I attended the Teacher's Salon at the MCA yesterday and had the sincere privledge of hearing Theaster Gates and Kerry James Marshall in coversatoin wiht each other. I was especially exciting to hear directly from contemporary artists on how they view education and how they view our role as educators. I was really impressed with how candidly both artists spoke. They were interesting, engaging, and most of all honest. I am still digesting all the thoughts that they shared, but I need to emphasize again how exciting it was to hear them speak. I specifically was drawn to their emphasis on educational theory. Marshall spoke so much about complex issues in art education. I appreciated that he took this venue to get those topics out, now it is our responsibility to work through them and identify how to apply these theories in practice. In particular he spoke about repositioning our definition of passive learners, specifically that we don't think about people as passive because they only listen to conversations. Instead he encouraged us to consider that the act of listening can be a very active education. The listening can make a student hungry and "hunger moves one quickly from mimicry to internalization." With my own research being so focused on talk- I was particularly excited to be reminded of the other learning ways that are embedded in talk. Talk is not only about verbalizing but rather is half speaking and half listening. Also the educators expressed on and on how much we love Marshall's paintings. LOVE THEM.

Volunteer vs. Service Learning

So I have lately been very interested in the trendy nature of volunteering and the connection between helping others and feeling good ourselves. However I crack up at some of the safe ways that we choose to volunteer and how we might sign up to volunteer for 2 hours on a saturday and something always seems to comes up to make us cancel. Anyways I have been writing about how teenagers know that college admissions counselors look for volunteer work and i think about how much I volunteered in high school pretty much so that i would have lots to talk about for my college essay...lame i know. But all of this started to be better understood, or at least i started to think in new ways about why people do flake on volunteer work, why people choose to play it safe, etc. Last night, in a stellar presentation by another art ed student she distinguished volunteering from service learning in a really comprehensive way. I now realize that when I am throwing every kind of service project under the umbrella term volunteer work, I get comfused. She spoke about how volunteering is usually driven by motives of the volunteer not the recipient of the work, its an isolated event, it implies the volunteer is bringing some of their world/agenda to the world/agenda of the recipient. Versus service learning which incorporates a learning component, there is initial research done on the project, it is rooted in educational progress, there are specific aspects of the project identified, there is a community-based approach, and there is a long term commitment. This is such a different act than volunteering! Now I am not at all saying that volunteering is bad, it is extremely wonderful and necessary but I am so excited to see the educational potential of service being defined as whole other term. I love when things get more complex but because of the complexities suddenly things start to make sense!

This has nothing to do with what i usually blog about but this is really interesting...

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/17/world/20091118-INDIA_index.html

FALL-IN-TO-THE-GAP

I would like to share a quote from a fascinating book I have been reading- Buddhist Mind in Contemporary Art (Baas and Jacob, 2004). They are writing in reference tp Duchamp’s definition of art making having two components.

“In the creative act,” he said, “the artists goes from intention to realization.” Duchamp spoke of a “gap” that “represents the inability of the artist to express fully his intention,” a gap that is filled by the participation of the spectator, whose own realization is a “phenomenon of transmutation”: an act of “transubstantiation” in which inert matter is experience as a work of art.

I was really excited when I came to this quote and I want to discuss it here relation to working in a museum. I constantly think about how artists leave their work in a museum. By leave I want to propose that its kind of like letting go of something or someone, all of a sudden that person is not there to talk anymore. I approach my visits to museums as a situation where I am charged with trying to make meaning about the work. I often make a mental list of the questions I would ask the artist if they were there and yet often I'm glad I don't get the questions answered whereas other times I know I really need to speak with that artist (although that is usually always impossible). I wonder why I don't always want to speak with them, I feel like sometimes I get so emotionally connected to a piece and I take my role as viewer too personally that I am afraid the work might fall short if I heard the artists view. I don't like that I think like that because I LOVE hearing artists speak about their work and I think it is so important to be able to hear someones view and still make your own meanings.

Either way, I liked how this text phrased t this experience as a gap. I also like that to be excited by the presence of that gap.

"We haven’t had recess since like fourth grade…[one day] we just got to have a free day…just a moment to get all the extra energy out and then be able to really look at the art a little more."

That was a quote from high school girl at my thesis focus group last week. Well did this make me think or what! First of all, I was already thinking about he recess issues because my little 4th grade cousin (who I pick up from school sometimes) was complaining last week because the teacher's punishment for not doing homework is that you "get the wall". This means that you have to stand against the wall of the school and watch everyone run around at recess. Ok, now I think homework is super important and believe kids should be punished if they do not do it but COME ON. "The wall" sounds horrible for everyone. First of all 4th grade kids NEED recess, taking it away only makes kids more rambunctious in class.

Anyways relating this to what this high school girl said i was thinking about how we are not allowing this free time anymore. With high school programs becoming more and more specialized coupled with the general societal push to grow up faster, are depriving this kids of the development that occurs when kids just chill. Even some of the best out of school programs in this city may border on being too rigid for kids who haven't had an ounce of free time all day. However free time means danger far too often. So what do we do?

Multicultural Arts School

Ok so I went to the Multicultural Arts School yesterday and am still excited from being in that space. The halls are lively with framed prints lining the lockers, the classrooms are beautiful with paintings on the walls and awesome posters and more prints, the teachers seem to be totally committed and all there. AWESOME. However the one thing that I haven't been able to get over--- the book shelves. I was in a social studies classroom and they had many of their class books on the shelves- you know how the teacher has like 25 copies of a book and keeps them in the class until you read them and then you get to have one copy and then return it. Ok so that was the setup and there were some of the titles:

Yes, Yes, Y'all- Oral History of Hip Hop's First Decade
World Changing- A Users Guide for the 21st Century
Crossing the Blvd.
Malcolm X, A Graphic Novel
Beginners Guide to Community Based Arts
The Big Book of Racism
Nat Turner, A Graphic Novel
Our America- Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
What is the What (Dave Eggers)

These are some cool books! I have ordered all of them through the library so I'll have more to say on that soon. The one thing I keep stumbling on is the idea of reading about important historical figures (Malcolm X and Nat Turner) through a graphic novel. Now I want to preface this by saying again how cool I think this is, but I then get caught on the traditional side of me- I mean what about reading the original writings of these famous people? What about the traditional biographies or autobiographies- shouldn't those be read? Will a graphic novel convey all that we get when we read thoroughly the academic writing on the great people of our nations history? I want to know more! I want to see these teens respond to reading a graphic novel- I'm sure its an amazing learning experience, I'm sure they must love it. But perhaps more so I want to know if the lasting lesson is: wow reading about Nat Turner in this graphic novel made me see how interesting his story is, I should read more (insert traditional biography here).

Copycat?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/arts/design/17frieze.html?ref=arts

So I was reading this article in the New York Times today and along with the review of this art fair there was a particular bit on this one artist who is re-creating mini versions of Jeff Koons' balloon dogs. I believe the direct quote is, "I’m making a copy of a copy”. Now that is funny to me, I think that it is in interesting idea and I am totally on board. Koons' balloon dogs were hands down my favorite pieces in his Chicago exhibition last year and further I saw a photograph of one of his balloon dogs being shown in Versailles which was one of my favorite images of contemporary art. People get so mad sometimes that Koons' pieces can be reproduced, that the same pieces can be showing in exhibitions across the country or world at the same time. I think its interesting- he really puts it in our face to consider why we crave the special nature of an original when we live our lives surrounded by reproductions, embracing reproductions. I find that the reason Koons' work is so strong is because his pieces are impeccably made- I spent many a day trying to find a flaw on his balloon dog and let me tell you I came up with nothing. Now I know that he has a whole team of studio assistants and lets be honest he probably has little to do with production but I like to think that he is the one who demands , the stunning perfection of his pieces are absolutely part of his work. Therefore I was all excited that this artist in this NY Times article was throwing all of this back in his face, in our face as consumers, etc., even talking about how these mini versions of other famous works are a popular item to buy- just like our obsession with souvenir ships. All of this was incredibly funny to me until I saw the image of these balloon dog reproductions!
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/10/16/arts/20091017-frieze-slideshow_7.html

Ok so those are the molds and then they are dipped to make the final piece but those aren't perfect, those don't have the same sensibility of Koons' work- if you are making "a copy of a copy" you have to really copy it otherwise it completely falls short. The way that we look at copying is so widespread these days with plagiarism in academia, the music industry download situation, bootleg movies, etc. This article makes me want to look closer at what it means to copy because this artists work is so not copying but it is claiming to be. What does it really mean 'to copy'?