Art Journal #1: visualizing a teaching philosophy

#teachandtuft

1/25/22

10 things to consider when you teach art:

1. There is hardly ever a right or a wrong when it comes to art. There are only suggestions.

2. Students learn by experimentation; trial and error.

3. Building relationships with students is the top priority.

4. Students should experience a wide array of media, mediums, and concepts when creating their works.

5. Students need to know the formal elements in order to break their properties.

6. Art-making is vital to the human experience and humanity in general. This should be emphasized to students to ensure that they understand how utilizing the creative process strengthens all of their other abilities.

7. The meaning of an artwork is not fixed but ever-evolving and continues to reveal itself through new interactions.

8. It is not solely about skill and craftsmanship. Ideation is just as important if not, more.

9. Artworks are more than the embodiment of a single theme - they are multidimensional objects with layers of interrelated meaning that inform, complement and contradict each other.

10. EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST.

more thoughts:

Before coming this far in my art education experience, I thought that I wanted to teach pedagogy that is super skill/medium-heavy and almost forces students to become great at a certain discipline such as sculpting or drawing. But, I have found in my own practice that I am not and will never be a master of any media. The truth is that if I don’t enjoy working with it, I don’t grow and learn. I can only imagine that this will be the same for my students. Now, I want my students to have autonomy over their mediums of choice after having given it a good go. I want them to have a vast knowledge of working with different media, but I also want them to hone in on the mediums and processes that speak to their practice and their experience. I want to teach art in a way that welcomes all ideas, mediums, philosophies, practices, and most importantly, people. My hope is that everyone walks out of my room knowing that they have and know how to tap into their identity as an artist. I seek to make these connections by showing students the practices, and bodies of work of a wide array of artists, exposing them to lots of different mediums while giving them opportunities to hone in on their own skills, and developing communicative, healthy relationships with all of them.

visual journal:

The art piece that you see today is a tufted rug sample that features several different transitions of color. Some of the transitions are more obvious than others. This is intentional as I created this to be a metaphor for the 10 things to consider when you teach art. Many of these philosophies piggyback off each other and must be done incongruently. For example, you can’t convince students of the importance of art-making if you have not developed a relationship with them. I went with a cooler spectrum as it is indicative of calming water-like imagery. It is my hope that when I teach art in the future my teaching philosophies and pedagogies flow like water. They are not stagnant, but dynamic and ever-evolving.