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.