Dr. Graham Figure Drawing Article

I really enjoyed Dr. Graham's figure drawing article.  I think sometimes I don't realize how brilliant he is at structuring his classroom.  I love that this unit pushes students to be better artists.  I really do think that there is value in learning how to draw like this and I think that Dr. Graham found a way to balance teaching technical skill while also helping them analyze the merit of developing that technical skill, and helping them see how they can apply to their own artistic practice.  I also think that it's amazing that Dr. Graham was able to help students feel comfortable doing something as difficult as figure drawing.  I think that what he did in creating a hospitable environment and helping students feel that their drawings were impermanent (drawing over drawings, etc.) was so important.

Natural Material Container

My first attempts at making a container out of natural materials involved tying a million blades of grass together.  It didn't work very well.  Then I wove some sticks and grass together, but that didn't work very well either (that's the raft like object that the carved cucumber is sitting on).  I decided to try a more subtractive process and I carved this cucumber so that it could hold water. 

Chris Jordan

http://chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway-film/#trailer

Spiritual Place

Mandala Destruction

CHAPTER 2 How will I Teach?

I really liked this chapter.  It's funny because I started my journey as an art educator in Art for Elementary School teachers.  I was an Early Childhood Education Major and I was feeling like my degree wasn't quite "right" for me, but everytime I went to that class I would think "this is what I want to do all of the time."  So I decided to switch one day.  Then I was thrown into the contemporary art world, almost drowned, and then I came out of it alive!  And since then I feel like I go in and out of that feeling of drowning.  Sometimes I think that I can be an art educator, and sometimes maybe more of the time I feel like there is no way I can do it.

"How will I teach?" feels like the real question.  This chapter is enormous and fees like it covers so many things.  While I was reading it I felt like I went in and out of that drowning feeling again.  But here are some things that I liked from it.

"Your teaching can be as original and personal as your art-making, and probably should be."

I've realized that I'm trying so hard to figure out how to be a good art teacher that I don't even really know how to be myself in teaching.  I've also realized that what they said in Chapter 1 that I was so skeptical about (how you need to be an expert in what you teach), is true to a good extent.  That doesn't mean you should only stick to things you know perfectly.  But I've realized that a lot of the reason that I'm floundering is because I don't know how to be an artist, and so being a teaching artist becomes even harder.  I want to really dig in deeper into my own artistic practice, and then I can focus on being me!

"If you think about it, the most important ingredients in developing an original voice and powerful creative solutions in any medium are time and space to work with the medium, useful feedback and criticism from others and exposure to a wide range of work in the medium."

I've realized that I've tried so hard to plan lessons that aren't lame, that I think sometimes I'm forgetting that kids are going to need time and space to work with the medium.  That they'll want to create their own art.

He talked about the role of copying!  I liked that!

I love this under "Working the range 2: Creative constraints vs. open-ended art-making:"

 "Either of these choices, and any point on the continuum between them, can be equally educative and generative for students, but only if there is space for students to invent and experiment with the medium."

To me this made "Good Art Education" something that's based off of choices instead of something that is inherently good or bad.

I still don't know how to be a good art teacher.  But, I think I'm getting closer to understanding it.  I want to write down a list of things that will be at the core of my art teaching.  I think I'm a little bit paralyzed by "doing it wrong" and so that hasn't left room for me to explore my own art, or explore my own at teaching.  This chapter is something that I need to revisit and digest more as I get practice in the classroom, and as I come to understand more how to be myself and be a teaching artist.

Reading Packet Response

The idea of what makes a good art teacher has really been weighing on my mind recently, because most of the time I feel like I don't know how to be a "good art teacher."  I feel anxious approaching the classroom because I don't want to teach something that isn't worthwhile and I don't want to teach it wrong.  I think I read all of the articles through that lens.  I was asking "what makes a good art teacher?" 

The first article about Graphic novels lead me to believe that good art teaching is challenging leads students to relevant discoveries about their own lives.  Graphic Novels fit well into the context of Contemporary Art.  They are very postmodern.  They take something like a cartoon and turn it into a tool for expression about important social, historical, and political issues.  They are also very relevant to students' lives and the creation and study of them is helping students to explore their own lives in a significant way.  That seems like an important part of art teaching.

The second article about the Teaching Artist was so interesting to me.  I've read it before but it has a whole new relevance for me as I'm getting ready to student teach.  Things that stood out to me.  I need to be a teaching ARTIST.  Right now I'm so busy with school and work that I feel like I'm not really an artist.  I still don't feel confident in my own abilities to make art and so the teaching that I think probably flows from that work is struggling.  I love the idea of a flexible and playful environment in the classroom.  I also love the idea of enabling constraints.  I think I learned from this one that your art teaching has to come from YOU.  I keep trying to force the art teacher out of me, instead of extending myself as a teaching artist.  The environment that we create is important, and so is the relationship that I have with my students. 

I loved the last article about copying.  Copying isn't always bad.  I love the way copying was framed though.  It's a way of learning how to be something.  It's giving you an opportunity to understand how the person you are copying was thinking and working.  Copying gives students something to link into, if they have nowhere to dig their heels in they might not be able to get very far. 

Springville Museum

I tended to like the pieces of art that surprised me.  I've also been thinking a lot about Annie Poon and her work and for some reason I find myself liking a lot of things that look kind of illustrative recently.  Here were two that I found surprising, they weren't the typical hyper realistic drawing that you see sometimes in art shows and so they stood out a lot to me. 

Curriculum Sketch

Figure Drawing: Body and Soul

Essential Questions

What is drawing?  Where did it start?  Is there value in figure drawing?  What does the figure represent?  How does our body relate to our soul?  How is the silhouette important?   How are our bodies represented?

Rationale

What do I really want them to be able to do?  I want them to think critically about drawing.  Within their own practice, within the history of the world, the way we think about humans, within the history of art.  How has it’s importance changed over time?  How has it stayed with us?  There are ideas about humanism, about classical drawing and what art education should be.  There are so many things to consider.  Why do we draw the body?

Learning Goals

Knowledge Base

Silhouettes: Kara Walker.  http://www.art21.org/artists/kara-walker

Michelangelo’s David

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel the later period when he started even adding muscles that aren’t even there.  “Last Judgment”

Leonardo da Vinci’s studies

Neoclassicism, why did we keep coming back to that ideal?

Fashion illustrators: ?

Janine Antoni “Loving Care”

Heather Hansen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4oBc-o1npg

Learning Activities:  

Make a drawing - first let the students draw anything.  

    Figure drawing

Drawing with sticks

Drawing from fashion illustrators

Drawing from the masters

Doing anything (from what we have done so far)

Drawing as an explorer as an excavator.

Drawing with tools.

Drawing with machines

The Big Project

Figure drawing: Drawing with your body somehow.  Needs to be a work that you spend a certain amount of time on.

What do you do as an artist?

What is the relationship between your experiences and ongoing artistic work to your curriculum and teaching.  How do you describe what you do as an artist.

It's hard to draw lines between my experiences, and work as an artist and my curriculum and teaching because I feel my curriculum and teaching aren't living and breathing yet.  So far my curriculum is hypothetical and my teaching experience is very little.  The curriculum I have written has a lot to do with things that I'm passionate about, especially in regards to my interaction with high school students.  I want them to think about communication and language and their interaction with others.  Those are the things that I think about and the things that I make art about.  I keep a running list of "art ideas" that I get as I think about different things throughout the day.  There are things that I want to do and explore and so I hope that my artistic work lives and breaths with my life and then my curriculum and teaching live and breathe along with my artistic practice.

As an artist, I honestly don't feel totally sure what I do.  People often ask you when they find out you're an artist.  "What kind of art do you do?"  "Do you draw, do you paint, do you do portraits, do you do landscapes?"  It's funny, at the MOA the other day I gave a tour to some Deseret Book employees who had just gone over to see our faculty show.  We stood at the entrance to a religious exhibit and they asked me "What kind of art that was" that they had just seen.  I tried to talk a little bit about process and concept with them and they seemed somewhat baffled.  I don't think the faculty art show fit their idea of art.  So what kind of art do I do?  I think I do... the kind that I have time for.  I wish I had a year where I could do nothing but think about and make art and take time to develop all of the parts of me that I want to.  Right now I feel like I'm the kind of artist that is barely able to put out enough art for her classes but wishes she could make more and invest more.  If I had to talk to an administrator about what I do most I would probably say that I'm a painter, that I can draw, that I can do printmaking, that I want to do more in social practice art.  Reading our book made me squirm just a little bit because I felt like I wasn't anywhere close to an "expert" in any area.

First day of school and drawing

On the first day of school I want to help my students deconstruct the first day of school and their conceptions of art. 

We'll start with a getting to know you activity. We'll maybe start with a conventional getting to know you activity where each student asks the person next to them the conventional questions. 

"What is your name?"
"Where are you from?"
"What do you like to do?"

I'll then spend some time deconstruction the first day of school, starting out with a discussion of what students expect from me on the first day of school.  We might make a list on the board.  I'd expect it'd say "going over the syllabus, getting to know you activities, introductions, etc." 

We'll then talk about the process of getting to know someone, and why we often start it the same way.  Why do we ask the same questions? Are those things important to them?  Do we even remember them?  What do you want people to know about you?  What do you want to really know about someone else?

We'll then do an activity where everyone will write a question and send it in to me.  I will answer the questions (unless they are inappropriate).

Next we'll take a test!  This will be a Dr. Graham test.  I want to ask them questions like this:

What is an artist? 
What will happen in this art class?
What makes an art class a good art class?
What makes a teacher good? 

I'm considering putting a scale on there that looks like this:

And having them rate themselves on the scale:


Not artist -----------------------------------------------------------------------------Artist


Then I'll have them answer the question of why they are or are not artists.  We will deconstruct this idea next time.

Now onto the topic of DRAWING.

I do think it's important to teach drawing.  Whether or not drawing is going to be a main part of each student's art practice or not, I think drawing connects us to art history and to the art discipline.  I think for me, most importantly drawing teaches us to see.  I would want a drawing foundation course to be about that.  About learning to see the world around you.  I think it is important for them to grapple with representational and observational drawing.  I think it's also important for them to explore conceptual drawing.  I want them to expand drawing past their original conceptions.  I want them to break their idea of "artist" and "not artist" and also consider what it is that makes art important or relevant.  I also want them to spend a significant amount of time drawing things that are relevant to them.  I want them to really consider what is significant to them and then make iterations and push themselves further.  I want them to deconstruct the world through drawing.

Springville

I honestly have quite a difficult time looking at spiritual art.  I feel this inner conflict about how to handle it.  I don't know if I should judge it, give in to the representational and/or cliche things that might be depicted, or if I should even treat it the way that I treat contemporary art.

One thing I do know is that when I look at spiritual art I definitely feel the reality of the pressure I feel to like or dislike something.  I kind of find myself wondering if I'm allowed to like or dislike something and I have a hard time letting go of that pressure.  These were non-representational and so they felt safer to judge than a large image of Christ.  I like the colors and shape and feel of the first one, and then I wonder if that was a correct judgment of it or not. 

This piece is similar.

Then there are other things that I like but I'm not quite sure if it's because I've been conditioned to think that it's a certain way or not.  I thought that this was an interesting piece because it freshened my perspective of Alma 32 without painting a little picture of a seed growing and writing faith in swirly letters next to it (which I have probably done at some point in my life).  I felt refreshed by it.  It breathed new life into those chapters for me.

This one made me feel similarly.  I felt refreshed by it.  The artist felt genuine to me. 

Then finally there are a number of things that I like but I don't like and I'm not sure why.  I can feel the pressure that comes from the general population.  Her hands and face and clothing are beautifully painted, they are realistic.  And then I read the plaque and I can't help but be drawn in by the story, it's the kind that you find in the Ensign.  It's only a short little blurb but it has the power to draw you in, rip your heart out, and amaze you all at the same time.  I'm not sure if I like it or if I just like the principle that is being taught by it.  I'm not quite sure if I should call it good art or not, but in my heart I feel like it's not supposed to be good art.  So I'm not sure how to consider it.  

 This representation of the Savior I actually did kind of like, but again I feel a little part of me wondering if I'm allowed to.

There was also a part of me that liked something like this.  I have no idea how accurate the clothing style or portrayal really is, but I do think it's beautiful to contemplate Christ and Mary when Jesus was a tiny baby.

It's really a difficult thing for me to grapple with.  I wonder if part of me is a little bit resistant to give into either party.  When I see 97% of the population (or at least the Mormon population) falling in love with most of these paintings, especially a certain kind of painting, I feel resistant to it.  When I see something that I (and others) like in my art classes, I feel conflicted.  Part of me resists giving in to what everyone likes and the other part of me is confused about what I really like.