Entry #5:
Big Ideas, Making Meaning, & 1st BRAINY Tour
February 27th, 2022
#museums4everyone #makingmeaning
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After weeks of brainstorming, planning and reorganizing a museum tour for BRAINY (Bringing Arts Integration to Youth,) I finally got to put my tour to the test. Our teaching group had two back-to-back 4th grade classes from Putnam Elementary. We led small pods of students through the Gregory Allicar Museum, then taught them our different art activities. The process was obviously very different than running through our tours with other CSU classmates. Both groups that I led were very different in their socializing, questions answered, art observations, and interest in my planned art activity. Overall, I had a great time, and found the experience really enlightening.
The past lectures, guest speakers and TAB classroom observation helped push me to let the students lead a good portion of the tour conversation, despite my original plans and conversation points. I only had a short amount of time with each group, and I realized that I really wanted them to feel like their voices were valued. For most of these students, this was their first time even in an art museum, or on a field trip, due to the pandemic. I think for future tours, I will try and increase the number of leading/essential questions, and back away from “random” facts about the art and artist— at least until after I get the students to voice their own observations and connections.
As for the weekly readings and lectures— this week focused on revisiting Big Ideas, and how to to guide students to investigate complex concepts. The reading also emphasizes students making deep and personal connections while making art. I think there are plenty of big ideas that I would enjoy having students explore. A few that come to mind are “dreams,” “power dynamics,” and “time.”After all, developing big ideas is not about crafting a project and technical skill, but instead extends beyond an artist’s subject matter. I found it helpful that Chapter 1 in Teaching Meaning in Artmaking, recommended never choosing an example artist’s work by appearance and style alone.
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The artwork that I developed this week, stems from my growth and understanding of what a BRAINY tour would actually be like (from idea, to paper, to practice), to the readings offering suggestions on guiding students to think about what matters to them. I want to revisit my idea from last week, and continue to use landscapes as metaphors for the student/teacher learning process. With the first few reflexive journals, I had a hard time thinking of a way to connect my artworks other than through materials, but I think having an overall narrative will strengthen my ideas for making a series. One of the other recommendations I liked from the reading, was to consider taking one big idea or theme and going in depth over multiple projects or a longer period of time.
-This landscape, titled “New and Old Growth Forest” represents the symbiosis and sharing of resources between the root systems within a forest. I feel like I will be helping plant and nurture a bunch of “saplings” and wanted to depict some pine trees to represent that relationship. You can’t make a tree grow— but you can make all the circumstances as perfect as possible for growth and thriving. All of these pieces will be gray ink pen on watercolor paper. I will pick the best of the landscape series, and choose a harmonious color palette for them at the end of these reflection journals.
