Buoyancy: Puzzle Project!

The puzzle collaborative project we had was with the concept of staying afloat (open experiences with learning). The concept came pretty quickly and we decided to create an installation. Alot of the people were kinda upset when they found out that they had to use their puzzle and dismantle it for this project. Other than that I thought it went fairly well.

First off I would like to say that I've never done paper mache in my life and I thought it was pretty cool that we got to do that. Working with everyone on the paper mache was fairly fun and messy. During this time, everything was pretty casual.

Painting the balloons was pretty fun too. The balloon was a metaphor for children as learners and we had to paint the balloon in a way that represented our ideas about that. For my balloon I decided to paint the sky. The sky is never the same everyday. The sky is an ever evolving entity filled with a variety of things. Sometimes it's dark and filled with stars, sometimes is azure filled with clouds, sometimes it's during sunrises or sunset. I felt that the sky was an appropriate metaphor because every child is different. They have different developmental stages, different ways they view things, different conditions for them to learn, and deffinitely different interests. This was a good metaphor in terms of holistic learning.

During the Installation set up, we had a fairly good system where some people painted while a few others worked on setting up the "country of childhood." Also the people in the other room putting up the balloons did an amazing job. This was definitely a really cool installation!

Experience in Art 307

Discuss your experiences in Art 307. What have they contributed to your understanding of Art? of the Role of Art in Leaning? of what the relationship between education and learning is? of the role of the teacher in this process?

In 307 we learned alot about different types children learners. These include multicultural backgrounds, special needs, and age groups. Children have many different developmental stages and they require the fundamentals to refine when they grow older. I've learned that art is not limited to those who have talent and skill, although this is beneficial as an attribute to have. Art displays the children's understanding about their concepts and the world around them.

The role of the teacher is to further develop their learners' understanding. Teachers need to incorporate holistic learning to account for their student individuality and learning abilities. There are different types of learners, from special needs, to other ethnic groups. The teacher has to find a way to implement the curriculum in such a way that everyone in their class is accounted for. At the same time, they also have to treat all their students equally and with the same care and attention.

Learning art is important for children because it provides them a chance to express themselves creatively. Children have the capacity to understand concepts and are able to create art. These concepts are may be simple and can be further developed. Other subjects contains elements of art, while other subjects can be incorporated with art. Because art is more of a tactile, kinesthetic activity, it engages childrent alot more than other subjects. Also it can accomodate for the various type of learners.

Learning is something that never stops for anyone. Learning can occur outside the education institution. Learning can take place in the community and through interaction. Education and learning are definitely connected in that learning is always taking place and education is the thing that initiates the learning.

Collaborative Experience

What has this experience of working collaboratively added to your understanding of what one learns through art?

When working collaboratively, I've learned that everyone has different sensibilities. In my painting class with Peter Deacon, we were given a piece of a postcard to paint. Everyone had a slightly different way that they saw colour and painting style. It was very interesting to see that in a combined piece. I also learned that negotiating is sometimes not the easist thing. Sometimes there's someone in your group who wants to do things their way and take charge. You can either argue or just go along with them and sometimes the effort is not worth it. In this sense, you have to learn to be more patient. Also you learn that although this is a collaborative piece, a part of yourself is still put into the art. The parts you do is your interpretation which still justifies the work as yours while it is also everyones.

Collaborations vs. Solitary

Where do our notions of visual art as a solitary activity come from? What are the benefits and limitations of engaging in collaborative works of art?

Visual art as a solitary activity is fairly common for art. This is probably because people learn to draw by themselves. Also when you make, you put a part of yourself in that it is your expression, ideas, values, and interest. Art is very personal and that makes it easier to be a solitary activity

When it comes to collaborative work in art, it becomes a social activity.
Pros:
-created with the help of others]
-interactive
-working with different perspectives

cons:
-compromise some ideas
-more work
-can't account for others

Compromising your ideas about how the work show be carried out is sometimes difficult because there is alot of negotiating. This makes collaborative art alot more work

Puzzel Time!

The group we were working with to help them wiith their puzzel finally finished!! One of their members stayed for a few hours just to finish it only to realize the next class that finishing the puzzle was not a requirement. I feel kinda bad that they put all that effort to finishing, but at the same time good on them for finishing. I guess I can kind of understand why they would think this because my group and the other group in the class finished their puzzles. Not only that, but the other group also finished two puzzles. Geez, that is crazy!! One was enough for me. lol

Child Workshop Experience

Reflect on your time with the child you worked with. What succeeded and why - refer to Dewey and other readings? What did not succeed and why not - again, try to find a reason based on the readings you have done for this class. If you could work with this child again, what would you like to do next time to develop what you today's experience?

Child Workshop Plan

Character- portrait of Character (drawing)à exploring line, shade, and different mark making (art)
Character-deconstruct and reconfigure of form(computer paint program)à ways to change character (math)
Supporting Characters- Metaphor/Analogy characters(clay sculpture)à (language arts)
Background/ Environment-(watercolour and ink map)à Where does the character live/ located in relation to othersà (social studies)
Background/ Environment-(landscape acrylic painting).à research the type of environment: what type of organisms live there. (science-biology)

For my workshop, I performed activity 1 and 2 with Malike. I thought that the first activity was successful in that he was engaged with the drawing. In terms of Dewey's open experience, Malike really liked spongebob and wanted to draw him. This provided Malike with an open experience because it was his area of interest and he was able to do something he wanted. Through this lesson, he cacn further develop his drawing skills. The success of this activity also shows through the documentation. The method I used for documenting is Photography. I was able to capture his body language as well as his drawing. In the beggining his first drawing was small and did not use most of the page. After encouraging him, his drawing used the whole page and there was strong attention to detail which shows he was engaged with the work.

For my second activity, I do not think this went as successful as I thought it would go. This activity was broken down to three parts. Creating Spongebob on paint was really well done. The deconstruction and reconsrtuction, however, wasn't. Through the documentation using his artifacts, there were definite signs of regress with his drawing. Not only that, but he stuck to the pencil tool and avoided the other tools for paint. I'm not too sure why he did this but some speculations might have been because he did not want to do the deconstruction or reconstruction, the concept was too difficult to grasp, or that the tools were too challenging for him. Malike is a special needs learner who is mentally delayed by a couple years. Next time, I'm thinking of doing an activity with each tool so that he becomes used to it. I know thhat he had problems with the pen tool because drawing with a mouse is not easy. Media compentency helps the learner have a good experience because they don't have to deal with the technical issues when creating their work.

Multiculturalism in Art

How does learning in, through or about art change when we begin to look at moving beyond a standard, Western European based, middle class curriculum? What to these “special” cases reveal to us about the central issues for our practice as art educators?

I know people say that art in the western culture is mimetic and representational which I guess to me is no problem. Drawing from observation is not a bad thing at all. It is definitely a skill that can benefit people in art and other subjects. Actually if you think about it, the Eastern culture like China, Japan, Persia are just as influential in the western culture. Art nouveau uses organic shapes. This is similar to the abstract patterns found in persian rugs. Manet's Olympia painting was influenced form woodcut block printing in Japan which was probably influenced from China. The abstraction from cubism was influenced from African masks. I guess when it comes to teaching art, it would be helpful for people to acknowledge these kind of facts into their learning so students get a better understanding about the development of art.

I guess I take the position that chagning the curriculum to include other cultures, the educator must be adequate in teaching it. I don't think that researching and learning a culture is the same as being a part of it. By teaching others about a particular culture from an outside perspective, they are moulding the rest of the people who belong to that culture with a stereotype that they are different and their art will fit a certain type of category. I know that there is always ethnocentrism to a degree, but I think that this will promote it even more. Individuals should be accounted for as themselves and their capabilites as opposed to catergorizing them in a culture.

A way that educators can incorporate multiculturalism in their art lesson is either by trying to allow the students to research a particular culture's art that they like and use it in their work or create an art that is a respond to the researched piece, or by having the students create art from their different cultures and standards, and share it with the class.