Thoughts On Arting

Portraits

1/30/2015

For our first assignments my Art 2 students created portraits. We started by dedicating a few class periods to building skills with drawing facial features, proportion and value.

Then I opened it up.

I showed them work from a variety of current, contemporary portrait artists (and one or two classics) who create in a variety of styles as a starting point.

Some chose to work with graphite, some with paint. Many decided to re-create treasured family photos.

Some of the work was highly realistic, other pieces were more interpretative or even leaning towards abstract.

I love what happens when student are pointed in the right direction, then allowed to develop their own voice and style. In this project, as always, my kids had something good to say.

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What's Quality?

1/19/2015

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What constitutes quality student work? A few conversations I've been a part of lately have made me ponder this question. It's an important one for art teachers because our value is often determined by the aesthetic appeal of the work of our very best students.

The first thing I think about when I consider a work's attributes is who made it. Making, of course, is the physical creation of the work but also the mental effort of planning and problem solving. Most of the art produced in my class room falls under two categories: projects and exercises.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing by Eduardo, Art 1.

"Auroracent" from our Character Remix exercise.

"I'm Fine" by Shelby, Art 2.

Exercises are for building skills, either the conceptual sort or skills with materials. For example, take our Character Remix project, where we asked our Art 1 students to take a recognizable character and change something fundamental about them.

Exercises like this are important for developing skills -the technical skill involved in re-creating an image and the conceptual skill involved in deciding what to change and what to leave the same in this case.

In exercises my students develop skills but in projects they apply them.

Take "I'm Fine" by Shelby. For this project I asked a lot of my Art 2 students. First, the had to select an artwork from the North Carolina Museum of Art. Next they had to plan and create a response piece of their own. They made all decisions for this project independently, unlike in exercises where I make most of the decisions.

About her work Shelby writes "My idea was to take a glass bottle and broken pieces of glass and put it into the bottle, but on the broken pieces are words that tear us up on the inside. On the outside we are smooth and clean but on the inside we have our own war that we are fighting. "

Or Eduardo's "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing", which he planned from start to finish around the open-ended theme of identity. He writes about his work
"To show my concept I did a painting of a wolf wearing the skin of a sheep, the painting showed how reality could be really different from the expectations that people have. I used a dark color in the background to represent the real identity of the animal. The blood and the skin of the sheep on the wolf represent the change of someone's identity with the purpose of taking advantage of other people."

The work in both of these projects is visually pleasing. They are well made and visually interesting. The ownership and the intent, for me, is what makes them outstanding. This is work that is expressive and personally meaningful.

When considering a works "quality", or lack of quality, what we should do is look beyond the technical skill, though that should be taken in to account.

We have to also look at the planning - was the student following steps planned by the teacher or did the student do the hard work of selecting the best materials and processes?

We have to look at concept - does the work say something, does it mean something?

When we think about quality we have to make sure that we aren't comparing teacher planned exercises to authentic, student directed work because there really isn't a comparison to be made.

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At the End

1/13/2015

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Ben, Art 1

Incorporating a high level of student choice involves quite a bit of trust. Students have to learn to trust their own ability and vision. Teachers have to trust that they can pull it off. Which is hard, especially when you're used to the control over the final product that a teacher directed model brings. So when exam time rolls around sometimes I'm a bit nervous, especially this year with our shiny, new re-vamped units. Did they get it?
Often I hear that beginning students should focus on skills, or that they can't make good decisions independently. I disagree. The most important thing I can give my students is a voice. So I challenge them.
For their final project I asked my Art 1 students to create a piece around the theme of identity and Art 2 to make work about about a current event or social issue.

These are big, hard topics and I wondered how my students would handle them.

I was pleased to see that they were ready for the challenge and also interested and engaged. You see, kids have good ideas. Above all, it's our job to teach them how to develop and express them.

Here are some examples of student work and writing. All the work pictured here is from Art 1 or 2 - this is not work from advanced students.

"I printed out a few pages of the harmful synthetic components used in beauty products, particularly the ones that were rated high on the toxic scale (10 being the worst). The names of the chemicals and the effects that they had on the body were the background, and in the center of the piece I drew an eye to represent the false sense of beauty that woman feel when they pile on layers and layers of makeup. " -Leigh, Art 2

"For this project I choose to represent the concept of how things are different to how they look, or also how people have a different identity and pretend to be someone else to take advantage of other people. To show my concept I did a painting of a wolf wearing the skin of a sheep, the painting showed how reality could be really different from the expectations that people have. I used a dark color in the background to represent the real identity of the animal. The blood and the skin of the sheep on the wolf represent the change of someone's identity with the purpose of taking advantage of other people. " Eduardo, Art 2

"To make the point, I broke up this text around the fists, showing the "people" pushing through all the negativity. How together, we can made a loud enough voice to get change done. Around the hands, i listed the names of activists and movements towards change. The big text, "Hear Us Roar", has the Earth as the "o", making it about all of us that call ourselves humans. I also used as many different skin tones I could find to also make it a unified, human issue." - Syndey, Art 2

Our last unit of the semester was about identity, or how people see themselves or others. My project was not only on myself but one of my favorite celebrities, Emma Watson. Seeing as we both identify as feminists, and that she has her own feminist organization, I would draw her as a feminist icon, Rosie the riveter. However, "I drew her in her Hogwarts uniform, wearing Gryffindor colors to show she is brave for expressing her support of feminism in Hollywood. Therefore, she has a speech bubble saying "Gryffindor feminist" instead of "we can do it" because it shows that she identifies herself as a Gryffindor and a feminist, and that in the end, how you identify yourself is all that matters." - Jenna, Art 1

Morgan, Art 2

And what did they think about the class? Did they learn? Again, my students:

"What I liked most about this class was our freedom to make whatever we wanted and ability to interpret the unit however we wanted. It really expanded my horizons and made me think about all of the options I had in this class. I got to make things I actually liked while stepping out of my comfort zone." - Jenna, Art 1

"I liked this class because we got to use our creativity to the fullest extent. We got to experiment with different materials and show our own style. We were able to come up with crazy ideas that may or may not have worked. We got to be ourselves and learn new ways to improve. I don't think anything could make this class better. " - Kearstyn, Art 2

"What I liked about this class was the variation of projects and topics that were introduced. I think we were all pushed in directions we hadn't been before and I know I personally improved my art work through this semester in Art 2" - Eloisa, Art 2

"Before taking this class, art was a much more literal thing to me. If the theme of a project was underwater, I'd draw the ocean. If the theme was nature, I'd paint a landscape. I never put any deep thought or hidden themes in my artwork. Everything was what it seems. Now having taken this class, I refuse to take any project literally. I think Art 2 has made me more conscious of themes in art and allowed me to incorporate them into my artwork. " - Matt, Art 2

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