Facilitating Engagement with the Art-Making Process

" Greater investment arises out of work that is guided by internal motivations to express personally significant ideas. Complex processes, mixed media, and specific challenges can inspire meaningful engagement." (Carrol, Tucker, 2003, pg. 116)

I like this book, I feel that is a wonderful combination of all that we have learned so far with many added strategies to explore. This chapter is nice since I am getting the opportunity to put many of these explorations and processes into my own art making practice for Sharyns class. I am also getting to use them with two very creative homeschooled children that have an amazing amount of self motivation and are exploring and creating every day.
I do agree in a Spiral curriculum in which, "a certain range of materials and processes are periodically revisited to build new skills and suggests new ways materials can accomodate, (new) ideas." (Carrol, Tucker, 2003, pg. 117)

I liked the book by Szekely, G. (1988). Encouraging Creativity in Art Lessons. The only article I could find was a review on Amazon:

"Szekely attempted to teach children how to be artists. He states his goal as "to demystify art, and assure children through the teacher's deeds and words, tat art is found in familiar places and ordinary environments, accessible to everyone...bring children closer to art-nearer to themselves." Szekely wrote his book to help spread these ideas among art teachers. Rather than create an environment where a select few talented students shine, Szekely's book suggests ways to create a level playing field between the students and teacher and make art a tangible object in each student's life. The major ideas discussed by Szekely center around breaking away from the traditional teaching of art. Szekely's suggestions for techniques in teaching children art include encouraging children to "be" artists which is a difficult task in the public school system. Szekely believes "that all children are artists, born with the natural ability to observe, to formulate art ideas, and to execute works of art on their own...As children grow up, however, they come to depend on adults to direct their art making. " The art classroom is a place where students execute the ideas and plans of the teacher. The students' natural ability to express themselves through art is hindered by the lesson plans they are assigned. Art becomes an assignment in the classroom, rather than an expression. Szekely states, "The first step in teaching children to make art it to be concerned that they regain their independence. " In the art classroom, students need to forget the formal structure of education and become in tune with their emotions and senses, and then they can begin to learn what it is to be an artist." (A. Wood)
http://www.amazon.com/Encouraging-Creativity-Lessons-George-Szekely/dp/0807728837

I also found was the website for TAB, which I have been linked to on FB for a while now. This was a paragraph explaining their ideas:

"Choice Based Art Education fosters imagination. Teachers all across the country are "discovering" how to motivate children through the method of instruction  known as Choice Based Art Education (Teaching for Artistic Behavior - or TAB™ Choice is an organization of teachers who teach using this method ). Centers are set up in the elementary and middle school art classrooms and students choose which centers to participate in for the day. High school students are self directed in their studies and studio work."

"Nothing in education is more powerful than authentic, student directed, student centered learning experiences constructed from the bottom up. The TAB art education concept allows students opportunities to take ownership of their art experiences from conception to completion with teacher acting as classroom manager, environmental designer, art expert, facilitator, and student mentor." (Clyde Gaw)

http://teachingforartisticbehavior.org/

I am a big believer in choice and freedom yet I would also incorporate and teach how to use Big Ideas to become a more thoughtful and intentional artist. 

I also was intrigued by:

Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking by: Joh-Steiner, V  (1987)

I found a great review on Amazon:

"How do creative people think? Do great works of the imagination originate in words or in images? Is there a rational explanation for the sudden appearance of geniuses like Mozart or Einstein? Such questions have fascinated people for centuries; only in recent years, however, has cognitive psychology been able to provide some clues to the mysterious process of creativity. In this revised edition of Notebooks of the Mind, Vera John-Steiner combines imaginative insight with scientific precision to produce a startling account of the human mind working at its highest potential.

To approach her subject John-Steiner goes directly to the source, assembling the thoughts of "experienced thinkers"--artists, philosophers, writers, and scientists able to reflect on their own imaginative patterns. More than fifty interviews (with figures ranging from Jessica Mitford to Aaron Copland), along with excerpts from the diaries, letters, and autobiographies of such gifted giants as Leo Tolstoy, Marie Curie, and Diego Rivera, among others, provide illuminating insights into creative activity. We read, for example, of Darwin's preoccupation with the image of nature as a branched tree while working on his concept of evolution. Mozart testifies to the vital influence on his mature art of the wondrous "bag of memories" he retained from childhood. Anais Nin describes her sense of words as oppressive, explaining how imagistic free association freed her as a writer. 

Adding these personal accounts to laboratory studies of thought process, Vera John-Steiner takes a refreshingly holistic approach to the question of creativity. What emerges is an intriguing demonstration of how specific sociocultural circumstances interact with certain personality traits to encourage the creative mind. Among the topics examined here are the importance of childhood mentor figures; the lengthy apprenticeship of the talented person; and the development of self- expression through highly individualistic languages, whether in images, movement or inner speech." (http://www.amazon.com/Notebooks-Mind-Explorations-Vera-John-Steiner/dp/0195108965)

The Dinner Party Curriculum Project

Encounter 10: The Artist’s Voice

This is a video with voice recording of Judy Chicago speaking and explaining the work.

Grade Levels: Upper Elementary, Middle and High School

Chicago provides a tour of The Dinner Party, one “wing” of the triangular table at a time, while revealing her intentions and making connections among materials, techniques, and symbolism in the plates, runners and the Heritage Floor. Prior to viewing the video, students list ques- tions that they have about the artwork and how it was made.

The artist’s voice and perspective enhance the students’ appreciation and understanding of the artwork. Close-up views of needlework are accompanied by the artist’s rationale for using various techniques for runners, and for what she calls the “millennium triangles” found at the three junctures of the table. Although students have been introduced to the notion of metaphor, their understanding is enhanced when they hear the artist refer to the various metaphors in the artwork. Ultimately, students learn that the artist often can offer important contextual information, contributing greatly to what they know and value about an artwork. 

2. Prepare a list of questions for students to consider while viewing the DVD. For example:
What is china painting and how did the artist learn how to do it?
How do you know that the artist and her helpers engaged in a lot of trial and error? How do the names on the Heritage Floor relate to the women “seated” at the table? What metaphors does the artist refer to when describing the artwork?
What is “white work?”
Why are some plates higher off the table than others?
Why did the artist make the backs of the runners difficult to see?
3. Prepare a list of questions for students to consider when the artist describes a plate and runner associated with spe- cific women. For example:
How does the artist describe the plate?
How does the artist describe the runner?
What symbols does the artist refer to?
What needlework is important in this particular place setting?
What does the artist indicate is important to remember about the woman’s contributions or achievements? 

www.throughtheflower.org

Another Awesome Ted Talk

Here is a new Ted Talk I found: "Be an Artist right Now!"

http://on.ted.com/BeAnArtist

Filmed July 2010 at TEDxSeoul

Young-ha Kim: Be an artist, right now!

When you were little, I bet you spent time enjoying the pleasure of primitive art. When I ask my students to write about their happiest moment, many write about an early artistic experience they had as a kid.Learning to play piano for the first time and playing four hands with a friend, or performing a ridiculous skit with friends looking like idiots -- things like that. Or the moment you developed the first film you shot with an old camera. They talk about these kinds of experiences. You must have had such a moment. In that moment, art makes you happy because it's not work. Work doesn't make you happy, does it? Mostly it's tough.

5:37The French writer Michel Tournier has a famous saying. It's a bit mischievous, actually. "Work is against human nature. The proof is that it makes us tired." Right? Why would work tire us if it's in our nature?Playing doesn't tire us. We can play all night long. If we work overnight, we should be paid for overtime.Why? Because it's tiring and we feel fatigue. But kids, usually they do art for fun. It's playing. They don't draw to sell the work to a client or play the piano to earn money for the family. Of course, there were kids who had to. You know this gentleman, right? He had to tour around Europe to support his family --Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- but that was centuries ago, so we can make him an exception.Unfortunately, at some point our art -- such a joyful pastime -- ends. Kids have to go to lessons, to school, do homework and of course they take piano or ballet lessons, but they aren't fun anymore.You're told to do it and there's competition. How can it be fun? If you're in elementary school and you still draw on the wall, you'll surely get in trouble with your mom. Besides, if you continue to act like an artist as you get older, you'll increasingly feel pressure -- people will question your actions and ask you to act properly.

So what happens when little artists get locked in, banished or even killed? Our artistic desire doesn't go away. We want to express, to reveal ourselves, but with the artist dead, the artistic desire reveals itself in dark form. In karaoke bars, there are always people who sing "She's Gone" or "Hotel California,"miming the guitar riffs. Usually they sound awful. Awful indeed. Some people turn into rockers like this.Or some people dance in clubs. People who would have enjoyed telling stories end up trolling on the Internet all night long. That's how a writing talent reveals itself on the dark side.

10:27Sometimes we see dads get more excited than their kids playing with Legos or putting together plastic robots. They go, "Don't touch it. Daddy will do it for you." The kid has already lost interest and is doing something else, but the dad alone builds castles. This shows the artistic impulses inside us are suppressed, not gone. But they can often reveal themselves negatively, in the form of jealousy. You know the song "I would love to be on TV"? Why would we love it? TV is full of people who do what we wished to do, but never got to. They dance, they act -- and the more they do, they are praised. So we start to envy them. We become dictators with a remote and start to criticize the people on TV. "He just can't act." "You call that singing? She can't hit the notes." We easily say these sorts of things. We get jealous, not because we're evil, but because we have little artists pent up inside us. That's what I think.

11:34What should we do then? Yes, that's right. Right now, we need to start our own art. Right this minute, we can turn off TV, log off the Internet, get up and start to do something. Where I teach students in drama school, there's a course called Dramatics. In this course, all students must put on a play.However, acting majors are not supposed to act. They can write the play, for example, and the writers may work on stage art. Likewise, stage art majors may become actors, and in this way you put on a show. Students at first wonder whether they can actually do it, but later they have so much fun. I rarely see anyone who is miserable doing a play. In school, the military or even in a mental institution, once you make people do it, they enjoy it. I saw this happen in the army -- many people had fun doing plays.