In the morning we work frantically in our studios. Then pizza comes at mid day and Diane has brought us wonderful rice and beans. We have a good feast.
Kathy and John tell us about TAB: Teaching for Artistic Behavior/choice-based teaching. Hand outs and video are given out. Information about TAB can be found on the ArtMatters website and at http://knowledgeloom.org/tab
Squares: Crowe gives us extra squares to take home.
Another square to do with a friend! We felt the pressure of the week; the squares filled up more quickly than usual. If done over a semester it is not so demanding. Erica’s lit up!
Crowe says “I connected with you as you worked.”
CROWE: artist as secretary: the artist writes down all the comments from colleagues about work.
When we speak: “From my experience”
Not judgmental, “this is what I see”
15 minutes each
Last day: critique: these are not exact quotes, but as close as I can come to re creating the dialogues about the work…(Kathy Douglas)
EVA: The work took on a new life today. The piece didn’t speak to me before. I had collected images and I wanted to use them somehow. Standard: role of artist in society; weaving is the environment that I live in…sky foliage, water, Winthrop. People who live there don’t appreciate the beauty. My role is not only teacher, art assoc. president, but also to make people aware of the environment. With more time I would have woven images more. Teach, enlighten, inspire, open eyes, foster appreciation for arts natural and manmade, there is more to life than sports, business, politics. Present artistic accomplishments, to exhibit, to provide a stage, to encourage society to make connections, to provide a base to interweave aspects of everyday life, to help make aware of possibilities, global possibility. Historical images of the artist, open eyes, connections of how found objects can turn the ordinary to the extraordinary, multi layered. I used trees, nature, color, and drawings. Cheese doodles, feeling myself part of the world; can I hang it in town? Maybe in my school. The artist sets an example: I dress like an artist. Here are all my art pins!
Crowe: Elements and Principals were not enough for you; the work was very tasteful but it needed to be more. You are layering all that you accomplished. In his workshops John MacPhee has students make art from little objects. Making the ordinary precious.
Diane: It seems to be more a quilt than a weaving…Eva: I am a painter, collage artist, weaver…. I can’t specialize.
DIANA
Everyone has influenced me so much; my role was to absorb from all of you. The grant money and the choices were great! I wanted to immerse myself in color. I used fabric dyes for intensity. My daughter is in the west, Native Americans’ holy place On the top of the mountain the glaciers are drying up; this shows on the map of Columbia. I am thinking about journeys to the southwest soon. Lots of water, water space, aerial view of islands. Triptych to give it form. Creativity is a holy act and the three panels contain it. Paper and color like animal skins. It is not right but here it is!
Crowe: incredible pigment; looks like ancient oxidation.
Diana: It takes me a long time to see what I am doing.
It risks being just a decorative thing.
Erica: I am struck from your divergence from what you did before. What a contrast!
Robyn: I see color connections to Arizona, like the turquoise jewelry. I am a textile designer; I use dyes on fabric; I like the way you went outside the box and still got the powerful brilliance. Iris: I have the desire to go in it. I want to go in and swim. Your comment on decoration: what does that mean? When I was in school it was considered bad. Why is that?
Diana: I don’t want it to be superficial or static. Crowe: this is about the purposes of art!
Eleanor: I can’t make “serious art” but it is MY ART. The world needs pretty stuff….
Diana: if it follows a pre-arranged path I may have missed opportunities. I don’t know if I will go back to them, I may change the orientations.
Diane: call these “in” scapes I started connecting to science, then more to the role of the artist.
DEBORAH
I was intimidated by this project. I am a sculptor. It was hard to start. Sculpture is too time consuming. I decided to work with my little figures. I searched for a place for them to exist. I am connecting to the stylistic change framework: interested in black and white photography. I will connect to light. I studied formal diagrams about natural phenomena. This made me feel more secure, to have these diagrams. This is called a caustic curve. Robert Wilson, in the theater... His sets focus on light and dark. I tried to create a hybrid of ideas. I broke the curve down into smaller pieces. I tried to describe the velocity of light. I broke Wilson’s sets down into geometric shapes. I saw people drawing big. I tried it big! I tried new materials to me. I usually work slowly; these were quick, and liberating for me. My little sculptures sit on chairs. Today I added chairs to the drawings but no figures. I connect to ten.
Robyn: I would have liked to see a 3d chair…Crowe asks to have the little figure attached to drawing.
Crowe: she really broke out--her early stuff was tight. You made this leap, a jump in the jumping universe.
Diana: These drawings evoke sculpture. Deborah: the color is all about black and white photography. I come from a long line of photographers. I use black metal, and then use pink and blue in my glass; a connection to my photo-tinting grandfather.
Robyn: This makes me realize that I need to push the light lesson a little further in my school. Carol: are you trying to draw light or the effect that light has on objects?
Crowe: There is this intuitive sense of light from the scientific study of light.
ERICA
I need to set this up a specific way. Crowe: she is like Robert Redford, behind the camera directing and then the star. She hands out programs. See poem; book called Multicultural Voices. Voices. It is about my students. These are photographs of my students from a field trip.
(note: we edited a copy of Erica's performance piece as part of the Exploring Digital Art course but it was deleted by another instructor before we had a chance to make a web-ready copy of it. We will try again)
She dances.
I have not performed in twenty years, but I do dance in my classroom. I have not choreographed in a long time. This has been a journey in itself. Given me a time and space to work, with the energy. The connection is to each one of you and to my teacher. Crowe: Erica was like a sponge, picking up inspiration. Erica: the culture of visual artists is so different; performing arts is too competitive. To watch is to steal, to watch you is to learn! Marcia: I have to say your visuals appeal to a number of senses.
Erica; I challenge all of you to take a course outside of your discipline! I think it is really important. And powerful.
Crowe; the elegance of the rectangle, the stool, it is simple with few props.
Erica: The cloth was too much for a costume. You were a gift to us, generous and brave. I resented going home and looking at piles of dishes. We should think about offering dorms in the future for this Institute.…
Eleanor: domains are artificially separated. Just be yourself in the world. You did not deny us your talent.
Crowe: the old domains no longer hold.
JAN: This is an idea in progress; I am overwhelmed with everything I have done this week. I am never in the middle. This is about me. I want it to blow in the breeze. It tilted, which was perfect. I have not done anything for myself in a long time, it gave me a new way to think. Everything is just coming out. From diapers through everything else…I gave myself freedom to play to just learn and absorb…I have a huge notebook of ideas. My son is in preschool in the fall; I will be teaching some, but I am going to use that time. I am just going to connect This has been emotional for me.
Marcia: this is very thought provoking. Suspend it on strings?
Crowe: a book would be very intimate.
DIANE P.: I was trying to make a stylistic connection. I had trouble. The piece was vertical. Then I saw this as a water piece. I like that I cut up the space a different way…I am going to leave it this way. I turned it and like it better this way. I worked on two things at one time. I was using the same marks to connect the imagery. I have two sets. I was going to do a night piece, all dark and then erase. It didn’t work. I saw a figure emerge. I went to the guard tower. I reverted to this image that I have been working with over the years. It wasn’t strong so I connected to a strand. So I put the text I read on it. For me it works. I want to thank all of you. I learned bits and pieces from everybody. Talking over my work was helpful. I realized I didn’t need to fill the space in this piece. There are Xeroxes that I wanted to connect to finish the space. I flipped through art magazines, perspective pieces. It led me to another set of images. It relates to the same story. My aunt was in a camp. In her journal she describes cots and a little window. This class allows you to take risks. It is okay if you don’t exactly follow the structure. Learn something that is valuable to the classroom but life has other stuff…
I share my work with my advanced classes. I may be too literal on this end. I may go another direction. Carol; to me the two pieces help each other.
Crowe: parts of stories are more clear than others.
ROBYN is basking in her fifteen minutes of fame. Robyn as teacher. She thanks us all for our contributions. This has been my summer vacation! The title of my piece is called Universal Languages. Art, no matter where you take it in the world, it speaks to people. Same for math; people can comprehend. I tell my students: you may not want to be an artist but when you leave my class you will be an appreciator of art. Give art a chance! Some will be mathematicians, scientists, and other career paths. I teach fractions when I do the face. I want my students to create a legacy. I got that inspiration this morning from Jen and Kathy. My students come up with their story to create their legacy to pass on. The Egyptian piece has lived on so we remember what they did. Legacy is powerfully rich. My kids say what are you saving, Mom? Your children will spend summer with me and I have a lot to share with them. What will YOU leave behind when you are gone?
Marcia: you are enriching their lives even if they are not going to be artists.
Robyn: Education was not my career path… but I could do anything with this degree!
Crowe: this is like a laboratory in there. A little mini classroom environment--it all connotes potential, words, visual, blank table; faith in potential.
Robyn: I used old gesture drawings. I used them, painted them,. I had no idea what I was going to make. "Students" was my noun and I expanded on that.
Kathy; teaching is an art that you make,. In Reggio Emelia they say that the classroom is the third teacher.
Dramatic rendition: Robin pantomimed a first year teacher.
CAROL: sculptures: There are two parts to this: the practical reason and more personal reasons. Started personal, went to practical and now I only want to think about the personal. The personal is that I came into the week wanting to make art about the fact that my husband and son have ADD. Chaos, disorder is part of my life. I teach 3d on the computer. I am connecting to science. My uncle is a cell biologist. What do students need to know about 3d if they are entering med school? Biologists take slices and then reconstruct from the slices. Spinning wheel of slices re creates the sliced form. Taking apart, slicing, looking carefully at shapes, then re create and build the object or re assemble it into an artwork. On the Internet I found cells from stems. They are sort of chaotic held together by a wall. I wonder if there is a message there for me. I fell in love with this image of a plant stem cross section. It is like a fractal; the small part of the flower is shaped like a flower. I saw the screen in the art store and used that.
Marcia: you have been repeating cylinders.
Crowe: this makes me think of a mystical architecture of the future, moiré pattern in the screens. Could be a memorial. Or industrial design pieces…
Carol: I am thinking of Peter London and energy. This is first step toward me really being able to express that energy.
Robyn: the colors are so pleasing.
Crowe: the neutrals are important too.
KATHY: This is the little book that you saw. It was totally haphazard. Chaos theory. I’ve always been interested in the connections between art and science. I considered becoming a scientific illustrator, biologist. In high school I made a catalog of crabs for a marine lab. I am from a scientific family. This is one of my father’s microscope cases. My father was a keeper of notebooks. This is his book of photography settings.Microscope case. Fathers. Keeper of books. Notebook of photography settings, lighting. Notes for each role. No one in my family understood what my father did. Started looking up information on the Internet. Microwaves. I love the shapes. I played with his oscilloscopes, French curves. Inspired by the shapes. Not important to understand what they mean. Blowing up things on the Xerox, become non literal, abstracting. What I was frantically trying to do was draw…I realized I wanted to make myself a little playground for drawing. I’ll set this up so I can draw into it, paint, and gesso. Something on every page. I’m going to be drawing into, on ,under. Building 20, where radar was invented. He came of age during this time and was invilved in all that.
YEAR OF MY BIRTH:1947, first satellite photos. His is why we lived in New Mexico. I did not know this until later. White sands. All these MIT dudes. One of my heroes, Richard Feynman, and there is his chalkboard. Transfers. V2 Rocket, I am going to be enjoying this book. This is going to be fun. Radio, frequency modulation.
IRIS: I heard the news about the reserves and Iraq. My partner is in the reserves. I was so excited about my fifty dollars to spend. I did that once with home depot. The money totally changed my point of view. I paint sometimes very large. I am connected to land. When I teach I am drained. I can’t come home and paint in that genre. So I don’t do anything. I get disconnected and burnt. I love these questions that have been posed here. I can respond easily to stuff, playful and colorful. I saw Laurie Anderson’s art and teaching journal, her visual diary. She made one little piece of art per day; she even did it in the car. At the deCordova Museum there were lots of little multiples. And then I saw the little pieces in Liz Rudnick's office. Saw these little canvases at the art store. I want to connect to myself and to those people who keep themselves alive as artists while teaching. This is my visual diary of the last 24 hours. It includes a television show on the Medici family. The funeral painting, color, presence somewhere fun. How can I bring spontaneity to it? I made a tiny version of my large composition. I fight the heavy and academic voices of old teachers. I remember my art birthday party. I could invite guests to make little art. What do I do with all the art in my house when I am gone?
My question to you is: what do you do to keep your art alive during the year? Crowe: can you have a dialogue with your other art self?
I have told my students about the wheel of creating
( ed note: this I have pulled off of Iris’ post on the YahooTAB site: )
Thinking—get an idea—get excited—try it out—get involved—yikes! What is this?—I want to give up—take a breath—regroup—get back involved--. It helps because when I student wants to give up I can say “Hey, you are right here on the wheel of creating; this happens all the time to creators, so don’t worry about it. Take a breath and continue because the last step is usually loving it!
MARCIA: I have no plans on what to say to you. Also matching art. Thinking of tactile qualities. I went to Mexico, and I saw pottery, ruins, stone. I was going for fabric but this spoke to me because of the recent trip. It just kept coming at me; I researched the Mayans and the imagery just kept coming in. We don’t know the symbolism. We have those symbols, stone and clay. Ancient civilization will be taught in my school. The Massachusetts social studies curriculum frameworks have dropped China in favor of the Aztecs and the Mayans. We don’t need to draw or paint them…I can offer these materials to my students. I will use this piece in my classroom. The platform is a pyramid.
Crowe: the presentation has such substance!
Erica: how would you introduce this? What would you want them to do?
Marcia: I don’t know just yet. Also being outdoors…this is how Mayans related to that. (The Peabody Harvard museum has a huge Mayan collection.)
Crowe suggests a variety of entry points for students:
Formalist: just use the form
Story: connections to that
Expressionist: show fear, etc.
What type of artist are you when you are looking at these artifacts? Postmodern: using bits and pieces to create new work.
Naturalistic
Formalistic
Expressionistic
Alien, imaginative
This is a gradual way of getting to choice in an art class.
Laurie had her car do the art! Crowe has piles of squares ready for art making.
They are small and precious but fast
Crowe: we should appoint ourselves the visiting artists!
Animating the Curriculum Frameworks Wiki Pages
Exploring Digital Art Wiki Pages
AEContent Web Links
(lots of great indexed and annotated resources)
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Fianal Project images and images from the Exploring Digital Art course can be found in the AEContent Institute Galleries!