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. 

Opposites Attract- Andre Breton

            I believe that a good artist to compare and contrast my work to, would be that of Andre Breton. Breton was part of the surrealist movement and he worked with what are called “Automatic Drawings”. I like the idea of relating to him because the way he works, or his working process rather, is completely opposite of myself, however, the way he is trying to work with the human psyche and how it can be influenced and affected very closely relates to my work. So in a way he is just like me, but totally different. For those of you who are unfamiliar with automatic drawing, here’s a brief explanation: “Automatic drawing was developed by surrealists as a means of expressing the subconscious. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move ‘randomly’ across the paper. In applying chance and accident to mark making, drawing is to a large extent freed of rational control” –Wikipedia definition (I know, not really official, but it explained it pretty well I thought).  Anyways, I say this is the opposite of my working process, because when I begin a drawing, painting or sculpture, I think for much longer than I ever spend actually working on the piece. I plan out with writing and sketches and such and know exactly what path I want my mind to lead me. I may let my mind do some wandering, but I get all of that worked out prior to setting paintbrush to canvas or ink to paper. I always know going into a work the idea behind it and why I’m doing it. With Breton and his automatic drawings, it is just the opposite. When he began work on a drawing, he had no idea what he was going to produce or what it might convey to a viewer. He let his mind wander from start to finish. I find his idea of automatic drawing very intriguing, however, I don’t believe that I could ever produce work under those parameters.  

My Artistic Process:

When I start work on one of my pieces, I begin first with a brainstorm of the concept I’m working under. I have three series or umbrellas under which I work, all of which fall under the larger umbrella concerned with the human psyche in relation to the physical body and life experiences. My three variations of this “big idea” consist of female beauty and what that looks like from various perspectives, Body image and how culture affects the way humans perceive themselves, and the mind-body reaction to domestic violence. When I begin work on any media, I always begin by brainstorming my idea for that work. I generally do some kind of list or chart, which is made up of words I associate with the topic or idea I’m trying to convey to the viewer. The words are generally feelings that the idea stimulates in me when I think about them, along with simple words describing the idea.  After I have this list, I take it and look up other artists who seem to be working with the same concepts to see how they go about visualizing these things. After getting a good visual vocabulary associated with my literary vocabulary, I start sketching. Regardless of whether or not I am working three dimensionally or two dimensionally, I always begin with a sketch. After I work out a basic idea of the elements I want in the piece, I decide what media will work best with my idea. Normally I turn to painting because that’s my main media of choice, but occasionally, I turn to 3D if I don’t feel like a 2D image will be strong enough, or if I don’t think it will engage the viewer enough. Once I decide on my media, and have a basic idea for what images I want to be a part of it, I start to loosen up. At this point, I lie out all my necessary materials and just begin piecing together, very loosely, what I think works best. I work in a very messy manner by this time, and I am constantly going back and re-working my pieces. Often times, I finish one piece the way I had originally sketched, but in the process of working with the paint or mixed media, I figure out a better way to do it, so I trash my previous work and start over all together. It is a rare occurrence that one of my pieces looks anything at all like the sketch I started out with, however, the list of words I start out with is almost always spot on for what the image evokes in people.  This is my basic approach to creating a work of art, meticulous at first, and then broad and open to change by the end. 

21st Century Art Tool!

While in class last week, I was shown a "bamboo" pad by one of our colleagues. I was immediately drawn into looking and learning about it and what it could be used for. I think the bamboo pad (original) or even better in an art sense, the bamboo craft pad would be an amazing addition to any art classroom. It's basically a big flat surface (much like the mouse pad on a mac) which allows you to preform all the same functions, but then on top of it, and this is the good part for an art classroom, it allows you to draw (by fingertip or with the pen) on your computer. It is pressure sensitive, and since it comes bundled with photoshop elements, you can make amazing works of digital art with it as well. It's like the best of both worlds: The ability to paint and draw, and the ability to utilize technology, all in one! One part of this product that interests me the most in relation to the art classroom would be for those students with tactile disorders, or other learning, physical, or mental delays who can not always participate in various kinds of art making activities. This would provide an alternative so they could basically get the experience of virtually any assignment without having to necessarily work with the materials hands on. As long as they could use their finger to draw, they can complete beautiful works of art with this product. I can also see it being a fabulous asset to any photo or digital imaging class as well. It's compatible with Mac or PC's and just connects through a usb. It would be good in these classes because of the range of hand gestures it allows you, as well as the chance to edit photos and digital art by hand instead of with a mouse. Technology always attracts attention, and this is an incredibly fun "toy" that I think would interest and engage students for a long time if it were brought into a classroom. Not only is it useful, but it broadens the scope of how our students can create artistically as well.

Here's the link to the main product:
 http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/bamboo_fun.php

And here's a link to the kinds of art you can do with a Bamboo!
Bamboo Art Page

Remembering Adolescence...

“Write about what it was like for you in adolescence”… this is what was said to me, and I have been thinking about it for the past week and am still coming up blank. I thought and thought about what it was like to be an adolescent and was beginning to get frustrated with myself when I couldn’t come up with a descent response, then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t speechless because there was nothing to my teen years, I was left speechless because of how overwhelmingly much there was to being an adolescent. Still, after a good four years of pondering and reminiscing about my adolescence, I can’t even begin to describe what the experience was like. It’s like a giant mass of swirling sparking glowing colors all moving at different speeds and in different directions simultaneously. Adolescence is like jumping off of a cliff because you want the rush of excitement the new freedom brings you, but then screaming for your mom to come save you because you don’t know how to handle your own problems yet.

            I remember when I was a teen, people always telling me that my problems were minimal, that there wasn’t anything for me to worry about, and that I should “just wait until I get into the real world if I thought my life was hard now”. Hearing these things infuriated me to no end, and still does when I think about it today. I always wanted to just scream back at people when they said things like that, that they had no idea what my life was like and that being a teenager was a million times harder than being a middle aged family man. To this day, I still feel like the high school years are so looked down upon by adults. Sure adults acknowledge that there can be “rough patches” but they just sum it all up to one big learning experience for the youth. I disagree entirely.  I think that due to where teenagers are developmentally, they are feeling the most intense emotion they ever will, and that because they are still incapable in many ways to handle this emotion, their problems are increased ten fold. Whether adults understand it or not, teenagers are living a difficult life. It may be somewhat sheltered, but that shelter doesn’t comfort the teen in any way. They feel just as venerable as a single mother of three living on government funds. Their problems feel just as warranted, and the intensity with which they feel is overwhelming for most.

            For me, the teenage years were spent living what I consider now to have been a double identity life. I had the great façade of being the epitome of high school happiness. I was a cheerleader, had many “friends”, was a track prodigy, got all A’s, had happily married parents… everything everyone said “should” make me happy, and to most people on the outside, that’s just what I was; a happy, energetic, enthusiastic teenager living the high school dream. I however, like so many other teenagers was struggling greatly with many things beyond the surface.

            This is where I feel many teenagers get lost in the mix. There are adolescents that stick out like a sore thumb who struggle with the notorious teenage angst and such, but what I feel is often ignored, are the do-it-all types (such as myself) who are literally working themselves to death while trying to figure out their place in the world. I was one of those; a do it all attitude with an iron wall built up that only I could look past.

            There was a lot going on in my life that those outside my family would have never assumed until later. I had experienced many things and been forced to face realities that teens of my age would never have even thought about at that point. Because of medical issues, I was jetting from one doctor to the next in-between my cheerleading practices and cross-country meets. My life was a constant balancing act of hospital visits, school functions and work, all the while holding up the pressure to achieve academically, socially, and physically. Teachers would come to me with “worry” when I was falling over asleep in class, and I’d blame it on getting to bed late or working too much. This seemed to be enough for them, I mean I was maintaining perfect grades and had a smile on my face, so why should they cater to me when there was a guy in a black cloak with green hair sitting in the back refusing to do his work or talk to anyone. I was determined that nobody see the other side of my life because I feared they wouldn’t accept me if they saw anything but the happy energetic Nikita they had grown accustomed to.

            As I continued on through my adolescent years, the schedule only got harder and harder to maintain, and teachers, older students, and adults kept telling me the usual “These are the best years of your life”, “ Think this is hard? Just wait for college!”, “You want freedom? The real world is hard honey, soak up the good life while you’re still living at home…”. I, like so many of my peers heard this and just laughed… if they only knew. I seriously felt like such an old soul trapped in a teenager’s body. I couldn’t wait to be independent and move on from high school.

            Going into my last year of high school, I took a trip to Europe with a history teacher of mine. Little did I know, that this trip would forever impact my life. Over the course of three weeks, I had for the first time, a teacher, an adult other than my parents, try to get to know me beyond the façade. For the first time in my adolescent years, I felt like I could open up to someone. This was seriously a first for me, and as uncomfortable as it was, at the same time, it was the most comforting feeling in the world. This teacher learned all about my background, my family, my real interests, the pressures I felt every day… We talked daily on that trip for hours and by the end of it I realized that I didn’t have to be the teenager who held it all in. This was the biggest relief of my life at that point. This teacher was able to show me the biggest life lesson in the matter of a few weeks. This would eventually become one of the things that drove me into education and her to now have changed from a history teacher to a counselor.

            I feel like although my teenage experience was vastly different from most of my peers, I still felt the same pressures, influences, and demands that they all did, just in a bit more unique way. As I’ve spent more and more time away from high school and reminisced with friends now about the past, I realize that adolescence isn’t an easy time for anyone. It’s a time of turmoil, self-discovery, intense emotion, problem solving, and conquering for every single person. Although the journeys are different for each of us, and people obviously choose to take various paths to get through it, some more detrimental or successful than others, it is still real life. That’s probably the one thing that bothers me the most to this day, is when people say that high school isn’t “real life”. I feel like high school is as “real” as you can get. It is the time when there is the highest amount of intense energy and emotion running through you and you don’t yet have the tools to know how to handle it all at once. It’s overwhelming and exciting simultaneously. Adolescence is like the ultimate “real life”. It’s the sum of every intense experience you can have combined. 

This I Believe about Art Education...

I believe that art education is going to be the saving grace of the public school system. I believe that it should be the one outlet kids of this generation have to express themselves without fear of test scores or academic achievement. I believe it is a way to teach children how to think critically about the world around them, question it, explore it, and thus find their own path through it. Through quality art education, students can learn to be expressive, open-minded, inquisitive imaginative, and well-rounded individuals. There are very few classes which can boast the same things as art. In a school day filled with rote memorization, numbers, textbooks, and endless exams and quizzes, the art classroom should be a place for freedom. This freedom and ability to explore with foreign materials and processes will foster the, often prematurely lost, natural yearning to create, and will give the students self-confidence in their abilities to handle unknown situations which they will undoubtedly be facing outside the classroom in day to day life. Art education can do more than build a foundation for higher education in art, it can be a class in which students learn quality life lessons, all the while having fun.