Art Journal #8 - What is BRAINY?

3/27/22

#WhatTheySeeandWhatISee

Wow! What an experience! BRAINY pushed and pulled from my previous knowledge so much throughout the entire process. When I started to plan for this event I thought the art making process was going to be the easiest part, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I had to revisit my original process and edit it so many times both before the first BRAINY session and after the second. Originally, I was really stuck on this idea that I didn’t want the students to create a craft. I wanted students to take home a piece of art that they could continue to work on. And could continue to serve as a tool and process for ideation purposes.

What is the difference between art and craft?

The Eden Gallery offers an answer to this question: Art v. Craft

Art according to Eden:

“Art is an expression and application of imagination and creative skill. The creative visual arts are traditionally painting, sculpture, photography, or drawing.”

“Art is highly subjective, so what one viewer considers to be an artwork may not be perceived as art by someone else. There may never be a universal consensus on what constitutes art; it has changed and will continue to change over time.”

Craft according to Eden:

“A craft or trade is traditionally a hobby or an occupation that requires skilled workers to produce an item. Crafts can include weaving, carving, pottery, embroidery, macrame, beading, sewing, quilting, and many other forms.”

“Historically crafts were made by a craftsperson; a title applied to people who were occupied in the small-scale production or maintenance of goods. Craft may also be referred to as “handicraft,” with their hand-made nature distinguishing them from other mass-made, readily available products.”

My thoughts:

I think arts and crafts are heavily intertwined and not as black and white as this article portrays. But, I wanted to include these ideas as these are the general consensus of our society. Growing up, I really disliked most things that are labeled as crafts. I think of crafts as a process in which materials are given and the participant is instructed as to how to manipulate those materials in a way that produces a very specific result. Art is when the participant is given materials and they get to choose how they are manipulated and how the final product is constructed/presented. Oftentimes when teachers or creators even are presented with limited time and materials, we resort to crafting methods because then we can ensure that the student will make at least something.

This is the reason as to why I chose to give my students looms and help them begin a weaving project. I wanted to teach them a specific artistic behavior; weaving, and instruct them to keep working in their own spaces.

The weaving art teaches students:

• A specific art-making process that requires learnt vocabulary and techniques.

• That the art-making process can be transferred and continued in different studio spaces.

  • This also shows students the mobility and flexibility that fibers artists work with.

• A traditional art-making process that has been practiced for thousands of years.

  • This also lends itself to the idea that, contrasting to the Eden article, fiber artists are not making crafts alone. Although their work can be mass produced and is considered a commodity in many cultures, this is not always the case.

Throughout this process, I learned that these ideas can be difficult to translate to students. I got a lot of “but I won’t finish it before we leave” and “are you sure that I can take this home?” I learned during my lesson that I need to continuously reiterate that students are learning valuable skills that can be taken home with them and that their studio space doesn’t just exist within the confines of their school. Looking back, I definitely wish I would have emphasized this more.

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Utilizing Visual Strategies in BRAINY:

Below are some visual strategies followed by an explanation of how I used them in BRAINY.

Predetermined Dialogue - Helps students arrive at concrete understandings that are identified in advance

I utilized this strategy especially when we looked at the Papalote (kite) in the Glorioserias gallery. I asked students:

“What do you see within this image?”

“Do you think it’s scary?”

“Do you think it could be associated with death”

“Why would an artist combine the idea of death with a kite?”

In this example, I had to ask questions that would allow students to understand that the kite was created to memorialize another. Out of the four tours that I led, this came quite easily to the first few groups. They easily understood that the imagery was a bit frightening and that this could allude to death. Normally, I enjoy it when students come to their own interpretations about art. But, there are just some instances where there's information that they need to know so that they can grasp the ideation/process of an artist. If we wish to teach for artistic behavior, we must inform students of the behaviors of other artists.

Interpretive Dialogue - Enables students to construct their own meaning in response to a work

Many times, students came to their own conclusions about a work and often, those ideas already aligned with all of my prepared/predetermined information. One example of this was when I talked to students about the “Trickster Showdown” within the Indigenous gallery.

I asked students: “What do we see here?”

And all on their own, students were able to tell me that the two animals were opposing each other. They told me that the coyote is one of the many traditional tricksters of Indigenous communities and knowledge. I was really surprised because I wasn’t expecting the students to think of the coyote in this way. I learned that students may already have the knowledge that you wish to share with them and it’s important to either have more questions to ask or be able to keep the conversation going.

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Teaching v. Giving a Tour

When I think about teaching art in a school setting, I don’t necessarily think about presenting information to students. I think about asking them lots of questions and creating a space in which their ideation and creation processes flourish. If anything, I might offer them different demos and insight that they can take or leave. In the museum setting, the students expect different things from me. They expect me to give them all of the information that they seek because that is what museums are for in today’s society. But in reality, I seek to show students that they can and should critique the art that they seek in museums in the same way that they do for their own work and that of their peers. Per the visual thinking strategies that I just spoke of, I think that those can be applied across the board. Students should always have the opportunity to determine meaning in a work of art. The tricky part of being an art educator is determining whether or not it’s vital that students understand the context of a piece. I had to question this a lot during the tours and for me, it was the most difficult aspect.

I asked myself:

• Will the contextual information that I have to share inspire students in their ideation and art making processes?

• Do students feel like they have to regurgitate what I say? Or can they develop their own understanding?

• What do students take away from what I am sharing with them?

• Do students feel like I helped them arrive at this information or do they feel like I spoon-fed it to them?

Asking myself these questions informed the choices that I made on these BRAINY tours and how I can improve in the future. In the future, I will be better able to:

• Guide students with more questions than information

• Allow students to explore the museum and study what peeks their interests

• Develop an art activity that promotes ideation and serves the needs of student-artists

• Consider how the identities that my students hold greatly influence a tour about identity

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For my art piece this week, I am focusing on this concept of how art is perceived by the viewer and how this compares to the artist's actual intentions. And whether or not this actually matters.

So, I’ve asked the two different participants to view my artwork and gave them the following premise:

“This is a piece that I am creating for my art education class. What do you think it is about?”

An elementary art educator responded: “It makes me think of the US flag and the CO flag and possibly how the state and the nation are connected but yet disconnected. It’s sadly being pulled downward. If the yellow represents the C for Colorado, then CO is being pulled out of wack.”

A non-art student responded, “I think that it shows a lot of movement. Bright colors remind me of youth and being young in general. The white marks feel like football or stitching. The yellow reminds me of wheat which is incorporated in lots of different foods and symbolizes growth. The red incorporates a feeling of vibrancy. I feel like it works for art education because there’s a lot of different shapes and strokes.”

As I have mentioned in my previous journal entries, this piece is a compilation of everything I have considered or learned in this 326 course thus far.

Indigo Dyed Fabric = Earth as Teacher/Artist/Sustainable Art-making

Red pour = Social Justice Art - acknowledging the violent history of indigo and cotton as products produced by enslaved in the US

Yellow swish = Movement in Art Education and what this looks like across ages/grade levels.

White oil stick marks = Mindfulness as an Art-making practice

So the question here is: How do I push this piece foreword with the understanding that it is not interpreted in the same way as I do?

If my students were presented with such a question, I would have them focus on the aspects of the piece that work and the parts that don’t according to their audiences. Then I would have them make modifications that honor both their insights and those of their viewers.

Keeping in mind my viewers suggestions I have decided to:

• Add another color to resolve this idea of CO/US

• Add an element that doesn’t make the piece seem like it’s being pulled downwards

• Embody this idea of growth as this is the theme that I want to stand out foremost

These decisions honor both the artist and the viewer.