BWC Group B - October 24, 2012

I was so proud of J S. who had an amazing day in the BWC!! We VTSed this image and the, asked the boys to imagine a move about this creature. They were to design a poster advertising their movie and we showed them example of the same kind of posters from the internet:

JS got right to work and designed a very elaborate poster with 4 kinds of tornadoes; fire, ice, wind, and poison and told us elaborate stories about them when we would stop to check on his progress.  Somehow, the yeti or abominable snowman idea got lost in his imaginative tale, but what he produced in terms or narrative and illustration was no less intriguing so we let him go with it.  When he finished, he asked Mr. T. what he should do next, he was told to write down his story.  He VERY WILLINGLY AND HAPPILY COMPLIED and this is what he produced. He was clearly very pleased with his work!

Outstanding Art Educator Sharyn Hyatt-Wade

 Send a shout out to Sharyn Hyatt-Wade for her MAC Art Education Award!!! Her Superwoman picture is pretty darn wonderful, too!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=363644497038037&set=a.154428944626261.34350.139606702775152&type=1&relevant_count=1&ref=nf

Connect Art, Music & Data!!

Amazing TED video!!

Fun images

Fascinating compare/contrast images for VTS. (We do compare/contrast images in VTS II). Top image is Still Life with Dralas by Marion Peck.  The second is Still Life, 1765 Henri-Horace Roland de la Porte.  For older art students these might be intriguing.
Enjoy!

At our VTS I class on Saturday, I mentioned a book resource that I used for a recent event for kids and parents at the Museum of Art & Archaeology.  It's called "A Kick in the Head" by Paul B. Janeczko and Christonpher Raschka. 

Half.com's synopsis states, "From the simplest couplet to the mind-boggling pantoum, the award-winning team behind A POKE IN THE I shows us the many fascinating ways poetic forms take shape. In this splendid and playful volume second of a trilogy an acclaimed creative team presents examples of twenty-nine poetic forms, demonstrating not only the (sometimes bendable) rules of poetry, but also the spirit that brings these forms to life."

It's a great little resource; non-intimidating and playful. A great classroom resource, particularly for reluctant writers. The illustrations are awesome as well and could suggest creative directions for companion art making.  Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

I came home from the first VTS I class of the year thoroughly "happy-tired"! The class consists of eight AMAZING graduate students who ROCKED at their first VTS facilitations of the school year!!  The images they selected at the Museum of Art and Archaeology were rich and varied, and in their VTS practice they demonstrated the kind of unbridled enthusiasm and risk-taking that characterizes exceptional art teachers!! I am so excited to have the opportunity to work with all of them this semester!!!! It's going to be a great new school year!!

Awesome Book Artist - Brian Dettmer

http://karanarora.posterous.com/insane-art-formed-by-carving-books-with-surgi

" Using knives, tweezers and surgical tools, Brian Dettmer carves one page at a time. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed."

These were too cool not to share with my fibers friends!! Many more at the website!

OMG! Just found the most WONDERFUL book for my proposed "Developing 21st Century Literacies: Integrating Visual and Verbal" class.  CHECK IT OUT!!!  I'm putting it on the required texts list right now!! http://www.mollybang.com/Pages/picture.html

Here is even a teaching PowerPoint to go with it!  I haven't looked at the entire PowerPoint, but the first few slides are from the book. BEST DAY EVER!!!
http://www.nhsdesigns.com/pdfs/graphic_ss_picture-this.pdf

Shout out to Fibers friend Penny Burton for locating a site and an artist who meshes BEAUTIFULLY with my Econolgy unit! Nancy Judd is her name.  She is an artist/environmental educator and creates fashions from trash like recycled lseat covers from airlines and as shown above, CRIME TAPE!  (What does the material say about the dress?? ) Check out her work at http://recyclerunway.com/fashions/  This would be an AWESOME art making activity for kids, too. The fashions are said to last at least 100 years!

Great new VTS find!

I'm always on the lookout for great VTS images and had to share these!

May have to use the first one with the BWC next year!

"Sea of Fog, 1818" David Friedrich Caspar

"Woman with a Veil" Lisette Model

"Untitled"  Garry Winogrand

TED Worth Watching!

I think, pehaps, I'll try to DANCE MY PhD!  Check out the following link!  (Includes a little arts advocacy, too!)
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_bohannon_dance_vs_powerpoint_a_modest_proposal.html

The Nomadic Museum presents "Ashes & Snow"

S. Lamme, one of my awesome VTS II students, posted this website on her blog and I was so blown away that I had to share! Like her, I can see AWESOME VTS discussions coming from these images AND Big Ideas lessons. Check it out!

http://www.ashesandsnow.org/en/vision/

Modern Day Intrigue in our own backyard!

FASCINATING ARTICLE about this painting, Henry Block of H&R Block, deceased heiress Hugette Clark, and the Nelson-Atkins Museumof Art.  I think I actually SAW this painting during the grand opening of the Block Building (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)!!

And I love how the lawyers "handed the painting off"....Someone's going to write a book or make a movie about this!

Check it out at:

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10693680-the-10-million-degas-ballerina-heiress-huguette-clark-and-the-tax-man

Reverse Graffitti Artist Alexandre Orion

While in New York, Amber and I went to the Museum of Arts & Design (MAD) and saw an exhibition entitled "Blown Away."  All works in the exhbition were created using dirt, dust, and/or ash.  There was a video of Alexandre Orion's work.  I've included the video and 3 images below. This artist's big ideas and images could easily be used at the elementary level.  Pretty amazing!
http://alexandreorion.com/ossario/video.html

Clearly, the most salient difference between the photograph that appears here and the physical structure that it depicts are the 2D vs. 3D charateristics.  Related to that, then, is the issue of context.  As it appears here, the image has been decontextualized.  It appears solitary; visually isolated from the environment in which it was created. Because the iPads, books, writing materials and other personal belongings of classmates as well as their persons are not evident here, the image must be read at face value. There is no evidence that it was a collaborative creation among classmates or of the educational intent of the creative exercise. The image is forced to stand alone and be interpreted based only upon what appears in the photograph.  The actual 3D structure, on the other hand, was part of a dynamic and active environment; a multisensory milieu in which not only the visual but also the auditory (i.e. class dialogue & movement) and olfactory (i.e. perfumes, snacks, etc.) dimensions participated in the overall perception of the work of art.  The image might evoke memories of the learning activity for the class partipants, but those who were not present during its creation are forced to read it through the lens of their own knowledge and experience.  Their understanding of the structure will be limited to its formal qualities and personal narratives.

Interestingly and from a purely aesthetic viewpoint, I think the image itself appears more artful and interesting in 2D than in 3D.  Within the picture plane, it lacks the frivolity and haphazzardness of the environment in which it was created, making it more serene. The black shadow framing the work itself serves to tame the environment and give it a more polished and finished appearance.

PLAY allows artists to suspend  disbelief; to follow the creative impulse through attempts, failures, and reinvention.  In the spirit of play, the artist focuses on the process, not the objective of producing a work that is necessarily successful or "good" by external standards.  PLAY invites experimentation, thinking through materials, and creative risk taking.  I think Sandy Skogland uses a "postponement of meaning" approach, which is very compatible with play and certainly applicable here.  Play starts the ball rolling; knowledge and skill can later refine the playful product into a work that is not only innovative and unique, but also conceptually sound.

Bumper Sticker

Well, I "drew" this bumper sticker on a word doc, but couldn't post my whole design into this blog post, so you'll have to use your imagination.  The picture would be on the left hand side of a red bumper sticker with large white letters with the NAEA logo in the lower right corner.  =0)

If you can read this, THANK AN ART TEACHER!!

Collaborative trumps Cooperative Learning

GREAT article to read through a VTS lens!

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/college-readiness-collaborative-learning-ben-johnson

I love reading Eisner! He's so comon-sensical, eloquent and profound, all at the same time! Freedman, on the other hand is not quite as accessible.  I keep wanting her to put her thinking in layman's terms. I'm sure her ideas are well-informed and brilliant; just more difficult to tease apart and digest.

In his discussion of "The Role of the Arts in Transforming Consciousness" (Chapter 1), Eisner describes our environment as a qualitative which we experience through our senses.  As language, culture, values, and beliefs combine with the sensory experiences of everyday ,we "create ourselves". (How empowering is that?!) Within this mileu, it is the arts that expand our imaginations, helping us to consider "the possible." Imagination  then leads to the inscription of creative ideas which are expressed outwardly as consciously chosen creative representations. As all of this transpires, cognitive growth takes place. Sensory experience, imagination, creative inscription and respresentation; all of this is the stuff that art education is made of!

Of all the lessons and cognitive dispositions Eisner asserts that the arts teach best, my favorite is the "slowing down of perception."  Maxine Greene refers to it as "deep noticing;" In the fast-paced, sensory-satiated, plugged-in-yet-tunned-out nature of 21st century life, I believe it is one of the most important. Our students look, but they don't see.  They hear, but they don't listen. How much of life is passing them by???? I know that is why VTS is so exciting for me.  When viewers look, listen to the observations of others, and then, look again, their comprehesion of the visual text and their recognition/appreciation of nuances and details expand exponentially! The more often they do it, the better they do it and the more likely they are to do it again independently and without prompting! A disposition is born!s

Clearly, Eisner's concept of imagination parallels the Imagination-Creativity-Innovation (ICI) model presented by Liu and Noppe-Brandon in "Imagination First."  The authors of both texts clearly agree that  significant human accomplishments must first be imagined.  Without imagiation, innovations that change the quality of human life and experience cannot occur.  The innovative results of creative thinking go on to shape the culture that have engendered them. The only real difference between the authors' conceptions of this process is that Eisner closes Liu and Noppe-Brandon's ICI continuum  into a cyclical model. Artistic  products are not end products, but rather inspirations for the ICI process to begin again.

In "Visions and Versions of Art Education" (Chapter 2), Eisner explains that art programs enacted in most contemporary art classrooms are pragmatic hybridizations, not pure forms of historic or more recently proposed art education models. Two art education forms that Eisner addresses as signficant are Discipline-Based Art Education and Visual Culture Art Education.  DBAE, which has impacted art curriculum since the 1990s, championed a comprehensive instructional approach which integrated 4 disciplines of art history, art criticism, and aesthetics as well as art production. DBAE proponents believed (and still do!) that this approach would  dissolve misconceptions that arts education lacked substance and rigor. Though less dominant, it continues to impact art curriculum design and instructional practice. (I know that DBAE continues to impact my practice and I don't think that is a bad thing. It certainly lays the ground work for integration and Big Ideas.)

VCAE teaches students not only to recognize the social and cultural values of their producers, but also to decode the messages and agendas beneath the surface of popular culture and the fine arts. Eisner adds that it helps students to become more "sensitive, politically informed interpreters" of the images that bombard them on a daily basis.

Though Eisner was cautious not to overtly endorse a particular version of art education, he voiced the need for "practical and principled" art instruction that would grant "pride of place" for the discipline. Such quality art education would help each student recognize and appreciate her/his uniqueness, becoming more sensitive to and capable of constructing meaning from the visual culture of her/his everyday life.

Freedman adds signficant understanding to visual culture and the importance of teaching it to 21st century students. She asserts that visual culture impacts identity and self-concept as well as the creation and viewing of art and is used to maipulate both thinking and behavior. Clearly, in a democracy, this idea is sobering!

I found Freedman's discussion of visual culture as a form of communication fascinating but also challenging to comprehend fully. Case in point: She explains that because it responds more and more to social conditions, visual culture is also becoming a mediator in social interactions. She presents 3 forms that such mediated interactions take: face-to-face interactions, mediated interactions, and mediated quasi interactions.  I found myself stopping and attempting to contextualize these activities for myself  by coming up with examples so that I could fully appreciate her thinking.  I decided that face to face interactions mediated by visual culture would include a person's dress, hair style, the presence or absence of piercings or tatoos; all of the physical trappings and embellishments that communicate things to us about that person and cause us to make judgements about that person's identity, status, character, intentions, values, and the like.  I took the mediated interactions as those NOT of the face-to-face variety: posters, advertisements, logos and trademarks, etc. which I found difficult, then (if I was correct) to distinguish it from mediated quasi interactions which consist of one-way communication that does not require a response.  Perhaps I'll need to go back and review this in the future; after it has had a time to simmer, so to speak. Anyone have any ideas that could enlighten me on this?



RElfecions on the reading