Play!!

Today, during our play I could relate to our guest in class when she said she was anxious. I like to plan at least a little bit what I am going to do in my art projects, so when Kathy said you have 10 minutes to make as many self supporting structure out of paper, I froze for a second. THen I remembered that my unit plan and studio thinking projects revolve around letting go of control. SO, I dove in. I was cutting the paper before I even thought about how I was going to fold it and make it stand. Curling, folding, crumpling, and all kinds of other things later, I had over 20 pieces. I surprised myself that I just kept going and didn't let myself stop cutting and folding. The next steps came easier to me after that first one.  This play day really helped me out of my comfort zone of planning ahead and over-thinking every detail.
Tomorrow, I am looking forward to going over design in the class. "A good design can change the world."

Chapter 6's, Pink, and White Paper

In chapter 6 Frredman talks a lot abut curriculum and the importance of cultural experience. I found it interesting when Freedman talked about how curriculum has changed time and time again, but to me it seems, that art education just wants to keep coming down to content and experiences. Also, she talked about art and integration, and how we need to be careful with integration. If you try to integrate too much with other subjects, it might turn out that art will start taking a back seat to STEM classes. Again, it has been determined that visual literacy can improve upon many other skills that students need such as contextual thinking and creative problem solving. We need to keep in mind that these skills that broaden a students sights on art will have differing of opinions and a multitude of experiences, but it is where we find that common ground of shared experiences, that social learning of visual culture takes place.
What I really enjoyed reading in Eisner in chapter 6 was at the very end, under the heading "What to public needs to understand." Throughout the chapter Eisner describes the importance of curriculum and what standards are and why they are important. I enjoyed at the end when Eisner was talking about a child using clay. How this sculpture is more than a piece made by a student, its more than play. It is a show to show creative thinking and development of an idea, which is being stressed, I believe, in the upcoming common core standards coming soon. Showing students that muddling through experiencing all that visual culture has to offer will be extreme, is what we need to promote in all aspects of curriculum.
Which leads my to Pink. I love Daniel Pinks book. It drives home everything that I have been learning about teaching art during my college career. People, no matter the job description, are needing to be creative problem solvers and thinkers. That is what businesses are looking for. I read this book a couple months ago and the things that still stuck out the most to me before refreshing myself were the age of abundance and outsourcing. Mostly because I cannot help but notice all of this in the world everyday. We go to the store and we have 25 choices for anything we want: food, drinks, toasters, coffee makers, paper, etc. It is amazing the choices that we have to make about what kind of toilet paper we buy. Also, outsourcing and finding the people that can do more than what a computer can do. That is what needs to be learned by students today. We need to think outside the box of the computer screen and become creative problem solvers that have empathy, emotion, and fun. I found it very interesting that even medical schools are requiring classes that show the future doctors what it means to be empathetic to their patients! The chapter on play, well, it made me laugh! If we don't have a laughter club on Monday I may be a little disappointed! Just the thought that this session can improve daily tasks in a business environment is wonderful. We need play, we need release!

6/6 Blog, Freedman 5, Eisner 5, & A new Culture of Learning.

Chaper 5 of Freedman had a lot of information in it but the part that I noticed was very heavily highlighted for me was the section on pages 88-92. First, when Freedman talked about how meanings in visual culture tend to conflict with one another it struck a chord. Just thinking about how artists, like myself, like to contrast our meanings in art. For example, in my curriculum project I will be focusing on control and loss of control. My problem, generally, is being a control freak, my next works are all about losing control over my art by having other people bring in objects that I MUST use in my work. This, I believe, is a duality that Freedman is talking about. Freedman then goes on to talk about how advertisements like to use fine art as ways to depict wealth and good taste to cause people to desire the product. I think that is very interesting, considering that we talk about how many people do not know how to interpret art, how do they know that they desire that fine art/product? Advertisers are very sneaky! On the next page, Freedman goes into explaining suggestiveness. I really like this term because it seems very straight forward. And the fact that Freedman goes on to say that viewers use this power of suggestion to turn the context into meaning for them. The great thing about suggestiveness, is that it is different to everyone, thus creating multiple meanings to artwork, and alos advertisements and all aspects of our visual culture. Then we read about Feldman's model and that takes us back to our VTS, how we must first look analyze the piece before making judgements, and that what we get from the piece must have evidence from the borders of the piece. However this doesn't work, we all bring personal backgrounds with us when we look at art. We all create stories as to why this or that is in a piece. Although we may not know the artists intent, we create intent because of the knowledge and experiences we bring to the table. Then on page 100 I really like the concept of hyperreality, and how advertisers want us to create this hyperreality to put ourselves into the commercials they create, so in turn they sell the experience of that hyperreality instead of maybe the product itself.

In Eisner, I have concernes. I agree completely that students need more than one project to fully grasp a medium as well as how this medium relates to content. However, I am concerned with time. Until people realize that more time needs to be devoted to the arts, we will never be able to teach these concepts to students, fully, AND give them opportunities to experience everything the curriculum says we need to teach them. As I say this, Hyatt's "pods" come to mind. They get to experience a large number of media and techniques and get to choose a few to put into their work. Then later, they get to see what others are doing with the other techniques, then they get to experience it more. Which brings me what the chapter is really about. The social life of art. When students are put together in education and allowed to discuss and work together to solve problems given, they are put into real world experiences. We all realize that they wont all be trying to make a landscape look realistic as well as portray a deeper meaning, but the fact that they discuss their trials with the work is how they will be creative problem solvers in the future. They will not be working alone. They will be around people, and most likely will be put into groups to solve problems, no matter the path of work they pursue. We, as teacher have to facilitate this experience. I the art room, I think that will be easy. My art room with be a freeing place. A place where they can discuss their work, to have impromptu critiques, and to discuss complex ideas, sometimes not always directly related to the task at hand, but that is ok. They are still having that experience, of socializing with their peers, to work through solving problems.

A New Culture if Learning is great so far. Very easy to read and it is realting very well to what was read by Eisner. It delves into how our society is not only learning through technology but how social interaction is in the forefront of learning. Just like Eisner was pointing out, socializing in education is real world problem solving, and the stories being told by Thomas and Brown solidifies that.

Chapter 2 Finding Meaning in Aesthetics
Freedman.
This chapter was a lot more interesting to me than the last one. I have never thought about aesthetics in the way that Freedman said that they can uplift us and make us feel good. but they can also make us aware of our weaknesses, they make us believe what they want us to whether it be stereotypes, or buying objects we don't need (page 24). I think this is very true, and I never thought about advertisements in the form of aesthetics before, for some reason. Under the Rejection of Symbolism section I found a couple points very interesting and quote-worthy. "Art should exist for its own sake, rather than conveying literary or moral ideals." -Whistler. I thought it was funny, and after looking at the painting mentioned in the section, understood it more, that his use of symbolism is quite obvious, and everything seems quite deliberate, from the painting on the wall and the fact that she is holding a handkerchief in her hand. Then in the next section, and I don't know why I didn't know this, perhaps because the public school system only teaches what they want me to know, but I did not know that artists and artists communities were being blacklisted because of communist affiliations. Not really anything significant to our class but I found this interesting.
On page 33 when Freedman said "The problem of curriculum is not form, it is an overreliance on formalism in the classroom." I think this is so true. I went to a high school where it was all just skill building. WHile I believe that those are important steps in moving forward in art, I am surprised that I wasn't bored out of my mind, like many other students. This is why we need meaning making in the art room.
Last, and my favorite part of the whole chapter is on page 40, "..denied the common assumption of many of his contemporaries on art that great works of art have inherent universal qualities that make them great."..."Art is made as a result of something 'occasional, something having its own date and place'" I loved this quote from Dewey. I also loved the discussion on how art has a different affect on everyone, not one person sees the same thing you do when looking at a piece of art.
Eisner Chapter 3&4:
Chapter 3, aptly named, teaching the visual arts, is exactly how it sounds. In a somewhat repetitive nature, Eisner goes into this chapter talking about what affects a students time in the art room. The curriculum, and how that curriculum is taught. A great quote that is found on page 48 could sum up the chapter "Wonderful plans can be scuttled by weak teaching. Conversely, good teaching has no virtue if the content students engage in is without value: if the ideas or skills being taught are not worth teaching, they are not worth teaching well." It is our job as educators to engage the students in what they are learning, while still TEACHING them something. Now, I know it is asking a lot to try to get a student to care about their school work, but putting that meaning into the artwork is what is going to hook them, and keep them engaged. The next part of the chapter is facilitating this learning and scaffolding it to becoming wonderful pieces of art. Materials, instructions, play, and exemplars have to be utilized for the purpose of the art to come out. Guiding them in the beginning of the unit, follow-up, talking with the artist constructively about their work, artist works, all help in this task. Chapter 4, What the arts teach and how it shows, to me can be summed up rather quickly. (Mostly because I feel I am rambling) I nuts and bolts of this chapter is learning to put meaning into the work through imagination and content that is expressive and personally meaningful, interpreting their own, and others' work, criticism, and being able to talk about pieces of art is what needs to taught in a successful art class. How it shows? Through the students' work, of course. A teacher can determine very quickly, even after the first day whether the students are grasping the idea. That is why discussions are needed, why in-progress critiques are useful, and why being able to talk to students on an advanced level about their artwork is so important. You are not going to get meaningful work from students if you cannot have a discussion with them about what they are thinking.
BARRETT
The ENTIRE time I was reading the articles from Barrett I was thinking about the VTS we did with Mary Franco my first semester at Mizzou. This article goes hand in hand with teaching students how to interpret art through VTS. The student are asked those three questions.. What's going on in the piece? What do you see that makes you say that? What else can we find? The article goes along withall of the rules, looking at what in in the piece, not who made it, not the name, not looking at an artist statement. Previously I stated how important it is to remember that everyone interprets art differently and gets a different meaning from it, this is why we need to teach students to not just look at art and say "oh that's pretty" but get to the deeper meaning.

Imagination First

First of all, I am loving this book so far. It has great ideas that can be used inside of classrooms! The one I chose to concentrate on was the "Play Telephone" chapter. This describes the way meaning gets lost in translation. One way I could see using this in my classroom is first by playing that game we all used to play in grade school. The students all lined up in a circle the teacher whispers in a students ear and we all pass it along to the next person. What starts as a coherent phrase ends up being a jumbles up mess. I think what could be led into is a discussion on meaning in art. Is the meaning on what we started with always what we end up with? It that a bad thing? Is the journey moving from one meaning to another more exciting than a clear concise arrow to the meaning?

All fired up!

Freedman and Eisner – Numero Uno

I read Freedman first, mostly because it was daunting after what Dr. Unrath said about it being dense; she was not wrong. This chapter, although and introductory chapter was full of information. However, after taking my time a reading slowly I didn’t stop highlighting. The most important part that I highlighted came from page 15, “Currently, students may gain more information from images than from texts.” This made me think about the symposium when we heard about the new common core standards and visual literacy. Students are bombarded with imagery, and from early on we learn to relate what we have already seen to new things we see every day. That is how our brain works, through relationships. So it makes me think, how can schools say that the arts programs are the first to phase out when we run out of money? It all relates to me back to Pink’s book that I will reread soon, that the country is looking for creative thinkers and problem solvers more than information and computer gurus.  Also, form page 13 I found this  as ironic and Freedman, “immense commerce surrounding the production of visual culture, which depends on so much learning about appreciating art , and yet results in so little money being given to art education.” That directly pings off of what Ken Robinson said about who is making the rules and regulation of education… Not Educators! So much more I found interesting in the chapter alone, but, I needed to read the other chapters and should go to sleep at some point tonight.

While reading Eisner I couldn’t help but feel like I had read the same things twice. Whether it be mirroring what Freedman said about the art developing conative thinking or like what Pink stresses about the society and workforce of today needing people who are creative. It is amazing to me that so many people know this and write about this and yet it is not catching on.  I really enjoyed this quote from Eisner from page 12, “Seeing is an achievement, not merely a task. It is the result of making sense of a part of the world. Learning to see the qualities that constitute a visual field requires a mode of attention that is rarely employed in “ordinary” living.” I thought this was powerful and coincided beautifully with what Eisner said about visual culture and how we have to learn to be visually literate in this world. Understanding imagery is not instinctual, it is learned from the beginning, associating something visually to what it feels or tastes like as a baby to looking at an advertisement and assessing exactly what the emotion they are trying to achieve to sell you their product. I feel like a broken record saying this but, with all of this imagery, why do people take the arts for granted?

Both of these readings got me fired up, and ready for a discussion tomorrow. I think that it is our responsibility as the new art educators to show the importance of what we teach and bring a new thinking to the students we teach. You are not just gaining your fine arts credit. You are learning how to function in your visual society!

This is my personal art history. (Sorry for it being sideways) I made it into a newspaper-like poster, since like a newspaper this carries history. The main big idea from this is self-discovery, I think. This caused me to think about my own stages of development and how I have evolved in my own artistic talent. I first saw my passion and possible career path in art when I was in high school. I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do with art but I knew I didn't want to do anything else. As I took classes throughout high school and college my love of art grew dramatically. I love art and cannot wait to teach it to students and hopefully let them discover a love for it as well.