Week 3 - Survey of Art Education

Better Visual Arts Education

Drawing on Imagination, Memory, and Experience

            For students to successfully draw from imagination, memory, and experience, it is important to implement strategies that promote idea generation and image formation.  Some of these qualities might include previsualization, guiding questions, verbal prompts, and existential questions. 

            Previsualization “aims to create a full and rich image in the mind’s eye prior to beginning work.  Questions used to guide previsualization typically involve who, when, where how, and why.”  The questions asked of the students should prompt them to visualize and locate the self in relation to memory.  “When a full and rich image has developed in the imagination, work can begin to bring the image into visual form.”

            Guided questions should be designed to solicit a creative response.  This may include verbal cues and open-ended questions that focus on “visual qualities such as size and shape, tactile and sensory qualities such as texture, feel, smell, and taste; and distinguishing characteristics or details that lend character or form to the imagined subject.”

            Verbal Prompts can be another strategy that enables working from the imagination.  “Here very descriptive language loaded with strong visual cues, stimulates imaginative imagery.”

            Existential questions such as “Who am I? Why am I here? What is this journey about?” may offer another approach to working from imagination and intuition.  These questions can start a process that “extends into a method for sharing imagery that focuses upon deeper reflection rather than critical analysis.

Tapping the Narrative Impulse

           

            “Teachers who allow the narrative impulse to fund image making help learners of all ages construct personal meaning while developing a repertoire of representational and expressive skills.”  A range of questions and prompts can foster narrative thinking and invite responses for a visual narrative.   “Narratives that deal with everyday life provide students important opportunities to reflect upon and find meaning in their experiences.”

            In order to successfully create visual narratives, it is important students develop a proper vocabulary that will allow them to create characters, settings, illustrate change over time, use different points of view, create drama to a story, draw people, show action and emotion, etc. 

Developing an Expanded Vocabulary for Visual Form

           

            “Teachers who use both formal and informal approached to the exploration of visual form build vocabulary and concepts related to art, nature, and systems theory while facilitating deeper thinking about live and art and about visually communicating ideas, thoughts, and feelings… A look at both the past and the present suggests that beliefs, values, vocabulary, and concepts have shaped, and continue to shape, the way visual-spatial forms operate, and create meaning, in art and design.”  Here, we see two types of visual form discussed: A Formalist Approach and An Intuitive Approach.  Within a formalist approach, visual form holds the primary focus, while in an intuitive approach, intuitive exploration is key.  Intuitive exploration includes existential questions, ideas, and possibilities with a focus on art media, where visual form is a result of this process. 

Expanding the Repertoire for Visual Perception and Artistic Response

            “Teachers who foster development of a repertoire of representational skills prepare students to make expressive and responsive choices to serve their needs and interests.”  Different types of representation apply to 3D and 2D forms.  Within these types of representation exist different modes of response.  An approach that fosters perceptual awareness as well as artistic response might be most valuable.  In order to facilitate this kind of response, teachers should incorporate opportunities for students to work from imagination, memory, and experience, narratively and from observation. 

Article #2
While researching an article to further investigate on the topic of Developing a Repertoire of Skills for Visual Perception and Artistic Response, I decided to choose an article written by an artist who creates work on the ideas of visual perception.  In a sense, the article reads as a detailed artist statement.  If we are to understand the relationship between artistic response and visual perception, perhaps it is helpful to look closer at an artist creating work on that very relationship.  

The artist, Paul Pratchenko, begins by addressing the importance of investigating the meaning and enigma of visibility.  He says, “We react to our visual perceptions and these perceptions directly produce concepts of truth and human values… Much of the ‘power of art’ lies in the fact that how and what we see is closely associated with what we do and believe.”

            Pratchenko discusses the illusions of depth and three-dimensional form on a flat picture plane as well as the illusions of reality we construct based upon our perceptions.  He creates images containing metaphors for his process of visual perceptions, his understandings of the world that result from these perceptions, and the way new information influences the evolution of his worldview. 

“Visual perception must involve some combinations of our knowledge about what is observed and what is directly viewed.  Our understandings are always subjective to some degree; we something of what we expect to see.”

Pratchenko also says his work addresses the idea of memory and how it’s existence affects an individual’s visual perception based on their past experience and exposure.  “Our sight is altered by previously stored information.”  He says our understanding of an artwork and our “ability to gather new information from painting systems are only possible through the systems previously known by artist and viewer.”

Painting and Drawing as Manifestations of Visual Perception Author(s): Paul Pratchenko

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 273-279 Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574952 .

Accessed: 12/02/2013 21:41 

Artist: Allan McCollum

Big Idea: Identity Through Systems

Lesson Plan

Big Idea: Identity Through Heraldry

Heraldry: “The art of pictorial representation of genealogy, as through coats of arms, crests, etc.”

Connection to students’ lives: Students will represent their personal identity within a group identity (family, club, social group, interest, major, etc.) by creating a “Family Crest.”  Students must use shape to represent who they are, both individually and socially. 

Authentic art integration:  Students are encouraged to incorporate their interests and knowledge outside of the art classroom and bring it into their artwork.  Students are manifesting who they believe they are, how they identify themselves, and who they identify themselves with into this piece. 

Art criticism, art history, and aesthetics:  Students will research the idea and purpose of heraldry and view examples of crests (history).  Students will watch Allan McCollum Art 21 video.

Artmaking process:

Essential Questions:

1)    What is heraldry?

2)    What is its purpose?

3)    How does the idea of heraldry relate to identity?

4)    What is uniqueness?

5)    What is your personal identity?

6)    What is the identity of a group you belong to?

How can we represent our personal and social (group) identity through the use of shape? 

How can we apply shape to create a “Family Crest” that represents our unique identities?