I wondered how I might provide students with the space to linger in the ambiguity of the creative process; a place where they could play with materials and develop ideas. Students need time built into the curriculum for sustained inquiry—brainstorming ideas, collecting information, designing projects, experimenting with materials, and receiving feedback to reflect on and refine their ideas.
In today’s instant world, where technology and culture stream and change at the speed of light, middle-school students can easily become preoccupied with the finished result of their art endeavors, rather than discovering and learning from the process of creating.
I wondered how I might provide students with the space to linger in the ambiguity of the creative process; a place where they could play with materials and develop ideas. Students need time built into the curriculum for sustained inquiry—brainstorming ideas, collecting information, designing projects, experimenting with materials, and receiving feedback to reflect on and refine their ideas.
Looking to Contemporary Artists
Developing a curriculum fueled by individual student interest and material exploration led me to explore the ways that contemporary artists approach creativity and production might fuel my own students’ work. Contemporary artists often choose unconventional presentation styles, media, and locations.
The materials stocked in my cupboards limited my students in many ways to the four edges of a canvas, paper, or pedestal top. I began researching contemporary artists’ material selection. I also began looking for contemporary artists who could inspire students to step outside those four edges of the paper, canvas, and pedestal top.
Gathering like an Artist
My research led me to attend the 2019 Art21 Educators Institute in New York City. After that experience, I felt equipped to curate groupings of contemporary artist video clips, interviews, and specific artworks focusing on a particular inquiry.
One artist who helped students reconsider material choice and meaning making was Daniel Lind-Ramos. His work covers topics rich in history and current events. His material choices range from altered baseball mitts and FEMA tarps to coconuts carefully composed into visually alluring figures. Responding to this artist’s focus on materials and the meaning in his work led my students to gather, collect, and experiment. My curriculum became more responsive to student inquiry as a result, and choice in material selections increased.
Media Explorations
Designing curriculum in which students are the curators of ideas became a balancing act. In addition to speeding up our skill-building exercises with traditional studio materials and techniques, I began conducting fast media exploration challenges. Sometimes students were tasked with using conventional media in a new way. Other challenges involved composition, layering, collaging, and transferring.
In one challenge, students were tasked with matching an unconventional material with an idea and experimenting with combinations, alterations, additions, or even the permanence of the material. I encouraged students to explore both the physicality and meaning materials inherently bring to an artwork.
Each subsequent semester and school year, students became more empowered choice makers through activities that deliberately promoted play. They began using conventional materials in new ways and brought materials to class such as old toys and dance shoes.
Another important component of the process was to consider what unconventional tools students might need to support new ways to create. We considered binders we could use to attach items, and tools we might need for disassembling them.
Gathering like a Teacher-Researcher
Throughout these processes, students were excited and engaged, driven by their own interests and curiosities. This emboldened me to search for more ways to include contemporary art in the curriculum. Along the way, students documented their work in their sketchbooks. Observing their experimentation and brainstorming provided me with the data I needed to confirm the benefits of student-driven curriculum.
An example in action emerged from the work of Claire, an eighth-grade art student engaged in an extended inquiry into “Fast Fashion.” She collected resources, conducted research, composed ideas, considered feedback, and experimented with materials. Her designs evolved with each iteration. Influenced by the meaningful objects that Lind-Ramos used in his sculptural figures, Claire sought to bring the same meaning to her own art. Creating her own delicately brittle, semi-transparent paper, Claire carefully layered and hand-stitched fragments together, visually representing the metaphorical layers of her concept.
Students recorded their creative process in their sketchbooks and took photos of their experiments. This material provided a visual portal into their thinking and idea development and was displayed with their final artwork. I plan to continue collecting data about how my students engage with both conventional and unconventional art materials in order to enrich their experience through an evolving contemporary art curriculum.
Jennifer Bockerman teaches visual arts and conceptual design for Lincoln Public Schools. JenniferBockerman@gmail.com
National Standard
Creating: Conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work.
Resource
Daniel Lind-Ramos
Art teachers spark curiosity through lessons that encourage material exploration, play, and reflection. Young students create flower petal prints inspired by Andy Warhol, elementary students collaborate to tell stories through installation and photography, middle-school students reconsider material choices and embrace a curriculum that encourages play, high-school students create reflective artworks based on visual journaling exercises, and more.
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