Material Arts: An Exploration in Creativity

After reading Carroll's Outcome II: Facilitating Engagment with the Art-Making Process, I looked for an article that might concretize the ideas expressed and relate directly to my own interests. Elliott and Bartley's May 1998 Art Education article, "Material Arts: An Exploration in Creativity" did just this.  It caught me initially with a reference to quilt making and other fiber arts created traditionally by women's hands and held my interest as it connected such feminine and domestic arts to broader concerns. Born of necessity and nurtured by their utilitarian functions, such arts as quilt making, embroidery, crocheted laces and garments altered or remade to extend their materials and use are sadly regarded as stepchildren to "real" arts despite their ingenuity and aesthetic appeal.  I must admit that I, too, feel the need to qualify my own fiber and textile creations as "contemporary," lest I be regarded as as a lowly domestic crafts person whose work has no place in studio, gallery, or museum. I was excited to see an article that apparently respected traditional "women's work" and saw textile and needle arts as an enticing way to meld history, ecology, creativity and artistry into exciting content for the art students of today. Even though the article is 13 years old, I felt its message was even more appropriate in 2011!

The article by Elliott and Bartley reports on "an innovative high school program that celebrates materials, creativity, and culture, while concurrently encouraging individual responsibility towards the environment" (p. 52).  Reflecting the age-old sentiment (that contemporary society seems to have forgotten!) of "Use it up; wear it out. Make it do or do without" this adage and program serve as particularly apt guidelines within the economic and environmental climates of 2011.

In the Material Arts Design course described by the authors, students explore the 3 areas of material arts, nontraditional media, and industrial design. The areas are synthsized as students examine the interrelationships between art, technology, aesthetics, and ecology and simultaneously develop a broad variety of technical and production skills.The authors state that within this program, "everything within the scope of our human context may be considered a viable material for artistic production" (p. 53) and they give the example of a dress that is first analized physically, culturally, contextually before it is then literally deconstructed to harvest cloth, embellishments, fasteners, and the like. Resulting materials become components of a variety of future art products. How exciting to begin an artwork with materials that have inherent history and meaning!  Of course I'm kicking myself for all of the significant garments in my own past that I"ve thoughtlessly done away with; garments whose component parts could have been the beginnings of  many personally meaningful and expressive works of art!  Yes, doing so would have meant excessive clutter, which I struggle with from time to time already!  Still, with proper organization and "cataloging," such materials could have been rich resources and environmentally responsible beginnings. I missed some great opportunities!

Within the context of "recycling," Elliott and Bartley note that students in their course develop a profound awareness of how much waste is created in our contemporary culture and the effort (and expense) required to ultimately break that waste down. They assert that within the context of their class, "Every artistic endeavor becomes an acologically positive act" (p. 54) When I read this comment, I immediately recalled "The Story of Stuff" that we watched last summer in my Critical Literacy course.  I liked, too, the authors' conclusion of the Material Arts discussion when, citing McFee & Degge (1977 - Whoa!  This is still true thirty-four years later!), that "The quality of the environment depends on people's ability to use their design sensitivity, their social responsibility, and their ecological concerns together to solve environmental problems" (p. 54). This is a very important idea to keep on the forefront as we prepare young citizens and artists for the future!

As Elliott and Barley's students identify, collect, analyze and "deconstruct" objects both figuratively and literally for the artistic and expressive potential of their component materials,  they also exercise creative problem-solving (which is one of the most exciting aspects of art production of any type, in my opinion!)  In their words, "Each project provides the students with a context from which they must assume creative responsibility as they struggle with a variety of physical, mechanical, functional, and aesthetic challenges" (p. 54). Creative responsibility...I like that, for it implies not only ownership of the design and execution of a work, but also environmental responsibility and good stewardship. Bartley adds that, "One of the desired outcomes of the program is to put students in touch with their environment at all phases of the creative process."  Sounds like a wonderfully integtrated program to me!

I see the Material Arts Design course of Elliott a Bartley as a great idea on many levels, including the practical level of both acquiring and restocking art materials;  harder and harder to do with tightening art budgets. "Use it up, wear it out..and then repurpose it into something expressive, wonderful, and new!" might just be the philosophy of sustainability for 21st century art classrooms!