Artistic Thinking: Week 14 Reflections

Part 1: Gude quote, “Consider whether ALL your curriculum projects engage students in making meaning through meaningful making.”

What are the classroom implications of this statement? Do you agree or disagree with her statement or stance?

To better understand and define what makes a good art project, in her powerpoint Gude also makes two more powerful statements: “When students are not introduced to a wide range of meaning making strategies, students tend to fall back on familiar, hackneyed image making techniques” and “Good art projects encode complex aesthetic strategies that give students tools to investigate and make meaning.” When I first read the quote, I remembered a discussion I had with a host teacher during field experience one semester. She had said that their art department was trying to find a balance between implementing art projects that are designed for meaning making and trying to equip students with the skills necessary to be able to do the projects. I think she raises an interesting dilemma: How do you continually engage students in meaningful art making if they are not equipped with the technical skill to create these projects? Gude address this concern by encouraging projects that incorporate technical skill building, indeed she says to “encode” it, into meaning making. As we’ve seen throughout this course, incorporating studio thinking techniques like “play” give students the opportunity to envision, think through materials, explore a wide range of strategies, and to build technical skill. This means that incorporating time in the art classroom to explore gives students the chance to build technique. I agree with Gude, technique should and can be “encoded” into meaning making art projects, not as stand alone ideas.

Part 2:

Value #1 – investigation on the new, not representation of the known. If the artist already knows what he or she wanted to say there would be no point in making the work. Art generated new knowledge; it is not merely a picture of what we already know.

What are the classroom implications for this value? How does this value connect to your studio practice and how might it affect your classroom now and in the future?

In my own studio practice, unpredictability is a necessary part of art making. While I start a project with some thoughts in mind and ideas I want to experiment with, if I am too detailed in my plans I feel exactly as Gude describes: If you already knew what you wanted to say, there would be no point in making the work! Art and meaning making comes as much from the process of making as from the final product. In the courses I teach, students are required to do some pre-planning through writing a script of their video project that outlines what video they are planning to shoot and what audio they envision going with it. While I like for them to be detailed enough so that I can also visualize their proposed work, they are not tied down to this script as often they form new ideas and knowledge during the process of creating their work. In the future I plan to provide them with additional ways to “script” their ideas as right now I have them limited to a two-column typed format. A way to digitally create a storyboard would also be very useful for them.

Value #2 – investigating how culture generates meaning over projects that merely mimic commercial culture. Are we as teachers shaping the future or merely providing the work force for designer culture? Will the employed designers of tomorrow be the students who learned to mimic today, or the students who learned avant garde ways of thinking and making?

Do you agree or disagree with including this value? Is it important or not? What are the classroom implications for this value?

This is an important value that can seem overwhelming to implement. I see in my courses how students are engrossed and tied to their current commercial culture. When I ask them to create their own concept for a video, many of them head straight to popular culture for ideas. And why shouldn’t they? However, they do have difficulty with deconstructing the popular culture they turn to for ideas. I often have to ask some “big” questions about their ideas to get them to do more than mimic and to help them create something new that will respond and react to their culture. In my courses I don’t specifically set out to teach this value during making, indeed I haven’t yet implemented a unit designated to the study of visual culture, but I try to point it out whenever possible. I find that this method works best with my students (who can sometimes get uptight when asked to think aesthetically) as it seems less intimidating and more like what it is; an observation I’ve just made and shared with them.