Developing a Repertoire of Skills for Visual Perception and Artistic Response

Within the Caroll text the first section "Drawing on Imagination, Memory and Experience" and the last section "Reflecting on Perceiving and Responding Visually" really stood out to me the most. I think that being able to go inside your mind and trust your own imagination and ideas is something that people tend to lose confidence in their ability to do somewhere along the line. By middle school kids seem to think that they can't come up with their own ideas anymore. A lot of the school day is not about coming up with your own ideas, but art is. The fist section in Caroll discusses strategies and the value of having students use their imagination and memory recall to create imagery and realize personally significant ideas and subjects. I also read an article by Rudolf Arnheim called "Perceiving, Thinking, Forming" (which honestly was not really about what I expected it to be about) in it he says, "A piece of work that has not mobolized the entire potential of thinking, perceiving, and forming... will not give [a student] the experience of what it is like to invest one's best powers in any field of application and what can be achieved by doing so." Arnheim expresses that by using higher level thinking skills students will  recognizing and appreciate their own potential. These articles stress the importance of guiding kids through developing imagery from their mind. I think that a few people in class might have some experience in successfully moving kids through this type of art making process (Did Amy Rupp do the daydream lesson?). I would be interested to know if they were originally meet with fear and self-doubt and tif they have any tips for success

Also on this topic...I have had a book for years, that I had never picked up until yesterday, by David Lynch called "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity." In this book he made an interesting statement that seems pertinent. He says, "Little fish swim on the surface, but the big ones swim down below. If you can expand the container you're fishing in - your consciousness - you can catch bigger fish (27)." While telling kids to expand their consciousness to come up with ideas is probably not very helpful, I think that scafollded lessons on using memory, recall, and imagination can help them to do this by pushing them to trust the power of their own minds and exercising their ability to create.

One last tid bit on this, yesterday I watched this Ted Talk from David Kelly on building your creative confidence, that I feel is also pertinent to this discussion. It's not specifically about art, but rather general creativity.

Art 21 Lesson Idea:

I watched the the Art 21 segment on Mary Heilmann in the big idea of Fantasy. In this video she discusses how she uses color as inspiration. She goes on to say that The Simpsons and other cartoon inspire her work, particularly is their use of color. She discusses a scene from The Simpsons when Marge is standing in a pink room and how the beautiful use of the shades of pink overwhelmed her senses. I think that this would be interesting for students to hear how even something like a moment in a  cartoon can become inspiration. 

First depending on the age of the students I might read Pink-a-licious. Then I would have them watch the segment of Art 21 on Mary Heilmann. We could then close our eyes and think first about different colors as a group. For example, I might tell them to picture the color red...What is the first thing they think of? What do they associate with different colors? Then I would ask them to think of a time when they were overwhelmed by a single color. Off the top of my head for me it would probably be when I was driving through the mountains in Oregon. Everything was green. So many shades of green. Even the tree bark was green, not brown and you couldn't really see the sky because the trees were so tall.

Then we color make painting of this color inspiration using their one color. This could tie in as a lesson on tints, shades, and monochromatic color. Another option might be to use some kind of dough or clay and use food coloring to tint it different shades and then create a monochromatic sculpture. 

Big Idea: Inspiration

How will you help students connect the enduring idea (Art:21Theme) to the students’ lives?
We will think of examples from our own minds and consider how something even like TV can inspire art. 

How will you build the students’ knowledge base about the enduring idea as it relates to other content areas as well as to life? (authentic arts integration) We could discuss how we need to trust our minds to produce ideas and that their are strategies for idea generation, such as brainstorming or questioning. Ideas don't come from thin air, but we need to practice this skill. This site might be cool to look at. http://www.inventor-strategies.com/latest-inventions.html. It explains new inventions and sometimes has good quotes from their inventors about the invention process.

How will you build the students’ knowledge base about the enduring idea as it occurs in art (art criticism, art history, aesthetics)? We will look at Art 21 and some cartoons. We will look at different sources of aesthetic inspiration and consider how imagination has affected these. In cartoons for example, what parts are true to life and what parts are not? 

How will you engage students with exploring, questioning, and problematizing the enduring idea through artmaking? By guiding them through their own memories and turning memory and imagination into product.