Cai Guo-Qiang, "Drawing for Transient Rainbow," 2003 Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York

I had no idea what to write about this week, so I asked my son, Paul…. He’s six.

“Write about words and art,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because words help explain art. You know, in case there’s some wacky drawing there, you know what it is,” he told me.

The kid’s right.

The soup de jour for galleries (not so much in museums, though) when it comes to avoiding all wall labels of any kind leaves me, well, speechless. I’m all for giving art an opportunity to work on my soul, but eventually I want some information to work with- a title, a name, the media. Please!

When it comes to teaching with contemporary art, it’s important to remember we’re always modeling and teaching, even through our displays and school exhibits. Students may very well create a wide variety of work that will elude even the most astute observer. Take opportunities (often) to include narratives, descriptions, and artist statements when exhibiting student work.

As Paul says, if you’re sharing “some wacky drawing”, it sure helps to have a little help understanding…

On a separate, yet important note: Rest in peace, John Parente. My mentor. Our teacher and friend. Your lessons live.

Jimmy Fallon as Neil and Bruce as Bruce circa 1985

Jimmy Fallon, in case you haven’t already seen this, does one hell of a Neil Young impression.

Recently I shared a video clip with one of my classes where Fallon, singing a Neil Young version of “Sexy and I Know It”, is joined by Bruce Springsteen in a duet of the song.

Crazy and fantastic performances like this are one of the things that keep me looking for new ways to inspire students. After watching the video, a few of us decided that Fallon was using a strategy employed by many artists, musicians, comedians and actors. Here he was, singing in a voice that makes you almost believe it IS Neil Young, and performing a song that Neil Young would never consider (or at least we hope). Because it was Fallon as Young singing LMFAO, it made the viewer/listener pay closer attention to the lyrics and the way the song was re-presented to the audience.

Artists such as Arturo Herrera, Mark Bradford, Paul McCarthy, John Baldessari, Jeff Koons, Laurie Simmons, Allora & Calzadilla, Eleanor Antin and even Gabriel Orozco employ a similar approach in some of their work. Each artist, in a unique way, juxtaposes elements we normally do not see together in order to make us pay a different kind of attention. In Fallon’s performance, you find yourself thinking about how the song has been given the “front porch treatment”. It feels more accessible, comical and silly than the original version, if that’s even possible, yet you wind up liking it even more each time you see it. Check it out here.

assume vivid astro focus, "assume vivid astro focus VII", 2003. Courtesy Deitch Projects, New York

Two questions that recently came up during the Art21 Educators panel at NAEA’s conference in NYC have got me thinking:

• How do we balance exploration of process, play & idea formation with technique and skill? I find that students get frustrated when they don’t have the skill to follow through with their ideas.
• How do you begin changing a traditional art department that is ALL SKILLS-BASED and get teachers on board?

Now let me tell you, there were a ton of good questions brought up at this particular session, and we will address a bunch in the coming weeks and months, but this particular set is quite popular right now so we might as well get into it.

Finding a balance between teaching specific skills and techniques with teaching about how to explore process in order to form and pursue ideas is not easy. If you teach in a culture (or department, or school, or district, or university…) that emphasizes skills and techniques as the “meat” of the curriculum, it’s probably a good idea to begin talking about the kinds of skills that everyone really considers “essential”. We all know it’s impossible to teach everything, even if you had classes for hours upon hours every day. What are the skills that the group feels are essential? This of course will vary from place to place and school to school, and it also has to be considered in context. My school, which offers lots of electives for high school students may very well come up with a different set of skills from another with different offerings, staff and students. But first, a frank discussion about the essential skills that should/could be taught is in order.

Once students have experience with these skills and actually practice them, even if they are bare-bones basic, it’s our responsibility to teach them to use these skills in order to explore ideas and important questions. Let’s face it, artists rarely if ever start works of art by saying something like, “I think I’ll make a piece about pointillism today.” But they may decide to utilize a stippling technique because it serves the idea they are exploring.

Similar to talking about essential skills that should be explored in a curriculum or art education program (and please keep in mind that I am streamlining a LOT here), educators then have to decide what kinds of big questions and themes can and should be explored. It all begins with discussions about how to do things differently and not accept the same old, same old “way we learned it.” I mean, while I certainly respect the way I learned about visual art growing up, I never really explored much more than representation until I got to college. And this really has to stop. Continue reading »

El Anatsui, "Group Photo", 1987. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

On Sunday, the National Art Education Association wrapped up their  52nd annual conference here in New York City and more than ever I am encouraged by the state of affairs at NAEA. In just the past four years, as Art21 has brought contemporary artists such as Mark Bradford, Carrie Mae Weems, Mark Dion and most recently, Janine Antoni and Oliver Herring, the change is noticeable.

This year, as I looked through the 1,000 workshops and presentations offered in the conference catalogue (?!), I noticed a deliberate shift from talking about an art education that’s driven by techniques or “the” elements and principles of design, to discussions and presentations driven by big ideas and questions about the nature of art education itself. Like a gift from the heavens there seemed to be far less offerings that proclaimed to save our school day through the creation of unicorns made from pipe cleaners (chenille stems!) or the merits of step-by step Peter Max paintings (and how many exactly thought his keynote bombed? The feedback was horrible. I wasn’t there but perhaps it’s better that way).

Quite a few teachers I spoke with continued the dialogue around striking a balance between teaching basic skills with teaching about ideas and allowing these ideas to drive works of art on all levels, including elementary school. And being careful not to throw out the baby with the bottled water is something I feel strongly about. While I can’t in good conscience ignore teaching fundamental skills, such as how to represent forms on paper or how to mix colors to achieve desired effects, the days of asking students to do “the Andy Warhol project” or “the Georgia O’Keeffe project”, where mimicry of a style or way of making is the sole focus of the assignment, seems to very slowly be coming to a close.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is reason to celebrate.

Other popular topics that kept surfacing during the packed four days included:

• How can teachers leave more room for process and place less emphasis on finished products?
• How will art educators be evaluated under new assessment models?
• Where do contemporary artists get ideas? How can students get ideas from very different sources (and not just Google)?
• How can art education play a larger role in teaching students to be critical viewers?
• Where are the opportunities in our curricula to slow students down, as well as ourselves, and get them to make more informed decisions about the important steps that lead to finished work?

Yes, it’s safe to say NAEA is making a slow turn. If you were there this past week, feel free to weigh in! What sparked your interest? What questions and ideas came up?

I recently presented at a conference at USC titled Art + the Mind: Neuroaesthetics, Phenomenology, and the Experience of Vision. I talked about the berserk vision of the Lewis Chessmen, and my co-presenters (four other grad students) covered subjects ranging from the historical conditions of viewing and its consequences in the 19th century museum, to Piranesi and occularcentrism, cinema and the intersubjectivity of attention, and spectatorship in Olafur Eliasson’s experiential installations.

The experience was a lot of fun (thanks for having me Karen, Megan, and Sam) and introduced me to a whole body of writing on neuroscience, visual culture, and experience that I hadn’t come across at the Graduate Center. Neuroscientist António Damásio (the director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC) and David Freedberg (Pierre Matisse Professor of Art History at Columbia) gave keynote addresses on the agency of art and their action on our neural pathways. Looking at an artwork causes our neurons to fire, triggering a physical, non-cognitive (or at least pre-cognitive) “mirror response,” what they termed an embodied reaction to artworks. Even if we don’t raise our hands in silent pledge when we see the Horatii raise theirs in Davids’s Oath, recent neuroscience experiments tell us that neurons fire in the region of the brain responsible for contracting the muscles in our arm and lifting our limb.

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Janine Antoni. Image: arts.columbia.edu

Below is part two of my recent interview with Janine Antoni in advance of her keynote address and workshop at the National Art Education Association’s annual conference here in New York from March 1-4. For part one of the interview, please click here.

Enjoy! See you later this week…

This Friday you will have about three thousand art educators from all over the country listening to your keynote address at the National Art Education Association’s annual conference. What do you most look forward to about participating in this year’s conference and what made you originally want to participate?

Janine Antoni: I want people to love art and appreciate the richness it can provide for one’s life. I see teachers as our first initiators. This introduction can set the stage for what a relationship with art can be. One does not need to be an artist to have one’s life enriched by art. Art provides an alternative way of learning that could be valuable in all aspects of our lives. Although I am far from a trained teacher of art, I feel that looking at an artist’s creative process can give clues about how to approach teaching art. It is a great pleasure and honor to be given the opportunity to share my practice with people that play this important role.

What other things will you be doing at the conference? You are also conducting a workshop. What will that be like?

JA: I’m particularly excited for the workshop. I have the opportunity to speak at art institutions and universities around the world and when possible I conduct a workshop rather then do studio visits. I am drawn to the workshop model as a way of generating and sharing ideas while creating an intimate atmosphere where people can engage in an inner search. For me, art isn’t necessarily about making things but about a way of thinking and accumulating tools for learning. The workshop will not be about how to teach art but to engage in the unknown.

Tell me more about how teachers will be “engaging with the unknown”. What kinds of things might they doing, or sharing with you, during that time? As someone who works with high school students every day, I think I have an idea about engaging with the unknown, but I’m not sure it’s the same kind you’re talking about…

JA: I want to approach the same subject matter from different perspectives: scientific, psychological, social, and emotional. The spaces we will create between these perspectives will allow for observation, contemplation, and interiority. The conclusions that we come to through this experience is unknown.

Many art educators find it difficult keeping an art practice and teaching practice going simultaneously. I often suggest to teachers there are ways to make connections between the two. What do you think? Does your art practice influence your teaching practice and vice versa?

JA: I’m drawn to teaching what I don’t already know. It allows me to treat the classroom as a space for exploration where my students and I learn together.  I try to look for questions that are relevant to us all. When we all contemplate the same questions, we accumulate approaches that broaden our perspectives. We all bring this back to our work in uniquely particular ways.

This is not unlike my approach to making art. By locating problems I identify questions that often draw me to unlikely materials and unknown approaches to making.

During our last conversation in 2009 you said, “I like to talk to my students about the importance of fantasy, because I think we all have a secret conversation with an imaginary viewer in our mind when making.” How might we encourage our students to engage in this kind of dialogue more often?

JA: I see teaching as working towards sharpening the skill of moving from the subjective to the objective and back again. For many of us our ideal viewers are ourselves. We engage in fantasy when we separate our making self from our viewing self. In teaching, I try to parallel this process by creating situations where we play out these two selves for each other.  It is this kind of fantasy that produces limber thinkers and makers.

Janine Antoni, "Lick and Lather" (detail), 1993

This week’s column features a new interview with Janine Antoni in advance of her upcoming keynote address and workshop at the National Art Education Association’s annual conference on March 2nd here in New York City.

As many of you already know, Antoni’s work blurs the distinction between performance art and sculpture. Using her body, she transforms everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and sleeping into ways of making art. She has chiseled cubes of lard and chocolate with her teeth, washed away the faces of soap busts made in her own likeness, and used the brainwave signals recorded while she dreamed at night as a pattern for weaving a blanket the following morning.

The second half of my interview with Janine will post next week. For links to both parts of our conversation from 2009 click here: part one & part two.

Enjoy!

Tell me about some of the things you have been focusing on at Columbia University since the last time we spoke. What course(s) are you teaching and what has the experience been like?

Janine Antoni: I’ve been teaching for the graduate program at Columbia University over the past 12 years in a very interesting program they’ve developed called the Master Class/ Mentor Groups.  The students chose two mentors from a pool of twelve artists from very different perspectives. It is a one-week workshop that happens every semester during their two years of graduate school. There is an intensity created from being together all day that leads to a kind of intimacy that’s very productive to teaching. Columbia has never instructed me on what to teach but the intention of the class is for the students to get into the mind of their chosen artist, allowing them to experience one way of being an artist in the world. This enables me to model the class alongside my current creative process and explorations. Over the years, after a lot of experimentation, I’ve slowly developed a methodology that seems to foster creativity in interesting ways. I create a loose theme for the week, and I vary the activities as much as possible. We make, we look, we move, we explore, we create dialog, and I intentionally create gaps between these approaches and the theme is never revealed. These gaps are created to allow the artists to find bridges in relationship to their work and interests. Again and again I am surprised at how their experience during mentor week triggers new work. The thing that I’m interested in is that the creative process is never in a straight line, so if you teach in a straight line you won’t get the best results. To create you have to be out on a limb and to teach requires the same risk.

Since you have a child in school now, I am wondering about your reactions to the art making experiences she has had so far. What kinds of things has she described when it comes to participating in “art class”?

JA: She rarely speaks about her art classes specifically. But the other day she told me that she’s the only one in her class that can cut a perfect circle. She wasn’t so interested in the fact that she perfected this craft but what she wanted me to know is that she could make a perfect circle as a lefty using a righty scissor. She instinctively invents a personal way of approaching all tasks. What’s important for me is that I value that personal approach in her and that her teachers have the sensitivity to do that as well. Continue reading »

Jethro Gillespie, his son and some friends at a TASK event

Over the past few weeks I’ve thoroughly enjoyed talking and e-mailing with two more of our current Art21 Educators, Jethro Gillespie and Jack Watson. Jethro teaches Studio Art, 3D Design, Ceramics and more at Maple Mountain High School in Utah while Jack teaches 2D Art and Art History at Chapel High School in North Carolina.

Similar to Julia Coppersmith and Maureen Hergott, whom I interviewed a few weeks back, Jethro and Jack have an infectious passion for the the things they teach and accomplish with students. Both look for ways to better engage their classes on a consistent basis and avoid “window dressing” projects that may look pretty but aren’t necessarily about very much…

Since participating in the summer institute, could you describe a significant change, improvement or extension of your teaching practice? Has the experience also in some way affected your own art making?

Jack Watson: There are lots of little ways that the Art21 experience works its way into my classroom – visual brainstorming with post-its, discussion prompts, the “parking lot” – but I think the most significant change to my pedagogy is reframing my curriculum within central questions, as opposed to objectives.  Like most teachers, I was trained to construct lessons rooted in standards with clearly defined objectives.  This is useful if you want your students to produce the same result, but frustrating and limited for working with open-ended ideas and contemporary art practices.  A framework of central questions opens the space to dialogue, ideas and possibilities.

As for my own practice, I’ve learned to embrace chance, and to focus more on the process than the product.  I think in particular of our visit to Oliver Herring’s studio in Brooklyn.  His work is so process-oriented, and he made such a strong impression on all of us that week.  I was most surprised that his studio was devoid of any of the trappings of a traditional artist’s studio: no easels, paints, etc.  Aside from some photos and a pile of TASK artifacts, I remember it being an open space full of possibilities- much like the classrooms we’re trying to create.  He might resist this metaphor, but it left an impression on me!

Jethro Gillespie: The most visible change in my own teaching since the summer institute is the inclusion of TASK parties. I’ve organized various TASK events with my own students at school and at 3 different conferences for fellow art educators since the summer institute. And to echo what Jack said, meeting Oliver Herring was for me probably the most memorable and inspiring part of that experience.

For me, TASK is so simple and so brilliant- I think the underlying, formative ideas behind TASK have to do with the relationship of the participants that engage with it, and also focusing more on the process than the product. As a teacher, having a TASK party with my students (right at the beginning of the school year) demonstrated and nurtured a genuine trust between me and my students, especially when it came to issues of power and control in the classroom.

In my first few years of teaching I tried to “manage” my class with some admittedly top-down, almost militant strategies in order to try and ‘control’ different situations. This ultimately left most kids feeling dis-empowered and often led to power struggles that I didn’t want to deal with. I’ve since tried to examine and focus my teaching practice on building a healthy and generative class environment in order to help students feel more empowered- especially when it comes to creating meaningful student art projects. Being involved with TASK has really helped me to re-examine my own teaching practice concerning these issues of relinquishing control in order to form relationships of trust with my students. And as an art teacher, TASK has also helped me shift my focus away from simply getting students to produce things, and towards getting students more involved with the process of creating.

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Fabulous designer Iris Apfel. Image: blog.mawi.co.uk

From March 1^st through March 4^th the National Art Education Association will hold their annual conference right here in New York City. Over 3,000 art educators from all levels, including myself, will descend upon The Hilton and Sheraton hotels in midtown and have the opportunity to attend hundreds upon hundreds of workshops offered by colleagues from close to everywhere across the country.

Here at Art21, we have a few very special things planned….

On Friday, March 2^nd at 8:30am Art21 is proud to present Janine Antoni’s keynote address, “Circuitous Path”, in the Hilton Grand Ballroom. As many of you already know, Janine Antoni employs a variety of mediums including performance, sculpture, photography and video. Her primary tool for making has always been her own body and she is known for using extreme processes and unusual materials. As an educator, Antoni is interested in teaching people ways to develop their individual creative process and will discuss her own art making as an example of the circuitous journey that one travels to arrive at a work of art.

At 12:00 noon, I will be co-presenting an offsite workshop at the Museum of Art and Design with Catherine Rosamond that focuses on teaching with contemporary art on film and in the museum gallery. While the workshop is already sold out, it never hurts to inquire at the NAEA information desk about any cancellations if you want to be in on the fun. Last year’s workshop with a similar focus at the Seattle Art Museum was wonderful.

Later Friday afternoon, at 3:30pm, we are excited about the “supersession” titled “Sown Within: A Performative Workshop with Janine Antoni” at the Sheraton’s Metropolitan Ballroom East. This workshop, led by Janine herself, will focus on the body as a tool for exploration and certainly promises to be a unique event!

To cap off Friday, Art21 is proud to participate in NAEA’s film salon and offer preview screenings of two new season 6 episodes. “Change” and “History” feature artists Ai Weiwei, El Anatsui, Catherine Opie, Marina Abramović, Mary Reid Kelley, and Glenn Ligon. All screenings will take place at the Hilton’s Concourse G- Lower Level. Check it out if you want a sneak peek at some of the segments before national broadcast.

On Saturday, March 3^rd at 9:00am in the Hilton Mercury Ballroom, Lois Hetland will moderate a conversation featuring a few of our outstanding past and present Art21 educators including Julia CopperSmith, Maureen Hergott , Anna Dean and Jocelyn Salaz. Participants will discuss case studies they created and changes in their teaching practice since taking part in the Art21 Educators program. This should be an excellent way to become familiar with the program for anyone interested.

Then, starting at 11:00am and continuing through 4:00pm on Saturday, Oliver Herring will kick off a huge TASK party in the Sheraton’s New York Ballroom East. Join Oliver and fellow educators for an unprecedented collaborative art experience. TASK is an improvisational, open-ended, participatory event with a simple structure and very few rules. It creates almost unlimited opportunities for a group of people to interact in a given space. TASK parties have been held throughout the world at museums, galleries, and schools but this will be the first-ever TASK event at an NAEA conference. Stick around afterward with Oliver and guests (including Dennis Greenwell, Karen Melvin, Kendra Paitz, Emmett Sandberg and Jack Watson) for a conversation moderated by our own Jessica Hamlin that focuses on “What is TASK and what can you do with It?” Teachers will share their experiences both participating in and organizing TASK events.

Finally, on Sunday, March 4^th at 10:00am in the Hilton Gramercy Suite A, artist LaToya Ruby Frazier will discuss the collaborative work with her family over the past nine years as well as her role as daughter, photographer and filmmaker. LaToya Frazier is currently featured in Art21’s new documentary film series, New York Close Up.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in just a few weeks…

Survey staple, the Woman of Willendorf. Just don't call her Venus....

Although I’d taught in the galleries at the Guggenheim before returning to school, when I began my academic program I also began my pedagogical baptism by fire, aka my teaching fellowship. I began where all other newbies start: with that strange, polymorphous beast, the art history survey. After my first semester, I realized that reinventing the wheel by writing each lecture from scratch was both time consuming and demoralizing, but that there was no standard, centralized pool of resources at CUNY that I could turn to as I learned the ropes. I had a great supervisor and generous peers (one of whom, Saisha Grayson, is co-developing parts of the this project) who could help out when I asked, but I began to imagine a permanent resource for all survey teachers that went beyond the supplementary teaching materials offered by Stokstad and Gardener, one that could be a dynamic, two-way street that built a community around it as it grew. How could everyone who was going through or had already passed the same initiation rite of teaching an art history survey (especially at CUNY colleges, where classes can be large and students are often ESL) help each other out, and leave resources for those who would follow in their footsteps?

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