Identity and Art 1

Building capacity to tackle big ideas with confidence, or at least without abject terror, is one of my central goals in my introductory classes. This takes work. A whole course for some students. 

The end results are so worth it. 

For this project I gave my students the theme of identity and open media choice. They ran with it, some making work that was brave and deeply personal, others examining social issues or complex themes. 

A painting of Tahrir Square protests by Sarah. Making art about her Egyptian identity was important to her. I love how this work both captures the power of protest and looks hopefully toward the future.

Alex chose to create a series of photographs about issues that transgender youth experience. He decided not to show faces in the work, including this self portrait, because of the violence that can be a constant threat to trans youth.

A common misunderstanding of Choice instruction is that it's a free-for-all where the teacher just sits back and lets the kids figure it out. The truth is that, like any good method of teaching, it's very planned and intentional. Developing the skills necessary to complete this work took much of the course and I carefully guided students through examining the concept of identity in the inspiration stage of this project. 

During design and creation time I focused on mentoring, which I wrote about last week here. Students often need help in narrowing focus and refining ideas. I do this by asking probing questions and helping them brainstorm a range of solutions. 

Mental illness was the focus of this piece. Elie focused on the idea of multiple personalities, developing the concept with wonderfully expressive faces.

Tazeen worked with the concept of poverty for her project.

I'm so proud of the work that my students produced during this project. I was also impressed that so many of them made work that was really personal. It's important to give kids a safe place to examine ideas and issues that are important to them.

This mixed media piece is about stereotypes. Jordan had a very clear vision and when her first plan didn't work she experimented until she found the solution she was looking for.

The theme of this work is death. Nic and I did some problem solving together when this work consisted of just the hand and the watch. He decided to add the text "birth life death" repeating in a spiral to better communicate the idea that time is running out for us all.