Here is the link to my final project that will be given in class on December 6th.
Last week we went to visit MIT to view the work of two different artist: Otto Piene and Hans Haacke.
I found that both of their work had some interesting qualities to it. I liked Otto Pienes work when I thought about it in the time it was made, I think that at the time it was really cutting edge and innovate of him to create work using light. I also enjoy the idea that both Otto and Hans have when it comes to their art, and that is nature, and a sense of calmness.
However in all three of the galleries that we visited I found that the curating was really distracting. In Otto Pienes room I felt the flow through the room was uncomfortable based on object placement. They placed two colored light pieces on opposite sides that really did not fit into the gallery space, along with a square box that because of the ceiling was unable to project the image Otto had in mind. I feel that if those three pieces were not in the room or in a different room I would of been able to enjoy myself more.
In Otto Pienes I found myself confused on why a school driven by progress would find the desire to copy the same exact show that they have already shown at the school before. I remember hearing from the tour guide himself that making the old show fit the new room was a challenge because it was shaped differently, and I feel as if they realized that some things just did not go well together but did not really put the energy in to make it work. Then when we went into the photography room, I understand why some of the pieces were crooked but I feel that they should of been more obvious or not crooked at all instead of playing it safe. Sadly I found myself more distracted by other things in all of the rooms to really be able to appreciate the art that was going on.
Even though we were asked to do a review on everything we did this year in class, I never really took it seriously until I entered a discussion with my old high school art teacher during prep hours on one of the days I was student teaching. We have always been friends since I had her as a freshman and I find it easy to have a conversation with her because we both know how we think so we can bounce ideas off each other quickly. I forget exactly how the conversation started but we started talking about student work and how it is different school to school and immediately I started to relate my high school to the schools and after school programs we went to as a class.
As we talked I really began to realize just how much we did in such a short period of time, and how I really enjoyed all of it. I brought up how we went to a high school that had metal detectors at the door which kind of scared me at first, yet how all of the energy in the room and the excitement of the students just made me want to.. create, it was wonderful how inspiring they all were dispite how their project was rather simple.
In my high school, art is done a lot differently. We offer art 1-4 and we have two art rooms with two wonderful teachers. Our budget isn’t the greatest but the school can afford things like oil paints, acrylics, etc that I just didn’t see while touring some of the schools in Boston. Money is one of the huge factors that I now realize plays into the framing of art education in todays society, no matter how big the kids imagination can be, if the school doesn’t have the budget it might be hard to help fulfill the child.
I related working with high school students to working with the little kids at the after school program, and the elementary kids in my hometown. Having not really considered working as an elementary school teacher, not because I don’t like kids, but because quite honestly I find them exhausting I went in with almost a bias opinion. The quality of fulfillment you get while working with younger kids is entirely different than that of a high school student, younger kids are so much easier to go up and talk to because they don’t get embarrassed and they say what is on their mind which makes the day go by faster because they are usually saying something hilarious.
The schools were not the only thing that I was able to bring up and reflect upon with my teacher, through out the day we would talk about different lesson plans different ideas and how they would work with the students and I found myself being capable to bring up some of the art work that we have seen this year as well. One of the more influential gallery spaces we went to this semester was “Drawing and Residue” even though the main focus of the visit was to learn about curating a show, I found that all of the work in the gallery was relatable to what I want to achieve in a classroom. The guidelines to the show were so strict, yet so loose that the same time that it just opened up a variety of finished products. Ideally these are some of the projects I would like to try and teach to high schools, something that lightly pushes them in one direction and then let them turn anyway they choose.
With my final presentation being Borders Within Contemporary Teaching, I am not sure if I have found any of the answers but I have found a lot of the questions and I am excited to ponder them not just for this semester but for my teaching career.
Being a Student Gallery Co-Manager this year, the trips that we took with Jen to Aspect Magazine and Boston Center of the Arts rang particularly important to me. At the beginning of the day we showed up at the front of Aspect Magazine, it is in an old complex that used to be a factory, it seemed like a nice quant quite place where artists could work and just be artists.
We met with former MassArt grad Mike Mittleman who started the program as a way to get more video out to the public, he explained how in contemporary art especially in video it is hard to control who sees it, and often it goes un-viewed, bringing up the example of many eyes and few hands is what makes art more valuable, with video and sounds it is hard to control the hands to eyes ratio. With his new idea he is able to get affordable video out to the population by using it as an educational tool. His website allows you to purchase a subscription in which you will receive cds containing artists work.
Mike talked about the jury process for all of his work, and because I had to jury work as a Student Gallery Co-Manager I could take in some of his ideas. He said how he would accept work that he didn’t like, because it was the best he had seen in that field, or have to turn down work that was great because there was something like it just a little bit better. When I was putting together the shows for this semester I ran into similar problems, some of the shows that I didn’t like I put through just because I felt they were different from the other applicants and some of the shows that were really well put together did not get in because there was one just a little bit to similar to it.
After we talked for a while we viewed a video of carp going through the washing cycle in a washing machine, this work quite frankly made me uncomfortable. Even though I am not a vegetarian I do consider myself a fairly humane person, so watching the fish as they span back and fourth and were slowly drawn into the air was heart wrenching. Ideas like that make me question how far people should go for their art, and if their are borderlines, and what those should be if I am to teach a classroom some day.
After a lunch break and some time to tour the area we went to the Boston Center of the Arts where they had a terrific gallery showing focusing on what drawing and residue is. I liked this showing because not every piece screamed both drawing and or residue, you had to think exactly what the artist was thinking when tackling that idea. With the mediums ranging from video, to photographs of radiation, silverpoint, chalk, and paper the curator really took into account the different ways in which artists are drawing in todays world.
Once we discussed a few pieces and challenged ourselves to find the drawing and residue in each we learned about hanging work in a gallery. Again this being something I have done it was nice to hear that I was doing some things right, but also learned some ideas like using color theory throughout the gallery, he hung one large painting that used bright oranges and reds on the opposite corner of the radiation photo so they would play off of each other and keep people moving. Another important thing I learned was the entrance piece, in this gallery they had an artist come in and do a huge line chalk installation on the walls, and talked about how it drew in crowds even when the artist was doing it. Even though I have learned throughout the semester that I do not want to curate shows for a living, it was good to pick up on some tips so I can make it through the rest of the year.
Two weeks ago we took on the challenge of doing two tours in one day. The first tour was a a tour of the MFA with the students of Swampscott Highschool. Then we went to our school to take the Boston Arts Academy Students on a tour of Shahzia Sikanders gallery “Exploding Company Man”.
In my tour group for the Swampscott Highschool we had three guys all Juniors and Seniors, only one of them going into an art field. When I asked if they had been to a museum they either haven’t gone at all or it had been a few years. I was a little skeptic about how much attention they would be able to pay to the art at first and I thought that they would wind up just wondering aimlessly. It turned out I could not of been more wrong, from the moment we entered the museum to the moment we left they were attentive and always observing. In each room they took their time to draw out the piece they chose and they were able to communicate (mainly subjectively) what they liked about certain pieces.
As we worked our way up from Early American Art to more Modern American art and finally Contemporary their fascination only grew, they seemed to warm up more about questions, wanting to know what things were made of, and what things were it was a very relaxing touring experience that I hope they enjoyed as much as I did.
After a quick lunch break at Qdoba with friends we made it back to the school where I met with Leticia Aguiluz a Boston arts academy student who is interested in character drawings. Letica is a very smart student who is not afraid to say what comes to her mind. Even though this was the fourth time I had been in the Shazia Sikander gallery she helped me look at her works in a new way. I found it easier to be able to talk with her about my opinions on the works because she wasn’t a college level student and I didn’t feel I had to worry as much about making a comment that sounded silly and therefore I felt I was capable of grasping a further understanding on her work.
Overall both tours were a very different feel to me, I felt like with the Swampscott students I was more of a leader, someone that they asked questions to looking for answers, but with Boston Arts Academy it was more of an informal flow through the gallery where you could talk about whatever comes to mind and bounce ideas off of each other.
When I first walked into Shahzia Sikander’s gallery showing “The Exploding Company Man And Other Abstractions” I noticed that she worked in a style that I have not yet been familiarized with. Born in Pakistan Shahzia studied the traditional miniature paintings. A miniature painting does not mean that the paintings are small, but rather the detail they put into the paintings is layered and very precise and small.
Shahzia Sikander took this style of painting to a more contemporary level, looking at it through the eyes of an animator and large scale paintings. When looking at her body of work you can see the similarities between her work and the traditional Pakistani miniature paintings, she had architecture in her animation as well as using abstracted arabic writing from the Koran throughout her pieces. The writing in her pieces reminded me of the work that my high school art teacher liked to focus on.
My high school art teacher was an artist, and a calligraphist who liked to work with letters to create an abstraction with the eye, since we was such a high influence on my young art life I have naturally gravitated toward being fascinated by lettering as well. Over the summer going into my freshman year of college she gave me an opportunity to work with her at an event called Odyssey. Throughout the program I met with different artist who expressed their work through lettering in various forms. When I saw some of Shahzia Sikanders work I felt as if it belonged with the work.
Other than appreciating the lettering as I walked around the gallery I noticed that their were some pieces of work in which she has mastered the optical illusion, there was a piece from her series called Drawings of the Langley. When you first approached the pen and ink drawing it looked if it was a complicated geometric design, as you look longer from up close and far away you realized there was a woman facing upright, and a mirror image of a skull facing downwards. I soon found that I was looking at the piece for a full twenty five minutes before I felt satisfied enough to even critique it.
Reading up more on Shahzia Sikander I learned that she is just as widely appreciated in Pakistan. Before I did research I naturally assumed that she would be seen as an outcast because of Pakistans strict rules and tradition. Since Shazia is taking her art to a different direction than what is generally made in Pakistan, I was afraid that her art would get her shut out from society but I am glad to hear that Pakistan is moving forward in the art world and accepting her not only as a woman artist but as a contemporary artist.
Work Cited
“Art21 . Shahzia Sikander . Biography . Documentary Film | PBS.” PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/sikander/index.html?gclid=CK2_udvg3qsCFYpn5QodFFiLFQ>.
“MoMA.org | Red Studio | Features | Shahzia Sikander.” MoMA.org | Red Studio: A Site for Teens. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://redstudio.moma.org/interviews/shahzia/shahzia.html>.
SHAHZIA SIKANDER. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://www.shahziasikander.com/>.
Reflection:
Having gotten back from Roxbury High School and Dorcester Academy I feel a sense of appreciation and gratitude for being fortunate enough to take art every year of my pre-graduate life. When we first walked into the Roxbury High School I felt extremely nervous because I have never been in a school with metal detectors, even though they are placed there to give you a sense of security it more of a sense of uneasiness.
When we walked into the classroom, I noticed how small the room was, yet how every corner was utilized with art/ materials. When the class started to come in, we got a few looks of confusion but for the most part everyone seemed to be energetic and welcoming. They were working on vessels, paper macheing balloons that they will open and paint to figuratively hold an object/ desire. As I walked around the room I tried to introduce myself to everyone, just like I would expect in a normal high school some kids steered away while some were more comfortable and talked to you. It seemed to me that everyone was either a Senior or Junior and taking their first art class since they were in the sixth or seventh grade. If I was brought up in a similar situation, that would of had a great effect on my life because I always felt art was the only thing to get me by in school.
After two classes we left the Roxbury school and moved to Dorcester Academy, a school that just recently got an art program. The school is really taking control of their new space, and with the help of an energetic teacher art seems to be booming. This school went from having no art program, to having a gallery space, wall on almost every wall, recording room, and a beautiful stage. The sense of empowerment and invincibility I got just from walking into the school was unbelievable it seems like they have a great pallet to start creating all different and exciting pieces of art. We didn’t get to talk to too many students but the one man we got to talk to was very passionate about his work, and the teacher allowed him enough trust to be in the room by himself without worrying that he will steal anything, a relationship I wish to have one day with my students.
After getting home and digesting what I have just participated in I got out the article we were told to print and started reading. I became irritated by the information it withheld. Due to standardized testing, schools are starting to cut out art as a means to boosts a child’s knowledge in science math and reading. I realized that this is probably what had happened to Roxbury High Schools art department, they wanted to get test grades up, and thereby dropped funding for the departments that they will not be tested on. However as I continued to read I learned that students who have art, are more likely to receive better results on standardized tests than the students that don’t receive any art education.
So, it would seem to me that it would be a wise decision for schools to continue funding for the arts, since it acts as a social and emotional outlet that allows them to focus more in their other classes and gives them a desire to continue going to school, with the expansion of the arts in Dorchester Academy, and the strive for improvement in the arts at Roxbury High School, I suspect there will be a decreased drop out rate as well as an improvement in test scores.
The Participation reading that we were given on the first day of class focuses on how the wave of contemporary art focuses on the involvement of the viewer in the piece. It shows that with the new interest in technology in art we are capable of further capturing the audiences attention and allowing them to change/ interact with with piece.
The article brought up issues such as the distinction between the performer, and an audience member. With an interactive piece I believe that an audience member can play both parts of a viewer, and performer because of they now play an important role on how the piece functions. Walter Benjamin states in the article that “Work of art should actively intervene in and provide a model for allowing viewers to be involved in the process of production”. By this I think he means that art should no longer just be stared at, and only mentally thought about, now a piece should challenge the viewer in a new way, how does it work and can they turn it into something new.
Another issue that the article brings up is the collaboration of people and the creation of the work being named to a single artist. Even though the artist came up with the idea, to what extent should the audience play until they are considered as part of the creator of the piece? I think that the artist should be accredited to the idea, and start of the piece but the finishing or continuation of the piece should include the accreditation to the audience who helped shape it into the finishing product (if there is a finishing product.
September 13 2011
I woke up today at 5:30 to start to get ready and make my way to school for the commute. Tired and groggy by the time I got on the train I just decided to sleep for the duration of my travel. Once I got to school I still had about thirty minutes before class had started so I just showed up early.
I was welcomed by Jen and Beth as I was asked to put on my name tag while the boasted about the large amount of guys that are in the class this semester. When class started we went over the itinerary of the year and split into groups and made an assignment based off a a piece of work we received. In the middle of presentations we were interrupted for a brief safety talk from public safety. After the talk we broke into lunch and finished the presentations shortly into the next part of class.
As the class was brought to a finish we were given choices on where we will meet for our out of class field studies, and learned how to right blogs on this site.
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