Checking in

Just finished checking in with a Grad Student who is teaching the second section of Painting to Non-Majors this summer. He showed me his course outline. Every thrusday is a crit and a movie. Ending the week with a film about an artist who is not clasically trained but who works with prolific abandonment.

I was thinking about this as a strategy for my students, becoming a stickler to mamouth amounts of drawing, reworking, revisiting etc. I thought about a teacher a few years back who made students draw one object for an entire semester, on one sheet of paper, every day. Something liberating about that notion. Something about a singular focus, and breathtaking sense of discovery through knowing something so well. I was thinking about my sketch books from back in High School. Man those things were amazing. Why did I stop working like that. Why did I stop drawing all the time, and get so tight, loose my sense of abandonment and be happy with my mistakes. Why did I have to have everything so precious and good and well concieved that all the time I am trapped in a fear spiral?

I don't want to have my students ever say my course is too academic. I want to teach with the ideas of DADA and Fluxus, strictly demanding craft conducive to the message, but fostering excitement and drive. I want to get my idealism back and I want it back today!

The Why in Art

I had an amazing conversation today with a fellow faculty member about what are we actaully teaching people. Too often we both leave the classroom angry, upset, and feeling insecure with our abilities as teachers. In part this is due to our personalities, but thinking after the conversation it might be in part to the structure of validation set in place with College Art Education.

What if we bypassed the what and went straight for the why. Looking at Art Self Help books in stores such as Michael's, one noticies a common language of, fun, enjoyment, passion, and emotions. People outside of the art realm get into art to say something. This summer working with non art majors I have found a striking passion for real messages, though their use of imagry, or sence of composition, design, and motifs might be a bit nieve or trite, they do have messages and concepts inside them to express. Why then is that desire submerged in freshman art students when it could be fostered along side a growing sense of the conditions, and aesthetics of art. Why is the personal, the private, and the meaningful disregarded for the cool, the disigned, or the well executed.

What would happen if art and art history were taught from a perspective of now what, but why. Why are these artists actually using these brush strokes, why are they painting those figures that way, why does red look so boring when it is in it's pure color form on a girls face. Why have we seen those motifs over and over again? Why do you want to hold your pencil that way. Perhaps if we did a bit more explaining of the reasoning behind our exercises, filing them with content beyond busy work, drilling, or exercises we might see some real results.

I miss teaching students to use photoshop to make zombies out of figures.

I really miss teaching content.