Tuesday, January 10, 2012

An Art Exploration

































If you're not planning on sending the kids home with something cute that they made themselves and you aren't working down a list of specific things that a legislative committee somewhere has decided that children this age ought to know, then this might be an art project for you too!


The first thing, of course, is to stop calling it an art project, I think, because words matter and the word "project" connotes ideas that get people focused on results or destinations. I suggested to the adults responsible for managing the art station to think of it as an art exploration.


It starts with these 2'x2' lucite squares: smooth, flat, non-porous surfaces. Paint just slides across them, never diminishing, flowing. You can use tools to swoop and swoosh it. If you use your hands, they glide through and across the paint.


And then there are these egg carton parts: rough, pointy, absorbent surfaces. When you apply paint to these it gets sucked right up, some of it always staying behind when you try to move it, leaving a permanent trace of pigment wherever it's been. It's more challenging to get paint in every nook and cranny so you have to adjust your brush to different angles and use different techniques like dabbing or twisting or wiggling.


Finally we explored using lots of tools, including brushes.


And like with any good exploration, we made some discoveries along the way about color . . .



. . . about texture . . .



. . . about print-making . . .


. . . about cleaning up and starting over . . .


. . . about exploring alone . . .


. . . and exploring together.


We took it where it needed to go, this exploration of smooth and rough, non-porous and absorbent, flat and pointy.


It was messy, sure, but it didn't have to be. That was up to how you wanted to explore.


And if you did, along the way, produce a masterpiece . . .


. . . and some of us did . . .


. . . then you can save it as a print.


There's no test that will ever tell us what the children learned from their exploration, and I know that for some that makes it suspect.


It's just play after all: how does anyone know what they know about paint and process and smooth and pointy? How can anyone express that to others other than to show them? I suspect, in fact, that these testers, these "accountability" thugs, aren't interested at all in learning, just in measuring. And this is all too hard to measure -- impossible to measure. So, they stick to math and reading comprehension, judging the whole of education by the narrow calculation of what can be calculated, casting the rest aside as mere play, a remainder that for the rest of us is everything.


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6 comments:

Scott said...

I love the term "art exploration." We also talk about "experimenting." It looks like the kids explored and experimented a lot with the paint. What a fun, cool learning time. (Even if you can't measure it!)

marcie jan bronstein said...

Right you are TT. How truly sad is the test-driven paradigm which, step-by-step, disintegrates the instinct to play. We wonder why so many adults reach desperately for stimulants and outlets for their suffocated "creativity"...

Beatrice said...

Your blog is excellent. It's really made me notice how much effort and thinking children put into playing.Have you thought of writing a book about your observations?

Aunt Annie said...

Fabulous ideas for stimuli, thanks.

I came across the whole 'we can't measure this so let's put in some artificial markers' business very early in my career teaching music. How do you measure whether a child has composed a successful melody? A set of 'rules' for melody writing was imposed by 'the system', and marks taken off for breaching them. I used to delight in demonstrating to my students how Beethoven. Mozart, Schubert and so on failed the test repeatedly.

This marking method systemically discouraged exploration of sound, and so effectively stifled creativity in a creative subject. As teachers it's our job to detect these sorts of fallacies and fight them tooth and nail.

Thank you, Tom, for your continuing efforts to preserve creativity in our children.

A Little Creative said...

Love it!! I'm an art teacher who is choosing NOT to work in a school for such reasons... Instead I am running my own private art studio with classes for kids (www.alittlecreative.net.au)
- now all I have to do is convince some parents that art does not have to have a set 'pretty' outcome! - it is about fun and exploration and SO much learning by doing!

rachelle | tinkerlab said...

Yes, exploration and experimentation...two great words to describe what's going on here! Sometimes the word "project" is a good one -- when kids get an idea in their head that they want to execute on it becomes a project. And I love seeing those shots of the hands right in the paint. It seems that every painting exploration we undertake ends in just the same spirit!