This week I visited the gallery show of my classmate Meghan Robbins. Located in the North Crackatorium at MassArt, For Troy is a series of ink on canvas works dealing with the execution of Troy Davis. Meghan’s work is deeply emotional, topical yet timeless, and well researched. My favorite element of this body of work is Meghan’s use of quotes from Troy Davis himself. The helplessness and injustice of Davis’ story is crushing and enraging, to say the least, and using Davis’ own words in the work further illuminates his humanity and life, both of which were taken away by his execution.

My favorite quote used was Davis’ final words:

“I ask to my family and friends that you all continue to pray, that you all continue to forgive. Continues to fight this fight. For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on all of your souls. God bless you all.”

Introductory Activity:

Materials: Paper, colored pencils

Directive: You have one minute to create something with the provided materials that says something about you personally. We’ll then share with the group what we created and why.

Goal: Create a classroom atmosphere of respect and creativity; introduce each other as people and artists.

I used to think…

Most K-12 art classrooms were like my high school art classes. Students are given an assignment and they complete it. The curriculum is based around the final product of each project and how that project can display the student’s technical abilities and observance of the elements of art and principles of design, which are rehearsed religiously. Talented and/or motivated students will create good work, everyone else can at least learn to clean up after themselves.

But now I think…

Respect/Expect/Connect

Art Classrooms (and really all classrooms) need to be an environment of respect and creativity. Students need to know that the art classroom is a safe place to try new things, be themselves and learn. The most valuable thing I learned from Chandra is to hold all students to a high expectation and celebrate when they meet or excel that expectation. Naturally, not all students will succeed with ease, and it is the teacher’s job to help them to get to that level.  Like we read in Teaching as Love, it takes love to expect something out of someone, but expectation breeds results.

History has to influence the work students make, whether it is the history of the artist, the community, or the history of art itself. Art isn’t created in a vacuum and no idea is entirely unique. Educated artists learn from the past and use that knowledge to inform their work. Cindy Georg, for example, uses her location and the history of that place to inform her work, like in her map of the Boston harbor.

Jayson, the choral director of Creativity Lab at Dorchester Academy introduced a “tree” of African American music. It started with African Tribal music, which led to slave spirituals, which led to jazz, which led to Rhythm and Blues, which led to Hip Hop and Rap. In this progression there are many other branches to the tree and influence of one genre to another isn’t perfect or clear. The students are introduced to new genres and artists they may have never heard of and grow in understanding of the music they are already familiar with.  The Creativity Lab kids performed a Nigerian chant, spiritual, R&B/pop song and composed their very own hip-hop/rap song.

CHANDRA ORTIZ INTERVIEW:

Three things I learned from TAB’s website:

1. Choice based art education means offering students “choice of materials while providing ample
time and space for them to pursue their own ideas (most of the time)”.

2. A “Centers approach” means offering classroom space that is divided so the students can learn independently and move around the classroom to get what they need, “a three dimensional lesson plan.”

3. TAB was started at MassArt!

Three questions I have:

1. How is TAB adapted for high school students?

2. Does TAB work with adults as well? Why or why not?

3. How is choice-based learning similar to alternative education like Waldorf and Montessori methods?

Things I learned from Fusaro’s blog:
1. When discussing a student’s work ask “What’s this about?” instead of “What is it?”.
2. Art Education “can teach us to look beyond ourselves in order to make meaning”.
3. “Broadly defining a theme or subject can serve as a launch pad for helping students avoid clichés”

Questions for Fusaro:
1. How do you balance teaching skills and teaching (idea based) art making?
2. How do you personally incorporate computer technology into the classroom? What is a good age to start? What kind of technology do you think is most beneficial?
3. How has working with Art 21 changed how you approach your classroom?

Yesterday we went to the MFA to hear a lecture by Tauba Auerbach. Auerbach is a painter and multimedia artist who has been working for about ten years since she received her B.A. in visual art from Stamford. Although she was nervous to speak, Auerbach was extremely eloquent and seemed like she spends a lot of time just contemplating complex ideas and trying to simplify them.

Auerbach’s work is extremely well thought out and developed, even though they are usually simplified by the time they come to fruition. I like the 50/50 Black and White drawings because they play with the idea of randomness in a methodological way. Similarly, I liked the alphabetized bible she discussed but didn’t show. I liked when she worked with text, because those works make you think about the nature of language and art, rather than the visual you are seeing.

I also liked that as an artist Auerbach isn’t tied to one specific medium or method of working.  In just the work she showed us there were examples of paint, bookmaking, photography, drawing, and sculpture. I feel like in this era of art-making, the concept should drive the choice of materials, and Auerbach’s work exemplified that as well as her ideology that as an artist she should be capable of making everything she uses.

Today was our last full Tuesday at Dorchester Academy. The students are in their DJ-ing unit, so the students met in the computer lab to work on their mix tapes. I had the chance to play around with Garage Band and create my own loop. I’ve never really worked with computer generated music or sound, so this was a great learning experience for me. I ended up with something that I was proud of, and I know most of the Creativity Lab students felt the same way about their work. I really enjoy hearing what the students come up with, especially since they are all given the exact same tool to work with. I’ve noticed that a lot of students who were uncomfortable on stage or in group activities are really blossoming in the more individual creative work. Jahari (I hope I’m spelling that right…), for example, was not exactly a stand out participant in the first two units, but as a percussionist with experience in Garage Band, he took to the DJ unit right away and is creating tons of really great and diverse work that he is proud of.

For the rest of the day we tackled the classroom. After a lot of organizing, cleaning and throwing things out, Room 305 looks a lot better, and hopefully Ms. Ortiz and the students will be able to maintain it thanks to the labels that Z and I made.

After school I stayed with Ms. Emma to talk to the Poetry Club about our upcoming bookmaking lesson! I brought in some examples, talked about the benefits of different types of books and what we would be doing. The students seems inspired by the examples and excited to get started on their own bound books. I can’t wait for May 10th!

On Monday, March 28th, I attended a lecture by Judy Pfaff, a prominent installation artist, sculptor and printmaker. Pfaff was born on in 1946 in England, and received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and an MFA from Yale University, in New Haven, CT. She was introduced as a MacArthur Fellow, a “pioneer of installation art” and a “collagist in space.” She currently teaches and co-chairs the art department at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY and has had many residencies around the world.

Pfaff talked about how she was the only woman in her class of Yale’s Painting MFA program, and how Yale is “not a place I would suggest anyone go” and that by the end of her graduate degree she knew that she “never wanted to paint again.”  I found it interesting and a little disheartening that she believed that “nothing I made in undergraduate or graduate school made any sense to me,” and she also didn’t show any of it to us. I feel like she prefaced her school work so dramatically it would have been interesting to seem but I don’t blame her for not wanting to show us.

I personally didn’t like most of Pfaff’s work, but it was interesting to hear her talk about her career and work. She was generally good natured and I liked that her view on critics was “f**k ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”

Her work centers around “making feelings, not graphics.” I just don’t think they’re visually appealing or interesting for the most part and I wish I could see her work in person because maybe I could get more of the feeling she is going for. I did like some of her prints though.

Today I visited Dorchester Academy to see the dress rehearsal for the choral section of Creativity Lab. The students are singing a Nigergian chant, a traditional Spiritual, I Believe I Can Fly and a rap that they wrote together. The first three songs are incredible for the group only being together for three weeks and though the rap was still pretty shaky, the kids clearly are having a lot of fun working together and performing. The biggest challenge facing the group is stage presence, so today we took video of them during dress rehearsal so they could have a chance to see themselves before they get up and perform for a crowd.

In the morning we visited the South Boston studio of Mobius, an artists’ organization that promotes and supports experimental art. We met with Mobius’ youngest member and MassArt almunus, Daniel DeLuca. Daniel shared with us his career path thus far and how he’s come from being a SIM student at MassArt to his work at Mobius today. In general, I struggle to understand and appreciate performance art, which is Daniel’s main focus. I rarely encounter performance art that speaks to me and I feel like I don’t really understand the genre, so I didn’t really connect with his work. I love most forms of visual art, and many forms of theater, but for some reason performance art is still something I don’t understand. Even if/when I understand what the artist is trying to explore or express with the work I usually can’t understand why the chose performance as a medium.

The afternoon was spent at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge. We attended the show “Stand VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom” and had a chance to talk to their educator. I really liked VanDerBeek’s collage work and silkscreen prints inspired by computer programing. His video work was definitely interesting, but the layout of the exhibit was so overwhelming because of the mixed sound recordings that I couldn’t really concentrate on them for too long. I thought it was really impressive that VanDerBeek had done so much work in video and computers at the very beginning of their technological development.

This morning we sat in on another Creativity Lab with Ms. Ortiz. This week the students are in their choral unit, taught by Jane and Jason. The focus of the unit is choral singing and group songwriting. This class was particularly interesting from our point of view as students of education because there were distinct failures and successes in classroom management during the brief class period. Furthermore, we were able to discuss these experiences with each-other, John, Chandra, Jane and Jason.

I think the most effective part of the class was the “rhythm machine”, a game where the class would create their own beat with their bodies and working together. I thought it was the perfect warm up activity because it got the students to focus, work together and perform creatively in a small group.

In the afternoon I had the chance to observe the after-school poetry club. I’ve been planning a book-binding lesson for them, so it was cool to see them in action. I had originally planned an accordion style book, but I think after meeting and talking to the students that a hardcover bound book would be a better challenge and the end product would better suit their needs.