Thoughts on Arting
  • Thoughts On Arting
  • Bootcamps
  • About Me
  • Fellowship Reflections

Thoughts on Arting

Making the artists of the future, one learning experience at a time. 

What's Quality?

1/19/2015

2 Comments

 
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. 
Picture
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing by Eduardo, Art 1.
Picture
"Auroracent" from our Character Remix exercise.
Picture
"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. 
2 Comments
jean b link
1/19/2015 04:20:12 am

Melissa, once again you have nailed it. I completely agree. I also want to add, and this is something I think is often overlooked, is the skill level of the student. I know often some people think work doesn't look good, but they have no idea of what student created it. Was it a life skills student that has just moved past the scribbling stage? Was it a student that had absolutely no drawing skills in August, but now in January understands how to draw a box in perspective?

Reply
Julia
1/24/2015 08:31:39 am



Mrs. Purtee,

I appreciate your philosophy of ownership and intent, and making the meaning of the students' work of great importance. My question is: How many students do you have every day in each class? And how many classes do you teach per day? Also, what is the grade level for the class mentioned above?

Thank you for your time,

Julia R.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Mrs. Purtee

    I'm interested in creating a student student centered space  for my high school students through choice and abundant opportunity for self expression. I'm also a writer for SchoolArts co-author of  The Open Art Room.

    Archives

    December 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013

    Categories

    All
    Flipped Instruction
    High School
    TAB
    The Gradual Release Model

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Thoughts On Arting
  • Bootcamps
  • About Me
  • Fellowship Reflections