RESPONDING - Developing a Repertoire of Skills for Visual Perception and Artistic Response

How do you teach students how to respond in their own voice? In many ways our education system is centralized on objectivity - one right answer. When in doubt, select "c." Answer questions 1-3 at the end of the chapter, but don't worry about #4 (the 'critical thinking' question). Fill in the blank. Make your marks heavy and dark. Now, create an original work of art.

It's a bit jolting really, because then the questions come. How it will be graded? What do we mean by "original?" How big should it be? Is this good/finished/enough for a 'B'?

I appreciate that several of Caroll's strategies are about teaching students how to see. These skills provide tools to fluidly transition minds from left to right brain and then wiggle down

to the fingers to create.

An obvious example is in the discussion of drawing from observation. When we draw from life, we are forced to "look" closer at object and learn ways of seeing.

I also enjoyed her discussion on tapping the narrative impulse. It is about not only learning how to "read" and see the narrative symbolism in artworks through the ages, but also to begin to develop our own methods of visual storytelling.

Folk artists have it figured out. They didn't fall for the "make your mark heavy and dark" rigmarole most of us did. They called BS pretty early on and "just did them."

And even when (if) they finally received recognition, they just kept "doin' them." Because most of the time, folk artists are responding from a sincere place (a pressing need - pp. 216, "Connecting") and a true voice that they altar for no one. Many people are uncomfortable with that; they call it unintelligent, degenerate, crude. Until we eventually realize, it's just different, and differences should be celebrated.

"Art and museum educators began to see artworks as sites of social and political change and were forced to abandon notions of art only as a creative aesthetic experience, thereby opening doors to new ways of integrating visual practices in their teaching." (pp. 269 "Connecting")

Artworks as sites. Artworks as space. Art as a response; art to ignite response. Art is transformative.

I appreciate the combination contemporary art and anthropology approach in chapter 33 of "Connecting." In many ways, Bourriaud's relational aesthetics apply to the experience of the art and museum educators at the workshop. As they learned about cultural appropriation and experienced the classes with one another, the experience itself became artful. The art ignited a response and the workshop built the educators' repertoire until the two merged into it's own artistic experience.

Check out the exhibition currently on display at the museum I work at (Memphis Brooks Museum of Art). Wonder, Whimsy, Wild: Folk Art in America: http://www.brooksmuseum.org/wonder-whimsy-wild-folk-art-in-america