ART JOURNAL 4
02/17/2020
Please think about and answer the following questions
What events/moments/personal experiences change or refine my past perspective to look at art teaching and learning now?
What current learning or art education theories do I learn related to this change or revision?
How does my art piece (or the process of making this art piece) represent this change or revision?
How does my current understanding influence my path of be/coming an artist and educator?
In this entry I continued to explore, and expand upon my thinking from the previous journals. I attribute this entry to the coheresing between three objectives that I have newly identified as I areas to assess moving forward. These are; to place emphasis on extrinsic value, identify future career opportunities, and make an impact NOW!
My assessment is predicated from the sentiment that intrinsic value is the single-most, fundamental pillar from which the originator instinct stems, in art making and all that we do as human beings. From this point however, I hope to improve the working conditions for my future students, by improving the extrinsic value they receive from their efforts as well.
Essentially… I want to get more students in the art classroom!
This stance is not taken against exploration and process based art making, but is to work in conjunction with that process, as a counter measure, to the difficult decisions students’ face with the evaluation of their time and effort. As they are forced to balance and weigh their investments of effort towards activities that will benefit their future, financial and social stigmas impact their choices. Understandably so… Making money, and connecting with the social climate around them are key factors, and often lead students to abandon the arts as an opportunity for a happy life. Often times, students, especially in the middle grades and high school, are weaned off of creative exercise and art making as they progress through their education. My goal is to address the issues that combat students to embrace art making as a part of their life, and create scenarios with which my students can envision and see, how their efforts in art are directly impacting their lives’ for the better.
For this entry, I was inspired to reflect upon a reading from my first semester as an art education major at CSU. The article described the YA/YA program, which was an art opportunity implemented in an “undesirable” and a hostile academic institution, but ultimately bore fruits for not only the students, program, and the community. YA/YA provided the opportunity for high school students to come together in a group, and spend their time in a professional art studio. This studio space served to foster their budding relationship with the arts, in conjunction with multi-faceted lessons they learned. These “real world” lessons relayed the importance of deadlines, mathematical and business understanding, as well as the intimate understanding of how ones artistic/design decisions impact how well a product sells. (Or is received). The students served as a council that academically critiqued, and socially critiqued their peers’ work, before, during, and after the launching of a design. They learned to evaluate the data, and relate that information with their pre-assessment of their peers’ artwork to better understand what kind of artwork and designs sell better commercially.
I found the success of the YA/YA initiative to exemplify, how someone can create an opportunity for those who, would otherwise be disenfranchised, and create a positive outcome for them as individuals, and the community as a whole. “…she gave them an assignment, she gave them a permission to search their souls for an experience and set of feelings that could be made into art. It is the depth of feeling that makes the YA/YA work seem so vivid and alive.”
“The workshop moves students into mainstream culture. In their interactions with artists and corporate clients and through travel, YA/YA builds their confidence and teaches students to maneuver through different cultures without compromising their own beliefs and histories.” “The workshop provides the means for these adolescents to bring voice to the mainstream and demonstrate that their voices have value.” Studies of human behavior and psychology show the importance of feeling like one belongs to a valuable group. The notion that a person’s efforts hold meaning, opportunity for personal growth, and developed capability to impact the community in a positive way, are vital to our being. Also, the way YA/YA incorporated aspects of business, marketing, sales, and competition highlight the importance of real world application, transfer of knowledge, techniques, and how students will rise to the occasion if they feel their efforts are not in vain. The extrinsic value in this case, is the reward to the intrinsic effort put forth by the students.
Addressing feeling in our lessons, is not only relevant to creating stronger works of art, it also expresses a more useful combination of our cognitive functions that allow for the transfer of information to be more effective. This method presents itself, for concepts to be retained at a higher rate. “To give voice to students, to engage in dialogue is—especially at this point in educational reform—necessary for our students’ well-being. Standardization and over-emphasis on testing with focus on test scores rather than the test takers leads to the kind of “silencing” referred to by Freire. And Eisner (1998) makes the plea that schools must move beyond “conceptually dense and emotionally eviscerated abstractions to forms of representation that utilize all the senses to help students learn...” This is information I will look to evaluate in my lessons as a teacher, and hope that I can create a classroom environment that enables my students to find self-worth through creativity, and explore ways in which they can impact their community for the better.
In connecting with my students now, I feel that the utilization of Instagram is another way that this lesson can be reflected. In my past art experiences, and even currently as a studying art teacher, I have not had a supervising teacher promote the use of Instagram in their classroom. I believe having students create an Artist Instagram page should be a staple, in all art curriculum today. In my opinion utilizing this app reflects an understanding of the current methods for presenting artwork effectively as well as the ability to adapt to technological trends. The app also provides students the opportunity for connectivity with other working artists, and connectivity to non-artists as well. This platform is active and vibrant, and serves to showcase their art, growth and development. Having an art Instagram also provides students ideas for their own trajectories based off of the shared experiences that they are exposed to by searching established artists on the app.
There is a feed on the top of the Instagram page that suggests profiles to follow. Just by flipping through that suggestion feed, I have found so many incredible contemporary artists, of varying notoriety, art styles, cultural backgrounds, genders, etc. Many of these artists create content that is truly incredible, but could not be suggested by a teacher directly because of the academically taboo nature of the work. By having students create an art Instagram they will have the aided ability to explore new artists and styles they would otherwise have never known existed. Also, they are free to explore in an unsupervised manner, intimately choosing for themselves what artists to embrace or reject by their own morale compass.
My current favorite artist is Simon Hanselmann, a transgender cartoonist who writes and illustrates a comic strip about a witch, cat, wolf-man, and owl. There is no way any art instructor that I have had, would suggest this artist or have even heard of this artist. But Instagram provided the means for me to discover this artist on my own.
For the visual component of the journal entry, I placed emphasis on utilizing my art Instagram page, to see if I could uncover a way to spark excitement through my future students use of the app. In this experiment, I painted a portrait of one of my favorite comedians, Deric Poston. The image on the left and right are from my past perspective, I posted them several weeks and months ago. The central image of Deric Poston was made during the week of this journal entry and posted 2 days to Instagram before I submitted this entry. I included the submission date at the bottom which shows "2 days ago" to highlight this. I specifically targeted Deric because he is a lower-tier celebrity and felt I would have a good chance of getting a response from him. Overall, I wanted to see if I felt extrinsic value from him interacting with my work. By this token, I also wanted to see if this kind of interaction would be exciting for my future students to pursue, as it gives realism and portraiture added gratification. I have drawn and painted celebrity portraits in the past, but only recently have conceived the idea that I could utilize my current understanding of what teens value, and connect with them through using Instagram. Celebrity interaction across non-art related medias is a valuable tool to attract more students into the art studio, and more eyes onto artwork.
Deric saw my post, he commented on it and even shared my artwork on his profile. This ended up boosting my follower count and presented my work to a brand new audience that would have never known otherwise that I existed.
Experiencing this interaction for myself, revealed to me just how multi-faceted these kind of “real world” lessons can be. I felt inspired afterwards to make more artwork, and hope that this kind of exercise can serve as a piece in my future students’ art education. After analyzing what my supervising teacher (Kimberley Noel) said to me, “ students these days have a growing appreciation for celebrities, and less respect for authority figures than they used to.”, I believe that incorporating this kind of activity will make students feel a stronger personal connection to the class, myself , and art making overall.
What events/moments/personal experiences change or refine my past perspective to look at art teaching and learning now?
What current learning or art education theories do I learn related to this change or revision?
How does my art piece (or the process of making this art piece) represent this change or revision?
How does my current understanding influence my path of be/coming an artist and educator?
In this entry I continued to explore, and expand upon my thinking from the previous journals. I attribute this entry to the coheresing between three objectives that I have newly identified as I areas to assess moving forward. These are; to place emphasis on extrinsic value, identify future career opportunities, and make an impact NOW!
My assessment is predicated from the sentiment that intrinsic value is the single-most, fundamental pillar from which the originator instinct stems, in art making and all that we do as human beings. From this point however, I hope to improve the working conditions for my future students, by improving the extrinsic value they receive from their efforts as well.
Essentially… I want to get more students in the art classroom!
This stance is not taken against exploration and process based art making, but is to work in conjunction with that process, as a counter measure, to the difficult decisions students’ face with the evaluation of their time and effort. As they are forced to balance and weigh their investments of effort towards activities that will benefit their future, financial and social stigmas impact their choices. Understandably so… Making money, and connecting with the social climate around them are key factors, and often lead students to abandon the arts as an opportunity for a happy life. Often times, students, especially in the middle grades and high school, are weaned off of creative exercise and art making as they progress through their education. My goal is to address the issues that combat students to embrace art making as a part of their life, and create scenarios with which my students can envision and see, how their efforts in art are directly impacting their lives’ for the better.
For this entry, I was inspired to reflect upon a reading from my first semester as an art education major at CSU. The article described the YA/YA program, which was an art opportunity implemented in an “undesirable” and a hostile academic institution, but ultimately bore fruits for not only the students, program, and the community. YA/YA provided the opportunity for high school students to come together in a group, and spend their time in a professional art studio. This studio space served to foster their budding relationship with the arts, in conjunction with multi-faceted lessons they learned. These “real world” lessons relayed the importance of deadlines, mathematical and business understanding, as well as the intimate understanding of how ones artistic/design decisions impact how well a product sells. (Or is received). The students served as a council that academically critiqued, and socially critiqued their peers’ work, before, during, and after the launching of a design. They learned to evaluate the data, and relate that information with their pre-assessment of their peers’ artwork to better understand what kind of artwork and designs sell better commercially.
I found the success of the YA/YA initiative to exemplify, how someone can create an opportunity for those who, would otherwise be disenfranchised, and create a positive outcome for them as individuals, and the community as a whole. “…she gave them an assignment, she gave them a permission to search their souls for an experience and set of feelings that could be made into art. It is the depth of feeling that makes the YA/YA work seem so vivid and alive.”
“The workshop moves students into mainstream culture. In their interactions with artists and corporate clients and through travel, YA/YA builds their confidence and teaches students to maneuver through different cultures without compromising their own beliefs and histories.” “The workshop provides the means for these adolescents to bring voice to the mainstream and demonstrate that their voices have value.” Studies of human behavior and psychology show the importance of feeling like one belongs to a valuable group. The notion that a person’s efforts hold meaning, opportunity for personal growth, and developed capability to impact the community in a positive way, are vital to our being. Also, the way YA/YA incorporated aspects of business, marketing, sales, and competition highlight the importance of real world application, transfer of knowledge, techniques, and how students will rise to the occasion if they feel their efforts are not in vain. The extrinsic value in this case, is the reward to the intrinsic effort put forth by the students.
Addressing feeling in our lessons, is not only relevant to creating stronger works of art, it also expresses a more useful combination of our cognitive functions that allow for the transfer of information to be more effective. This method presents itself, for concepts to be retained at a higher rate. “To give voice to students, to engage in dialogue is—especially at this point in educational reform—necessary for our students’ well-being. Standardization and over-emphasis on testing with focus on test scores rather than the test takers leads to the kind of “silencing” referred to by Freire. And Eisner (1998) makes the plea that schools must move beyond “conceptually dense and emotionally eviscerated abstractions to forms of representation that utilize all the senses to help students learn...” This is information I will look to evaluate in my lessons as a teacher, and hope that I can create a classroom environment that enables my students to find self-worth through creativity, and explore ways in which they can impact their community for the better.
In connecting with my students now, I feel that the utilization of Instagram is another way that this lesson can be reflected. In my past art experiences, and even currently as a studying art teacher, I have not had a supervising teacher promote the use of Instagram in their classroom. I believe having students create an Artist Instagram page should be a staple, in all art curriculum today. In my opinion utilizing this app reflects an understanding of the current methods for presenting artwork effectively as well as the ability to adapt to technological trends. The app also provides students the opportunity for connectivity with other working artists, and connectivity to non-artists as well. This platform is active and vibrant, and serves to showcase their art, growth and development. Having an art Instagram also provides students ideas for their own trajectories based off of the shared experiences that they are exposed to by searching established artists on the app.
There is a feed on the top of the Instagram page that suggests profiles to follow. Just by flipping through that suggestion feed, I have found so many incredible contemporary artists, of varying notoriety, art styles, cultural backgrounds, genders, etc. Many of these artists create content that is truly incredible, but could not be suggested by a teacher directly because of the academically taboo nature of the work. By having students create an art Instagram they will have the aided ability to explore new artists and styles they would otherwise have never known existed. Also, they are free to explore in an unsupervised manner, intimately choosing for themselves what artists to embrace or reject by their own morale compass.
My current favorite artist is Simon Hanselmann, a transgender cartoonist who writes and illustrates a comic strip about a witch, cat, wolf-man, and owl. There is no way any art instructor that I have had, would suggest this artist or have even heard of this artist. But Instagram provided the means for me to discover this artist on my own.
For the visual component of the journal entry, I placed emphasis on utilizing my art Instagram page, to see if I could uncover a way to spark excitement through my future students use of the app. In this experiment, I painted a portrait of one of my favorite comedians, Deric Poston. The image on the left and right are from my past perspective, I posted them several weeks and months ago. The central image of Deric Poston was made during the week of this journal entry and posted 2 days to Instagram before I submitted this entry. I included the submission date at the bottom which shows "2 days ago" to highlight this. I specifically targeted Deric because he is a lower-tier celebrity and felt I would have a good chance of getting a response from him. Overall, I wanted to see if I felt extrinsic value from him interacting with my work. By this token, I also wanted to see if this kind of interaction would be exciting for my future students to pursue, as it gives realism and portraiture added gratification. I have drawn and painted celebrity portraits in the past, but only recently have conceived the idea that I could utilize my current understanding of what teens value, and connect with them through using Instagram. Celebrity interaction across non-art related medias is a valuable tool to attract more students into the art studio, and more eyes onto artwork.
Deric saw my post, he commented on it and even shared my artwork on his profile. This ended up boosting my follower count and presented my work to a brand new audience that would have never known otherwise that I existed.
Experiencing this interaction for myself, revealed to me just how multi-faceted these kind of “real world” lessons can be. I felt inspired afterwards to make more artwork, and hope that this kind of exercise can serve as a piece in my future students’ art education. After analyzing what my supervising teacher (Kimberley Noel) said to me, “ students these days have a growing appreciation for celebrities, and less respect for authority figures than they used to.”, I believe that incorporating this kind of activity will make students feel a stronger personal connection to the class, myself , and art making overall.