April 2015 – kitchentableprinter

Why Make Art?

Published on April 28, 2015 by printmakertracyLeave a comment

I was visiting our local craft studio last week. I have a gift certificate from my former employer (you can buy their awesome socks here.) I have been wanting to turn my prints into jewelry and I wasn’t sure which jewelry making class to take, so I talked to the teacher in charge of the metals studio. Well, I must have said something annoying because she came out with some harsh opinions, one of which was:

You had better know why you want to make jewelry otherwise you’re just making stuff, and the world doesn’t need more stuff.

Strangely, this made me really want to take a class from her. It also got me thinking. Why make art?

I doubt that I will make lots of money selling my art and I no longer harbor illusions that I will become famous for my art. I’m not even sure I have the time and money necessary to learn another skill well. So why make art?

1. I feel like it’s important to see and express beauty in the world. It’s almost like making a daily gratitude list: the action of doing it changes my thoughts and the way I perceive the world. I love the Bertholt Brecht quote:

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.

I would argue that it’s both. By reflecting selectively (as we must, or we’re merely recording devices) we can choose what we remember or where our minds rest. We can stop time and record an idea into human consciousness. We have a responsibility to be intentional about that because we are creating our reality and affecting others. Also, what we choose to create informs us about our values so we can shape our futures with greater integrity. Which brings me to my second reason . . .

2. I create art to connect with other people. The reason I walked into that metals studio is that even though I am primarily a printmaker, I feel a strong desire to wear my artwork. I want to wear my artwork because I want people to know something about me when they see me. I want them to know who I am, what I stand for, and what’s important to me. I want to remember it too (it’s so easy to forget!) So making art is a means of self expression, but it’s also a way to connect with others–to find my tribe.

3. The third reason I make art is one I am newly cultivating, but I think it’s an important one. I make art to hold a space in our present culture for art, because it enhances my appreciation for the work of others, and to pass on my skills to others. When my children first began taking violin lessons, this was an idea brought up by the owner of the local strings rental studio. I sort of knew my kids probably wouldn’t become professionals, so I wasn’t sure how much musical training made sense for them. What this man told me was that we give our children music lessons not only so they can perform, but also so they can be part of a generation of informed/appreciative audience members. That made a lot of sense to me. I also came across this idea last weekend at a singing workshop I took. The leader spoke quite eloquently about the music we were learning being an oral tradition, and our responsibility in carrying it forward. I know for a fact that even though I may not be a perfect practitioner of art, music, or math, I can be a conduit of knowledge for the next generation. And that is reason enough for me!

What are your reasons for making art?

Kahn Academy is Distance Learning

Published on April 23, 2015 by printmakertracyLeave a comment

There is a trend emerging in our local elementary and high schools to use Kahn Academy and other online learning resources to supplement or replace classroom instruction in math. I understand the attraction. At the small schools in the region where I live you tend to see a wide range of abilities in students. There are simply not enough resources to create different classes for kids who learn at different speeds. By using an online curriculum, kids are free to work at their own pace. The faster students can barrel ahead, while the slower ones can re-play a lecture to reinforce a concept that didn’t come through the first time. There is the potential to minimize classroom management issues and maximize everyone’s productivity–sounds like a win-win.

However, what teachers and administrators who jump to embrace this new way of teaching need to realize is the importance of the real time teacher-student relationship in learning. Relationship is another important way to make information sticky. A teacher, teaching in real time, can intuit moments of confusion, enlightenment, or boredom in a way that a computer never can. A good teacher can leverage those moments to propel or pause a lesson, to engage or disengage students from on another, in order to broaden the education of the whole class. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I believe it’s an art worth striving to master–and that is lost when we rely upon online learning.

Most of the students I’ve talked to emphatically do not like learning from Kahn Academy or other video lectures, whether they find math inherently easy or difficult. The online lectures are good as a back up or reinforcement, but as the primary source for content they are disorienting. Most teenagers (especially the ones who struggle with math) are not good at knowing whether or not they have mastered a concept, and what they need to learn next. The computer algorithms that attempt to figure that out from them are flawed and impersonal. There’s also the HUGE problem that when a student doesn’t understand something in a lecture, he or she can’t ask the video a question. Most teachers know that when your student doesn’t understand what you said, repeating it word for word is generally not going to help. There are also a million other factors that affect how receptive someone is to learning–human relationships are all about meeting and welcoming the ineffable. And that’s all part of education.

I think that Kahn Academy and other online learning tools are a great resource as long as you see them for what they are: distance learning. They can be really helpful if you’re in a situation where you don’t have access to a classroom and a live teacher: studying while working full time, recovering from an illness, or traveling. But if you have a choice, it makes much more sense to choose live human teachers as the means for teaching math and all other subjects. In addition to classrooms, textbooks, and instruction, I believe human contact is critical to quality learning.

Art, Education and Math–What’s the Connection?

Published on April 18, 2015 by printmakertracyLeave a comment

Stickyness.

In addition to being an artist I am a math teacher. I often struggle with deciding whether I am more of an artist or more of a math teacher, but at the moment I am surrendering the struggle to explore areas where the two overlap.

I was working with a tutoring student last year who was having a hard time memorizing vocabulary words on flashcards. She was getting frustrated and she said to me, “The words go in but then they fall right out–they’re just not sticking.” Immediately I thought of Malcolm Gladwell’s book on social trends, The Tipping Point, where he explores the importance of stickyness in making a message memorable. I also thought of a class I took called Teaching to the Adolescent Brain where I learned that for information to be stored in deep memory it has to pass through the region of the brain called the amygdala–also the processing point of emotion and basic fight or flight instincts. These two different ideas combined and I realized that my job as a teacher is to help make information “sticky.”

There are many ways to do this–some better than others. And different sticking techniques will work for different people. I happen to be a very visual person, so color is one of my favorites. After learning a little about Goethean color theory at a summer class on Anthroposophy and Art, I also believe that color carries archetypal emotional content and meaning. Blue is peaceful, red is dynamic, yellow is uplifting. My student tried color coding the vocabulary words to correspond with the part of speech (blue for nouns, red for verbs and green for adjectives.) It takes more work to make information sticky (especially if it’s a topic you don’t particularly care for), but a little effort in the right direction will go a long way.

I’ll explore more in subsequent posts–meanwhile I invite you to ponder: What makes information sticky for you?