Color Outside the Lines!

Art is personal. Art is individual. What one person may find beautiful the next might not and that's okay. I think students should feel free to express themselves any way they wish. Who says that coloring in the lines is artistic? Coloring outside the lines in art should be the same as thinking outside the box! Art shouldn’t have all these rules. Art should be freedom to express. ( I use the disclaimer that coloring inside the lines serves the purpose of developing fine motor skills... but we can’t squash creativity and self-confidence in children when they can’t!! Fine motor skills will come with experience and maturity...but an insecurity towards creating artwork is hard to overcome!)  

(www.oopsiedaisy.com)

 

On the drive home after school one day, my six year old son told me that he was a bad “color-er”.  I said that that wasn’t true to which he responded that yes it was, his teacher had told him he was a “bad color-er”. I said, “I don’t think you are bad at coloring, in fact, when we get home you can color something for me so I can see...because I know that you are not bad at coloring”. He hung his head down and said, “No mom, it’s true. Mrs. “B” told me and I already know.” And so began his hatred towards art for the next 5 years (not sure he’s over it even still)!

If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder then, as teachers, who are we to say something isn’t art. It may not have met our criteria, but I really struggle with saying it’s not “good art”. We can follow our rubrics but at the end of the day, the assignment of grades on artwork (or poetry) is subjective. Case in point: The following piece could easily have received a failing grade (though the artist is an adult!)



(http://artsalesindex.artinfo.com/asi/lots/4132118)

Instead, Peinture (Le Chien) by Joan Miro - Sold for $2.2 Million

 (The following information is taken from Wikipedia)

Joan Miró i Ferrà April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983)

Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and famously declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

 I hope everyone who says "I'm not an artist" will look at the above picture and say "Actually, maybe I am!"

www.patheos.com

 

Art or Cookie Cutting?

I have been thinking about what happens to students' artwork after it is taken home. What do parents keep and what gets thrown away? I hope I can help develop my students sense of pride in what they create and I really hope I can help them create things that showcase their individuality. That said, I also hope that when they bring their creations home that their parents value the time and effort that has gone in to the piece. Art has the ability to bare the soul. A negative response to someone's creation can injure self-confidence and make a person utter the words "I am not artistic"..

I am also thinking of the stacks of stuff that my own children have brought home...I haven't exactly valued all of it and I feel (a little...just a little) guilty for that...but let me explain why I say it's only a little guilt and not a lot (please don't judge)...

It is hard to value "artwork" that includes "coloring in a picture", "cutting out on the line", and "gluing specific things on to specific spots". Especially when 3-4 of these come home each week (I'd need to buy a bigger house to save it all!) As far as I could see, these were not so much artistic creations as means to develop fine motor skills and the ability to follow directions--in which case if I save these things am I expected to save math worksheets and spelling lists too? So, after a month on the fridge, most of these items found their way to the recycling bin. Yes, I feel a little guilty. Every time I lowered one to the garbage I felt a pang of guilt...but how much is too much? I always saw value in pieces that I could see they put a lot of time and effort in to and I certainly cherish the items where I see that the ideas came from them. Furthermore, I always keep the pieces that mean a lot to them on an emotional level such as mothers day gifts and so on....even when they were required to follow a template. 

But even in grade six my son was bemoaning art class. He said he hated art. Art was boring. Art is hard. He'd say he's not good at art. Then I saw what they were doing! Templates. Rigid instructions. 29 pictures on the wall with minimal variations...well, with the exception of my son's which was either incomplete, lost, not started, or haphazardly put together. We had a big talk about effort. About accountability. About the fact that we may not like all the subjects in school but we are still required to do it and since we have to be there and we have to do it we should at least put in our best effort...(gasp for breath...). NOPE. No desire to even be bothered. Can I really blame him? I could barely be bothered to look at this wall of cookie cutter art myself.

Then the most amazing thing happened. After studying a unit on Ancient Greece each student could pick two projects from a list of about 10 choices. The options ranged from a research paper to a sculpture. My son found a picture of an artifact from King Tut's tomb and thought he'd like to try making a painting of it. I brought him out one of my canvases and let him pick out acrylic paints. I supplied him with brushes and gave him a brief lesson on how to hold a paint brush and how to pick up paint, and I showed him couple different paint strokes. Then I left him to create. Hours went by (and I mean about 6-7 hours!) before he stepped away. What he created was amazing! (For a boy who hated art!). What a surprise to everyone...even himself! He got an A on his Social Studies project and his teacher commented that he had some talent and should continue painting.  He barely got a C in Art. Well, there you go.

(I will attach a photograph of his painting when I go home on the weekend...proud mama!)

So what can I learn from this? Well, I hope to come up with art lessons that will allow creativity to find a place in each student. I will give them criteria but not so specific and so much that it stifles their individuality or their creativity. I will give options. I will let my students know that I value effort and that creativity sometimes means taking a risk and watching that risk turn in to artwork.