Art Education
Course Projects
In art education methods courses, preservice teachers (PSTs) are asked to create projects and artifacts as part of exploring their triality identity as Artist, Researcher, and Teacher - their "A-R-T-identity"
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To model such practice, I often participate in practicing identity exploration alongside these learners. These are some examples of such practice.
Social Justice Big Idea Book (SJBIB)
Like the PSTs, I began by selecting a big idea as focus for my social justice exploration. I settled on: witness.
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Associative words, nouns: onlooker, bystander, observer, viewer, watcher
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Associative words, verbs: see observe, watch, notice, view, behold
Rationale:
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Social Justice is a vital component to art education curricula and a topic of methods courses, included to unpack, deconstruct/reconstruct and to locate meaning: What does it mean to be a social justice agent?
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From the myriad big idea choices to anchor this project, I selected "witness" because it connects with how I see my role as a social justice agent and advocate: I am here to bear witness to transformational change in education, in art, in schooling, culture, community, and society.
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As a critical component of my development and growth along an awareness continuum, bearing witness - witnessing - as an action may foster a sense of urgency, of building a critically reflective disposition as one who witnesses, watches, sees, observes, beholds, views.
Process:
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With my big idea in place, I began to consider how to make my SJBIBook: Which materials should I choose? What form should the 'book' take on? How might I interpret the idea of a 'book'?
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Initial choices connected to artist's books and I considered making an accordion fold book , or a book that folded out from a cigar box, or a series of pages tied together like a bundle of sticks.
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My final idea centered on an iPhone box because I wanted to draw attention to how each of us with a mobile phone has the ability to bear witness, to document, to record, etc. I settled on altering the iPhone box as a differently looking box mimicking the size and shape of an iPhone.
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The exterior would illustrate the big idea: witness; and the interior your hold 'pages' in the same thickness as an iPhone - reinforcing the witness-making capabilities of a mobile phone.
What follows are process photos.
SJBIB Cover and Reflection
Design and create the cover of your Social Justice Big Idea Book: This is a visual interpretation of your social justice issue in the larger context of contemporary culture (it's not personal). Include relevant historical context (from course materials) that offers additional insight into the issue.
Photograph your process and ideas as you work. Submit these images as well as a final image in the assignment folder and respond to the following questions in the text window. Pay attention to your thinking process. Discuss the different ideas you came up with before arriving at the image you created.
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What were your initial frustrations, and how did you work through them?
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Initially, I struggled to come up with a design for the SJBIBook. I considered a few options, one or two involving artist’s book orientations, but those seemed to tried and true for me based on my artmaking history and practice. I worked through my challenges by remembering how artists incorporate “risk-taking, purposeful play, and experimentation in artmaking production/reflection” (Walker, 2001, p. 115). I wanted to stress that as an art educator, I needed to recall and embrace my artist’s skills because these remind me that “artmaking is about searching and discovering meaning” (Walker, 2001, p. 137), while in the flow of creativity. In doing so, I am better equipped to help guide PSTs toward also embracing the three components of their own artful identities: artist, researcher, teacher.
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What prior knowledge and skills did you draw on to create your cover?
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As a proponent and practitioner of social justice, this project connected directly with my teaching and creative practices. Because social justice art education is both a research interest and a teaching perspective, the knowledge I bring to this project stems from years of critical exploration into what it means to be a social justice practitioner. I draw upon scholarship generated through a social justice lens inclusive of the following:
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Critical Race Theory
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Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
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Socially/Culturally Relevant Teaching & Learning
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Critical Reflective/Reflexive Practice
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Awareness/Bias Critique & Exploration
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Critical Whiteness Studies
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Prior examinations of personal and professional dispositional practices, examined through such lenses and scholarship as these, provided a conceptual framework for my creative thinking. I was better able, as a result, to examine the big idea of ‘witness’ based on the knowledge I gleaned from and owned from past efforts.
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Reflect on your thought process; were there any breakthroughs or 'ah-ha' moments?
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My major breakthrough or ‘a-ha’ moment came when I settled on ‘witness’ as a big idea. From that word/idea, I was able to propel my creative exploration forward. With ‘witness’ selected, I could define the term, look for linked or synonymous words, and construct pathways between the idea and visual elements to express meaning on the SJBIB pages. Using the iPhone box also helped me link the idea of bearing witness or capturing experience in an electronic medium. The iPhone is often the witness to events that unfold in our lives. I think back on the disturbing video capturing the murder/death of George Floyd in 2020. Because of that one video, we all became witnesses to the horrors of police brutality, social unrest, institutional racism, and profound sorrow, nearly in real-time. The connection between the word ‘witness’ as a big idea and the iPhone, sparked a creative direction for the remainder of the project.
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SJBIB Pages 1&2 and Reflection
Page 1: Craft a well-structured rationale (including supporting citations – from course materials) exploring the personal significance of your social justice big idea. You can capture an image of your written page as long as the text is legible. If the rationale is not legible, please ensure it's typed out.
Answer the following questions:
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What changes occurred in your understanding of your selected social justice big idea after completing page 1 and page 2?
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I found that I need to be clearer in these instructions because students were confused as what to do with the two pages: what goes on page one and what on page two? This question prompted me to write an update to the assignment guidelines as follows: “Think about how you position yourself within the big idea – embody it – and make a meaningful gesture on pg. 2 that expresses how you see yourself, through your chosen medium, within this big idea. Make this illustration/image a personal reflection – see yourself residing inside the big idea.” As for changes in understanding my chosen big idea, revising the assignment’s guidelines helped me to see how I might more clearly investigate the big idea of ‘witness’ from my personal perspective. Spelling out the intention of these pages for the students brought more clarity to my own intentional praxis.
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What prior knowledge and skills did you draw on to create your pages?
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As I was creating my image, however, I noted how I used imagery that was a part of my own artmaking process, from some time ago. I felt the desire to tap into the figure illustrated on page 2 because ‘she’ represents a witness in my other artwork. Because ‘she’ came before, I felt the need to include the same presence in this image as a stand-in for myself. This figure, foregrounded in the picture plane, looks over a shoulder, witnessing an altercation. The thread in the image was intended to show a connection between observing and moving forward. Below the surface image, is a clipping from a book with the printed image of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. I wanted to ground the figure in this declaration to make a statement of our inherent liberty and how witnessing events (see something/say something) reinforces our individual and collective human/citizen rights. I considered the postmodern principle of layering as described by Gude (2004) as a process of “evoking the complexity of the unconscious mind (p. 10), because when the layers were assembled, they all play a part in creating meaning for myself and for a potential viewer. The parts within the collage image I created were selected, possibly unconsciously, but with the intentionality of generating a conversation among the multiple parts brought together in concert on the picture plane surface.
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Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern principles: In search of a 21st century art education. Art Education, 57(1), 6-14.
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Reflect on your creating process: Were there any frustrations and/or breakthroughs? How did you work through them?
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My most evident source of frustration was in not expressing clearly enough the pathway for students to work through this portion of the assignment. I believe in making the artifact myself, their questions and individual frustration became obvious to me – I had to reckon with the same quandaries myself. This is modeled practice and I am not in a better position to explain to my students a revised pathway through my own creative and considered experience. By reflexively participating in this artifact making process, I envisioned myself as a learner coming into knowing through the creative act (McGarry, 2019), and used that knowing for personal critical reflection. The praxis of reflection and action (Freire, 2011), as an activated state of mind, helped guide my reflective critique both in time and after time, reflection after the action occurred.
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Freire, P. (2011). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum International Publishing Group.
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McGarry, K. (2019). Reflexivity as a process for coming into knowing. LEARNing Landscapes,12, 155- 170. https://www.learninglandscapes.ca/index.php/learnland/issue/view/44
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Page 3: Engaging in Dialogue with Other Artists [Cindy Sherman]
Referring back to the research you conducted on your social justice issue, select an artist who worked with the same big idea in a different manner from 50 to 100 years ago. Virtually collaborate with this artist visually on page 3 of your big idea book.
Share a photograph of your page and pictures of your creative process in this designated folder.
Additionally, submit a reflection addressing the following questions:
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What does their work convey about the big idea? How can you juxtapose or integrate it with your own work to enrich the idea's significance and expression?
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Artist #1: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills, 1978
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In Sherman’s 1978 series of black & white images, Untitled Film Stills, she explores her interpretation of a role for women in contemporary society through the lens of the postmodernism and feminism, showing herself in various poses reminiscent of movie posters from historical film noir movies of the 1950s and 60s.Her work connects to the big idea of ‘witness’ because in her film stills, she is witnessing how women in general are portrayed through the gaze (mostly of and for men) and, because she is the subject of the photographs, she is also witnessing her within that same gaze, as a social critique of image and power. She is looking at the artifice of how women perform in society and culture.
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In my own artifact creation, I sought to witness the gaze as it impacts the portrayal and consumption of women in historical and contemporary visual culture. By again exploring Sherman’s work, I inserted myself as witness, collecting evidence of experiencing her images while highlighting what others might witness in terms of the gaze – as socially constructed from a dominant (mostly male/power) narrative. My aim was to deconstruct her images through a looking, examining, witnessing process whereby critiquing perception and identity as a woman and an artist, like Sherman.
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How do the artistic interactions within your big idea book influence your considerations for curriculum design for grades 6-9?
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Visual culture, image production and consumption, and critiquing socially constructed roles for people in society and culture are topical and relevant interests for learners in grades six through nine (even beyond). For example, I could imagine unit plan extensions into the big idea of ‘witness’ with these learners through a set of learning targets and strategies for learners to explore what it means to witness and then create a visual/textual response for a learning process. These learners could begin by exploring Sherman’s work an relate it to today’s influencer culture on social media. They could learn to critique Sherman’s work through art criticism strategies like VTS and then construct a reflective action incorporating written and visual texts in their completed assignments, examining a self-selected social construct for themselves. Such a unit plan has the potential to impact learning the goes beyond surface appeal and image consumption, to analyzing and critiquing how images are produced thoughtfully prior to exhibition and eventual public consumption.
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Resource links for Cindy Sherman: https://publicdelivery.org/cindy-sherman-untitled-film-stills/; http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/20thcentury_feministartists.html
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SJBIB Pages 3&4 and Reflection
