Iceland Academy of the Arts Spring 2012 Media and Materials: From the Studio to the Classroom Instructor:

Aileen Wilson http://about.me/AileenWilson Email: awilson2@pratt.edu 1) Course website: http://fromstudiotoclassroom.weebly.com Password: fulbright 3) Class size: 15. A materials list will be available 3/30. Course Description Through a consideration of the themes, practices and concerns of contemporary art, pre-service teachers will learn how to adapt and translate these ideas for educational settings with children and adolescents. Various themes, practices and concerns become the motivation for exploring the processes, properties and expressive uses of a range of materials, particularly found and recycled materials. This course develops the kind of thinking that is not imitative of the themes, practices and concerns in contemporary art but rather supports the idea of adaptation, translation and the production of new meaning. Students will work with a range of materials and look at ways of structuring and motivating groups of children and adolescents in those materials. The class will combine short lectures, demonstrations, group work, one on one instruction, hands-on instruction in the studio. The project motivations take literally the idea that we live in the images of our culture (Carter, 2008, p. 100). Objectives: Upon completion of this course students will have:

Explored the processes, properties and expressive uses of a range of materials Developed a broad knowledge of materials and how to use these materials with a variety of school age populations Refined skills in adapting materials including found and recycled materials for use in a variety of classroom/studio settings Researched contemporary materials used in the visual arts Learned how to adapt a lesson idea for different age groups through an understanding of different materials and themes Developed strategies for effective organization and distribution of art materials and how this impacts on instruction Discovered the possibilities of childrens artistic expression

As Evident from the Following Activities and Assignments with Related Learning Outcomes Assessment: Please note that the class is PASS/FAIL. Formative portfolio: all studio work and assignments 3

Assessment: Student, teacher, peer review and critique Summative portfolio #1 Assignment #1 #2 Assignment #2 (to be discussed in class) Assessment: Peer/Instructor review and critique Attendance to all sessions is required. N.B. Please note that the syllabus is a plan of what might happen but is likely to change in response to your own interests and ideas that emerge during the course. It is your responsibility to keep up with any changes. Session 1 3/30
Whats most desirable is to fashion instructional activities that have the students examining, reflecting, questioning, and responding to the important issues of their world by engaging with the concepts and inquiry that spurred the artists thinking and art making. What you dont want is for students to simply re-create the form of the artists works. The goal of basing curriculum in contemporary art is to engage students with current culture, not to replicate 25 or so mini-versions of the artists work. Melinda M. Mayer, Considerations for a contemporary art curriculum. Artists must remain responsive to inklings of energy in the culture. Mark Dion, artist

Welcome. Introduction. Introduction of website. Review of course requirements, assignments and documentation. Complete consents for work to be used. Theme: Dystopia: Contemporary Ruins and Disappearing Places Short project: Books structures/paper cuts/graphic novels/books without words. Worksheet # Graphic Novel. Discuss Assignment#1 Studio Project: Recontextualizing toys in micro-worlds/Staged photographs. Motivation: Photographers documenting-New Jersey, Detroit, East Germany. Newspaper images of current disasters, environmental issues, Prattfolio on Sustainability, paper cutting, comics/cartoons/books without words. Artists and Ideas: Anslem Keifer, Chris Jordan, Liu Jianhua, Liliana Porter, Slinkachu and more. Critique: What can we take from this into our work with children and adolescents? Complete worksheet and images for graphic novel Assignment #1. Session 2 4/2/2012

teaching about contemporary art involves making links with other areas of knowledge. Artists today explore science, literature, history, robotics, medicine and forensic science with great fascination. The study of contemporary art can no longer be contained within the narrow confines of the western or modernist canon and for some this involves a degree of

anxiety as the subject art makes potential curriculum links with subjects such as science, literature, history and social studies. When the subject art moves into the sphere of visual culture it does demand that art rethink the very boundaries of the subject. Lee Emery, Art Education in a postmodern world

Assemble hand-made books. Continue Theme: Dystopia: Contemporary Ruins and Disappearing Places Studio Project: Re-contextualizing toys in micro-worlds/Staged photographs. Assignment: photograph work and email to awilson2@pratt.edu Session 3 4/3/2012

[Postmodern art teachers] see their task as intermingling their knowledge of art with that of their students such that all parties arrive together at a new place. Fehr, D. (1994) Studies in Art Education 35, 4. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Theme: Fragmented Body: Turning Inside Out Short project: Folder for prints 9x9. Studio work: Hand printmaking, Stations x4 1) collagraph with motivation 1; 2) collagraph with motivation 2; 3) corrugated card; 4) oil based ink and watercolor / Casting body parts. Motivation: Slideshow of cell imagery, surgery models, childrens books. Artists and Ideas: Welcome Trust, London; Antony Gormley, Magdalena Abakamowicz, Kiki Smith, Mona Hatoum -video of the esophagus, Oliver Harring: Gloria-photo sculpture Art 21; Mark Quinns piece from the Sensation Show; Shiran Neshrat. Assignment: Photograph all work to date, sign/title all prints.. Session 4 4/4/2011
The art world is now like Wikipedia: It is vast, multilingual, collaborative, inconsistent, contradictory, and coming from everywhere. As with Wikipedia, anyone can participateIt means discerning the original from the derivative, the inspired from the smart, the remarkable from the common, and not looking at art in narrow, academic, or objective ways. It means emerging uncertainty and contingency, suspending disbelief, and trying to create a place for doubt, unpredictability, curiosity and openness. Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine.

Theme: Home: Space and Place Short project: Mapping/Paths Studio Project: Structures + Forms; Motivation: Home Sweet Home Project; Vyzoviti, S. (2003) Folding architecture: Spatial, structural and organizational diagrams. California: Gingko Press; Blog entry @ http://www.fromstudiotoclassroom.com/2010/02/home.html 3

Artists and Ideas: Exhibition and display; Catalogues and brochures Critique: What can we take from this into our work with children and adolescents? Reflection: Complete three reflection sheets (one for each theme); Photograph all work. Final thoughts.

References Als, H. eds. (2000) Drawing us in: How we experience visual art. MA: Beacon Press. Blanciak, F. (2008) Siteless: 1001 building forms. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Emery, L. (ed.) (2002) Teaching art in a postmodern world. Australia: Common Ground Publishing.

Glen, J. & Hayes, C. (2006) Taking things seriously: 75 objects with unexpected significance. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Harmon, K. (2004) Personal geographies and other maps of the imagination. New York: Princeton Architectural press. Harding, A. (ed.) (2005). Magic moments: Collaboration between artists and young people. London: Black Dog Publishing Hoptman, L. (2002). Drawing now: Eight propositions. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Ivashkevich, O. (2006) Drawing in childrens lives in J. Feinburg (ed.) When we were young: New perspectives on the art of the child (University of California Press), 45-59. Jacob, M.J. & Grabner, M. (eds.) ( 2010) The Studio Reader: On the space of artists. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Lesko, N (2001). Act your age! A cultural construction of adolescence. New York and London: Routledge Falmer. Mathews, J. (1999). The art of childhood and adolescence: The construction of meaning. London and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Nesbett, P. & Andreas, S. (2006) Letters to a young artist. New York: Darte Publishing. New, J. (2005). Drawing from life: The journal as art. NY: Princeton Architectural Press. Robertson, J. & McDaniel, C. (2005) Themes of contemporary art: Visual art after 1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, K. (2007) Wreck this journal. New York: Penguin Group (Inc). Turkle. S. (2007) Evocative objects: Things we think with. MA: The MIT Press. Vyzoviti, S. (2003) Folding architecture: Spatial, structural and organizational diagrams. California: Gingko Press Weintraub, L. (2003) Making contemporary art: How todays artists think and work. Thames & Hudson: London