Hats, Hats, Hats!

For the tiger artist weekend the idea that keeps sticking in my head is hats and head dresses. I can't remember the title of the painting but the painting of David and Goliath is what is inspiring this thought. Our guide pointed out that the hat the David is wearing is current with the time of the painting not the time of the subject matter. I found this very interesting. My lesson is still in the works but a thought I had was recreating a painting (a live recreation where the students are the people in the artwork) and having the students make hats/head dresses for the recreation. The hats can fit with the time that the painting was done or from today. This idea doesn't have much to do with Nick Cave so I'll keep trying to think about it and incorporate the two concepts together.
The other idea that I had that did have something to do with Nick Cave were making "sound hats". The hats would obviously have to make some sort of noise. The only thing about this idea is that I really like the idea of having the students collaborate to put together the recreation of an artwork. I did a group project like that a year ago and it was very fun finding the costumes and working with the other students to organize our thoughts.
I just really like hats!!

Discussion 1 Art in the 21st Century

1. Art education is moving into the 21st century, in my  opinion, behind the times. I really enjoyed the articles because it shows the initiative of art teachers now trying to bring their students up to date. I especially liked reading Principles of Possibility by Olivia Gude because she had a clear path that she wanted art education to eventually move to. She starts out by saying that the 7 principles of art and design that we all had to learn and are still learning today in our art classes are, while important, slightly outdated and should be replaced. She explained that students need to be kept up on the world around them to be able to produce art meaningful to themselves. I think that the “Attentive Living” section of the article is very insightful. Students need to experience everyday life to be able to make meaningful art and also apply it to everyday things. In my teaching I hope to instill in my students that art is FUN. Of course, like in my high school art classrooms, art is a “free period”, and getting students around that thought will be challenging, but showing the students new techniques of modern artists will hopefully hold their interest. No matter what a students number one interest is, there is artwork out there that connects. Which brings me to my other thought, showing the students that artwork should be connected to them more than what they think I want the art to be in more important. The textbook goes into making works personal, and I think that is what art needs to be to be meaningful to anyone, even the viewers.    
2. The Art 21 that I watched was about Cai Guo-Qiang. He uses gun powder to produce his works. In my art lesson, power (or loss of power) would the theme of the lesson. I think that I would talk to me students about experimenting with different materials, and making mistakes. The artist himself said that he wants to work with a material, he wants to have it give him problems and have to work through those problems. This is very helpful for students. The students will either have success or failure, but it’s not about the success/failure, its about the road taken to get their and the processes gone through to get to that final project. This artist shows power through the explosions of the gun powder. More of the work is in the performance of the explosion than the actual outcome. I would have my students pick a material that traditionally wouldn’t be considered an art material and have them experiment and have them show the successes and failures. Working with a new material can show the students that a loss of power can make beautiful artworks, like in the video.