Week 6 Response, courtesy of Claire

I missed this class, so Claire sent me her notes. Thanks Claire!



Notes from Clare Hilger
5 Oct 2010
Media and Materials

To begin:

Topic presented:
Pedagogy of Listening
• An approach used in Reggio Emilia
• Most important to listen to children talking, especially children talking
about art

Move onto:

Critique of 4 Letters
Brief explanation of how critique about everyone’s 4 letters will be structured—Aileen
assigns:
• 3 minutes per person to talk about his/her work
• Timer
• Critique leader
• Note taker
(I don’t have the notes from the crit note taker, as far as I know these were not posted
or emailed)

Aileen says little else about the critique or during the critique. She wanted it to be run
completely by the class.
• A chance to practice running a crit
• To make us think about how we talk about art—what language we use
• To model language you would want your students to use when talking about art
• A crit is a “conversation with a purpose” (not sure who said this…..)
• “I like it.” “Cool” “Awesome”—what not to say at a crit, not helping students
• Connect student work to other artists
• Read your students’ mood, can they handle a harsh comment?
• Words in a crit are powerful, think of how what you are saying will affect your
student
• “Always be on the side of the learner” Herb Kohl, educator in NY
• Duchamp and the Creative Act

To think about as the artist presenting their work at a crit:
• Present work with intention—think about how you set your work up;
backgrounds, placement, etc.

Move onto:

Dystopia topic for Graphic Novels
• Paracosm—a child’s invented world
• To portray Cataclysmic events, artists use metaphor, allegory, narrative (graphic
novels,) symbols, observational drawing
• Violence
• Ruins
• Aileen showed us an example of a graphic novel written and illustrated by a 7th
grade boy—amazing work, gifted artist. The boy comes from a poor family,
Aileen said art is how he plays

Dystopian artist examples:
Cormac McCarthy, author, The Road
Ai Weiwei, artist made work called “Oil Spills”
Felix Schramm, installation artist, made pieces that were
“exploding” out of gallery walls, conjuring ideas of disaster and
destruction
Christoph Buchel, artist installation work recreates aftermath of
(fictitious) disaster

Sketch Book

So here are a few more entries in my sketch book. I have been having a great time making these entries and have been really trying to experiment. So far none of my entries have used the same materials. One of these uses string and the other tape. I have also been mixing up the content. Some is based on something, others are purely abstract.



These embroidered feet were inspired by Margarita Cabrera, especially the way the ends of the string are shown. In the pictures of her work I posted last week, you can see her exposed ends. I had never done that before. It added so much to the overall piece that you can really see in real life.

Alphabet Video

This was so much fun to put together! Even though we didn't have themes it feels pretty cohesive for most of the pictures. I preferred the bright and colorful letters. The only letter I couldnt find from everyone's blog was the L, so I used google earth to take a picture of the Avenue L street sign in Brooklyn. The picture isn't very high quality, so I can try to substitute it and make a new video if necessary. I used iMovie to make the slideshow, mostly because I was familiar with it after taking Teaching Technology with Allison. So here it is!

Week 5 Response

One of the books in the classrom was "By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art" edited by Shu Hung and Joseph Magliaro. I found one artist that I was struck by, named Maragrita Cabrera. Here are "Pink Blender" (2002) and "Coffee Maker MIM" (2001) They are made of vinyl, thread, velcro, and appliance parts. I love the soft look and how she leaves the threads hanging from them. I'm thinking my sketchbook entry this week will be inspired by her work.




We talked about the use of emergent curriculum and responsive classroom. I like this idea of working together to listen to and be inspired by the students and their energy. It would also be kind of scary to just trust this to work and not have everything planned out. A lot can be accomplished by just listening to the students and asking what they think. Aileen said "Solicit the interest of children and follow them."

A couple weeks ago when looking at the sketchbooks Aileen cut out black paper viewfinder frames and laid them over the drawings. Last week we came up with two ways to move forward using the frames. We could choose one place that is interesting and zoom in on it in the next drawing. We could also move the frame around and use it to tell a story from the first drawing.

Alphabet project

This was a really fun project to do and I think students of any age would enjoy it. I made the letters R, which was sewn, A, which was collaged, F, which was found, and X, which was my choice of a photograph of legs. Here they are...

Another sketchbook page

Useful Links

Here is Aileen's flicker account of our work.

Here is the class blog.

Here is the teaching blog.

Here are links to everyone's individual blogs.