NAEA Conference: TASK

In early March NAEA held its National Conference in New York City, at the Hilton and Sheridan hotels. As an official member of NAEA, I could not pass up the opportunity to go to the conference that was so close in location.  The conference spanned a four day period, but since I had class Thursday and Friday, I only participated in the weekend festivities and talks.  I thought the conference had a lot of great speakers and artists, including Chuck Close and LaToya Ruby Frazier.  One activity that was located at the Sheridan Hotel on Saturday was the "TASK" event.  The activity consisted of people writing down a task on a piece of paper and  putting it into a box, labeled "New Tasks."  If you choose a task from this box, you have to preform whatever activity the task tells you to do!  When you are done, you put the piece of paper in the box labeled "Completed Tasks."  The room where this event was held was covered in all sorts of art supplies, and it was filled with people working both individually and collaboratively.  I was able to take a video recording of the scene which I plan to incorporate into my video documentary.  The energy in the room was amazing, and the willingness to participate in collaborative art activities among strangers was something that I thought was very rewarding.

Is Anything Original?

My unit on appropriation has got me thinking about what it means to be original, and how much of our own art is influenced by other artists and the world around us.  Can you appropriate your own art?  This question was raised in class one day, and I have since been wondering about its implications.  I have just finished a whole unit on appropriation, and because of it I feel that I have more of an open mind about using other people's work to influence your own.  As an artist, it has always been easier for me to work from reference photographs when painting or drawing, which is my concentration.  That being said, it has always been important to me for those photographs to be my own.  I take a lot of pictures whenever I am outdoors, especially if I am in a new environment.  If I had to answer the question, I would say yes you can appropriate your own art if by using a source photograph you change it in some way, whether it be visually or conceptually.  Much of my photo collection has influenced my studio art, and I have always tried to avoid using Internet images as my source material unless absolutely necessary.  After completing my unit, I am wondering how many other artists really did influence my work, even if I did not necessarily use their images to reference while working.  A running underlying theme throughout my unit is the question of originality.  When I went to London for the London Art Seminar course, I wrote my final paper on this very subject.  I remember being very impressed by the Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum even though all of the work was the replicas, not the originals.  An excerpt from my introduction reads:

The aura can be described as the uniqueness or the experience of a piece in relation to “its presence in time and space” (Benjamin, 4).  The uniqueness of a piece can also be considered its authenticity, which stems from the ideas of the Renaissance and the debate about imitations of great artists.  It is interesting to question what happens to the aura of a piece if the piece itself is reproduced; does the copy have the same aura as the original?  Or does this replica destroy the intended aura of the original?  The two ideas of authenticity and aura can be tied together through imitation.  While suggesting that a replica has an aura, perhaps its own aura, one challenges what difference really exists between the original and the replica or imitation and the intent of the artist.

It is interesting that this question is still relevant to me and my artwork as well as my exploration of appropriation in my lessons.  I often feel that my work can be called original if I use my photographs, but I am influenced by what I take pictures of from other artists and what I directly observe in my environment.  I therefore feel that this is a question that can not easily be answered, if it even has an answer.

Appropriation in Art

Today I completed my first written unit plan, titled "Appropriation in Art."  The unit was compiled of four linked lessons, each meant to build off the last.  I choose the theme of appropriation as it was part of the original idea Kim and I had used for our Theme-Based Lesson that we presented to the class.  I feel that teaching students about appropriation is so important.  My unit rationale reads:

This unit educates students about appropriation which has been present in the arts throughout history.  It also encourages students to change existing sources by putting their own expression into their work, and to questions what it means to be original.  This unit allows students to make a connection between their art work and other source material, creating their own visual language.

I feel that students should know how to incorporate sources into their own art by changing it to fit their needs, and by changing it, this reduces the idea of "stealing."  My unit explores change through both physical and conceptual properties of sources, working from simple to complex imagery and ideas.  I had the most fun working on my ideas for the third lesson, "Cluster Sources," which requires students to find source material and use the theme of juxtaposition in order to create new meanings.  This lesson calls for students to use at least three different sources, such as other artists' work, their own art, or media images.  Students must first plan out their drawing by cutting out images and arranging them on paper to test out different compositional ideas.  My favorite teacher example that I made consists of work by Willem de Kooning, my own figure drawings and photographs, and a newspaper image of a peacock.  I meant for this combination of images to speak to the body (particularly the female body) and the different forms of beauty that are depicted.

A Place of Your Own

Our individual library display cases include our experiences from our fieldwork and our lesson plans.  My lesson, A Place of Your Own, focuses on the theme of visual story-telling and memory.  Romare Bearden and Faith Ringgold were used as inspiration for my students as they discussed what visual cues are needed to tell a story, such as color, line, shape and form.  We differenciated between abstract and literal elements, and I encourages my students to  evoke a mood through both kinds of imagery.  The students had already completed their two-point perspective city-scapes, and once they scanned their images into Photoshop, students digitally collaged over the buildings, adding texture, color, and figures to their work.  Since I only observed on Wednesdays, I got to see the work in progress but I did not get to assist with the process all that much.  For the most part, I saw students choosing colors and forms for reasons that related to their personal memories, and I was very pleased that they understood the assignment.  The two-point perspective buildings were not perfect, and more practice might have been needed, however the unique shapes gave the work personality, which was a positive outcome of the project.  I felt I succeeded in creating a lesson that allowed students to put themselves into it, that encouraged students to make their city-scapes personal to them.  The finished works came out great and students put the time and energy into the pieces that made me proud to display.

Advocating for the Arts

Art education is a subject that may not have as much respect as more "core" subjects such as math, science, or english.  The main goal of our library display, Constructing Meaning: Educating Through Art, is to educate our fellow New Paltz students and faculty of the importance of the arts in a standard curriculum.  We each had to write "statements of purpose" explaining the reasons why art education is important for student learning.  Art is a form of expression that allows students to make a connection between themselves and the making process, creating a visual language of ideas and concepts.  Art education also gives students a voice to share with others.  The inclusion of post-modern principles into the art classroom ensures that artmaking goes beyond just basic skill and visual aesthetics.  Meaning is present within the arts, meaning that may allow students to explore personal and world issues through their work.  The library display is just another step towards making the community aware of the importance and the value art education has to offer.

Final Week of Lessons

For our final week of our Theme-Based Lessons, two groups presented.  Gina and Rachel presented their "Memory" lesson based on the artist Mike Kelley and his work.  We discussed Kelley's sculpture model of all the places he remembers as a child, and we looked at his complex of different buildings.  Four our activity, we had to focus on a place where we spent a lot of time as a child and build a small model of that place using our sensory memory as a guide.  Everyone was fully engaged in this making process, and though the goal was to simply start our model and finish it next class, everyone was disappointed when we had to stop and clean-up.  Another aspect of the art activity was that we were planning on combining our models into a collaborative complex, which is something I think would have been pretty cool to see completed.  The second and last group to present consisted of Chris and Amanda, whose "Conflict" lesson focused on text and image in art.  Chris performed a thorough demo of a collage technique using water and glue that I had never tried before.  This was the most successful of the demos from our class's lessons, and it was very helpful since the art activity was to create a collage based on a personal conflict in our lives using text and images from magazines.  This was an engaging process that we also did not have time to finish in the allotted time.  At the conclusion of our Theme-Based Lesson presentations, I felt that our group of classmates really supports one another in giving out praise as well as helpful criticism.  These lessons were good practice, and even though it was not in a "real" classroom, everyone did their best to simulate near-realistic conditions.  I thought as a whole the lessons were well planned out and everyone seemed to give forth their best effort.  This was a good exercise for our class to grow and learn from each other, as I am sure we will continue to do for the remainder of the semester.

Third Week of Lessons

Two groups split the time during the third week of presenting our Theme-Based Lessons.  John and Sam presented their lesson titled "A Shadow of What It Once Was" and focused on resources and objects. We had to explore the resources that make up an object we can not live without, and from our research create a sculpture that will create a visual shadow display of a resource.  The artists they showed, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, are two British artists whose work I am a fan of.  I saw their shadow sculptures in a gallery when I was in London, and I remember being drawn to the work because of the trash they use.  It seems crazy to think that the trash can cast such a different visual shadow on the wall in silhouettes of people or buildings.  The second group to go was Jackie and Natalie, whose lesson "The Reel Me" focused on how different images get viewers to look at them and where the power lies in the gaze.  We then watched a short video and had to focus on non-verbal cues of the characters, such as color and body language.  We began a project that would in reality take a few classes to complete, but everyone was well engaged in the planning stage.  We had to pick an alter ego of ourselves and create a storyboard to eventually turn into a movie focusing on non-verbal cues to explore this side of ourselves.  I thought this lesson was great, and Natalie and Jackie did a very good job of role playing and laying out the plan for the rest of the lesson even though we would not actually complete it.