descent-to-the-mediterreanean.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf2LvyhEJp-BaOBDUmZkxX_FG4HQJt14CpO-XIg6TNCL5zKF4_XWkh07Ueiys83brspHF4ijOEMW4KHEuiswn_Mnfp06Sh91zz7CY_R0lhQEIt9x3Rew1F9j9koHJ6dB4edjN9/s320/vladimir-kush-descent-to-the-mediterreanean.jpg" width="193" /></a></div>
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<i>Descent to the Mediterranean</i>, Vladimir Kush, 39" x 23.5"</div>
<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-16340979976421025612012-02-26T12:11:00.000-06:002012-03-03T17:04:41.906-06:00STEM to STEAM - Adding the Arts to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong style="display: block; margin: 12px 0 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/tagartteacher/new-stem-to-steam-presentation-11756800" title="New stem to steam presentation">New stem to steam presentation</a></strong><object height="355" id="__sse11756800" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=newstemtosteampresentation-120226115441-phpapp01&stripped_title=new-stem-to-steam-presentation-11756800&userName=tagartteacher" />
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View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/tagartteacher">tagartteacher</a>.<br />
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Video links that may not work in slide 3 of uploaded presentation:<br />
Sir Ken Robinson's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U">video</a> - RSA Animate Changing Education Paradigms</div>
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Nick Okafor from the School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas ISD coordinated a STEM to STEAM Festival last Saturday bringing students, parents and members of the community together to discuss the importance of adding the Arts to a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum. You can visit Nick's STEAM Through Education website <a href="http://www.steamthrougheducation.com/">here</a>.<br />
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Nick asked me to make a presentation about the importance of the Arts in education as well as strategies to incorporate the arts into STEM curriculum. Attached is my presentation. I am grateful to Nick for inviting me as I am learning more about it myself. Plano ISD is set open a STEAM Academy fall of 2013 and I have a lot of interest in it. Not just because it's in my school district, but also because I think this is one of the most exciting times to be in education.<br />
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There is a strong movement across our country to change the way we teach our children. Our students want their education to be relevant, collaborative, include the technology that rests in their hands, and be more student-directed. Fortunately the Arts do all of that and much more! Please join me in the rethinking of our children's education. Find out what's going on in your community and support the efforts of your schools in changing education to meet the needs of our students in the 21st century!</div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-69803734414281576872012-02-20T21:20:00.002-06:002012-03-03T17:04:06.574-06:00A Letter to my Students<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNd8DjpksV9nSKwvJA6X8vRGDob4jZLbO4d95Rq3EsRiXgEUXDARtlggQqFn2QmDheAYuJ_BTFBBhASMLmtKBBN4BOPpnCTfp8vr2WBbTbepv0f-AcktPfIeKeBN7oKK5LDaZK/s1600/You+are+Creative.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNd8DjpksV9nSKwvJA6X8vRGDob4jZLbO4d95Rq3EsRiXgEUXDARtlggQqFn2QmDheAYuJ_BTFBBhASMLmtKBBN4BOPpnCTfp8vr2WBbTbepv0f-AcktPfIeKeBN7oKK5LDaZK/s320/You+are+Creative.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
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Dear Art Students,<br />
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First, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for participating in the VASE competition this last weekend. Making that kind of commitment to your work is really admirable! It was a cold, rainy day and I know that alarm came really early! But we went and had a great experience!<br />
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It's one thing to talk about your art in our classroom, but quite another to do with someone you've never met! I know it can make you feel nervous - I was nervous for all of you! I believe we did everything to get ready for the experience - matte and pack all of your work, get all of those darn papers filled out and turned in, take pictures of the art and practice the interview in class! I hope you felt we did all that we could to prepare you for the event (especially the first timers!).<br />
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I hope we can have conversations looking back on the experience. Let's look at the evaluation forms and see what comments were made about your pieces. Some of the evaluations I agree with, some I do not. This is really very typical for competitive art events. I've been putting my work in art competitions for many, many years, and I still can be surprised (happy or frustrated!) by a judge's opinion! And, I have been a judge in many different kinds of competitions, so I've also looked at the work from their perspective. Try to think back on times in our class when we didn't agree on art! Often when I've shown the Artist of the Day videos, some people will like it and some won't. And so it goes with judges' opinions. In the end, it's helpful if you can be open to what they are saying, but you have to take it with a grain of salt.<br />
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Sometimes in these competitive events we lose sight of what's really important about participating. Let me tell you what I think the great advantages of showing your work are:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>It propels you to do work and to get it ready for competition. There is an energy about that and it can be very positive and fulfilling. (Sometimes it can be very frustrating and exhausting to meet those deadlines too!)</li>
<li>I believe you strive to do your very best work when you enter competitions. I've seen so much growth in all of you, and I am super proud of the hard work you have put in making your art. </li>
<li>You see other artists' in the process, and how fun is that! So many ways to express yourself - I never tire of seeing what other people think of doing.</li>
<li>And from all of that, you grow as an artist. The more you do, the more seasoned you become. I've been entering contests for over 30 years, so you would think I'd be used to them! But I feel just like you - excited, anxious, nervous, joyful and frustrated. </li>
<li>The judges' opinions are just that - opinions, not "truth". We can be open to hearing what they have to say, but in the end you have to check in with your own truth about the work. </li>
</ul>
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So I wanted to celebrate your fantastic efforts by showcasing each VASE entry here in a special online exhibit of its own. Here are all of your pieces (in alphabetic order by artist). Hats off to all of you! I am incredibly proud of the risks you took, the problems you overcame and the beauty you discovered. Let's celebrate the accomplishments you achieved! </div>
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Yours truly,</div>
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Ms. Miller</div>
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Nazia Ahmed - Intersections</div>
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Cardboard sculpture</div>
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Jordan Anwer - Big Idea</div>
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Jedidiah Berhanu - Broken Yet Bold</div>
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Jedidiah Berhanu - Climb</div>
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Needlefelting</div>
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Alec Bob - Pop Art</div>
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Amber Brown - 524</div>
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Soneri Chaturvedi - Birds of a Feather</div>
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Soneri Chaturvedi - Cough Syrup</div>
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Sahiti Cherukuri - The Point of Speech</div>
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Colored pencil</div>
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Jennifer Chhoa - Pish Posh</div>
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Mandy Cho - Don't Lose Track of What Matters</div>
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Mandy Cho - In the Depths</div>
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Needlefelting</div>
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Ryan Desmond - Mr. Mogu's Insta-serrating Servicer</div>
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Paper & cloth mache, mixed media</div>
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Tara Dunlap - Consumed by Fire</div>
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Needlefelting</div>
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Meghan Duong - Masquerade</div>
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Paper and cloth mache, mixed media</div>
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Grace Hseu - The Night Sky</div>
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Cardboard sculpture</div>
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Maria Lopez - Beaucoup De Couleurs</div>
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Maria Lopez - Fashion Statement</div>
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Needlefelting</div>
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Felipe Ramos - In the Shadows</div>
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Marker</div>
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Brenda Segura - New Ending</div>
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Mixed media</div>
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Brenda Segura - Squared Belief</div>
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Hanna Sirak - The Little Things</div>
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Mixed media</div>
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<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-77029745959449299782012-01-22T20:44:00.003-06:002012-01-22T21:02:25.495-06:00Artist of the Week - Jean Paul Gaultier<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk</div>
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Exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art closes February 12, 2012</div>
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GO SEE IT!!!!</div>
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I just have to make a post about this exhibit. It is just spectacular! The way the show is hung is amazing and so perfect for the incredible fashion in the exhibit. When you step into the first gallery, there is a virtually animated image of Jean Paul along with the other mannequins. It is an eery virtual presence, but I thought it was just marvelous and mesmerizing. I was fascinated with this technological aspect of the exhibit. </div>
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As we wandered through the show, I noticed the conversations the viewers were having about the show. They were animated! People that were next to us, who we didn't know, were striking up conversations about the work they saw. I've never really seen so many people talking and interacting with the work quite like this show. I think perhaps it's because we all wear clothing and can relate to what we see (either thinking we could or couldn't wear a particular fashion statement). I really loved seeing so many people marveling at the time, effort and money that was put into each piece. Watch the video below to get a tiny glimpse of the exhibit.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/-7qX7pj5Lrc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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As a textile artist, I sewed a lot of my clothes in junior high and high school. During my weaving career, I had a line of handwoven clothing I sold, though I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've always loved fashion and as I came to the end of the exhibit (for my second time), I said to my husband, "I just don't push the fashion envelope like I used to!" It seriously makes me want to play (though my closet needs some new pieces to play with!) more with my clothing. We'll see. I suppose I marvel at how much fun he has had as well as how fearless he is in his art. As an art teacher, I just love this exhibit of divergent thinking! I am always encouraging my students to think more divergently - his divergent thinking is to the power of 10!!! A great inspiration, Jean Paul absolutely rocks the catwalk!</div>
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<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-2575718599618038012011-12-03T16:52:00.001-06:002011-12-03T21:03:09.548-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - Video Games and Importance of the Visual<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Wish I knew who to credit this image to! <br />If you discover it, let me know!)</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>OPENING A CAN OF WORMS!</b></span></div>
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It all started with an Artist of the Day that was about a video game. I had been thinking I wanted to bring in topics that my students were interested in, but I think my hesitation was that I didn't know much about video games myself.</div>
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I have played "Bejeweled" and "Fruit Ninja" on my iPhone (don't laugh!), and when the Nintendo DS was out, I went through a phase of playing games that strengthened my frontal cortex (being the age I am and reading about the new brain science), but though I am aware that many games are out there, I really don't know much about them. </div>
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Anyway, after the video was showed in class, one of the students made the comment that they didn't know that art was a part of the video game. What? Really??? How could they think that? This was puzzling to me, so Kim (my student teacher) and I decided to have the theme for the next week be the art of video games.</div>
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Kim (with the help of her gaming boyfriend) selected the videos for the week. The videos specifically featured information about how the artistic, cinematic, story, game play or sound was conceived and created to produce the games. They were:</div>
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<li><a href="http://youtu.be/-b4wFVeiMhA">Rage</a> - Making of the Sound and Art Video</li>
<li><a href="http://www.gametrailers.com/video/growing-the-sylvari-art-design/718807">Guild of wars 2</a> - Growing the Silvari: Art Design Revealed</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZClqsF7G4g&feature=relmfu">God of War</a> - Art of the Game</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.gametrailers.com/video/developer-diary-art-direction/21253">Assassins Creed</a> - Development Diary: Art Direction</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Aa7KlpGfLI">Rusty Hearts</a> - Development Diary 3 - Game Art</span></li>
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We showed the videos, Kim and I taking turns leading the classroom discussion after the viewing. We asked if they liked the game, the responses varied. Some liked the more fantasy or anime aesthetic, others the more realistic and dark environment aesthetic. We talked to them about the cinematic aspect of the games - what was important about that? They felt they were a part of the game. I pointed out how the video gaming industry was booming and was a huge opportunity for artists, as well as the need for those artists to continually be coming up with new, fresh and divergent concepts for the games. I asked why they got tired of games and wanted new ones: they completed all of the levels, they got bored, they wanted something new. </div>
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I prepared a short questionnaire for them to complete on Friday. Here are the questions with a few of their responses:</div>
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<li>Before we started looking at video games this week, did you think about the role art plays in it's creation? Why or why not?</li>
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<li>No, I never imagined how art worked in games, I just thought about technology.</li>
<li>Yes, but I thought teachers and adults didn't consider it art.</li>
<li>Well, I am not a big video person. I seriously didn't know art was really involved in video games.</li>
<li>Even though I like for games to have good graphics, I never thought of the art because I just like for it to be fun.</li>
<li>I knew it took a lot of art, but whenever I play video games I always think about either how good or bad the graphics are, but I never really realized all the thought that went into it.</li>
<li>As far as marketing goes, I do consider the artwork. I've never really thought about the effort and time it takes to create it.</li>
<li>Yes, because I've seen and researched character designs, weapon designs, and world designs for popular games I liked.</li>
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<li>How important is the art in your enjoyment of a game? Explain your opinion.</li>
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<li>It is very important because I enjoy looking at the background and interacting with objects in the game. </li>
<li>The art of the game is very important because it makes you feel like you're in the game.</li>
<li>Video games are fully visual experiences, and for the hardcore gamers especially, it has to be endlessly immersive for them.</li>
<li>Very. Nobody wants to play a game with terrible scenery, bad graphics and unrealistic characters.</li>
<li>Very important. If I don't like the art, I won't play it. If everything is too dark, I can't play it.</li>
<li>Good art and graphics, I think, are sometimes even more important than the game itself.</li>
<li>The art is the greatest part since it is what pulls you in first and what captivates you throughout.</li>
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<li>After we looked at the videos this week, do you think you will look at the artwork of games more closely?</li>
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<li>Yes, because after this week I will be more into games than I was before.</li>
<li>Yes, actually I already do!</li>
<li>Just a bit, because I've always enjoyed observing aspects of the visual elements of my games. </li>
<li>Maybe, only if it really amazes me.</li>
<li>Not more than I already do. While art is important in video games, there are other things that are just as important, if not more.</li>
<li>Yes. Some of the artwork from the videos has made me very interested in the field of graphic design.</li>
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<li>What kind of artwork do you prefer in a video game?</li>
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<li>I prefer artwork that looks realistic, but has the idea of fantasy. It's cool to see something not in our physical world come to life.</li>
<li>I prefer video games that have more realistic art work.</li>
<li>EVERYTHING and ALL! I have games ranging from anime style to Super Mario. But I usually prefer cartoony because I have a 10 year old brother and realistically drawn games are usually rated Mature.</li>
<li>I guess I like realistic with fantasy! It's a good combination!</li>
<li>I prefer artwork that relates to history, like in Assassin's Creed. Certain fantasy-like artworks in a video game also look nice, as in Zelda.</li>
<li>Clear, crisp images/graphics like most of the PS3 games have. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core & Final Fantasy XIII are my favorite games.</li>
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One of my first thoughts, after reading through their responses, was that they are VERY articulate about what they like or don't like about video games! Much more articulate than when they are addressing other forms of art like paintings, sculpture or installations. Interesting. Roughly half of the students didn't consider the art of the game before watching the videos for the week. That surprised me a lot initially, but I can see how the "game" and the competitive aspects of speed and accuracy could command most of their attention. What did please me was that after watching the videos, about 80% of them said they would be noticing the art of games after learning about what went into the production of them. And, not very surprising, 62% preferred realistic artwork, 18% fantasy, 14% cartoon-like artwork and 6% anime/manga artwork. With the resurgence of 3D movies and the availability of 3D televisions, the blurring between the virtual and real is becoming even blurrier! They want those realistic experiences in which they feel they are a part of the game.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWdsMvmVQM6tvsPxpa7DYvIkvNOdcnoX_WhLB2xjchl3DHMI0B-d7sCNoUItDxx8EQYorq8oadTRxCUUdd0OMY8qus8dZbOW6EXQIiPApNXLgRPPOaOebeerhIbApqnAFPeao_/s1600/Video-Games-Posters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWdsMvmVQM6tvsPxpa7DYvIkvNOdcnoX_WhLB2xjchl3DHMI0B-d7sCNoUItDxx8EQYorq8oadTRxCUUdd0OMY8qus8dZbOW6EXQIiPApNXLgRPPOaOebeerhIbApqnAFPeao_/s320/Video-Games-Posters.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
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Certainly this generation of gamers is driving a billion dollar industry. With improved technology, the realism these games create is truly astounding. As I was preparing this post, I decided to find out a little about the history of video games and stumbled on this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwjNy2ogUBw">video</a> put up just yesterday that chronicles both the hardware and software from 1958-2011. Six plus minutes long, it clearly shows the move from clunky controllers and pixelated game environments to body controlled games (Wii and Kinect) and amazing environments and characters. I understood why some students thought the art in a game was just technology - you see those little Pac Men gobbling things up and they look like computer programmed characters. Not very sophisticated, the early games had color and movement, but don't look very "artistic". Where the artists stepped in along the video game timeline, I'm not quite sure, but now the games are produced like a full feature film with game designers, environmental art designers, character designers, writers, modelers, programmers and marketers. Check out this <a href="http://www.vgchartz.com/">website</a> that lists the statistics of video game sales - unbelievable!</div>
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As I was cruising around the Internet looking at stuff, I found this <a href="http://danteinslovenia.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-if-tolkien-and-lewis-were-video.html">blogpost</a> that addresses the thorny topic of art and video games. Apparently, Roger Ebert proclaimed that "video games can never be art". The author of this blog, Dante Stack, believes (as I do) that video games are a new art form and could be <b>THE</b> art form of the gamer generation. Hard to argue with. And, as Mr. Stack points out in his post, this all gets back to what the definition of art is (enter the can of worms), etc., etc. Perhaps one reason it might not be considered art is that it's not exclusive to the rich and powerful as "art" has often been over the last several thousand years or so. What are some of the important aspects of art (the kind found in "the canon")? Canonical Art is thought to be:</div>
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<li style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u>Powerful</u></b> - But video games are powerful to the common man - they are democratic. </li>
<li style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u>Innovative</u> -</b> Technology is taking this art form of video games to an incredible level where reality and fantasy are blurred. </li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u>Persuasive</u> -</b> Because we are in the explosion, it's difficult to know how this form of art is changing the workings of the human mind - there is much controversy about this. I don't usually source <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy">Wikipedia</a>, but they have an interesting page about science's study of the pros and cons of playing video games if you want to check it out. So not only are we changed socially, we could be reframing the brain for the 21st century as well.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u>Beautiful</u></b> - Whether you are a gamer or not, these characters and environments are undeniably lush and gorgeous. Many of the games draw on aspects of art from other periods of art history such as the Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u>Intellectual</u></b> - The games of today are multi-faceted and multi-layered. They involve concentration, dexterity, skill, imagination and their own form of critical thinking skills. </span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u>Pleasurable</u></b> - Art through the ages has always had this element, whether it was created for love, religion or politics. Video games have evolved to a level that connects with most of the senses: physical, auditory and visual. With 4D, the sense of smell is the only sense missing in these realistic environments. </span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">So....what am I thinking about all of this? I'm thrilled. I see evolutionary change happening right before my very eyes. It takes me back to Captain Kirk's and the Starship Enterprise's mission, "to boldly to where no man has gone before"; that's where we are going. I sent the preview of this post to Kim to see if she had anything to add, as the co-creator of our experience, and she sent me three links from the TED Talks that are powerful. Get a cup of coffee, or a nice cold drink and settle down for a bit longer - these presentations are definitely worth the time. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/gabe_zichermann_how_games_make_kids_smarter.html">Gabe Zicherman - How games make kids smarter</a></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.ted.com/2010/10/08/fellows-friday-with-kellee-santiago/">How video games are an interactive form</a></span><br /><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html">Jane McGonigal - Gaming can make a better world</a></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">This week's activity has changed me. In the end, I am truly inspired and encouraged. I am a believer of the power of man, the power to reinvent himself yet again. My own generation was a transformative one, living during civil rights movements, the Vietnam war, Woodstock, women's liberation and the power of peace and love. This generation, the one I teach, is going to change the world in an unbelievable way. I'm glad I will be able to see what they will do. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;"></span></span></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-13974640059993619692011-11-20T09:10:00.001-06:002011-11-20T12:01:42.070-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - Letter to the Artist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG3p2ftiF5XPm7RahX17J_RR6_ktB1vcIblADUz7EFxbj9ljtO7qdVk0YWuHrvcjyTCU9iY4Lh49zDgwQ1YpZNtzsvomJitlz_OvCxDMwi3haUMdMaY85O2R_oZUoNS1hE49qh/s1600/writing-a-letter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG3p2ftiF5XPm7RahX17J_RR6_ktB1vcIblADUz7EFxbj9ljtO7qdVk0YWuHrvcjyTCU9iY4Lh49zDgwQ1YpZNtzsvomJitlz_OvCxDMwi3haUMdMaY85O2R_oZUoNS1hE49qh/s320/writing-a-letter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Last week I attended the Texas Art Education Association's annual state convention in Galveston, TX. It was a great conference! I reconnected with art teacher friends, got inspired by the great keynote speakers, and discovered some new lesson ideas to take back into the classroom. One of the sessions I attended, "Exploring Aesthetic Choices", was presented by Dr. Carrie Markello who teaches art education classes at the University of Houston. I really enjoyed her presentation. One of her observations about her pre-service art ed students was the lack of wonder they seemed to have. They were interested and diligent in completing the work for the course, but only because they had to jump through the hoops to get their credit. She asked herself the question, "How can I instill a desire to wonder in my students?" She admitted that she did not have the answer, but her question led her to creating an aesthetic activity called "Letter to the Artist".</div>
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She asked her students to choose a work of art they like and then write a letter to the artist, commenting on the piece and asking the artist questions they might have about the artist, the process or the work of art itself. I liked the activity a lot, and decided to do this with my own students. I've been bringing artists to them all year in my Artist of the Day activity; I was curious to find out what artists they would select given the chance. I'll share four of their letters with you in this post. (Note: a little bit of editing has been done in grammar, punctuation and word selection.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Pn8jrktRz0qyWD7g9fGuyUMmR9qLYAuo7mrPhh2DlIDgIPnt6WeiupLQWk-ucv4hmRQt_Qg5ep4JFSNwQ8mFoJNZuB8gPexg_-uSVVPloCgT4SD4XtESAvd1MfFtOuLeVc5R/s1600/Dog+tattoo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Pn8jrktRz0qyWD7g9fGuyUMmR9qLYAuo7mrPhh2DlIDgIPnt6WeiupLQWk-ucv4hmRQt_Qg5ep4JFSNwQ8mFoJNZuB8gPexg_-uSVVPloCgT4SD4XtESAvd1MfFtOuLeVc5R/s320/Dog+tattoo.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
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<i>Tattoo Art</i>, <a href="http://www.katvond.net/index.php">Kat Von D</a> (My student wrote: This Artist is My Favorite Artist and Type of Art, Tattoos)</div>
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Dear Katherine Von Drachenberg,</div>
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I love your work. It is my greatest inspiration in life. I've always wanted a tattoo, but my parents always say, "Over their dead body." This drives me to want one even more because I want to show them that tattoos aren't just drawing on your body. I think tattoos are a way that you can express yourself and show others what you feel and like. I also think it's a way to stand out. I think tattoos are an art that everyone can see - it's like something you can take with you forever. I think that tattooing is a way for people to ask questions and wonder what the tattoo is supposed to mean.</div>
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I like how you always ask someone that goes into your tattoo shop, "What does this tattoo mean to you?" or "Why are you getting this certain tattoo?" My 3 questions for you are:</div>
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<li>What inspired you to be a tattoo artist?</li>
<li>What you have become if you hadn't started tattooing?</li>
<li>What was the meaning of your first tattoo?</li>
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Sincerely,</div>
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Delette</div>
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I was not surprised that a student chose a tattoo artist - tattoos are so prevalent today! I don't have a tattoo myself (I don't think I could commit to an image for life!), but I recognize the power of the art form. I did not realize until I looked up the <a href="http://www.designboom.com/history/tattoo_history.html">history of tattoos</a> that they started about 5,000 years ago! I used to think they are were a passing fad, but they are obviously here to stay.</div>
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<i>Seascape near Les Saintes Maries de la Mer, </i>Vincent van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas</div>
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51 x 64 cm, <a href="http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?lang=nl">Van Gogh Museum</a>, Amsterdam</div>
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Dear Vincent van Gogh,</div>
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I like this painting because it reminds me of the past. When I was younger, during the summer I would go up to Wilmette, Illinois to visit my grandma and grandpa. My grandfather had a sail boat that we would go on every day. The waves of the ocean remind me of the waves of Lake Michigan, when I would sit off the side of the boat and run my fingers through the dark blue water. I like the colors you used to highlight how the light hits the water. This painting brings me back to the good times of the past.</div>
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<li>What inspired you to paint this painting?</li>
<li>Were you at this location when you painted this?</li>
<li>Have you had a past experience that you can relate this painting to?</li>
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Thank you for your time.</div>
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Sincerely,</div>
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Julia</div>
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My heart swells! This is one of the goals I have for my students in this activity: that they can find a work of art that relates to their life. Marcel Duchamp expresses it beautifully:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">― <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/25418.Marcel_Duchamp" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">Marcel Duchamp</span></a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;"> </span></div>
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After my students leave their high school Art I class, I want them to continue to decipher, connect to and interpret the art they see. More importantly, I want them to know that they have the <i><b>power</b></i> to decide for themselves what the work means; that they will have the skills and confidence to express their opinion.</div>
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<i><a href="http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/">Before I Die</a>, </i> Candy Chang, 2011, 41' x 8', chalkboard paint, stencils, spray paint</div>
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Dear Candy Chang,</div>
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Your installation of the "Before I Die" wall was one I found particularly intriguing, thought-provoking and altogether an exquisite example of creativity and it's effect on a community. The question itself is a very loaded one, and it's interesting to see the different answers - funny, heartwarming and crazy - all written in broad daylight.</div>
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I can't help but wonder if you chose New Orleans for this project because of it's history and hardship with Hurricane Katrina? If so, this wall would not only symbolize the desires and longings of a random group of people, but a group of people who have seen the long-lasting effects of death on their community and have the ability to appreciate life in all the chaotic glory it deserves. This would, in my opinion, only further its purpose as both a point of interest as well as a reminder of the gratefulness we sometimes lose in pursuit of material and worldly objects in life.</div>
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Having grown up in the current generation, I suspect that this wall is often, in light terms, repurposed by teenagers with accessibility to graffiti-making tools. Is this true or false? Though a project like this would seemingly command a great deal of respect, thoughtfulness is often wasted on the youth, and I would suspect globs of red paint proclaiming 'S.W.'s love for D.W' is not far from the realm of normality in such installations. </div>
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Lastly, what, if any, type of media or influence struck this idea in you? There is no denying the innovation of such work as either a product of a creative mind or an external muse.</div>
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Sincerely,</div>
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Brenna</div>
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Wow! First, I was really surprised (and thrilled!) that one of my students found this great artwork. I knew about it, but it got buried deep in my brain somewhere, so I was really happy to be re-acquainted with the installation. Brenna's thinking shows a high level of thoughtfulness, observation and curiosity. A quiet student in the classroom, I would not have known the depth of her thinking had I not given her this assignment. </div>
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<i><a href="http://www.all-about-india.com/Indian-Body-Art.html">Henna Body Art</a>, </i>Artist: Anyone who can make Henna, Materials: "cone" and a blend of leaves from the henna plant</div>
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Dear Artist of Henna,</div>
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Hi! My name is Cynthia, and I am very interested in the Indian tradition of Henna which is focused primarily on the women of the house. I really love this type of art. Most people don't consider it to be art, but I do. One of the really cool things I love about henna is that the finished product looks so delicate. There are many small and intricate details. This particular picture of henna is one of my personal favorites. It looks like the art is flowing from her fingertips up to her forearm.</div>
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Henna makes me feel happy. I wish I could make this art. I've never had henna done on my body; my reason is because I don't want to mess with the Indian tradition. I have many questions about henna, but I'm afraid I can only ask you three of my very important questions.</div>
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<li>When henna is being applied with the "cone", does it hurt the women in any sort of way?</li>
<li>Is it possible that non-Indian girls could get henna without disrespecting the Indian traditions?</li>
<li>My third and final question is, how much time does it take to make henna that has very delicate, small, and intricate detailing?</li>
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Sincerely,</div>
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Cynthia - A Fan of Henna</div>
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Oh, my! A response from another quiet Art I student, I am truly blown away by not only her choice, but the sensitivity and respect for another culture's traditions (Cynthia is Hispanic). I was surprised to see Henna show up, but delightfully! </div>
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Most of my students didn't turn in their work on Friday, the deadline for the assignment, so out of the 100 student responses I was expecting, I got 26. Out of the ones I did receive, there were letters to several van Goghs, a couple of Picassos, Walt Disney, Monet, three da Vincis (yes - the Mona Lisa showed up!), Steven Moffat (for Dr. Who), Tanemura Arina (a manga artist), and some artists from Deviant Art. It was interesting to me how the sampling was from current pop culture <b>and</b> from the great artists of the past. I loved the divergent thinking in some of their choices. </div>
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"Homework in art? Why do we have homework in art?", they ask! I'm not sure they would really understand if I tried to explain it to them, but this homework assignment is important to me. It enables me to find out so much more about what they are thinking, what they are interested in, and how they feel about the art that <b><i>they</i> </b>choose, not what I choose. I am grateful to Dr. Markello for this aesthetic assignment idea. It's super juicy!</div>
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<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-82135882806011191992011-11-05T16:10:00.002-05:002011-11-06T10:51:37.154-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - What is the Purpose of Art?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">What is the purpose of art?</span></div>
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This was the aesthetic question of the week and I had help from my student teacher, Kim, that has joined me for the rest of the semester. It's been fun introducing her to one of my favorite parts of my art classroom - Artist of the Day! I explained the aesthetic project I'm doing with my students, and she was eager to lend a helping hand with it, so she chose the video lineup for the week knowing what the aesthetic question was. (We only had four this week because one day we had a shortened schedule for our end of the football season pep rally!) I thought Kim selected some wonderful artists that might challenge the students' ideas about the purpose of art. This was the lineup:</div>
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<li>Monday - Marcel Duchamp's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIApXD-TdDs">'Fountain'</a> installed in a bathroom in Liverpool</li>
<li>Tuesday - Damien Hirst's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g49gGKV7Epc">'For the Love of God'</a> </li>
<li>Wednesday - James Turrell's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHFOYp1tkQA">'Skyspace"</a></li>
<li>Thursday - no video</li>
<li>Friday - 3 short videos of Golan Levin's work:</li>
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<li>Double-Take <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6vFB580-SM">(Snout)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp_Cg09chO8">Interstitial Fragment Processor</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_gfzx8DQx0">Scrapple Installation</a></li>
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On Friday, after viewing the videos, they were given a handout that asked these questions:<br />
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We saw 4 videos this week that challenge the viewer's ideas of the purpose of art. What do you think each of these artists' purpose for their art was?<br />
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<li>Marcel Duchamp - urinal - "Fountain" -</li>
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<li>Damien Hirst - diamond skull - "For the Love of God" -</li>
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<li>James Turrell - sky reflector - "Sky Watch" -</li>
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<li>Golan Levin - mechanical eye - "Double-Take (Snout)" -</li>
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What do you think the purpose of art is?<br />
How did these artists challenge your own ideas about what art is for?</blockquote>
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At the end of the day, Kim and I eagerly sat down to see what their responses were. I have to say after 7 weeks of asking them to write down their opinions, they are gradually going deeper with their thinking. I'll list a few of their responses for the reader:<br />
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"Fountain", Marcel Duchamp, readymade, 1917</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b;">What do you think each of these artists' purpose for their art was?</span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b;">Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" -</span></b><br />
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<li>he chose the urinal to create controversy</li>
<li>use it for humor</li>
<li>to challenge the concept of art itself by presenting something most people wouldn't expect</li>
<li>to show that the idea behind the art is more valuable than the art itself</li>
<li>to show that art doesn't have to be skillful or beautiful or even professional</li>
<li>(one student replied: I thought it was not art and not a good idea to do that)</li>
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"For the Love of God", Damien Hirst, 2007, platinum, diamonds, human teeth</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b;">Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God" -</span></b></div>
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<li>to show that death isn't a demise, but a fabulous beginning of something</li>
<li>riches are useless when it comes to death</li>
<li>he wanted to make a visual metaphor of death's beauty and how when a person dies, their last memories and feelings will be forever frozen</li>
<li>art can be very valuable</li>
<li>death costs a lot (Ha! Out of the mouths of babes! If they only knew!)</li>
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"Skyspace", James Turrell, </div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b;">James Turrell's "Skyspace" -</span></b></div>
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<li>to see the sky in a different way</li>
<li>a way to bring the sky closer to you</li>
<li>to show nature is calming</li>
<li>you can imagine being in the sky</li>
<li>that the sky is art, the universe is art, and everything is art</li>
<li>to give a persona a sense of solitude that only nature can bring and that can't usually be experienced in normal city life</li>
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"Double-Taker (Snout)", Golan Levin <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">with Lawrence Hayhurst, Steven Benders and Fannie White, (2008) interactive installation</span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b;">Golan Levin's "Snout" -</span></b></div>
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<li>challenged people's belief that art was something for you to look at, and made so that it was looking at you</li>
<li>that technology can be made into art</li>
<li>humor on the whole security watch system</li>
<li>art can be fun</li>
<li>to show that someone is always watching</li>
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And, the larger questions for the day.....</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b;">What do you think the purpose of art is?</span></b></div>
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<li>to express yourself and your talents</li>
<li>art serves as <i>anything </i>that evokes real, true emotions, whether they be good or bad</li>
<li>the purpose of art is to show that creativity can be endless, and that anyone can create it</li>
<li>I think the purpose of art is to let your conscious and subconscious mind let it's thoughts be reproduced through physical form</li>
<li>to entertain people and keep them asking questions</li>
<li>to express a feeling or emotion without the barrier of language or words</li>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b;">How did these artists challenge your own ideas about what art is for?</span></b></div>
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<li>it made me think that art can be taken to a different level of critical thinking</li>
<li>art is more than just a drawing</li>
<li>by showing that art does not have to be amazing</li>
<li>they made me think more about what they're trying to say and I feel like art teaches me new ways to look at things</li>
<li>they showed me that art has no limit</li>
<li>their artwork is not traditional, but is testing the boundaries of creativity and originality</li>
<li>they made you think; art doesn't necessarily make you feel good - it just makes you feel</li>
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Awesome! Admittedly, I just picked a few responses out of the many, but some of these responses were repeated frequently. There were some students who didn't think the selections were art, and yes, some thought they were boring. But those were in the small minority. The large majority responded in a way that lets me know that their preconceived notions about art when they first entered the class are now expanding. Artist of the Day has got them thinking, and that's the most I can hope for.</div>
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So, I asked my student teacher what <i>she</i> thought about Artist of the Day and this is what she said:</div>
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I think it's a good way to introduce a lot of different artists to the class that are not usually covered. It's also a really good way to expose the students to the artists' processes and ideas. When I was in art class I don't remember being able to hear the artist talk about their concepts and how they go about their work. I really like the theme of the week - it helps organize the thought process that lies beneath the idea of the artwork. And, it's a good way to show them more than one artist within that question for the week, so the students get a broader view of different interpretations of a concept or idea. I am interested in continuing this when I have my own classroom. And, I don't think this is good just for high school, but would also be great for elementary students.</blockquote>
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Kim & me</div>
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Nice! Passing on a passion (for me, my Artist of the Day) is not always an easy thing to do. We are all unique and different, and what I love, others may not. It pleases me that Kim has caught a little of the fever for Artist of the Day. I get to see it six times a day and I love every minute of it. Plus, I love it when the kids are as enthralled as I am in someone's work. It's a time when we can come together in wonder and amazement.</div>
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<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-1280133393381158442011-10-29T08:41:00.002-05:002011-11-06T09:18:08.104-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - Does Art Have to be Beautiful?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Student A - Happy </div>
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My students and I have been entertaining the question "Does art have to be beautiful?" I have been observing their reactions to art they don't like (it's boring or dumb). It's not just that they are responding to the visual, but also to the meaning and emotions that are in an artist's work. I wondered if they were able to connect to their emotions and feelings in the art they made, perhaps they could relate to the feelings of other artists. I came up with an activity that really seems to have connected my young artists with their own feelings expressed through their art.</div>
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I asked my Art I students to create two artworks: one representing happy emotions and one sad emotions. We used oil pastels as a quick, expressive material. I asked them not to draw something recognizable, but to try to draw what their emotions might look like. Then I asked them to answer four questions about their drawing. I selected these four (out of over sixty 9th & 10th grade students) for their artistic expression and their responses. </div>
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Here are Student A's responses:</div>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Does your art have to be beautiful to be meaningful to you?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">Your heart doesn't have to be beautiful to be meaningful to you just as life doesn't have to be great to have importance.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Do you think your art reflects your emotions successfully?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">I think the first picture reflects my feelings better because it's more expressive of life as a whole. </span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Which work do you like the best and why do you like it the best?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">The second picture is too true to be true. Being average humans, we don't usually go a day without expressing griefs and sadness, making it more real.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Do you think making art in this way could help you deal with emotions?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">I think I can reflect my emotions through art successfully and organically, but when we get assignments that I can't relate to, it's harder to do so. This can help with emotions for sure.</span></li>
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Student A - Sad</div>
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<i><b>(NOTE to teacher self: try to make all assignments engaging to all students! Is this possible?)</b></i></div>
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Student B - Happy</div>
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Student B's responses:</div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;"><b>Does your art have to be beautiful to be meaningful to you?</b></span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">No, just as long as you think it's beautiful, it doesn't matter</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;"><b>Do you think your art reflects your emotions successfully?</b></span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">Yes, I think it does.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;"><b>Which work do you like the best and why do you like it the best?</b></span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">The bad drawing because when I'm mad there are storms going on.</span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;"><b>Do you think making art in this way could help you deal with emotions?</b></span></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">Yes, because you can color different types of ways.</span></li>
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Student B - Sad</div>
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<i><b>(Is it possible by connecting to their emotions in making, that they might be able to extrapolate to other artist's emotions?)</b></i></div>
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Student C - Happy</div>
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Student C's responses:</div>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Does your art have to be beautiful to be meaningful to you?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">No, it does not - it can be ugly and still mean something.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Do you think your art reflects your emotions successfully?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">My art does reflect my emotion.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Which work do you like the best and why do you like it best?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">The sad one cause that's how I am in the inside.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Do you think making art in this way could help you deal with emotions?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">Yes, it would help me a lot.</span></li>
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Student C - Sad</div>
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Student D - Happy</div>
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Student D's responses:</div>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Does your art have to be beautiful to be meaningful to you?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">No, it just has to mean what you feel, no matter what it looks like.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Do you think your art reflects your emotions successfully?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">Yes, because when I think of sad, I think of grey, black and red. I think these emotionless colors mean pain. When I think of happy feelings, I think of vibrant colors that pop out. I think blue, yellow and green means happy and light pink is peaceful.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Which work do you like the best and why do you like it best?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">I like the sad one because it might be simple, but when I look at that one I feel empty and sad, which is the way I intended it to be.</span></li>
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<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599;">Do you think making art in this way could help you deal with emotions?</span></b></li>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c;">Yes, I do; it gives you a way to express your feelings in a good, positive way.</span></li>
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Student D - Sad</div>
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This activity, which helped to connect them to their feelings seemed worthwhile. Elliot Eisner says:</div>
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"The distinction between feeling and knowing is deeply ingrained in Western culture. It is also deeply rooted in our educational culture. Relatively few theoreticians dealing with epistemological issues in education underscore the importance of feeling as a way of knowing." (Eisner, p. 115)</blockquote>
The arts are a perfect place to reconnect our students with their feelings. As they reflect on their own emotions and use those emotions to create, my beginning art students hopefully are starting to understand (know) that those feelings are a powerful place to tap into for their creative expression. Perhaps through connecting with their own feelings, they will begin to recognize other artists' emotional messages in art and be more open when considering art they may not like. <br />
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This exercise works on another level as well, because I want my art students to come away from their art class ( because it is possibly the ONLY art class they will ever take) with the understanding that art can heal the viewer as well as the maker. Having an outlet of expression, like art, to mediate between the physical and emotional can be of benefit to them in the future. The creative and expressive experience is ingrained in us, and sometimes we just need to know how to tap into that power.<br />
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Imagery is a function of the right side of the brain. Every experience we have and the emotions that accompany it are perceived by the body and the right brain as imagistic sensations. Although any of the senses can produce an imagistic impression, visual imargery, which can be anything form a recognizable object to an abstract shape or color is usually (for sighted people) the strongest of these sensate impressions. That is why when we feel angry, we often say we see red. When we are sad, we may say we feel blue. Or when we near the end of a difficult ordeal, we may say we finallly see a light at the end of the tunnel. These are prime examples of the universal imagery we all share and associate with particular feelings or emotions. (Ganim, p. 10)</blockquote>
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So as maker or viewer, finding and relating to these universal images can be exciting and healing. As I looked at my students' work, I was amazed at the variety of their expression. Their images are visually diverse yet spring from a common place. I'm going to hang this work up in the art room as an installation and we'll have a conversation about it. It will be interesting to hear what they say. I hope they are beginning to understand the power of art.<br />
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Resources: </div>
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Eisner, E.E. (1998) The kind of schools we need</div>
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Ganim, B. & Fox, S. ((1999) Visual journaling: going deeper than words.</div>
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<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-54692058227481758712011-10-21T18:29:00.002-05:002011-11-06T09:18:25.898-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - Artist of the Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I feel a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz this week...at the end when she wakes up in bed, surrounded by the ones she loves (who strangely look like the ones in her "dream") and she realizes everything she wanted was right there in her own back yard. So it is with my Artist of the Day videos and the aesthetic experience.<br />
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I started Artist of the Day last spring semester as a result of divine inspiration - the idea just came to me, possibly the day before the second semester started: show a short video (under 5 minutes) of artists' work at the beginning of class each day. Last semester I stabbed around, searching for interesting, dynamic videos that I thought would capture my students' attention and imagination. I didn't use it as an instructional tool particularly, but <i>was</i> interested in finding out what they were interested in. It was a hit. Even students who were hard to engage would watch the videos, and I LOVED seeing them six times a day! <br />
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Fast forward to this semester. I have launched into an effort to include more aesthetics activities in the classroom for my graduate semester project. We have been reading Elliot Eisner in my coursework, and when I got to his essays about aesthetics, I stopped in my tracks. I felt as though I had strayed away from teaching the students about aesthetics, that we were blazing down the trail of making art without stopping to consider nuance and meaning. My last four posts have recapped beginning aesthetics activities: liking, finding the words, asking 'is it art?' and ranking art. This project has inspired me to create weekly themes for the videos, and not only was I hoping that my students were thinking more deeply about art, I was also taking Artist of the Day to a new level.<br />
<br />
Last Friday I gave midterm exams and included a question about the Artist of the Day videos. I wanted to find out what they were thinking about the videos. What else might they be thinking beyond the activities we've been doing together the last month? I gave them the beginning of 4 sentences to complete (they could choose two of the four to respond to):<br />
<blockquote>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The thing I like most about Artist of the Day is....</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Artist of the Day helps me....</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Artist of the Day is fun because....</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I wish Artist of the Day was....</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
Their responses really surprised me - truly! I don't think I realized that Artist of the Day was impacting them on such a deep level (hence the Dorothy analogy). Aesthetics learning was happening and I didn't even know it! Here are a few of their responses:<br />
<br />
<b>The thing I like most about Artist of the Day is....</b><br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>it wakes me up</li>
<li>it makes me think of art in my everyday life</li>
<li>it gets my creative juices flowing and gives me inspiration</li>
<li>seeing how people can create magnificent stuff just from their imagination</li>
<li>it inspires me to have a more open mind</li>
<li>it encourages divergent thinking</li>
<li>it's relaxing and entertaining</li>
</ul>
<div>
<b>Artist of the Day helps me....</b></div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>learn something new</li>
<li>meet new artists </li>
<li>open up the creative side of my mind to get ready for class</li>
<li>wind down from another class</li>
<li>analyze art better</li>
<li>challenge my ideas of what art is</li>
<li>become more cultured</li>
<li>find inspiration to further improve my artwork</li>
<li>by inspiring me to be a better artist</li>
<li>by giving me something to look forward to</li>
</ul>
<div>
<b>Artist of the Day is fun because....</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>each day it shows divergent thinking</li>
<li>it expands my horizons</li>
<li>it gives me new ideas to make unusual art</li>
<li>I get to see the people in my class vote for the kind of art they like that week</li>
<li>it's a behind the scenes look at how an artist makes artwork</li>
<li>it shows that we are all unique through our methods, creations and differences</li>
<li>it gets me in the mood for art</li>
<li>it's the only thing that amazes me</li>
<li>it takes just a little time and helps you understand so much more about the world</li>
</ul>
<div>
<b>I wish Artist of the Day was....</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>something we could talk about the whole period</li>
<li>more fun, more interactive, that we could try what the artists are doing</li>
<li>more interactive so students could tell the teacher what artist they like most and find a video on them</li>
<li>longer!</li>
<li>was ME</li>
</ul>
<div>
Wow! Talk about a happy art teacher!!! Very few of my 170 students had a disgruntled view of the videos. Some thought that some of the videos were boring (I already knew this - they have a high need for excitement). There are times I don't get it right - BORING, they tell me. But that's OK, seeing a variety of work is what matters. Pushing both our comfort zones has its rewards.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And, how Artist of the Day matters to them (and to me) leads me back to Eisner's ideas about art education (pgs. 97-99). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote>
I am interested in the contributions arts education makes to both the arts and to life beyond them.<br />
1. Arts education should enable students to understand that there is a connection between the content and form that the arts take and the culture and time in which the work was created. <br />
2. Arts education should refine the student's awareness of the aesthetic qualities in art and life.<br />
3. Students should acquire a feel for what it means to transform their ideas, images, and feelings into an art form.<br />
4. There should be a willingness to imagine possibilities that are not now, but which might become. A desire to explore ambiguity, to be willing to forestall premature closure in pursing resolutions, and the ability to recognize and accept the multiple perspectives and resolutions that work in the arts celebrate.</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I believe Artist of the Day hits the mark on all points, using a 5 to 10 minute activity to help them understand what's happening in art at the beginning of the 21st century, giving them opportunity to express their opinion, getting them inspired to practice more divergent thinking in their own art expression and opening them to the unbelievable variety and diversity of art being created and being shown on the Internet for anyone to see - here, now, relevant. Artist of the Day rules!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Resources:</div>
<div>
Eisner, E. E. (1998) The Kind of Schools We Need </div>
</div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-66220332707801035832011-10-15T17:20:00.002-05:002011-10-15T20:25:55.048-05:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - Ranking Art<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvBMGjLbneUa_aPErYLfaXy058St27z9Fitf3OTKztShqqp2e68tT8loEKubBuNcMINHJYAEkesUEh00Kouo6A13y7JplB4b8eEg0yauVxn0P7Xp_1zVuS4_UI6Nhms89zUJTR/s1600/Mona-Lisa-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvBMGjLbneUa_aPErYLfaXy058St27z9Fitf3OTKztShqqp2e68tT8loEKubBuNcMINHJYAEkesUEh00Kouo6A13y7JplB4b8eEg0yauVxn0P7Xp_1zVuS4_UI6Nhms89zUJTR/s320/Mona-Lisa-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="color: #f3f3f3;">Mona Lisa</i><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">, Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-1519, oil on poplar, 30 in x 21 in, Musée de Louvre, Paris</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
This week's aesthetic activity was object ranking from
Marilyn G. Stewart's book, <i><b>'Thinking through Aesthetics'</b></i>. My students did this activity in small groups but each student had a form to record their individual opinion. They looked at a collection of artworks and gave them a rank depending on how they valued each object. Not only did they have to rank the art from 1 to 6, they also had to provide a reason for their determination. I have a large art postcard collection and was able to make a like selection for each table grouping (typical images in this post): 1 master painting card (i.e. da Vinci, Michelangelo), 1 Zulu telephone basket card, 1 Van Gogh card, 1 Matisse card, 1 Ansel Adams card and 1 contemporary/minimalistic sculpture card. I wanted them to have a diverse selection of art within the six cards and hoped some of the work would be familiar while other work would be new to them. I also wanted to find out how painting, sculpture, photography and basketry would be ranked against each other.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPg3rq4tnSpI2DlLmkuEO0NC9uiOZRyPlA16v6jfyENfqoW9thzZtThX4_IBgpXCjLQBBOjzJa7-SB71Cez9KYp0EbDWPUSelwsR4WmcDwdED3Mh0TNHrZAhNH-vxdjzLJaLy/s1600/zulu+basket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPg3rq4tnSpI2DlLmkuEO0NC9uiOZRyPlA16v6jfyENfqoW9thzZtThX4_IBgpXCjLQBBOjzJa7-SB71Cez9KYp0EbDWPUSelwsR4WmcDwdED3Mh0TNHrZAhNH-vxdjzLJaLy/s320/zulu+basket.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #f3f3f3; text-align: center;">
Zulu telephone wire basket</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
It was serendipitous that my reading for my grad class last week revealed a passage from Elliot Eisner's book <b><i>'The Kind of Schools We Need'</i></b> that lined up with my activity. He believes art education is vital in teaching students to use an aesthetic frame in order to respond to the things they see and hear. As a result of providing these experiences, they would be able to speak with intelligence and sensitivity when they talk about art. "It means that they will know not only what they like or respond to in a work - or a walk, for that matter - but why. This means that they will have reasons for their preferences, they will be able to bring to a work what they need to render the work intelligible." I was excited to see what this activity would reveal to them as well as to me!<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs99kQjcRhZOewPPaz3d7sFes4iNWV4jXTR6sTphSaTrxx-SnOzYWFGVZFY39wJOsFloNGtfC838G9HNw45neUquEV_kHBjYR5NvZ3ns-cvmHfF_QGdivAjR4RILwMpoI4ecYg/s1600/Ansel+Adams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs99kQjcRhZOewPPaz3d7sFes4iNWV4jXTR6sTphSaTrxx-SnOzYWFGVZFY39wJOsFloNGtfC838G9HNw45neUquEV_kHBjYR5NvZ3ns-cvmHfF_QGdivAjR4RILwMpoI4ecYg/s320/Ansel+Adams.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #f3f3f3; text-align: center;">
<i>Tetons and the Snake River</i>, Ansel Adams, 1942, gelatin silver photograph</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
There was another serendipitous event last week - one of my colleagues in my graduate program came to observe my class for a day. It worked out that Melissa visited the day I was going to conduct the ranking art activity. We could both learn something from the experience! I asked her to write her observation of the activity to include in my blog post:
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<blockquote>
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One observation I had that was very interesting was during
your aesthetics assignment. You gave your
students six photos of famous artwork in different mediums and asked them to
rate the photos and explain why. Some
students thought there were “right” and “wrong” answers and worked as a table
to figure it out. Others voiced their
opinions but had a hard time explaining why they gave a specific rating. Some of their explanations were:</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span>Because I like it</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span>I hate it</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span>It is creative</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span>I like eagles</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
I
thought it was interesting that they had a hard time elaborating the “why” in
their responses (e.g., why they liked it, why they thought it was creative,
etc.).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
This
shows me how important it is to have students critique artwork at a young
age. It helps them articulate why they
like or dislike things more effectively-- something they can use in life.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">It is wonderful that you are having your
students work on aesthetics assignments, like the one stated above, to help
them think critically about artwork.</span></blockquote>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM_oaRIa6jTLKW_vvPGZOfY-tC3qDp05KUv63TrrGGCrOSvcs_AaaTMKD_hRYGEjohOj8XNY3uFoRMoiYHLbE63B8m0szpibrTANg13v3H7lQPSWNfLD5lFCiD6n6VSRUCwWQS/s1600/Van_Gogh-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM_oaRIa6jTLKW_vvPGZOfY-tC3qDp05KUv63TrrGGCrOSvcs_AaaTMKD_hRYGEjohOj8XNY3uFoRMoiYHLbE63B8m0szpibrTANg13v3H7lQPSWNfLD5lFCiD6n6VSRUCwWQS/s320/Van_Gogh-11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="color: #f3f3f3;">Bedroom at Arles</i><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">, Vincent van Gogh, 1889, oil on canvas 28 3/8 in x 35 3/8 in, Musée d'Orsay, Paris</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Once they put pen to paper, they actually were pretty articulate about their reasons, even if they couldn't elaborate on them further. There were LOTS of reasons, both pro and con about each artwork. Here are some of their reasons (high and low ranking) for the "categories" of artwork they looked at:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Mona Lisa</b> - (high) by da Vinci, famous, a favorite, beautiful - (low) just a woman, she never smiles!, normal looking, common picture</li>
<li><b>Ansel Adams</b> - (high) captured the moment, dramatic mood, great composition - (low) I can take photos, needs color, just a bunch of mountains</li>
<li><b>Zulu baskets</b> - (high) colorful, creative, took a long time to make - (low) ugly, boring, not important, I could do it</li>
<li><b>van Gogh</b> - (high) more free, original, it's a classic, love texture and color - (low) don't like the color, not the best, doesn't look like art </li>
<li><b>Contemporary sculpture</b> - (high) simple design, unique, creative - (low) lacks color, don't know what it is, irrelevant, I've seen better</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJlQJ1dTDltrVCCUJS8Ps5HxapYVEu0LEfzSHIHbcyApMXJhBydJXZtqBhmIHnWyTE3sSFy13oamwh1fgGp3iZr9kg5b7vKSBC_yKZdlHlQd-Mhu525AwBmxa8va3cHE8cKpMl/s1600/Night+Road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJlQJ1dTDltrVCCUJS8Ps5HxapYVEu0LEfzSHIHbcyApMXJhBydJXZtqBhmIHnWyTE3sSFy13oamwh1fgGp3iZr9kg5b7vKSBC_yKZdlHlQd-Mhu525AwBmxa8va3cHE8cKpMl/s320/Night+Road.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: #f3f3f3;">Night Road, </i><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Anthony Caro, 1972, welded steel, painted, 93 5/16 in x 27 1/8 in x 60 7/16 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston</span></div>
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After I gathered all of their opinions, I analyzed their rankings to see how the baskets fared against the photography against the sculpture and painting. It was interesting, and for those of you who are into polls and statistics it is a telling snapshot of their opinion: </div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>van Gogh: 61% in top ranking (1-3) - 39% in bottom ranking (4-6)</li>
<li>Ansel Adams: 60% in top ranking (1-3) - 40% in bottom ranking (4-6)</li>
<li>Zulu baskets: 32% in top ranking (1-3) - 68% in bottom ranking (4-6)</li>
<li>Contemporary sculpture: 29% in top ranking (1-3) - 71% in bottom ranking (4-6)</li>
</ul>
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I agree with Eisner and Melissa about the importance of giving students the opportunity to voice their opinion about what they like in art. But I learned some other things as well. Not too surprising to me was their favoring of van Gogh's painting and Ansel Adams's photography over the more utilitarian Zulu baskets and conceptual contemporary sculpture. Their rankings showed a preference for work with a strong narrative in an artwork, it gives them something to grab onto. They love color and have some awareness and appreciation for historically great works of art. More education and knowledge about the techniques and cultural background of basketry could change their perception and appreciation. My experience with the general public about contemporary art reflects in these young art appreciators' opinion - there isn't an easy entry to the work and can be more easily disregarded. Again, exposure, contextual information and understanding the conceptual ideas behind such works might not change their opinion about whether they like it or not, but could broaden their understanding of the diversity and expressive qualities of art. They still might say, "It's really boring, but that guy put a lot of effort into it!" And just adding a qualifier to their opinion would swell the heart of this art teacher!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1iku2kdAgF5qQBhgRnhbFtwOOB1__Z7C3YBR-qAzu7n6UAHsaiUw-bAQBX5Pa7nFATvkUgfAtObZuTVPgrRzhz5TEK36lS0nCxIztMJx4Pp5lmCDfjVLB1Z-yR3oLY3aSejyn/s1600/Matisse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1iku2kdAgF5qQBhgRnhbFtwOOB1__Z7C3YBR-qAzu7n6UAHsaiUw-bAQBX5Pa7nFATvkUgfAtObZuTVPgrRzhz5TEK36lS0nCxIztMJx4Pp5lmCDfjVLB1Z-yR3oLY3aSejyn/s320/Matisse.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
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<i style="color: #f3f3f3;">The Yellow Dress,</i><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"> Henri Matisse, 1829-1931, oil on canvas, 39 1/4 in x 31 3/4 in, The Baltimore Museum of Art</span></div>
<br /></div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-67093785694512893682011-10-08T08:40:00.000-05:002011-11-06T09:18:44.653-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - Is it Art?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This week I wanted my students to consider the question, <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">"Is it art?"</span></b>. I explained the process for the week to them: after viewing the 'Artist of the Day' video, they would answer this question about each video; they would talk about it together in small groups then decide their personal opinion. Here are the 4 videos I chose that I hoped would push their thinking about art:
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk">An Elephant Painting</a> (8:29)</div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2CKfl8Sox4">Yarn Bombing in Madison, WI</a> (1:29)</div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF-Mgx2aSC8">Andy Goldsworthy</a> (5:53)</div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye6dvv_OPeg">'Overflow' (Plastic bag installation) by Virginia Fleck</a> (4:48)</div>
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After viewing each video, I gave each table group a survey form to fill out. I asked them to discuss it with their table mates, then place their name in either the yes or no box to indicate whether they thought the work could be considered art. There was another box for them to list reasons why they thought it was or wasn't art. This method encouraged both group discussion and they had the ability to express their personal opinion as well.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7_fk06fdiOLcBnyaV9vzP73rxlnqhyOJH2Hefq_Ae6Z_3GTAXI26I8YHfB6MFuqpgRzJJIjHRb515YZ5SaAkOgtkJv7XOMK5QIRp9WhcLhuebyvni3-dipQ5fCdhRowwFqIe/s1600/Is+This+Art_+Elephant+Painting+Form-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7_fk06fdiOLcBnyaV9vzP73rxlnqhyOJH2Hefq_Ae6Z_3GTAXI26I8YHfB6MFuqpgRzJJIjHRb515YZ5SaAkOgtkJv7XOMK5QIRp9WhcLhuebyvni3-dipQ5fCdhRowwFqIe/s400/Is+This+Art_+Elephant+Painting+Form-1.jpg" width="272" /></a></div>
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Their responses were interesting - here's a sampling of what they thought (space constraints are such I can't list all of their comments, so I'll do my best to summarize their thinking):
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;"><u>Elephant Painting: (133 yes, 9 no)</u></span> - </b>The reasons for it being art included:
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>everything can be a work of art</li>
<li>the elephant is expressing thoughts and feelings through painting</li>
<li>the elephant has talent</li>
<li>he used the elements of art in his painting (line, color...)</li>
<li>he did better than I could</li>
<li>humans are not the only ones that can make art</li>
</ul>
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The reasons it wasn't art:
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>the elephant has been trained</li>
<li>only humans can make art</li>
<li>the art is taught, it's not expressed</li>
<li>it's a fake</li>
</ul>
<div>
<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">Yarn Bombing (101 yes, 48 no)</span></u> - </b>The reasons for it being art included:
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>anything can be art</li>
<li>there's meaning behind it (to foster community unity)</li>
<li>includes the elements of art (color, texture...)</li>
<li>comes from the heart</li>
<li>incorporates design</li>
</ul>
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The reasons it wasn't art:
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>yarn is not art</li>
<li>the color is not thought out</li>
<li>knitting is a hobby, not art</li>
<li>it doesn't express</li>
<li>it's just random stuff in public places</li>
</ul>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">Andy Goldsworthy (129 yes, 11 no) </span></u></b><b>- </b>The reasons for it being art included:</div>
</div>
</div>
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<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>nature is art (and can be used in art)</li>
<li>he expressed himself and used imagination (& divergent thinking)</li>
<li>it makes you think</li>
<li>includes the elements of art (texture, color....)</li>
<li>it's beautiful, creative and unique</li>
<li>he used one thing to make another thing</li>
</ul>
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The reasons it wasn't art:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>it's random and in weird places</li>
<li>he's just rearranging nature</li>
<li>it's just nature (nature not art?)</li>
<li>nature is already art</li>
<li>it's photography</li>
</ul>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: large;">Plastic bag installation (85 yes, 65 no) </span></u></b><b>- </b>The reasons for it being art included:</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>it's a new type of art</li>
<li>it creates a message</li>
<li>used something simple to make something interesting</li>
<li>conveys a message that can be interpreted different ways</li>
<li>uses the elements and principles</li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span">art doesn't have to have a purpose</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">)</span> </li>
</ul>
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The reasons it wasn't art:</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>it's just plastic bags and looks like pollution and trash</li>
<li>lacking in emotion or purpose</li>
<li>it's just tying plastic bags together and anyone can do that</li>
<li>it's not a painting or drawing</li>
<li>there's not purpose and it has no emotion</li>
</ul>
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I'm not sure I could have predicted these responses and comments, though I suspected they might question the yarn bombing and plastic bag installation as being art (and that's why I chose those videos). I was pleased that they thought more deeply about why they felt the way they did. I still got a few "amazing" and "boring", but very few overall. They shared their thinking with each other and evaluated for themselves if it was art or not. And by having my little survey form, I got to see how really juicy their thinking was - much more than if we had had a class discussion.</div>
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</div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-10037203227010024902011-10-01T09:48:00.000-05:002011-11-06T09:19:03.288-06:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - Finding the Words<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJLJz4rngutBh2_eeUYfZJeUtHI8MuabFgSkHFf5EUFKHZbqcFV-xe43Inz6SGkJTBuQNlFwKZKzjdHsMxmMEdK5OdNpLNzB3VyUo7WYgtPOm2dM8KA-lBrTkmiXbRGwKWUD8/s1600/Christo+Word+Cloud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJLJz4rngutBh2_eeUYfZJeUtHI8MuabFgSkHFf5EUFKHZbqcFV-xe43Inz6SGkJTBuQNlFwKZKzjdHsMxmMEdK5OdNpLNzB3VyUo7WYgtPOm2dM8KA-lBrTkmiXbRGwKWUD8/s400/Christo+Word+Cloud.jpg" width="349" /></a></div>
'Artist of the Day' video associated with this word cloud: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FaPcH1M81w">Christo & Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates" NYC in a Stowstorm</a><br />
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Next week I plan to start asking the big cahuna art question, "What is Art?". For six weeks I've been showing an 'Artist of the Day' with the objective of exposing them to different artists and thinking about the videos they see thematically (last week was stop motion animation, this week installations). I give them a chance to express whether they like the art that day with a show of hands, then we take a vote on Friday to see who the favorite artist is for the week. 'Artist of the Day' is intended to get them thinking about the big world of art. Already some of my students have told me they have gone back to find out more about a particular artist that interested them, or they have brought a suggestion for an 'Artist of the Day'. Yea!<br />
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But before we start asking more questions about art, I wanted to spend a little time developing their vocabulary about describing the art and their feelings about it. 9th and 10th graders typically have a narrow range of words to express their feeling about an artist or artwork: awesome and cool to stupid and boring. There are not many words in between. Since divergent thinking is a big theme in my classroom this year, I came up with a classroom activity designed to get them to dig deep and find other words to communicate their ideas and feelings about the art they are seeing.<br />
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For three of the five days, after the video was shown, I gave each table a piece of paper (1/4 of a sheet of printer paper). There are about 6 students per table group, so it makes a nice small group activity. I encouraged them to talk to each other about other words they could use (get that collaborative thinking generated), then to list each student's name on the paper and write down their word. Each day I reminded them about thinking more divergently and suggested that they each come up with their own word within the group.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ki0AUmH0O6xYTv1BXYqu0vsDhmwad6jaJbwm9E1ezg5plrOhgUPCogK0BZqptrY3vfmaTeyS7I7oGWEvA76qjWwOmMrwl0ZSJtFlT5YifIiQMQ-IFam3SsdUuONeto1vIyPq/s1600/Cadillac+Ranch+Word+Cloud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="339" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ki0AUmH0O6xYTv1BXYqu0vsDhmwad6jaJbwm9E1ezg5plrOhgUPCogK0BZqptrY3vfmaTeyS7I7oGWEvA76qjWwOmMrwl0ZSJtFlT5YifIiQMQ-IFam3SsdUuONeto1vIyPq/s400/Cadillac+Ranch+Word+Cloud.jpg" width="387" /></a></div>
'Artist of the Day' video associated with this word cloud: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1m9xWVzBRc&feature=fvsr">Cadillac Ranch</a><br />
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I gathered the sheets by period and clipped them together. Great - now what? Quite serendipitously, or cosmically as I like to say, I stumbled onto another blogpost that gave me a fun idea. <i>Innovative Educator Consulting<b></b></i> is the blog, with a focus on "Inspired Technology Leadership to Transform Teaching & Learning". Perfect! This feeds right into our 21st c. learning objective to incorporate more technology into the classroom! The specific post I read is titled <a href="http://blog.innovativeeducator.us/2010/02/have-no-fearword-cloud-makers-are-here.html">"Word Cloud Makers Are Here"</a> and it has a juicy list of free sites that are available to teachers to use as instructional tools in our curriculum. I took the time to go through the entire list and chose <a href="http://www.tagxedo.com/">Taxedo.com</a> mostly because you could put your word cloud into a shape.<br />
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You can see the word cloud for each video here and it really was quite revealing. I showed the students the word cloud the day after they saw the Christo video (I chose colors that reflected the gorgeous saffron of his gates) and we looked at what happened. When you type the words into the application (in my case 170 words from my student body), the more frequently a word is used, the larger the font and it's prominence in the cloud. Contrast and colorful were the most frequent responses. I was delighted to see words like flowing, relaxing, graceful and soul.<br />
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I created the next word cloud from their viewing of the video about Cadillac Ranch. The next morning, I put the two word clouds up side by side and asked them what they saw. Colorful and creative were the most prominent words, but this time we had some other words that weren't in the first cloud: changing, painstaking, unpredictable and representative. Yesterday we watched a video about a very different installation, an Art:21 artist, Pepón Osorio, and we gathered words for our last word cloud of the week. Not much overlap here with interesting, confusing and mysterious being the major ideas. Some nice observations were intentional, reflective, eyeopening and mystifying. <br />
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This activity was valuable in getting each student to express their opinion. At the beginning of the week, I tried to generate classroom discussion. My first period class has from the first day of school been unnaturally silent. I can hardly get them to talk! By Wednesday, I came up with the idea of having them write their idea on paper along with their name. Now I could actually see what each one of them was thinking, and it gave them the freedom to be more expressive and candid. There is a large percentage of students who don't want to speak out in class because they are afraid they will be wrong or the other kids will think they are stupid! It's hard to overcome. Smaller groups get them loosened up. One other thing that I think was valuable for them to see was their differing opinions - some thought an artwork was interesting, some uninteresting. Some of their typical language showed up, like weird and awesome, but overall, I was extremely happy in the way they were able to express their opinions, push their thinking and then be able to see their thinking in a visual way. Word clouds are a great way to get a snapshot of collective thinking! <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX3xJEXSq3gi4mu7w6M_-c5nIvQSre-GWtO0DyWYEIeoLRQUYvl5npLvzGHh_hHLPqhKnJObAaxC6YvjFxtBL1LQAaSt7tyaJOQMmTTII-PEj2ssw5kNyEFD6MO95oOt1paMtR/s1600/Crime+Scene+Word+Cloud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX3xJEXSq3gi4mu7w6M_-c5nIvQSre-GWtO0DyWYEIeoLRQUYvl5npLvzGHh_hHLPqhKnJObAaxC6YvjFxtBL1LQAaSt7tyaJOQMmTTII-PEj2ssw5kNyEFD6MO95oOt1paMtR/s400/Crime+Scene+Word+Cloud.jpg" width="369" /></a></div>
'Artist of the Day' video associated with this word cloud: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKenn_ypzc">Art:21 | Pepón Osorio</a> (For a longer, more comprehensive look at his work, see the official Art:21 <a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/1230660017">video</a> that is about 15 minutes long. His section of the video is Chapter 13 of 16, 40:09 minutes into the 53 minute video. It's worth a look!)</div>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-60400059456138105422011-09-24T21:38:00.025-05:002011-09-25T09:07:05.993-05:00Aesthetics in the Classroom - The Art of Liking<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1_QMi1lXeUfSdTJsaeQDZAtWRzsFFT5MjqgaCtjIIlbCwfkXdV6aL5sOg-Ud59Vuy4ap2vnV-1k4tWBc58Gros2_NzyE95U9UufGgPLMnWv-utMXbMlY8heMvW7VQUDfSgyxW/s1600/Art+mascot.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1_QMi1lXeUfSdTJsaeQDZAtWRzsFFT5MjqgaCtjIIlbCwfkXdV6aL5sOg-Ud59Vuy4ap2vnV-1k4tWBc58Gros2_NzyE95U9UufGgPLMnWv-utMXbMlY8heMvW7VQUDfSgyxW/s400/Art+mascot.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656127246252470674" /></a><br /><br />21st c. learning is the big buzz word in our school. Incorporating student driven learning, the use of more technology and fostering collaborative learning in the classroom are the charges we've been given as teachers. As most other teachers, I was a bit more of a "sage on the stage" instead of a "guide from the side", and I have been working on letting those teaching strategies go as I adopt new ways of learning for my students.<br /><br />Last spring semester I began a new feature in my classroom: Artist of the Day. Each day I show a video of a contemporary artist to my 9th & 10th grade students. The videos are short, usually under 5 minutes. Sometimes I would show them a website, but I noticed that they were not as engaged when I walked them through a website as they were when they watched a video. So this was the first thing I learned - they are used to action and high stimulation. Last year I didn't use them for instructional purposes particularly, but each day I was interested in knowing if they liked the artist with a quick show of hands. At the end of the week, I took a weekly survey and conducted a vote up on the board and each class could see what the other classes voted for. <br /><br />In this day, "Liking" is a big deal. I see it as a first step in teaching aesthetics to our 21st c. students. They "Like" things on Facebook, give reviews and post comments on all manner of things on the Internet. Conducting a vote on the artists they see is something they know how to do and are pretty comfortable with. It's fun for me to hear them say on Monday, "I'm going to vote for this artist this week!" only to change their mind as the artists unfold. And, sometimes I put something up that I think they will like but it turns out to be a big flop. <br /><br />I am beginning a project this semester of incorporating the study of aesthetics into my curriculum. Though they practice aesthetic thinking when deciding how they feel about the artists they see, when I ask them why they do or don't like a video they can rarely tell me, except for it was awesome or it sucked. Note to self: they don't have much of a vocabulary to explain why they do or don't like something. <br /><br />This last week I created a theme for Artist of the Day - stop motion animation. In the past I've bounced all over the place with media and process when selecting the videos, but I want to focus their thinking (and mine!) more. Instead of a quick show of hands vote, I asked them to write about the lineup. We just finished studying the Elements of Art, so I asked them to write down which Elements they saw in the work. They could do this fairly well. I also asked them what divergent thinking they saw in each video, and they were able to see examples of that. (Divergent thinking is a BIG theme in my classroom this year - seeing it in action and practicing it.) But, when I asked them how the materials and processes of each video affected how the communication of the art, a good percentage of the students couldn't make the connection on that more subtle level. <br /><br />Here's the selection for the week and the voting results. I am also including some of their thoughts about the connection of material to art; some great connections were made. If you would like to watch the lineup and place your own vote, the links are here and it will take about 12 minutes to view all five videos. I welcome your comments and input on my blog. And now Ladies and Gentlemen, Artist of the Day - Stop Motion Animation!<br /><br />68 votes - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bx0dEYiDYw">Pencilhead Fatboy Slim</a> - smoother flow of movement, filled with energy, more cartoonish<br /><br />33 votes - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYFkDO6WIls">Street Knowledge by King Adz</a> - some sections look 3D, strong detail, urban feel<br /><br />28 votes - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD7eagLl5c4">The Dot - world's smallest stop motion video</a> - surreal effect, more excitement, specific focal point, though it's about destruction bright colors are used (NOTE: if you have another 5 1/2 minutes, watch the companion video, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTbzSiwbRfg">"Dot. The making of"</a> - it's great!)<br /><br />26 votes - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovvk7T8QUIU">Game Over - PESfilm</a> - use of toys create a nostalgic and humorous feel<br /><br />1 vote - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDO_k5qWRjc">Stop Motion Photographer</a> - more realistic look, nature has calming, peaceful effect (NOTE: This was the dud. One vote. Back to our students and what they like - fast, exciting, complicated, dynamic.)<br /><br />Which one do YOU vote for?Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-25001152164279258522011-06-05T19:07:00.007-05:002011-06-06T20:44:58.922-05:00Oil and Cotton - Creative Exchange<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFX_GOfHhaupYv_M_HW6ijjP6jOgdLphP0pOLUs8RB8yXq4jjZf-Mj5EX5T2k4ifbSuNRr0ucLS7IT-8nSU-4-hwloWHpHruvCuPV_seaUI6_DuWrAgSM90MWa-feGdTD_cUrS/s1600/Flaming+felt.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 296px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFX_GOfHhaupYv_M_HW6ijjP6jOgdLphP0pOLUs8RB8yXq4jjZf-Mj5EX5T2k4ifbSuNRr0ucLS7IT-8nSU-4-hwloWHpHruvCuPV_seaUI6_DuWrAgSM90MWa-feGdTD_cUrS/s400/Flaming+felt.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5614892607264835330" /></a>My scarf made out of prefelt<br /><br />My new favorite thing is felting! I've been taking a series of felting classes at Oil and Cotton Creative Exchange in historic Oak Cliff in Dallas, TX. They have been fun, informative and great experiences. The more felting I do, the more I want to do! Lizzy Wetzel has taught the felting workshops last fall and this spring and they are really helping me get ready to teach felting in my classroom next year. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_ExC3r9DbZNYV1IuM0pJG2OYKu3r8T9pveRGbpGSOxio4j6TPBSLI2elhUdFaqmjhom6qMy7fa-WzLVwfnp0PiLKwWsVn12cxfo-LrJvBsu5c0Q0W-UzGPVXxtBsNIGk3pmr/s1600/IMG_0510.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_ExC3r9DbZNYV1IuM0pJG2OYKu3r8T9pveRGbpGSOxio4j6TPBSLI2elhUdFaqmjhom6qMy7fa-WzLVwfnp0PiLKwWsVn12cxfo-LrJvBsu5c0Q0W-UzGPVXxtBsNIGk3pmr/s400/IMG_0510.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5614911984739355650" /></a>One classmate's fun dog portrait in felt<br /><br />We've dyed wool, worked with prefelt, made thick felt, shaped felt into sculptural forms and more! The timing of today's play time couldn't be better because I'll be attending the <a href="http://www.surfacedesign.org/">Surface Design Association's Confluence</a> conference in Minneapolis next week. One of my anticipated activities is a 5 day workshop to make a coptic style felted book. I can't wait! Anyway, Oil and Cotton offers LOTS of different kinds of <a href="http://www.oilandcotton.com/calendar.html">classes</a> for kids and adults. Check out their <a href="http://blog.oilandcotton.com/">blog</a> to find out more and sign up for classes and have some summer fun!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHf33rfBWCy__JGbzV6AVaPkodfiAynTPj7EnjrG0l7FdT8yiahJ60FJWk-RLMXthXjWGlBljukPvaNWMl1qE23sjKRAOoTc6ZbiQb4IliNdIhAa6-OVVqJjur9OqIkgFMc2Mu/s1600/IMG_1333.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 298px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHf33rfBWCy__JGbzV6AVaPkodfiAynTPj7EnjrG0l7FdT8yiahJ60FJWk-RLMXthXjWGlBljukPvaNWMl1qE23sjKRAOoTc6ZbiQb4IliNdIhAa6-OVVqJjur9OqIkgFMc2Mu/s400/IMG_1333.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615286795345422162" /></a>One of Lizzy's felted samplesTag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-51776668619980617952011-02-04T13:36:00.012-06:002011-02-04T17:30:45.519-06:00Snow Days & Artist of the Week<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC28W6aRHW2H-FjEQr9TX7MSGqA1xnVBaQxusC65j5IZmxnNf0YVZuQm2jg6T-yIoTtlPB6CRrHIQyk8U-1n2JugDIHm3v9ffXK2XlQPmWXtew4T_aFga_qemwJyCScyQmR13n/s1600/Aladdin%2527s-Flying-Monkey-w_carpet.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC28W6aRHW2H-FjEQr9TX7MSGqA1xnVBaQxusC65j5IZmxnNf0YVZuQm2jg6T-yIoTtlPB6CRrHIQyk8U-1n2JugDIHm3v9ffXK2XlQPmWXtew4T_aFga_qemwJyCScyQmR13n/s400/Aladdin%2527s-Flying-Monkey-w_carpet.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569980042188253474" /></a>My own See.Saw picture - Christine Miller - date, the great blizzard of 2011<br /><br />Unprecedented! We have missed 4 days of school this week because of this massive winter storm that has stretched across the country! Talk about a long winter's nap!! I haven't been napping. It has been a wonderful time for me to work on several projects: weaving samples for my guild's overshot study group, taking the scans from my Sketchbook Project's book and making a digital version, goofing around on the computer, and playing with this art idea I <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/home/">stumbled upon</a> (if you haven't been on this site, you have to go! Be prepared to burn some major time stumbling!!). <br /><br />It's not a new idea, but I like what the artist has done, and he inspired me to try it for myself. I think this would be a great project to take into my art classes! Lots of grade school teachers do it to make butterflies and such - you put paint on one side of your paper, fold it closed, open it and you end up with these identical paint splotches on both sides. (I was so excited, I forgot to take a picture of my splotches before I drew my picture!) I used cadmium red pale hue, cadmium yellow, and cerulean blue watercolors. I also splashed some beautiful gold watercolor out of a Japanese pot. It didn't take me long to see the monkey, bird and camel in my drawing. The golden ribbony smoke came next, then I thought to add the Aladdin's lamp and the carpet at the end. It was fun! Check out the link in the post headline to see the original site I stumbled upon. It's the work of L Filipe dos Santos from Madrid, Spain - he calls it his See.Saw series. You can see more of his work <a href="http://www.behance.net/corcoise">here</a>.Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-64457691159847971482011-01-25T08:34:00.000-06:002011-02-01T09:08:25.632-06:0010/11 Academic Decathlon The Great Depression Art Selection #18 - Nighthawks<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOHmH_TyNo1apGe5-u1J0EsCMF_xOl4avcqe-MakiGAbG5pEZWqK3DIJFMkb2vgVdCSO72RON8Oo010Makaw5SSqRmSy0f-G2VTg5V44oPwC5jm7fY2hyphenhyphenDFBjOzl9x2VbUS_Ts/s1600/%252318+Nighthawks.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOHmH_TyNo1apGe5-u1J0EsCMF_xOl4avcqe-MakiGAbG5pEZWqK3DIJFMkb2vgVdCSO72RON8Oo010Makaw5SSqRmSy0f-G2VTg5V44oPwC5jm7fY2hyphenhyphenDFBjOzl9x2VbUS_Ts/s400/%252318+Nighthawks.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5568729936603259714" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Nighthawks</span>, Edward Hopper, 1942, Oil on canvas, 84.1 x 152.4 cm (33 1/8 x 60 in.), The Art Institute of Chicago<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/">Edward Hopper</a> studied at the New York Institute of Art and Design and became a commercial illustrator. He went to Europe in 1906, but just like Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, he did not embrace the theories and techniques of modernism. He preferred painting in a realistic style. Though he lived in the city, he was preoccupied with isolation and loneliness. His paintings reflect this duality - single figures in communal spaces, cities deserted except for one person. He did not initially enjoy success from his personal artwork and had to continue to work as a freelance commercial artist. By the time he was 40, he had only sold one painting.<br /><br />He married Josephine Nivison who helped him promote his art. She was an extrovert, he an introvert, and she had a good instinct for business. She helped him get six of his paintings into an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923 and that proved to be the turning point for him. He gained attention, sales and commissions and was able to quit his job and begin to paint full time. The critics loved his work. He sold paintings to major museums and became financially comfortable. His peak productivity time was during the 1930s, but he painted until he died in his studio in 1967. His wife bequeathed his artwork to the Whitney Museum in New York.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Nighthawks</span> shows a corner diner brightly lit against the night. The glass walls provide an easy view into the diner and the contrast between the spotlighted inhabitants and the darkened street make it seem like actors on a theater stage. We see them, but they do not notice the viewer. The scene is unremarkable, people dining, talking, a couple together, one man sitting at the counter alone. The server is waiting on them, but at this moment in time is also a bit disconnected and off to one side. Detail is spare both in the diner and on the street. You don't see anything in the shop windows, no litter on the streets, no sign of humanity except the people we see. It's almost as if the city is empty except for these four people and the scene has a quality of eerie solitude about it. (Anybody ever see the "Twilight Zone"?) We see a story, but don't know what to make of it. Barbara Haskell, an art historian, calls this "suspended narrative" or a "narrative of inaction". It's compelling for the viewer - you can make up your own story. Hopper gives the viewer a lot of creative license in the interpretation of the scene. What do you think is going on?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_EQ3bCcnjkhaNCyCVB6tLWKi7XlebAKfsPjhfTVVBVr1Mw6wpAPW5osmkO93K4_o5B3XujztCuEXjLwxnJeNWjggCEYPXnKnTzOvg-mflJ65qbYFtGpl9Q2sEv5yvrqBnfYz/s1600/edward-hopper_self-portrait2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_EQ3bCcnjkhaNCyCVB6tLWKi7XlebAKfsPjhfTVVBVr1Mw6wpAPW5osmkO93K4_o5B3XujztCuEXjLwxnJeNWjggCEYPXnKnTzOvg-mflJ65qbYFtGpl9Q2sEv5yvrqBnfYz/s400/edward-hopper_self-portrait2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5568730730803008594" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Self-portrait</span>, Edward Hopper, 1925-30Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-60953563706173563662011-01-23T20:48:00.006-06:002011-01-23T21:44:22.511-06:0010/11 Academic Decathlon The Great Depression Art Selection #17 - And the Migrants Kept Coming<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAMZ53ngH01m5kmiYKpdDsazt-MISrLNjP9vBfdUUj0hStoOQ3GrebCFZ1sRn9OyOCUupDDwfhVB-iBgriks95uZzy7-k-TbD5AzFlLSzH9gYXAAkMd-oDjl1VxjN-YpwR8A4V/s1600/%252317+And+the+Migrants+Kept+Coming.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAMZ53ngH01m5kmiYKpdDsazt-MISrLNjP9vBfdUUj0hStoOQ3GrebCFZ1sRn9OyOCUupDDwfhVB-iBgriks95uZzy7-k-TbD5AzFlLSzH9gYXAAkMd-oDjl1VxjN-YpwR8A4V/s400/%252317+And+the+Migrants+Kept+Coming.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565579316724061554" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">And the Migrants Kept Coming</span>, Jacob Lawrence, 1940-41. Tempera on gesso on composition board, 12 x 18" (30.5 x 45.7 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY<br /><br /><a href="http://www.jacoblawrence.org/#">Jacob Lawrence</a> did not have a stable life - his parents divorced and he moved from one foster care home to another until he was about 13, then he and his brothers and sisters went back to live with their mother. He took art classes early and went on to study at the Harlem Art Workshop, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Artists' School. Outside of the art classes he took, the also got a lot of energy and inspiration from the artists that had flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. (See the post done about Aaron Douglas on this blog in October 2010)<br /><br />He was a mover and a shaker. He had a studio while he was a student and got a solo exhibition of this work at the Harlem YMCA in 1938. At that time, he made small paintings reflecting daily life in Harlem. He was a product of his neighborhood and drew a lot of inspiration and identity from Harlem. He also was interested in history and did a series about <a href="http://www.frederickdouglass.org/douglass_bio.html">Frederick Douglass</a>, a former slave and orator. These were well-received, so he did another series about the Underground Railroad leader <a href="http://www.harriettubman.com/">Harriet Tubman</a>, Haitian liberator <a href="http://thelouvertureproject.org/index.php?title=Toussaint_Louverture">Troussaint L'Ouverture</a>, and abolitionist <a href="http://www.johnbrown.org/">John Brown</a>. These series prepared him for a huge project he would undertake: a 60-painting series on the <a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=443">Great Migration</a>. This is the work that would jettison him into the larger art world - he became the first African American artist to have one of his works included in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<br /><br />This work, <span style="font-style:italic;">And the Migrants Kept Coming</span>, was the last painting in the <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/odonnell/w1010/edit/migration/migration.html">Great Migration Series</a>. A crowded railroad platform is shown and the wavy lines beneath this platform suggest water beneath a dock. The composition is crowded with people, young and old with their luggage. The way the image is laid out, you can imaging people stretching beyond the canvas edges in both directions. The people lack faces or individualized features - this helps the viewer think of them as "anyman" and connects to the larger idea of vast numbers of people looking for a better life; people who are willing to leave their own lives behind in the hopes of finding a better one. He uses only a few colors, but even though his figures are reduced to shapes, the viewer recognizes the image as many men, women and children on the move. There is not texture or nuance in this painting, and the paint he uses is a matte finish - a finish that is dull and unreflective. All of the paintings in this series use the same elements of simplified shapes out of seven colors which unifies the group and makes the series visually cohesive. <br /><br />Many African American people were poor sharecroppers in the South - they owned nothing and eked out a subsistence living. The industrial boom centered in the northern part of the United States in the early part of the 20th century and promised jobs and a better life. Huge numbers of African Americans migrated to the north and poured into cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and New York. Because discrimination was still a stronghold across the nation at that time, these immigrants would form their own neighborhoods such as Harlem in New York. Their move to these new cities was a mixed bag - they may have found work and a new life, but they did not escape the prejudice and discrimination that they had experienced in the South. Racial tensions resulted from this new influx of people. <br /><br />Lawrence's documentation of this phenomenon is based in history. He researched the Great Migration and strove to document and educate the viewer about the event. Each panel has a short title that is descriptive of the scene. The early paintings depict scenes of life from the South and show the reasons the people decided to leave. There are images of withered cotton plants and is entitled, "They left because the boll weevil had ravaged the cotton crop." The middle paintings go back and forth between the South and the North. Then the later paintings show the trials and the triumphs of the migrants in their new lives. These paintings resemble a storyboard for a cinematic undertaking. The critics responded so well to this monumental work the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art fought over who would own the complete series. In the end they split the paintings with the Phillips getting the odd-numbered panels and MoMA receiving the even numbered panels. Cool! How about that? He may have also been the first African American artist to have two major museums fight over his work! <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5kWBzgf8mmWYTWrVAPy1jQCpYoi7Gh199y6EBg3YyNaBzkun8iOEb-GFKSehUvlM0z8WEA1jHT5zkBEZ6oiaXbDPawjJWYhHdoZWvPJs2z9hovkcBygFE2zgEfuLsMJ1WozYP/s1600/Jacob+Lawrence+Self-Portrait%252C+1977%252C+gouache+on+paper_jpg.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 296px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5kWBzgf8mmWYTWrVAPy1jQCpYoi7Gh199y6EBg3YyNaBzkun8iOEb-GFKSehUvlM0z8WEA1jHT5zkBEZ6oiaXbDPawjJWYhHdoZWvPJs2z9hovkcBygFE2zgEfuLsMJ1WozYP/s400/Jacob+Lawrence+Self-Portrait%252C+1977%252C+gouache+on+paper_jpg.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565580977989646690" /></a>Jacob Lawrence self-portrait, 1977, gouache on paperTag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-31751391697859311922011-01-15T17:56:00.007-06:002011-01-23T20:47:47.519-06:0010/11 Academic Decathlon The Great Depression Art Selection #16 - Departure of the Joads, from the Grapes of Wrath<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisaiVVvf1l0bsj1FNBls9Nd9XBn1pATrpQPFiWXJllKn9Ax9rRvlIMnRyhTNbLnKFF0wtas8eYPf_eK_MTVh8tzkHrHwjYPrhy-5rTs9Fk7vSGrrwMKb7xRfBMqn-UVPmayE7s/s1600/%252316+Departure+of+the+Joads.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisaiVVvf1l0bsj1FNBls9Nd9XBn1pATrpQPFiWXJllKn9Ax9rRvlIMnRyhTNbLnKFF0wtas8eYPf_eK_MTVh8tzkHrHwjYPrhy-5rTs9Fk7vSGrrwMKb7xRfBMqn-UVPmayE7s/s400/%252316+Departure+of+the+Joads.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562566432632655826" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Departure of the Joads, from The Grapes of Wrath</span>, Thomas Hart Benton, 1939, Lithograph on ivory wove paper, 327 x 470 mm (image), The Art Institute of Chicago<br /><br /><a href="http://www.questroyalfineart.com/artist/thomas-hart-benton">Thomas Hart Benton</a> was a rebel. The men in his family were professional politicians and military men - his great-great grandfather was governor of North Carolina, his great-great-uncle colonel in the Confederate army, his father was a colonel, and Congressman. But Thomas did not follow in the steps of his family, he left military school in Missouri in 1907 to go study at the Art Institute of Chicago. Eventually he studied in Paris during a period when Modernism was flourishing. When he returned to New York, he became an art teacher to Jackson Pollock and Rita Piacenza. Pollock is the famous abstract expressionist (who went on to be called "Jack the Dripper") and Rita became Benton's wife. He was in the midst of a variety of styles of art were exploding, but none of them really resonated with him.<br /><br />When Benton's father fell ill, he returned home to Missouri to sit as he was dying. It became a pivotal moment in his life and he wrote about it in his memoir:<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote> I cannot honestly say what happened to me while I watched my father die and listened to the voices of his friends, but I know that when, after his death, I went back East, I was moved by a great desire to know more of the America which I had glimpsed in the suggestive words of his old cronies...I was moved by a desire to pick up again the threads of my childhood. <blockquote></blockquote><br /><br />So he began painting rural scenes and people from the Midwest and made these images symbols of the struggles and triumphs that happened in these humble places. Benton was at the forefront of a new "ism", this one American - <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA98/haven/wood/depreg.html">Regionalism</a> - one that is synonamous with the 1930s. He painted a series of murals for the 1932 World Exposition in Chicago depicting the history and culture of Indiana. He did not censor the bad with the good and included images of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross, unemployment lines and labor riots. Though critics railed at these images being so public, Time Magazine put him on the cover and declared him to be one of the definining artists of the time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg65neQn3Y60LXJ1f7sWKLyPFAsh1h0Y7FSfR60-HbQgn6nDI5TXFcHIonDpzGpDQsFqEWHY9Ap0YEfwTH6gwEPOwarzOKlv4luOyYqIQckFSlodUmOz7t_HohyphenhyphenQvOAexyaUCYD/s1600/Benton+Time+Magazine+Cover.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 304px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg65neQn3Y60LXJ1f7sWKLyPFAsh1h0Y7FSfR60-HbQgn6nDI5TXFcHIonDpzGpDQsFqEWHY9Ap0YEfwTH6gwEPOwarzOKlv4luOyYqIQckFSlodUmOz7t_HohyphenhyphenQvOAexyaUCYD/s400/Benton+Time+Magazine+Cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562574238994350562" /></a><br /><br />Trying to take this subject matter and interest the art scene in New York was another matter. New York was on the cusp of becoming the art center of the world and tastes favored the modernism coming out of Europe, not the rural, earthy images of people and places in America's heartland - it just wasn't sophisticated enough for that scene. He turned his back on New York took a teaching position at the Kansas City Art Institute and taught and worked until his death in 1975. He is one of the most important artists of his day and his work is still respected as central to the Regionalism movement.<br /><br />The series he did about <span style="font-style:italic;">The Grapes of Wrath</span> by John Steinbeck, include a lithograph entitled <span style="font-style:italic;">Departure of the Joads</span>. There are many ways to make prints (see this excellent explanation called <a href="http://www.moma.org/interactives/projects/2001/whatisaprint/flash.html">"What is a Print"</a> by MOMA); a lithograph print has the image drawn on stone or metal instead of being etched into metal. <br /><br />This lithograph illustrates a scene from the <span style="font-style:italic;">Grapes of Wrath</span>, the moment that the Joad family is preparing to leave the poverty they faced in Dust Bowl of Oklahoma in order to find a better life in the rich fields of California. The image is printed in black and is rich in tones of grey between areas of black and white. The crescent moon is about in the center of the print and lights up part of the sky while the other half remains dark. <br /><br />One detail of Benton's style is the curving lines you see everywhere: the ground, the clouds and even the figures undulate which creates a sense of movement. The house, clouds and logs all lead your eye to the family - even the light, moonlight sky highlights them in their departure activities. Not all of the family members are glad about this move - the women and Grampa (who sits forlornly by the door of the shack) look dejected and powerless about the decision. Ma Joad embraces Granma to support her in her decision to leave with the family, leaving Grampa behind - he refuses to leave. The scene is packed with a lot of emotion, but the artist puts almost no facial features in the characters, and relies on the body language and poses to tell the viewer what is happening.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/grapesofwrath/">Grapes of Wrath</a></span>, Steinbeck's novel was published in 1939 and one of the movie studios, 20th Century Fox, jumped on the book to use for a <a href="http://www.filmsite.org/grap.html">movie version</a>. Benton was commissioned by the studio to produce the images to promote the film. Five of the artworks were portraits of the characters, but <span style="font-style:italic;">The Departure of the Joads</span> was the sixth work he made and turned out to be the most powerful and long lived. It was enlarged to billboard size and he also reproduced it in color as a painting. It was also included in its original form in the 1940 edition of the novel.<br /><br />American people across the nation identified with this powerful image - it reflected the hard times they had been through with the Great Depression and the feelings so many people felt - anxiousness, sorrow over broken dreams but a tentative optimism that is so characteristic of American people. The road represents the future and a journey to a better life. His image represents both spectrums - Grampa's inability to forge ahead and embrace change alongside Granma's hesitancy and anguish about the choice she is making. But the men of the Joad family have the courage to carry the family ahead. All of these emotions permeated the country in the 1930s and this image captured the essence of an important historical period.<br /><br />On a personal note, I was speaking to my own students Friday about the hardships that this country is experiencing now. We talked about other periods of hardship our young country has gone through. This image is a powerful one today showing the characteristics of the people in this country that have made it great: vision, determination, hard work, sacrifice and grit. One of my students how long this current period of hardship would last, 5 yrs? I don't know the answer, but I have faith that if we pull together, love and support each other, we can come out of this stronger than ever. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqXOTCBiv2dytWau6ukKqYCjyQPgUpfuXfa-uYAktliuHD8iW5GCcLQBu1wTQFs_Mz0W2-p4EzDPokogh8Ybe1QhZHHT9ps7T1_VJQuvN_LD2P_eT2Iz5V7f149y-tTI6fCxk-/s1600/Benton+Self+Portrait.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 273px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqXOTCBiv2dytWau6ukKqYCjyQPgUpfuXfa-uYAktliuHD8iW5GCcLQBu1wTQFs_Mz0W2-p4EzDPokogh8Ybe1QhZHHT9ps7T1_VJQuvN_LD2P_eT2Iz5V7f149y-tTI6fCxk-/s400/Benton+Self+Portrait.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562568229719380994" /></a>Thomas Hart Benton self portrait, 1972Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-22192756317070656042011-01-04T08:30:00.002-06:002011-01-04T21:32:49.265-06:0010/11 Academic Decathlon The Great Depression Art Selection #15 - Cow's Skull with Calico Roses<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3yeOzpxxEubrETkzL_ToPG_69rkPBWYY5G_qgffhjMpKFKlatdmH62xY4saQkJlF6jaGLBeRG0Rn2LBcTqFP6Q6WR4zMBwW9ZooVXmDujG5wsvJMI3d6UHqAxXrcMmaJbYFR/s1600/%252315+Cow+Skull+With+Calico+Roses.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3yeOzpxxEubrETkzL_ToPG_69rkPBWYY5G_qgffhjMpKFKlatdmH62xY4saQkJlF6jaGLBeRG0Rn2LBcTqFP6Q6WR4zMBwW9ZooVXmDujG5wsvJMI3d6UHqAxXrcMmaJbYFR/s400/%252315+Cow+Skull+With+Calico+Roses.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556853958766721330" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Cow's Skull with Calico Roses</span>, Georgia O'Keefe, 1931, Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 61 cm (36 x 24 in.), The Art Institute of Chicago<br /><br /><a href="http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/">Georgia O'Keefe</a> is one of the most recognized artists of the twentieth century. It's rare to find such an accomplished woman in the art world - it has historically been a career for men. Even today, women are not on an equal footing with men in the business of art - check out the Guerilla Girls for more information about that and to see about their <a href="http://www.guerillagirls.com/index.shtml">activisim</a>! O'Keefe was a strong woman who followed her passion and became an icon in the art world, especially for aspiring women artists. <br /><br />O'Keefe studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Art Students League in New York and was exposed to a new art trend: imitative realism - a movement that was meant to artistically reproduce nature as the artist saw it. When O'Keefe took a summer class for art teachers, she was introduced to Arthur Wesley Dow who had a passion for non-western art, especially Japanese art. He believed that color, line, light and dark tones should be balanced. O'Keefe connected with these ideas and began to experiment with them. Her initial work was brought to the attention of photographer and art dealer <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgp/hd_stgp.htm">Alfred Stieglitz</a>. Without her knowledge, he put her work in an exhibition at his gallery in New York, 291. Her work was a hit and Stieglitz became a huge supporter of hers and began regularly exhibited her work. He was able to get her to move to New York and paint full time. They married, lived and worked together until 1946 when Stieglitz died.<br /><br />O'Keefe began with paintings of New York, flowers and plants. Her flower paintings were so close up, you lost the overall image of the flower and just focused on the details. It's said that O'Keefe responded about these paintings once by saying she wanted the viewer to stop and really look at the flower. Her love for nature took her out west to New Mexico and one visit was all it took to hook her for life. Take a look at this 10 minute <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYwKRVJaNEA">video</a> and listen to her tell her story about her love of New Mexico. She began painting desert scenes, including bones and skeletons of dead animals. The pure line, light and shade she used in her other paintings transferred perfectly to these new subjects. She kept going back to the Southwest all through the 1930s until Stieglitz died then she settled in Arizona and lived out her life into her 90s. Her work became so important, she was given a solo retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the first woman to receive such an honor. <br /><br />This work, <span style="font-style:italic;">Cow's Skull with Calico Roses</span>, uses many shades of white to create the skull and roses over an unidentified white background. The value creates an image that looks three dimensional (remember, it's painted on a two dimensional canvas). It is symmetrically balanced with the focal point centered in the picture plane. The painting is a still life, but the composition is strong and bold. O'Keefe loved painting nature, and this skull was beautiful to her, not morbid. The juxtaposition of the soft flowers with the brittle bone make for an interesting combination. They could be speaking of both life and death, but ultimately speak of the beauty of nature. Her approach to her paintings is pure and direct - she had an eye for capturing nature and detail without making it fussy and busy. Her paintings are elegant, spare and compelling. Her work is beautiful and haunting and helped establish a modern aesthetic in the world of art.<br /><br />This post seems woefully incomplete. Stieglitz and O'Keefe had a powerful love story and an incredible artistic connection. He was one of the twentieth centuries most reknowned photographers and Georgia was often his photographic muse. I have always enjoyed reading biographies of artists throughout my life, and reading their biographies were some of my favorites. Explore their lives for yourself - you won't regret the time invested.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwFtJBUtkVOdKmA3wVxO6VQ23Wc2wSkC_DVnUXiB4lYw5NrV2o-LKMkrqbLzAA2c8g7bGKMZrAnY3lJks0CtB8VTZek0J6r3DJCBPj5tp1PVk4i-edvVHwu0hIPJhrBCLh1-W/s1600/Georgia+O%2527Keefe+Portrait.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 316px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwFtJBUtkVOdKmA3wVxO6VQ23Wc2wSkC_DVnUXiB4lYw5NrV2o-LKMkrqbLzAA2c8g7bGKMZrAnY3lJks0CtB8VTZek0J6r3DJCBPj5tp1PVk4i-edvVHwu0hIPJhrBCLh1-W/s400/Georgia+O%2527Keefe+Portrait.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556856732661985362" /></a>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-78100486384280842432011-01-02T14:40:00.005-06:002011-01-02T14:53:13.282-06:00The Sketchbook Project<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8lPj7X0ebe8xFgdjleCBBzJjAlMpXUWANETeJ0MhNT3KXitUkqTSEpUyEnTxPVmtdscFMGInY4oGyBrK-5bfcD-zMD0Q-dgUWSC0z1ifT_cHMmSP8xK64rN24s4XiikgFbT5/s1600/The+Sketchbook+Project.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8lPj7X0ebe8xFgdjleCBBzJjAlMpXUWANETeJ0MhNT3KXitUkqTSEpUyEnTxPVmtdscFMGInY4oGyBrK-5bfcD-zMD0Q-dgUWSC0z1ifT_cHMmSP8xK64rN24s4XiikgFbT5/s400/The+Sketchbook+Project.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5557692261340357346" /></a><br /><br />I signed up to create a sketchbook for this traveling exhibit of sketchbooks. Over 28,000 people from 94 countries have signed up to do this! The deadline to postmark our sketchbooks is January 15, 2011. I have been working like mad over the holiday to finish my book. I'm not quite done, but I see the end in sight. When I signed up for the project in October, I chose the theme "Mystery Maps". It sounded juicy to me. <br /><br />The day I received my sketchbook, I had a realization: after my father's death, I asked for one thing that belonged to him - his satchel of maps. He began traveling around the US after he retired from teaching and collected maps from all the places he visited. That bag of maps sat in my closet for seven years. I knew immediately that I would use the book to explore my dad's travels. This is the cover of my book. You can see my artist profile for the project <a href="http://www.arthousecoop.com/users/christine-miller">here</a>. I'll post more info about this project later, right now I have to get back to work on it!!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitIKHojJmvU6t_zilNUjOzKLp2tAION9-KuwOUIx8GmrQMUcp7eFH6EbgoPLz2T1APJVxt-VYCljzjmk_MTWFr2LKeiN0KdcdGX_1byPJ0qhjFNq2zcfit3f7njLywcak2swDp/s1600/IMG.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitIKHojJmvU6t_zilNUjOzKLp2tAION9-KuwOUIx8GmrQMUcp7eFH6EbgoPLz2T1APJVxt-VYCljzjmk_MTWFr2LKeiN0KdcdGX_1byPJ0qhjFNq2zcfit3f7njLywcak2swDp/s400/IMG.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5557692476217454258" /></a>Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-66526399791662035862010-12-28T17:49:00.001-06:002010-12-28T17:12:25.545-06:0010/11 Academic Decathlon The Great Depression Art Selection #14 - American Gothic<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZTGu5VGLvCAEF4NNMzsQaxyXg1-kYqmI25M2ST8SQGydOp13KEssJgVzNFN1J0STmwRXxBOpGuWT9zI1eiukHoubL6PMcniUbd1y71fKEMJN6RpN632vsrpGl0tEo_4A2gMtu/s1600/%252314+American+Gothic.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 312px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZTGu5VGLvCAEF4NNMzsQaxyXg1-kYqmI25M2ST8SQGydOp13KEssJgVzNFN1J0STmwRXxBOpGuWT9zI1eiukHoubL6PMcniUbd1y71fKEMJN6RpN632vsrpGl0tEo_4A2gMtu/s400/%252314+American+Gothic.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548092122153015634" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">American Gothic</span>, Grant Wood, 1930, Oil on Beaver Board, 78 x 65.3 cm (30 3/4 x 25 3/4 in.), Signed on man's overalls: GRANT / WOOD / 1930, The Art Institute of Chicago<br /><br />This is one of the most interesting paintings - not because I think it's such a fantastic work of art, but because it has spawned so many variations and has been used in advertising ad nauseum! Right up next to the Mona Lisa, I think this painting has a notoriety that is astounding. It has a ton of parodies - check out this <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/american-gothic">site</a> that shows some of them. You know what they say, "Imitation is one of the sincerest forms of flattery." <a href="http://www.grantwoodartgallery.org/">Grant Wood</a> should fee really flattered! Let's see how this painting got to be so famous.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwgJXF5V9s4ldIsNPCX6suo33q1qfHaZ_gDR_H0jZGATG8uHVIfe1kbA6rjOnUJC8gW5PVeV8bxhWN3mnuAQCIBmNyx1H6Z6pSh35GtXWdj5k1RXaPEugUkLTUl89RE4I9fb6s/s1600/Balloon+American+Gothic.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 374px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwgJXF5V9s4ldIsNPCX6suo33q1qfHaZ_gDR_H0jZGATG8uHVIfe1kbA6rjOnUJC8gW5PVeV8bxhWN3mnuAQCIBmNyx1H6Z6pSh35GtXWdj5k1RXaPEugUkLTUl89RE4I9fb6s/s400/Balloon+American+Gothic.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555862781910024530" /></a><br /><br />Wood was one of the artists that started a new movement of art in the United States, <a href="http://www.artinthepicture.com/styles/Regionalism/">Regionalism</a>. For most of Western art history, European art and artists drove the boat. Let's face it - with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance artists (to hit the high points) all centered in Europe, it's no wonder it was so important. Paris was the art capital of the world until the mid-twentieth century when it shifted to New York. American artists in the twentieth century wanted to begin their own traditions and began breaking away from the European tradition. Artwork that was based not only in realism, but also reflected American towns and people became the subjects of the paintings of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry. Grant Wood's <span style="font-style:italic;">American Gothic</span> was a hit when it was first exhibited and it has remained an icon for Midwestern America. <br /><br />His early art education included metalworking, silversmithing, woodworking and jewelry-making. The Craftsman, or <a href="http://char.txa.cornell.edu/art/decart/artcraft/artcraft.htm">Arts and Crafts movement</a>, was a big influence in his artistic style. It helped that he had so many skills because he was able to support himself as a silversmith while he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1934 he became the director of the PWAP for Iowa and was able to draw from the artistic community he had launched by involving many of the Regionalist artists to work on public art projects. From 1934 until his death in 1942, he was a respected painter and professor of painting at the University of Iowa. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.wapellocounty.org/americangothic/educate/ag.htm">Let's take a closer look at the painting</a> - a man and woman stand formally in front of a farmhouse - they look serious and stern. Though the house is in the background, the painting is set up like a portrait. You can see a Gothic-style window in the house, a corner of a red barn and some treetops in the background. The couple are dressed in their finest clothing - the woman has a white collar with a cameo fastened at her neck, the man is wearing a formal dark blue jacket over his overalls and work shirt. Holding a pitchfork in his hand, his face tells of a life of physical labor and exposure to the elements. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBw_cQbj00FSaNkq7XA7pNTMp2UNN7CP05jIGOHE1yxgPN4X_LEBUfJ5bZNPIgUDkUiRWBLd7zQ7rxPg55qJ5tea9qBa4d6AtavQUzmdn6JdVt21fAmS9hJUy4cbEKlBKUwaWI/s1600/36682-wood_sesame_gothic.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 342px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBw_cQbj00FSaNkq7XA7pNTMp2UNN7CP05jIGOHE1yxgPN4X_LEBUfJ5bZNPIgUDkUiRWBLd7zQ7rxPg55qJ5tea9qBa4d6AtavQUzmdn6JdVt21fAmS9hJUy4cbEKlBKUwaWI/s400/36682-wood_sesame_gothic.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555874842273952722" /></a><br /><br />The farmhouse looks a bit like a bungalow with Gothic church detailing. The window is arch shaped and has a tripartite (three-part) division, just like the windows in Gothic churches in Europe. There are other Gothic references: the lightning rod that is cut off could represent a cross and the stiff postures of the couple resemble the carved saints that might surround an entrance to a Gothic cathedral. There are lots of decorative details, patterns in the fabrics, details in their clothing, the grain of wood the house is made of, which makes the painting super realistic. So realistic, you think he has documented a moment in a farm couple's life. But Wood carefully set the scene himself - the woman is his sister and the man is his dentist. Everything, man, woman and house, were sketched separately and combined into his composition.<br /><br />There is some ambiguity in their countenances - the woman is staring off with an expression that could be worried, dreamy or distracted, but the man confronts the viewer's gaze directly. His grip on the pitchfork communicates his ownership of all you see in the picture - he is protective and proud. The seriousness of the painting tips just slightly into satire. Is he honoring this couple or mocking them? Even when the painting was first exhibited, no one was quite sure what his intentions were. He never tipped his hand; he just explained it as part of the Regionalism movement. Smart guy. Artists do not always have to tell everyone what their work is about - it can be up to the viewer to make their own meaning. Is this one of the reasons this painting has been parodied so much, because it already has this edgy quality to it? What do you think? <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvvgXmkln2s-f0BhhdstoXpO6i4Od8h4qyno-uYjrqGpk2lVOxKhNuz1VBD0t5uHJHA-OGRqohBO6kMm9r1PnZNw_7KuVY5fzlshzUFxxAbkw-ja3N6s4bXSkbQjUO2mTASDHx/s1600/Grant+Wood+Self+Portrait+1932.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 248px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvvgXmkln2s-f0BhhdstoXpO6i4Od8h4qyno-uYjrqGpk2lVOxKhNuz1VBD0t5uHJHA-OGRqohBO6kMm9r1PnZNw_7KuVY5fzlshzUFxxAbkw-ja3N6s4bXSkbQjUO2mTASDHx/s400/Grant+Wood+Self+Portrait+1932.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548093648518594418" /></a>Grant Wood Self Portrait, 1932Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-24418096839960107552010-12-19T09:21:00.004-06:002010-12-19T09:27:40.005-06:00My Art I students' thoughts about making art<a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2906162/What_Art_I_students_feel_about_making_Art" title="Wordle: What Art I students feel about making Art"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 180 px;"src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/2906162/What_Art_I_students_feel_about_making_Art" alt="Wordle: What Art I students feel about making Art" style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"></a>Click <a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2906162/What_Art_I_students_feel_about_making_Art">here</a> to see a higher resolution of the word cloud on wordle.net's site<br /><br />OK - so I did the same thing with my Art I students and was curious to see how different their thinking might be. Their ideas weren't radically different, but there were some responses that were different. Check out their word cloud by clicking up above and visiting it on the wordle site.Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29680042.post-42248566542695886202010-12-18T17:37:00.014-06:002010-12-18T21:39:50.189-06:00My sculpture students' thoughts about making art<a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2905127/Thoughts_about_making_sculpture" title="Wordle: Thoughts about making sculpture"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 180 px;" src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/2905127/Thoughts_about_making_sculpture" alt="Wordle: Thoughts about making sculpture" style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"></a>Click <a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2905127/Thoughts_about_making_sculpture">here</a> to see the word cloud on Wordle's site in better resolution.<br /><br />I gave my sculpture students a fall semester survey to get their feedback on the class so far. One of my questions was for them to make a list of words and phrases that communicate their feelings about their art making. I used wordle.net to make a word cloud of my student's word lists. After typing in all of their words, Presto! A word cloud was formed! BUT, I found out you can't search for your word cloud on their site, but could paste the html into your blog, which I have done. The resolution isn't great for this post, but I've created a link above to the original word cloud. Much nicer. The biggest words were the ones that were the most frequently listed, with the smallest words being the least frequently used. Fun stuff.Tag art teacherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03731034841123086244noreply@blogger.com1