http://herbertfoundation.org/media/img/large/25_baldessari–job04.jpg
I am still looking at John Baldessari’s work. The image I copied her by him is similar to how I am going to approach some of my work. I am reversing the color and I am hoping to use a grey scale for the cutout areas.
I have been continuing on with artwork that deals with place and visual material culture. I am still going to try and create a diptych of two different locations and attempt to cutout portions that differ between the two areas. I am specifically trying to deal with different socio economic locations around me. Right now, I have just finished the outline drawing of one area. I am beginning to add the color with soft pastels. I am trying to figure out some technically aspects of PanPastels—love working with the Pan Pastels!
I know this might sound ridiculous, but I was consumed the last couple of weeks by Halloween. The other art teacher I work with is very big into costume design. It is her major art form, and every Halloween since I have worked with her we have dressed up for Halloween as artist and artwork. This year we were Leonardo Da Vinci and Mona Lisa. Although, I did not make the dress, I was experimenting with make-up and wigs. I give the utmost credit to costume designers. The work I put into finding a wig that would work under my budget was crazy. I also tried to use make-up to reproduce my face in a realistic manner to the painting of Mona Lisa. That was difificult to do, and I ended up just wearing normal makeup. I have grown to respect the artform more and more as the year passes. So, for this post about our artwork, I am posting about the costume used for school. Although, it was not supposed to be work for school, I was consumed by trying to make it life like these past two weeks. So, here is the picture to display the results.
If words are limiting, then can’t pictures be as well? Especially pictures that are not coherent? Yes, the pleasurable thing about art is its ability to be open ended and relatable to all, but don’t artists—generally- create with intension? These are a few questions that came to mind when reading Nick Sousanis’s “Behind the Scenes of a Dissertation in Comics Form.” I enjoyed the synopsis from his dissertation, but I struggled with understanding much of his imagery in the raw form. I think I would have liked to see a few more “polished” strips. This leads me to another question, one in which he mentions text and imagery being a generative cycle. If his sketches are created for the intention of generating thought, is his intension to generate thought just for him or for the viewer as well? How can an artist create something that generates thought for the public and not just generated for the artist’s thoughts?
Sousanis’s excerpt generated many questions for me, especially since I document my work in a less creative manner. Much of my work generates from pictures. Pictures I have taken with my camera phone. I find that I am one who is guilty to being a slave of time. Due to that, I constantly take pictures on my phone of things I want to revisit. I don’t often carry a sketchbook around with me anymore because it takes up space, but instead, I allow the space to be consumed by my phone. A device that can capture what “captured” me more accurately—but maybe less creatively. However, I do appreciate his argument for visual thinking. I have seen many statistics on how humans obtain information mainly though seeing. This one, I have copied and pasted from http://velvetchainsaw.com/2012/05/23/your-senses-your-raw-information-learning-portals/:
Neuroscience and cognitive psychology research has uncovered the amazing power of our senses. This was unimaginable a few years ago.
According to researchers Dr. L.D. Rosenblum, Dr. Harold Stolovitch and Dr Erica Keeps, here’s how much information each of our senses processes at the same time as compared to our other senses.
83.0% – Sight
11.0% – Hearing
03.5% – Smell
01.5% – Touch
01.0% – Taste
That’s surprising. And it flies in the face of some of our conventional educational theories like VAK (visual, auditory and kinesthetic) and Learning Styles. No matter how you slice the pie, our brains give preference to processing vision as compared to our other senses.
So why don’t we emphasize the visual more in education?
The beginning of a soft pastel drawing in which I will be removing areas. I am going to place two images next to each other–two part piece. I am still hoping to explore visual material culture and place.
Scratching out the creativity of color. Literal meets figurative response to the reading.
Twyla Thorp, The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life
The first thing that came to mind after reading the small section in Thorp’s book The Creative Habit: Learn it and use it for life was to look up more about her. Inferring that she was a choreographer from her writing, I wanted to find out more about what she worked on and is currently creating. “Reading fat,” as she calls it is something that I find myself unconsciously doing when I have found something of interest—to learn more about that something. I found this to be very interesting because if you have the interest then the desire to learn more is naturally there. I believe this to be true for my students as well. When finding something of interest, you are naturally curious and want to seek out more information until you ease the scratch; until something else sparks your interest and causes you to scratch for more.
Thorp’s description of scratching was beautifully poignant. I took to her description instantly, and was somewhat jealous of how she found one word that could affectively describe the process we all take in finding our next creative focus. Her lists of areas to find inspiration to scratch, such as books, nature, mentors, and her rules of managing them I enjoyed greatly. I instantly related it to advice I was given when I was sick in Ghana. Never scratch the same place twice, be in shape, and maintain the white hot pitch. I instantly internalized it as a survival tool, categorizing it next to my Ghana life survival tips.
Judith Burton discusses the need to focus on the personal expression of youth and adolescents in art making rather than directed art techniques and outcomes. In her article, “The integrity of personal, experience, or the presence of life in art,” she explains the developmental stage of youth and adolescents, and breaks down the thought process during art making for these age groups. Her article also discusses how fostering youths’ expression of personal experience with imagination can cultivate better perspectives toward the arts, be it: visual, written, auditory, or performative. If art education was directed in such a manner, then much of the youth would not find it to be pointless but pertinent.
Burton’s essay arouses many questions for me. Many focusing around Rolling’s Analytic form of Arts Based Research (ABR). The main overarching question was how do you foster Analytic self-expression with youth when administration and parents’ perceptions are similar to Burton’s statement that, “in the western world, grown-ups were not so comfortable with the works that denied acceptable standards of beauty or realism in the art of the children however young,” (p 13)? I have a tendency to think that art education is run the way it is currently in public education settings because many districts’ administration view art education this way (this bias only coming from the perspective of my current district where I am employed). The overall arching theme of education currently is statistic and data based research. Administration in my district has a tendency to only support the arts if we can focus it in this direction—which I believe is discipline based arts. Burton also made me question my current teaching because I do fit into the realms she describes as ineffective. I would love to implement strategies that focus on youths’ imaginative creative self, but the few times that I have tried, my students didn’t take interest. I fail at the implementation. I have started several lessons with my students where it has been working through materials. They stop about half way through a thirty-minute class and ask if we can start the real lesson. How do you carry on lessons that are self-explorative in theme? What if the overarching theme you introduce for some direction and scaffolding doesn’t fit? To be honest, I find frustration in these articles because, yes, these ideas are beautiful, and I do agree with them to a certain extent; but, how do you affectively approach implementing said ideas? In a bias, bold statement of my own narrowly formulated opinion, I feel these theoretical ideas seem untested in a variety of environments. I feel that these practices are implemented in settings that have income and support flexibility in the teaching atmosphere.
Swimming Through Ideas
My ideas and focus first started around the idea of visual culture. I am still very much intrigued by the influence of visual imagery, and its impact on individuals consciously and subconsciously. However, the exploration into many of the articles for this course has caused me to think greater into material culture. The reality is, all things have an influence; not just visual images. With this idea, couldn’t things (objects) we even create or recreate impact our conscious and subconscious? Object and imagery influence has become my main focus now through material culture. I was even thinking about pursuing a research topic I came up with after reading “From Topics to Questions,” which was: I am studying/working on the disconnect between administration and teachers in creating effective school atmospheres. I want to find out whether this is the cause for failing large inner city school districts. I want to help my reader understand that teachers are not failing our students and deserve greater freedoms that allow for less testing and less strict surveillance. I am beginning to think that material culture could even give insight into this proposed topic. Since this topic was formulated after a day filled with disheartened belief in the abilities of my district to make decisions that were best for the success of students and their teachers. I also just read an article from City newspaper here in Rochester, the article is called, “Black Teachers Matter.” Tim Louis Macaluso writes on page 10 that, “we often view [black] students through the eyes of poverty and underappreciate some of their soft skills—the resilience and the ability to adjust to complex situations, code-switching, and being able to adapt.” I think through the exploration of objects with students, a teacher could find the way to reach a student’s adaptability to lead them to a successful route. Material culture will allow for a teacher to connect with a student’s strength.
Tim Ingold’s essay, “Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials,” is a summation that nothing is static or ever finished; material forms are always acted upon by various sources. He emphasizes more importance in the process than a static product. Ingold states five aspects that support this idea of process being more important than form. His first argument is that forms are not objects but things. Things respond and react to forces allowing us to be productive or do. A thing creates a space where living happens. Second, he continues with the idea of life and agency. He defines life and agency through boundaries—not separate-but rather points where things diffuse or stick; it’s a place where things mutually act upon each other. Third, materials and materiality, is where people bring together materials in hopes of what might emerge. His fourth argument he labels improvisation and abduction. He describes this as allowing things to unfold unexpectedly; not to force a set direction or reach an end but to keep going. Lastly, he mentions network and meshwork. He describes this area of interaction as a place where things act indirectly upon other things. Overall, Ingold states that there is mutual interaction among things, whether indirectly or directly, and that forms are not static objects, but necessities that allow us to experience. We should look at the process of things rather than things as dead objects.
Ingold utilizes beautiful descriptions or metaphors as examples to explain these areas of interaction among things. The reading is a beautiful analysis for artwork, and how artwork is not a static object with a set ending; rather, a boundary where interactions occur, or the areas in which materials are brought together with no set expectation just a hopeful emergence of an ever evolving thing. In essence, his five points of argument are powerful supporters for the description of creativity.
