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.