Mini Lesson 3

“Evolving Revolution”

By: Nikita Luedke

Big Idea: We will be working with the idea of “Revolution”. This lesson in particular will focus on the digital/technological revolution taking place within the US and/or globally. Students will be asked to take a positive or negative stance on how these types of revolution affect our lives now and where our future is headed, and will then animate their ideas through simple pictures using a stop-animation format.

Essential Questions:

-Is technology more helpful or harmful to our lives?

-Do you think technology is becoming too powerful for human good?

-What positives can come of digital and technological revolutions?

-What would our lives look like if we lived before the latest technological/ digital revolution? (say… in the 1930’s).

-Why do artists use stop animation today? Why did they use this in the past?

-How does using stop animation related to the idea of revolution and changing society?

-If you had the choice to live in the distant future (3010) or the distant past (1010), which would you choose and why?

-What part of society do technological and digital revolutions affect the most? Why?

Objectives:

-The students will learn about stop motion animation through hands on experience as well as through exploration of working artists and historical references.

-The students will learn simple animation techniques and tricks.

-The students will gain experience in utilizing non-classical art media (dry erase boards and dry erase markers) to produce video art.

-The students will look critically at our technology driven culture and form an opinion on whether it is a positive or negative thing.

-The students will learn to use digital cameras as well as computer software for making slideshows.

-The students will engage in peer reviews.

Lesson Vignette:

Anticipatory Set

-The Student will research the recent advancements in technology both at the national and international level.

-The student will form an opinion on wethere he or she believes this technological revolution has a more positive or negative impact on society as a whole.

Body of Lesson

-They will then express their opinion in a short narrative using stop animation style

-First they will sketch out ten basic frames in a simple comic style sketch

-Second they will begin to transfer their ideas onto the dry erase board. They will take each of their original sketches and put the transition into ten movements to get from the first frame to the second and so on. (this should leave them with 100 frames total, give or take depending on individual needs)

- They will photograph each of their drawings before they erase it and move onto the next one.

Closure

-Finally, they will put all of the photos in order from start to finish into a slideshow/film short.

-To end the lesson, the students will have a “movie day” where we will watch and discuss each of the film shorts.

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=40497 - link to student made art work set to viva la vida

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovvk7T8QUIU&NR=1 - stop motion of various old school video games using food as props… really cool!

http://www.eraseboards.com/content/view/12/1/ - longer stop animation video on youtube (semi-professional work)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moving_Penny.gif - moving penny ; most simple example of stop animation

Artists:

http://pharosproductions.com/aosma/aosma_masters_aupperle.html - Jim Aupperle – one of the “masters” of stop animation- this website features photographs of him working on some major motion pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8JexiISPNk - amazing stop motion video of man going through his day. Choppy. (Eriq Wities) (If you are working in a conservative high school, be warned that this video does have one point where the main character drinks from a beer bottle, and another where he is smoking a cigar)

Future Classroom

For my future classroom (through the 5 senses), I chose to make a video. The classroom should be an experience, not simply a space or a place. I want an open atmosphere where children feel appreciated and comfortable. I want it to be a place where kids aren't scared to talk or be themselves. I want them to feel comfortable to explore their ideas. It will be an organized space, yet the children will still be able to get to the supplies they need. I want it to be clean, but not so clean that the kids don't feel like they're allowed to make a mess. I want my students to get their hands dirty each and every time they come into my room. Overall, I just want a relaxed atmosphere that is still conducive to artistic expression and learning. I don't want it to be "my" classroom but rather "our" classroom. Here's a short video about the topic:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPlIRB6Pxys

So the Adventure Begins...

I don’t have all too many fears about student teaching, however, I know there are many things on my mind when I think about the whole experience. I believe I am the most worried about how well I will get along with my host teacher, what that relationship will be like, and how I will learn all I need to in the short 8 weeks we have with each of them. I want to know what all I will be expected to do; will I work on grading? Will I write and teach lessons? Will I participate in parent teacher conferences? Do art teachers even do those? Will I take over the class by the end of each experience? There are just so many thoughts going through my head. I am as ready as I think I ever will be, and I have plenty of confidence, because I feel like I’ve been well prepared, yet there is still that fear of the unknown. Overall, I know I am far more excited and anxious to start than anything else. I must say the only actual “fears” I have are how my life outside of the classroom is going to go during student teaching. I don’t know where I’ll be living, what school district I’ll be in, how I’m going to manage to pay my bills, what it will be like if I have to hold down an evening shift job and student teaching, how I will balance a social life and student teaching so that I don’t get overwhelmed and so I still have a space to vent when I need to, etc. Many more of my concerns lie outside of the classroom than within. I know that I will make mistakes, I know that I will become overwhelmed at points, I know that kids will get under my skin some days, however, I also know that I love what I am doing, and that I will learn and experience more than I ever thought possible, so I am more excited to start than I am worried to go into it. 

Teachers should know....

So this doesn't have to do with our Art Education class, but is more about education as a whole. In our other education course last week, we were shown a video that was about individuals who teachers labeled as stupid or unable to learn, that turned around and became some of the greatest minds in history. This got me wondering about another issue. I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was in third grade. Now I'm not going to say in this day and age, that teachers told me I was stupid and should drop out of school, but, I was told that by my peers on a regular basis, and that's what went through my head every time I had to complete a task in school that involved literacy. When we were shown that video last Tuesday in class, it got me thinking about my own situation, and if there were dyslexics who were able to overcome and achieve great things. Much to my surprise, I came across hundreds of names of individuals just like me who were/are phenomenal minds; Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jay Leno, etc. The list goes on and on. Now, for those of you who haven't ever dealt with a learning disability, this may seem like just another cheesy educational YouTube video, but I must say, for anyone who has gone through those experiences, it is more inspirational than words can describe, to know that others have overcome the odds. I was always told that I could expect to get poor grades, that I would never enjoy reading, that I would never be able to get through college courses... I've proved all of them wrong. I am about to graduate from college with two degrees and hold a 4.0. I chose not to use disability services even though it was offered because I knew if I was going to make it through, I couldn't just rely on extra time for exams and assignments. I needed to find another way to learn. Enter: ART. This whole topic we've been talking of, visual literacy, different forms of media, online resources to help visual learners...They are all ways to help learners like myself. The only reason I have been able to get through courses here at MU was by utilizing tools like these. I don't say this to gloat, however, had I not had the personality I do, the comments I was told by educators, family, and friends when I was younger would have doomed me to failure. There were an exceptional few (family mostly), who always had faith in me, however in general people were extremely discouraging. My point in writing all of this: Don't let your students continue to think that just because they learn differently or at a different pace, that they can't go far in the education. It is possible. It's up to us as art teachers specifically to encourage our students and show them that there are other ways of thinking about things, that there are other forms of literacy that can take them far in life. If we are able to show them this, they will have such greater chances, and not just become another statistic.

Here's the video that I watched that made me think of this:
Famous Dyslexics

Just as an aside for those of you unfamiliar with this language processing disorder which does affect 10%-15% of your students, here's what they see. Now imagine that every time you put up a slide show with words, assign them readings due the next day, ask them to read an article aloud in class.... this is what they're trying to translate on the spot:

Mini Lesson 2

Media’s Manipulation- “A critique on Visual Culture”

Nikita Luedke

Enduring Big Idea: Visual Culture and Ideologies

·      In this unit, we will be exploring visual culture. Visual culture in relation to this lesson, can be defined as all of the visual objects and images we are surrounded with every day. Ideologies play a large part in visual culture, and tend to be completely intertwined. In this unit, we will learn more about how we read and interpret the visual culture and ideologies we are surrounded by, and then learn how to actively critique them as well as create our own. In this lesson specifically, we will be turning our focus more directly on media and marketing techniques that cater to various groups in our society, and how those create a visual culture and impact our ideologies as a whole.

Essential Questions:

·      What is an Ideology? What are some general ideologies of American culture?

·      Who do you “idealize” and why?

·      How have ideologies changed over time?

·      Do different cultures hold different ideologies?

·      What is “Visual Culture”?

·      How are visual culture and ideologies connected?

·      What role does marketing play in forming ideologies?

·      Does marketing control our ideologies, or do we influence what they put in front of us?

·      How can specific images (visual culture) influence how we act, feel, or relate to people?

Objectives: The student will…

·      Learn to critique various types of media images put in front of them

·      Actively think about how ideologies and visual culture influence their opinions, actions, judgments, relationships, ect.

·      Learn how to take an image displaying one ideology, pull that influence out, and re-create this image in a way that will showcase a different viewpoint

·      Come to understand how marketing can cater to different age groups, genders, cultures, etc.

·      Pull together all their knowledge of visual culture, ideologies, marketing techniques, and technical application to produce four re-created images into one comprehensive book, that will critique points of ideological tension in which they are interested.

Ads we will be looking at: Bebe women’s sportswear ad, Nina Rici Perfume ad, Tag for men ad, and McGraw cologne.

·      Bebe ad will explore the use of idealized bodies to pull people in

·      Nina Rici ad will explore the use of fantasy/ fun/ beauty to pull people in

·      Tag ad will explore the use of “I get this/am happy when I use this product and if you use it so will you”

·      McGraw ad will explore the use of celebrity figures to sell products

Artist we will explore: Instead of focusing on specific artists, we will turn to various ads from throughout history. Many of these are drawings from the 1930’s and 1950’s. We will also look at some of the artwork of Ben Frost (check images carefully, a number of his works would be highly inappropriate for the school setting)

Lesson Vignette: Anticipatory Set

            The students will be shown pictures of Ads from 1930’s-2010 and will uncover techniques marketing specialists use to sell products to specific types of people. I will introduce the project, discuss a few of the essential questions, and request that they bring in a minimum of 6 ads (magazines will be provided if needed) which they feel cater to them specifically. That same day, we will learn 3 various book folding techniques they may choose from for their book’s format.

Lesson Vignette: Body of Lesson

We will discuss—as a class—the rest of the essential questions to get their minds moving in the correct direction. The students will then spend time looking at each ad they brought in, and take notes (text or sketches) on what parts of the ad draw their attention. They will pick out one the one part that draws them to the product the most, and will then begin exploring ways to change that one thing to make the ad draw in a different gender, age, personality, etc. They will collage these two opposing things into one ad (I’ve left this part vague and open to interpretation intentionally, they will be allowed artistic freedom in how they perceive this part. Some may want to collage in images from other magazines, some may want to go back in history and pull our old newspaper clippings, some may use text, some may want to draw or paint something in on top instead… all of these are okay and will make the project more meaningful to them). They will then use the 4 ads that they feel make the strongest impact and put them into a book format that they learned earlier in the lesson.

Lesson Vignette: Closure

            The students will all set their books out and we will have a class go around where they will all get a chance to look through one another’s books. We will discuss which things worked well, and what could be improved, as well as what they’ve learned about how techniques in advertising affect the way they look at things.  We will also go over some of the more critical “essential questions” and see how their answers compare to before they participated in the image manipulation.

Grading:

The students will be graded upon completing of 4 collage advertisements. They must write their reasoning for each one, and the way the image is portrayed must meet up with what they are saying.

Additional Considerations:

·      Purposeful constraints/boundaries—What technical problems  will the lesson address/explore—What conceptual problems will the lesson address/explore?

o   It must be done in a book format, however, they will be able to choose which of the three types of book folding/binding techniques will present their ideas the most effectively.

o   They will be asked to collage and piece things together, however, the process and materials they use will be totally up to them and will force them to think critically about what they are trying to say with each collage, and how they can pull them all together in the end.

o   They will address the technical aspects of 2D composition as well as book construction

o   The conceptual problems they address will vary based on what types of ads they pick to work with, however, they will all deal with the concept of how to take one ideology and transform it into another as a critique on visual culture.

            

Walker Chapter 6

            This chapter in the textbook was for the most part, a summary of everything we have learned about creating units and lessons in Art Education. Although much of it was redundant and ideas we have heard a million times over at this point, I do feel like what was said was a good reminder of the “best” way to teach art. As the teacher, you start creating the unit with a “big idea” in mind. You research artists who exemplify this idea and come up with essential questions which will later guide student learning. These questions are meant to provoke deeper thinking about the big idea, and it is imperative that they are well thought out and connected to the big idea. After you have your big ideas, you use supportive activities which are more hands on or discussion based so that the students really do understand what the big idea is all about not just at the surface level, but more comprehensively. Following the meaning making activity(s), you move into the art making section of the lesson or unit where students apply what they have learned prior into art pieces of their own. This is the time that they get to explore and work with art-making problems, technical aspects, media manipulation, etc, yet are still guided by the overall big idea that ties it all together. The last piece of the puzzle is the assessment where the teacher must decide whether or not the student has not only completed the project, but gained a handle on what the big idea really meant and how they worked it into their art.

            As I said, we’ve learned all of this before, but it’s a good thing to hear over and over. The more I see of various art classes, the more I realize that we learn this style of teaching—this philosophy—yet it is hard to find this level of meaning in most of the basic level art courses in public schools of all levels. There have only been a handful of times where I have been observing that the group of students I’m watching is doing anything more than material exploration. This is a sad thing to see, students who you know are capable of creating art with much deeper meanings than simply technical media expertise, yet all they have the opportunity to do in the classroom is just that… learn how to use a given media, and then apply that expertise into an artwork with no meaning. If this is something that is started in grade school, our students would be so much more rounded. I have seen, in good cases, where there are kindergarteners talking about what symbolism is, and how they used one thing to represent something else they were thinking about, and that’s KINDERGARTEN! If a 5 year old can produce meaningful art with big ideas to back it up, it can be fostered at any level. This is the way art should be taught in my opinion. 

Spiral Workshop Lesson

I have fallen in love with the collaborative wall connections/ symbolic constructions lesson on the Spiral Curriculum website. I actually explored the lesson plans before I did the reading from Walker for this week, and loved the idea of a collaborative project which could work with art as well as other class subjects. After reading Walker Chapters 4 and 5, I realized that the reason this project would work so well was because it was simple in nature, yet required so much artistic research, focused on art-making problems, and held onto a strong big idea throughout the entire project. This is a quick project that can have a big impact.

What this lesson consists of:

1. Have your students choose a theme for the entire class to work with; this could be anything from each students favorite memory to what WWII was about, to the human body and it’s anatomy. Any theme will do.

2. Have each student gather information about said theme and come in with an image based off of the information

3. Each student creates a “symbol” based on this image that represents the theme to them

4. This symbol is cut out of a large piece of black construction paper or mat board and they are then all arranged (with the help of the students) on a large blank wall

The result of this project is a massive mural of many symbols that represent your whole. It’s an intensely collaborative project, yet each student gets to do their own thing as well.

This project immediately stuck a chord after I read Walker chapter 4 where Walker talked about art-making problems and how they can enhance and expand upon the big idea you are working with. The problems Walker suggests in this chapter as “art-making problems” are transformation, concealment, disruption, illogical combination, and opposition. Think about this project as a whole. EVERY ONE of these art-making problems would have to be called upon in the creation of this mural. Students would have to transform a complex image, which may hold a million pieces of information, down into one simple symbol. That’s like taking a book and turning it into a word. Concealment would be dealt with in the explanation of how symbols aren’t meant to be a literal translation of an idea, but rather a simple image, which strikes up an idea. They will have to choose what parts of their information and image to conceal, and which parts to show. Disruption, illogical combination, and opposition are all things that would be brought up when hanging the pieces to form the mural. After making all their symbols, they have to work together and discuss issues such as these in order to create a unified mural that says what they want it to. The meaning will change based off of how they place things next to one another and so on. This lesson so clearly tackles the idea of art-making problems unified by a big idea, that I would actually try and start a unit with this so that students would understand these issues at a core level before moving on to more complex problems.

In chapter 5, Walker talked about boundaries in art, and how they can be both helpful and destructive at the same time, but in different ways. Now, this isn’t as relevant to this project as chapter 4 was, but it is still entwined in it. Because of the nature of this project, the students are extremely limited in what they can create. They must all create a symbol which would be the same height and close to the same width, they must all work in black paper, and they must all work from the same big idea or theme. The freedom and exploration in this project however, comes from the fact that they can create any image they want within that context. Say they were working on this mural in collaboration with the Biology department at their high school. The theme could simply be human anatomy. The student would have so much independence and freedom to choose to research what would interest them. They could choose anything from brain development to toe nails. Because different things are bound to interest different students, they would all come up with very unique symbols, and then there would be the interesting task of finding a way to tie all of them together and the questions that would raise. Let’s go with my previous example of doing this for the biology class. Say a student who did their symbol to represent heart attacks placed theirs next to a symbol to represent emotion. This would carry a deeper meaning. Now say that same heart attack symbol was placed next to one representing the circulatory system. These two placements would carry very different meanings. There are just so many different forms a project like this could take. The balance of boundaries/ limitations and freedoms in this project is well suited for students who are new to artistic thinking, however it could easily be adapted to ALL levels of artists. The more advanced the students, the more complex you make your mural and the more questions you as the teacher are able to raise to make them think critically.

I just love this project. I will totally be doing this the first chance I get with my class. Kindergarten through college, this would be a great fun little lesson which would teach many artistic concepts in a way that would be easy for students to understand.

Walker 4 &5

Walker Chapter 4

            In this chapter, Walker spoke of the idea of how art-making problems can be used as tools to enhance big ideas in the classroom.  The problems that Walker suggests are transformation, concealment, disruption, illogical combination, and opposition. I think that the way this idea is explained in the beginning of the chapter makes it quite confusing, however, by the end, I realized that all Walker was trying to get across was that when other artistic problems and processes are brought into a project, it can in turn enhance and expand upon the big idea your students are working with. My favorite of the five major questions Walker asks is “Does the art-making problem extend beyond cleverness and novelty”. I especially like this question for middle school and high school curriculum development. From the small bit that I have seen, students at this level are starting to understand the idea of using art a less literal way, however, they tend to stick to obvious solutions to get away from this less literal representation of ideas. I think we as teachers can get our students to understand this concept of letting art-making problems enhance and extend the big idea they originally started with, they will create much more unique and thought provoking art. I really enjoyed when Walker brought up Barbara Kruger as an example of how to explore this with students. I am partial to Kruger because much of my research has focused on parts of her work, but that aside, the lesson Walker thought up was genius to me. Having students look around them in order to get a picture that would seem normal at first glance but then having them think critically enough to find something wrong with that picture, or a way to comment on that picture to make other people think is an amazing idea. It would force students to take into consideration the world around them, find something that they feel strongly about, figure out a way to represent that photographically, and then think about how to put a spin on it with text which would suggest their ideas, but not be too blunt or give away too much. It would be a tough exercise for many high school students, but I feel like even if they didn’t all succeed at every part of this project, they would have learned a lot about how to think about art, and how to use art-making problems to enhance their art.

Walker Chapter 5

            This chapter was overall about art boundaries. In one particular section of this chapter, Walker was writing about a teacher who was showing her class the abstract work of Sean Scully “Angel”. In this section, there was a student who said this of the painting  that the streaked paint was “like a marker running out. It’s ugly and boring and looks like something a three-year-old could do. The lines are not even strait. It’s all messed up.” I greatly appreciated this quote for the reason that before I was educated in art history, this would have been my exact quote if I were being shown this painting. I used to think that all artists should create to the best of their technical abilities. I did not understand art that “looked like a something a three-year-old could do”.  This whole story by Walker led into the idea of teaching students about abstraction and how to utilize specific boundaries such as color, line, emphasis and so on to create art with deep meaning behind it. I thought this whole scenario was a great way to explain how to go about teaching the importance of boundaries and aesthetic choices in abstract art.  

Visual Lexicon- My Favorite Resources

Google has, in recent times, become a verb instead of a noun; “To Google”.  When faced with any question, what do we as Americans raised in the digital age turn to? Google. If someone asked you to look up a list of the American presidents, where would you turn? Google. If you need directions from California to Maine, where would you go? Google. If you want pictures of a poodle wearing a hat, where would you go? Google. This epidemic has affected education far more than any other sector of our society, and I myself am just as guilty as every one of my peers. I am guilty of Google abuse.  Anytime I need to acquire new information of any type, I immediately turn to Google, simply because it is fast and easy to use. The problem is, it is not necessarily reliable, efficient, or meaningful. Learn things, and I find out what I need to know, but the answers and pictures I come across are, in general, very generic. They are in essence what every person finds when they “Google” the same word or phrase. I wasn’t aware until it was explained to me, how Google actually works when you search an image in particular. Say for instance, you search the word “Baby” as an image search in Google, and your friend who lives 300 miles away does the same search. Google immediately pulls up the pictures in the same order for every person based on which photos are the most “relevant” or “popular”. So therefore, you are not finding out anything unique. This comes into play in the art classroom more specifically when you tell students to go find inspiration through pictures. They all go and look up the same theme, and they all come in with the same photographic “inspiration”. Many projects begin to look like one another, and new ideas are rarely formed.

Now this of a world where Google didn’t exist. At first thought, this may be terrifying, however, there ARE alternatives. I did not come to understand this until a couple of years ago myself. There are other search engines and programs, which allow you to tailor your search and find unique ideas, information, and photos. THESE are the kind of websites we need to be teaching our students about, and these are the kids of websites that we as educators need to start utilizing. Google is good for many things, however, when it comes to image searches, there are so many higher quality alternatives. Here are a few:

http://myartspace.com/

Now this may look like the somewhat familiar website “myspace.com”, and in essence, it is the same in many ways, therefore, the general public will probably be able to use it with ease. It works in the same way as MySpace in that people create profiles, upload pictures, network, blog, share information, and so on. The difference is that this is an entire community of artists, and the site is maintained by professionals. All the members are artists, and the photos that are uploaded are all the artists’ works. You can search through an unlimited amount of current works, and at the same time can network and talk with the artists themselves (if they’re willing of course). This website is so much more than simply a social networking site however, it allows you to search in the “Google” fashion by typing in word and choosing whether you want to search it by artist, gallery, or image as well.  I’ve found it very interesting to play around and do searches through this website in particular because of the fact that it’s almost exclusively contemporary art as opposed to the famous “art historical” art that you get when you search for art on Google.

http://www.photoree.com/

This is a website that I would recommend as a first stepping-stone out of the world of “Google”. It is run in exactly the same way; you go to the site, type a word or phrase in the box, and it pulls up images. I have found the art based searches to be much more tamed down and focused on the specific word I typed however, and therefore, when doing image searches, I almost always get better results.  This would be a simple way to introduce art students to the concept that you CAN in fact search the internet for images with an engine other than Google, however, it since the set up is virtually identical, they won’t be intimidated by how to navigate it.

http://vi.sualize.us/

This is the last of my favorite “real” websites that I could see utilized in an art education environment. This website is simple enough as well. It is an image book –marking website that allows you to click on an image and save it in your library online as opposed to having to copy and save every image you run across online, onto your desktop, and then organizing it into folders. It’s basically a one-click way to save images you come across online. I haven’t played with this all too much, but have started using it recently, and it’s been very useful and time saving.

http://www.oobject.com/

This is the last one that I have to share simply because it is fun. I don’t really see much academic use for this website, but if you’re bored and want to waste time, and like to categorize EVERYTHING into lists like myself, this is the most amazing website EVER! It is an entire website comprised of lists (done through photography I might add, not just like lists of words) or the most random things ever. Like for instance “14 Examples of Book Burning”, “ Absurd Armored Trains”, or “Snowmobiles through History”. They are random, and fun, but they are great as a time waster on a Sunday afternoon while sitting on the couch. You should check it out.

Inspiration Board

We were asked to create an "inspiration board" or "mood board" based on a theme we are currently working with in our own personal art. Throughout the past couple of years, I have had one overriding theme throughout all of my artworks. I deal with the issue of body image and the concept of beauty. I have done a ton of research on the subject (visual, historical, literary, personal, etc.) and have expanded on the theme to include the history of female body image (aka the concept of beauty in the 1800's versus how we as a society view beauty today), the psychological effects our culture's views on female beauty and how this effects the brain, and so on. This has led into a great deal of research and art-making which has extended to the exploration of eating disorders and related issues that feed into many eating disorders such as trauma and psychological disorders. The series of art which has come from all of this artistic research and experimentation continues to fascinate me and inspire me to learn about new branching topics and create one more work after another. The photograph above is a small bit of what I would consider my "inspiration board", feel free to click on it if you would like to see it larger and explore it more in depth.

Big Idea: Fear

So, for our first big idea of fear, I decided to look at the different types of fear. I wanted to take my lesson as a means to delve into what fear really means, and show students that fears can be personal, cultural, phobias, etc. I wanted students to start to connect with their own fears with this project. My lesson involves discussion of the different types of fears, journaling about their deepest fears and where they think they might stem from, or journaling about a cultural fear that they feel a close tie to in one way or another. They are then asked to take that fear and find a way to photograph themselves representing that fear using whatever props or such they feel might add to it. Following that (and for the main part of the lesson- I have 3D/ Sculpture), I have asked them to create a sculpture relating to the picture. I left the sculpture part of the lesson pretty open ended, they will get a large list of possible materials to use, but I wanted it to be more individualized, because I wanted them to think critically about how to best represent the fears they are working with. An example would be like a phobia of a spider, they may want to make one giant oversized spider attacking a human or something, as opposed to someone having fears of being bit by spiders may just sculpt a herd of a hundred tiny spiders in a box, etc. Get the idea? Anyways, it will be followed by a critique or a "pow-wow"- as Melissa puts it, where they will display their photographs and sculptures, and talk about what fears they see in one another's works. That's my lesson in a nutshell. I've pasted the lesson plan below if you want to see more in depth what I intend to do. Any advice or input would be appreciated guys! Thanks!

Exploring Fear

By: Nikita Luedke

Enduring Big Idea: “Fear”

            How fear manifests itself in your eyes

            How past and current artists visualized/ showed fear in their work

Essential Questions:

            What does “fear” mean to you?

            Are there different types of fear? Internal, cultural, learned, phobias, etc.)

            What are your biggest fears?

            How does scale, color, texture, media, etc. impact what art conveys?

            What artists worked with the concept of fear? How did they interpret it?

Objectives:

            The students will…

                        Explore what fear means to them

                        Think critically about what that fear could look like

                        Investigate the work of other artists’ interpretations of fear

                        Construct a 3 dimensional sculpture

Lesson Vignette:

            Anticipatory Set:

                        I will introduce the idea of fear and have an open discussion about what “fear” means, and what various types of fears there are. After that we will look at the art of Joshua Hoffine (a photographer whose work is all about childhood fears), Martin Mikolajczyk’s sculpture “fear”, Katherine Howard’s sculpture “friend of foe”, and the Roman sculpture “Laocoon and His Sons”, and talk about how all of these are representations (formally and conceptually) of the different types of fears. Finally, the students will be  asked to journal about their fears or cultural fears they feel strongly about.

            Body of Lesson:

                        Students will get in pairs and photograph each other (preferably after bringing in props), acting out the fear they have chosen to work with in a dramatic way. They will then be asked to create a sculpture using any material of their choice (a list of said materials will be provided so that this is not too overwhelming of a choice for them) to create a sculpture based off of their photograph and what it was trying to get across. There will be no scale limit/ requirement as I want this to be a critical part of their working process, to decide how the fear they are trying to show would manifest itself (multiple small pieces, one oversized piece, intermediate sized, etc.)

            Closure:

                        Students will do a critique (“pow wow”) where they will show both their photos and their sculptures side by side. The critique will focus on the other students talking about what possible fears they see in each piece, followed by the artist explaining the pieces. Grading will be based on craftsmanship, completion, execution, and overall, how well it shows the fear they are working with (which will be decided by the class during the critique).  

Walker Chapter 3

In Walker chapter 3, Walker talks about the importance of building a knowledge base before the art-making process begins. She talks more specifically about how this changed the way a group of art education graduate students viewed the Motherwell series "Elegies to the Spanish Republic (1948-78)", and how they learned about how gaining that knowledge base informed his art-making. They did ample research of all different media and types in order to understand what the artist knew and learned and how he applied it and let it inform his art-making. They were then asked to create a series of their own based on a topic they had built a strong base for.

I have never considered delving into deep research of a subject with school aged children, however, after thinking about it, I don't see why we wouldn't ask them to. As an artist myself, I rarely ever start on a painting or sculpture without reading for at least a couple weeks about the topic I'm working on, and gaining all different kinds of background knowledge about how other things might impact that decision. Often, I've had one idea before the research, and then throughout the knowledge gaining process, my ideas become much more comprehensive and form much deeper meanings, and this in turn changes the way the art piece turns out. I also tend to stick with pieces that I have researched and gained more background on much longer than pieces I have not, because I feel more connected to them and have much more interest in them. I think the same thing can be done with students in the art classroom. Although grade level and developmental abilities would have to be taken into consideration when thinking about researching a topic, I believe it could be accomplished at any level. I can't imagine an english teacher telling her students to write a poem without having them read and research all different types of poetry first. The same thing should be done with art. We shouldn't just teach them process and go from there because they will not feel a connection to it other than superficial level connections. I think if guided correctly and if shown step by step what the artistic research process should/can look like, students at almost any developmental level could participate in this process and achieve great things with their art.

"Artist Research" in the classroom

When I think of artistic research and how I would want my future students to go about artistic research I think of a couple of things. The first thing I think about is finding a good quality way to search for images. I believe that searching through images is a great way to foster visual arts research. If students are working on a visual arts piece, it only makes sense that at the first level of research, their work would center around images and things they can see visually as opposed to textual research, although that should come later, in order to more deeply understand what they are looking at if it is an image that catches their eye as one they might use for inspiration. The second thing that I think would be important for students at the high school level would be a way to keep track of what they've seen so that when they start to branch out into other ideas, they know where their foundation for that idea came from. In order to show this, I think I would want my student to keep some kind of graphic organizer to aid them in their research.

For the first part of this "artistic research", I would recommend a couple of different search engines. The first (and the one many of them would turn to because of comfortability with how it would work), would be dogpile.com. I like this website for if you already know what you're looking for. This website pulls together all the big search engines such as google, yahoo, big, Ask, etc. What I like more specifically about this site however, is that when you begin your search for an image with something such as "Art", the site comes up with ideas that relate to that idea on the side. (AKA it does the branching off of ideas for you in many cases, and can lead you in places you may be interested in seeing, but hadn't thought of.) Another site that may be a little bit more out of student's comfort zones, yet one that I see as being much more beneficial, is StumbleUpon.com. With this website, you simply sign up (for free), and pics topics of websites you want it to let you "stumble upon". For example on mine, I have photography, fine arts, drawing/painting, and dance. When you enter the site, it simply takes you to websites that have to do with those topics. Often times, it brings you to contemporary artist's sites that you never would have happened upon by yourself. All you have to do is click a button that says "stumble" and it brings you to one site after another. You can explore around that site, and if you like it you continue exploring it, and if you don't, you simply click the stumble button again. This is more of an autonomous way of searching, and students would have to spend more time with it, however, it yields much more information, and many more "real" artists than any image search engine would give them. One last web link that I feel I must include is one related to an online magazine I often find things in. This one wouldn't foster as much research, however it would show them that they could use current happenings to influence their art as well. The website is: http://el-chali3f-art.com/category/art-design.

The second part of research in a classroom environment would be a way to show that they actually have done research, as well as a way for them to keep track of their thoughts/finds. For this I have yet another website. This website: http://my.hrw.com/nsmedia/intgos/html/igo.htm is an education based website with many different kids of graphic organizer's which you can pull up, type in, drag images or website links into, or re-arrange. Each one also already comes with blanks at the top for the student's name, class, and date, so they can print it out and turn it in easily. They would also be able to save it to a personal computer to work on later or just have for their notes.

Like I said, I believe the search is the important part of this. Students need to learn that in art, artistic research is not simply going to a library with a pre-concievd topic and picking out every book that has that topic in the title and taking notes out of it. Artistic research can be anything from image searches, to writing down thoughts, to simply playing with materials to figure out what you want to do.

Meaning before Process- Walker Ch. 7 Read & Respond

In Sydney R. Walker’s book Teaching Meaning in Artmaking chapter 7, the working processes of three various artists are discussed. I found this chapter very interesting, not only as a future art teacher, but also as a working artist myself.

The main overriding theme in the chapter was trying to illustrate the point that although deeper meaning is important in the end, great art can be created not with an idea in mind when you start, but rather, that you should play and experiment and put things together and only try and think about what the piece says once it is completed.

The first artist Walker referenced was Sany Skoglund, who makes installation pieces as well as staged photographs of these pieces. I believe the idea of working with surface level ideas (such as media and beauty in “The Wedding”, or alley cats in another piece), is a great way to come upon deeper meaning. Although it is hard to keep an open mind once the ideas start flowing, I believe that this would be a great exercise for high school aged students to explore. The difference between the projects of the first art education class Walker referenced to the second, spoke to how much impact this process of art making can have.

With the second artist, Claus Oldenburg, Walker spoke to pre-planning and how meaning and ideas can be further developed as you work. I think this would be very important in an art classroom as well. Often times, students start work on one piece and then hit a stuck point because it is not going as planned. This is where the not trying to work from meaning would be important. Walker talked about how Oldenburg’s flashlight statue on the Plaza of a university outside Las Vegas changed as he brainstormed, and in the end the meaning was totally different from when he started, yet he let himself explore and change along with the ideas and didn’t try to make them go a specific way.

Haring, the last artist Walker talked about I believe would have the most impact on earlier grades. He was the subway artist who refused to erase or make mistakes. He started off his work with ample research and schooling, and while searching for his artistic identity, came upon a series of simple drawings. He emphasized risk taking and repetition in his artistic process, and I believe these are two important things to getting younger students to understand that art can be fun.

Overall, I liked the simple message of process before meaning that this chapter stressed. From what Walker wrote, it does seem to have significant impact on how students and working artists create, and that impact is usually for the better. 

Work in Progress: Remembering Adolescence

When we were asked to do a visual representation based on the theme of adolescence, and as a response to our reading of "Speak", I knew immediately what I intended to do. Having a strong background in psychology as well as art and education, I find the teenage mind to be one of the most fascinating areas of study (Thus why I enjoied the book so much I'm sure!). I decided to link my love of art, anatomy, and psychology once again into a magnificent project. For this piece, I decided to stretch outside of my comfort zone a bit and work three-dimensionally. I did this primarily because I know that we are constantly asking our students in art classrooms to go outside of their comforts zones for media, so I figured that in an art education class myself, I should try and practice what I preach. There will be more to come later in that the project is still "in progress", however, my basic idea has to do with brain development in adolescence and how this impacts the minds of young adults. To do this, I have taken three skull figures and have found words in the dictionary and thesaurus that are associated with various aspects of adolescence, everything from emotions that are constantly swirling around during those years, to more medical terms having to do with actual brain development during this time, and finally one of them holds words which represent things that teens often face outside of emotional stuff like peer pressure, and academics, and stuff of that nature. I really like where this project is headed, but am open to any feedback you all might have for me before I get to a point where I can't really leave any room for changes :-)

Art Ed Metaphor:

So, as I said in class, this was the first version of the metaphor I came up with:

Art Education is like the human body. Just as there are many various body systems that must continually work together to keep us as humans ticking, there are many different parts of an art classroom that must work together in unison for it to become a place where students can flourish in their artistic endeavors. I have thus linked each major body system to an important facet of what I see to be as the exemplary art classroom. 

The skeletal system represents curriculum. In the human body the skeleton is what supports the rest of the body. In the art classroom, the curriculum should support student learning. A strong curriculum is a necessity.

The Digestive system represents an evolving atmosphere. The art classroom should act like the digestive system in that it should foster continually changing, moving, and evolving ideas within the students.

The Respiratory system represents the freedom to breathe. The art classroom should be a place where students feel like they have room to breathe. It should harvest a relaxed atmosphere so students can openly create without fear of judgment.

The Reproductive system represents inspiration. The art classroom must be a place of inspiration where new ideas are constantly created and cultivated.

The Circulatory system represents Peer Review and critiques. It is important for conversation and ideas to always be “flowing” in an art classroom, and it is up to the teacher to form a classroom atmosphere which will allow for acceptance and appreciation of all the students and their artistic ideas.

The Nervous system represents the teacher in an art classroom. The art teacher should act like the nervous system does in a human body, constantly feeling for what students may need and then sparking all of their students to create to their full potential.