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Unit 1: Getting Acquainted

Week 1: Wandering and Wondering

"As the child of immigrants you have that sense of Where are you? Where’s home? And of trying to make a home."

Maya Lin

1. Getting Started

During this first week of class you will:

• learn to navigate the Web site
• preview the course content
• enter text into your Visual e-journal
• introduce yourself (online) to course members

The aim of this week’s assignment is for you to meet other course members, and for you to begin making personal connections to the course concepts. You’ll also begin to consider the importance of identifying and including broad-based ideas or generalizations such as identity and place in the development of educational curriculum.

2. Inquiry Questions for This Week’s Assignment

Contemporary artists explore ideas about their place in the world. They ask questions about what these ideas mean to them and to different groups of people at different periods in time.

During this course, you will explore how to conduct inquiry and teach about the concepts of identity formation (self-identity, social identity, social relations) and place through contemporary art.

Identity

Artists have looked at ideas about the formation of self and social identity, and social relations across different environments and in various societies. Through their art, artists have reflected on and presented their interpretations of these fluid relationships, practices, meanings, and values.

Artists in past and contemporary societies have asked questions such as:

• "Who am I?" (self-identity)

• "Who are we?" (social identity)

• "How do our daily interactions (social relations) play a role in how we live our everyday lives?"

Place

Through various aesthetic and cultural means, artists have represented ideas and issues of place. Their work has looked critically at questions such as:

• How do we understand our place in the world?

• Do we define a place or does the place define us?

• How do we understand the dynamic and interactive processes of our relationship with a particular geographic location (spatial) and at a certain time (temporal)?

NOTE: Keep these guiding questions in mind as you work through this week’s assignment.

3. Teaching through Contemporary Art —Art Education Strategies for Using Contemporary Art

"I’m trying to deal with...present and past stereotypes in the context of today’s society….Aunt Jemima is just an image, but it automatically becomes a real person for many people."

Michael Ray Charles

A. Introduction

In order to teach about contemporary art, it’s important to engage in action-oriented inquiry. See examples of action-oriented inquiry at http://www.getty.edu/artsednet/resources/Ecology/Curric/action.html. The life of ideas is forever changing. People give new meanings and values to ideas that fit their social interests.

Click on the links below and think about the following questions and information relating to ideas and issues. Not only do these questions lead us to consider what the terms idea and issues mean, they suggest ways of thinking about how we teach art.

What is an idea?

When is an idea at issue?

What is a generalization?

What are examples of generalizations?

How do artists address ideas and issues through their art?

How do ideas about curriculum influence how we teach about art?

What are inquiry questions?

How can we use inquiry questions to teach about contemporary art?

B. Artist Stories: Telling Tales about Ideas and Issues through Contemporary Art

Each Artist Story includes information about the artist’s biography, artwork, and related resources.

Artists’ stories can be deeply meaningful, interesting, and inspirational. There is much to be learned from an artist. As they speak in their own words, they’re sharing intimate thoughts about their art practices, art forms, and how these connect with everyday life experiences.

At this point, become familiar with some artists who have addressed ideas of self-identity and place through their art by browsing through the Artist Index.

C. Personal Connections (Direct Experiences)

Peter London said to "start where you are" when conducting inquiry about the world around you. In other words, our learning experiences should begin with our own community, school, and classroom. Learning experiences should also bring us into direct contact with people and things in all their multisensory fullness. Direct experiences have a degree of unexpectedness, a dynamic sense of uncertainty that is usually absent from indirect encounters. By encouraging students to make personal connections with the world directly, teachers help them understand the interconnectedness of art, aesthetics, and culture in their everyday lives. Starting the inquiry process with the immediate environment has the promise of generating responsibility, participation, and cooperation among class members.

Read a few Teacher Stories about making personal connections through education. (http://www.arts.ohio-state.edu/ArtEducation/Ecology/)

D. Weaving What You Know (Observation and Reflection)

As teachers and students identify information about an idea within their daily lives, they need to weave their findings together. Using the strategy of Weaving What You Know helps teachers and students build a mutual understanding of what is important about the people, places, and events that surround them. They can then extend this knowledge to include regional, national, and global affairs. This process of teaching and learning is about identifying, investigating, and making sense of contextual relationships that surround the life of an idea.

E. Teaching through Inquiry (Critical Thinking)

Another teaching strategy that encourages students to become active and responsible lifelong learners is the use of sense perception. Each day, we connect with our world, our sense of reality, and all its perceptual richness. Sense perception enables us to encounter a world through sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Daily classroom art education should be significant and extend our passion for learning. As Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out, "A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension."

Direct experiences must also be understood–internalized or thought about. However, these are also mediated–we understand our experiences and self-perceptions in relationship to other people in the classroom, neighborhood, community, and society. Sense perceptions filter how we come to know our self-identity, social identity, and social relations. Art can be better understood by taking into consideration how people feel about and interpret their interactions with others in everyday life experiences.

As they conduct inquiry about life-centered ideas and issues, teachers and students should think about how people can learn to be responsible for their actions. When conducting inquiry in art education, teachers should introduce ways to pose and solve problems on a regular basis, encouraging students to nurture their own abilities to assess problems and solutions. Teachers and students need opportunities to practice, model, critique, and build confidence to confront life-centered ideas and issues associated with art problems in the future.

F. Extending Art Education Practices

Ideas of identity formation and place can be found in many different subject areas. Teachers and students should connect and extend their inquiry with an interdisciplinary study of music, dance, theater, social studies, language arts, reading, math, and science. Next week you will be asked whether you have ever worked with other teachers to include the study of identity in your own school curriculum. Between now and then, think about and write down some of the ways that you have worked cooperatively with other teachers to do this.

4. Weekly Inquiry Assignment

This week’s assignment is to practice posting messages and to get to know one another. In your Visual e-journal, complete Week 1 Online Forms 1—7.

Personal Introductions

1. Write two to three short introductory paragraphs about yourself, your teaching situation, and your previous experiences teaching about contemporary art.

2. Consider a few of the following questions when posting your personal introduction to your Visual e-journal.

Interests: What do you like to do, create, or perform? Do you collect things that hold special meaning? Why are you interested in these endeavors?

Satisfaction: Why do these practices bring enjoyment and satisfaction to your daily life?

Practices: How do you use your own time to make/create/perform/collect things? Describe the kinds of things you make or collect. What materials do you use? Where does it come from?

Values: What interests or practices do you value most? Why are these interests significant?

3. Read the introductions by your classmates and post a response to two different class members. NOTE: You can post a response to any class member who does not have two responses already posted. Please do not post a third response to a person until each course member has received two posted responses.

5. Visual e-journal and Teacher Stories

The Visual e-journal and Teacher Stories section is a collection of text posted from your weekly online questions. Later in this course you will be able to submit digital image files.

After reading the artist stories, complete the following Week 1 questions.

Week 1 Question #1

Write two to three short introductory paragraphs about yourself, your teaching situation, and your previous experiences teaching about contemporary art.

Week 1 Question #2

Describe some of the ways that two artists you selected to review explored their own sense of identity and place.

Week 1 Question #3

Describe your current thoughts about identity and place in a few sentences.

Week 1 Question #4

Identity:

List 10-15 words to complete the following phrase:

Identity is:_____________?

(e.g., diverse, family, friends, enemies, complex, changing, healthy and unhealthy, interconnected, purposeful, intentional, uninhibited, uncertain, fragile)

Week 1 Question #5

Place:

List 10-15 words to complete the following phrase:

Place is:_____________?

(e.g., connected/interconnected, changing, chosen, influential, uncertain, powerful, fragile, complicated, reassuring, cyclical)

Week 1 Question #6

Select three terms from your list for identity and explain why they are the most important to teach about.

Week 1 Question #7

Select three terms from your list for place and explain why they are the most important to teach about.

6. Communication Tools

During week 1, send direct e-mail to the instructor if you have a specific question that cannot be answered from the Web site. The Discussion Forum is where you should post your answer to one of the Discussion Forum questions for week 1.

7. Resources

Note: In order to access the Art:21 Web site you need to first install Flashplayer 4 or greater. This application can be downloaded for free at http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download.

In addition, to access the video resources on the Art:21 Web site you must have Realplayer 8 Basic installed. This application can be downloaded for free at: www.realplayer.com.

Important: Realplayer 8 plus is a different application and costs money. It is not necessary for you to purchase this application. Realplayer 8 Basic is often featured on the lower part of the Web page.

Artist Index

Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century Video Series

William Wegman, New York (born 1943, Holyoke, Massachusetts)

Maya Lin, New York (born 1959, Athens, Ohio)

Bruce Nauman, New Mexico (born 1941, Fort Wayne, Indiana)

Kerry James Marshall, Illinois (born 1955, Birmingham, Alabama)

Louise Bourgeois, New York (born 1911, Paris, France)

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Web Site Links

William Wegman (b. 1943)

Biography

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/wegman/index.html

Artwork

Opening Segment–text and video

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/wegman/clip1.html

Cotto, 1970. Black and white photograph, 10 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/wegman/card1.html

Family Combinations, 1972. Six black and white photographs, 12 1/2 x 10 5/16 inches each.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/wegman/card2.html

Resources

Wegman’s Homepage

http://www.wegmanworld.com/

Maya Lin (b. 1959)

Biography

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/index.html

Artwork

Interview–Groundswell and Studio Works, text and video

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/clip1.html

Interview–Grand Rapids Project, text and video

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/clip2.html

Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C., 1982. Black granite, each wall: 246 feet long, 10 1/2 feet high.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/card1.html

The Wave Field, 1995. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shaped earth, 100 x 100 feet.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/card2.html

Resources

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/biblio.html

Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982

http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial.html

Topologies, 1998

http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/maya/index.html

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Bruce Nauman (b. 1941)

Biography

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/index.html

Artwork

Interview–"Setting a Good Corner," text and video

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/clip1.html

Interview–text and video

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/clip2.html

The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension supports; 59 x 55 x 2 inches.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/card1.html

Clown Torture, 1987. Four color video monitors, four speakers, four videotape players, two video projectors, four videotapes (color, sound), dimensions variable.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/card2.html

Bruce Nauman–Vices and Virtues

http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/nauman/index.html

Double Poke in the Eye II, 1985. Neon construction, 24 x 36 x 11 inches.

Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Gift of the R. C. Kemper Charitable Trust and Foundation1995.54

http://www.kemperart.org/perm.html

Resources

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/biblio.html

Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955)

Biography

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall/index.html

Artwork

Interview–"Many Mansions," text and video

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall/clip1.html

Interview–" RYTHM MASTR," text and video

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall/clip2.html

Our Town, 1995. Acrylic and collage on unstretched canvas; 100 x 124 inches. Collection of the artist.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall/card1.html

Watts 1963, 1995. Acrylic and collage on unstretched canvas, 114 x 135 inches.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall/card2.html

Resources

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall/biblio.html

Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)

Biography

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/bourgeois/index.html

Artwork

Black Hands, video

Twosome, 1991. Steel, paint, and electric light; 80 x 456 x 80 inches.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/bourgeois/card2.html

Resources

Eyes, 1982. Marble; height 74 3/4 inches, width 54 inches, depth 45-3/4 inches (189.9 x 137.2 x 116.2 cm). Anonymous Gift, 1986 (1986.397) © Estate of David Smith/ VAGA, New York, NY.

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/view1.asp?dep=21&full=0&item=1986%2E397

The Nest, 1994

http://www.sfmoma.org/collections/recent_acquisitions/ma_coll_bourgeois.html

The Blind Leading the Blind, 1947-1949/1989. Bronze, paint, 88 x 65 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches.

Collection Walker Art Center, Gift of the Marbrook Foundation, Marney and Conley Brooks, Virginia and Edward Brooks, Jr., Markell Brooks, and Carol and Conley Brooks, Jr., 1989.

http://www.walkerart.org/resources/res_msg_mapframe.html

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