Readings #2

Postmodern Principles by Olivia Gude

Olivia addresses the elements and principles of design as just SOME of the descriptive vocabulary to describe art and design. These are not the only vocabulary words out there. The way that these elements and principles became such a "core" part of art education was not even by any persuasion, but only by endless repetition! No where has anyone in charge said these must be the standard in your art room. This relieves me because I thought that is what administrators have said! I am very excited to use different methods and techniques in my classroom instead of spending hours on line, shape, and color, etc.

I really liked Olivia's questions to ask ourselves as art educators:

- What do our students need to know and understand from the art of many cultures, from the past and from the 21st century?

-Today, what knowledge do students need to stimulate and increase their creative process?

She also lists some other standards or principles in which we can use instead of the overdone elements and principles of design. These are:

1. Appropriation: using printed materials or what is abundant and available to create art.

2. Juxtaposition: contrast, energy infused with radically different images.

3. Re-contextualization: recombining imagery to create something new.

4. Layering: images are cheap and plentiful, no longer precious.

5. Interaction of text and image: these two don't have to match, but can be an exploration in disjuncture.

6. Hybridity: use of media-video, sound, photo, and computer

7. Gazing: who creates and controls imagery? How does this effect our understanding of reality? Who is being looked at and who is looking?

8. Representin': locating one's own personal history and culture of origin for meaningful self expression.

My take-aways from this article were mainly that there is not one right way to organize and understand art. As educators we are not required to conform to one way of doing things, but rather have the freedom to decide what we think is most important for our students to learn and the path that we take them on to get there. Olivia encourages us to embrace choice, differences, relevance, and art making today in our teaching.

Principles of Possibility by Olivia Gude

Olivia Gude continues in this article to say that the elements and principles of design are not an ideal structure to make a curriculum. A curriculum, she says, should teach skills and concepts while creating opportunities to investigate and represent one's own experiences. Do we really want our students to say that art is about line, color, and shape? She gives a list of "principles of possibility" that are a useful checklist or structure to determine if a curriculum provides a range of important art experiences.

Principle of Possibilities:

1. Playing: creative, deeply personal play. Play is free, not directed towards mastery or solving a problem. Often students will need to re-learn how to play because of the "one right answer" school system. Many artists work with process, not knowing the results.

2. Forming self: Don't make representations of the "known" self. Instead use new ways to see one's self. They can identify new traits of self by looking back on experiences

3. Investigating community themes: this will bring a shared social experience together and will help students investigate real issues of real concern.

4. Encountering difference: This helps us see the world through the eyes of others. It is more important to focus on fewer art or cultures in depth than many without any context.

5. Attentive living: vitally experiencing every day life is the goal of art ed. This can be achieved through the study of nature, mateialism, becoming aware of one's own self and environment.

6. Empowered experiencing: notice and inerpret a wide range of social practices of the democratic society we live in. Terry Bartlet's principles of interpretation can be used to search for meaning within art work

7. Empowered making: contemporary as well as traditional. Focusing on the process rather than the product. (No grid system pop art!) The 6 areas of art making are:

-expressionism

-mimesis

-formalism

-applied design

-craft

-post modern (digital, etc)

8. Deconstructing culture: have conversations about what is "real" and "natural" with students.

Olivia's suggestions here make me think outside the box. I think that Olivia's ideas, when applied, will provide for a meaningful art experience that is current, applicable, and last of all fun. I would have much rather had art classes growing up based on these principles and ideas rather than the principles and elements of design. I love that she includes the uncertain in her definition of curriculum. Like we learned in class, a curriculum is an experiment and we can't always predict all the results.