Stairway to art

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Statement

In art and in life, you cannot reach the top automatically; there are many steps that you must take. You have to learn through practice, and once you have the concept down, you can move on to the next step. Often times students may try and skip steps, rushing to get to a particular goal, only to realize that what they have missed along the way was important. All stairs have a destination point, whether you are going up or down. With each flight of stairs you gain on your goal, but there will always be another flight ahead. Even though there are many different staircases (and arts) students will find that they all are connected and intertwined. While one stair may be old and worn, another modern and new, they both serve the same purpose. They both act as paths to get you to the point where you want to be.

Brainstorm

Sketches

The Art Room is Like a Rich Soil

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Statement

Art is seen by many as less academic than other school subjects, but without art instruction we do not provide students with the necessary environment for optimal growth and change.

Art instruction, like properly prepared soil, provides conditions favorable for students’ metamorphosis. When teachers, administrators, board members, parents, citizens, and business come together to fortify the soil of a quality art program, they forge a path toward students’ self-expression.

Community support, teacher training, and funds work to support the curriculum, like the rain and sun sustain trees and flowers.

Trees and flowers prevent erosion, provide shelter and nourishment for cicadas. Cicadas, like our students, need perfect conditions to reach their full potential. Art history, art materials, and knowledge of art processes nourish the creative soul.

The art room, a rich composite soil of contributors, provides an environment that is used and consumed by our children so, like the cicadas, they may grow, develop, and transform into better versions of themselves; individuals who are eager to bring flight, song, art, and joy to our world.

Brainstorm

Sketches

The weaver

Metaphoric Self-portrait

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Artist Statement

Artists are not born artists; they are developed. Through a weaving of experiences, influences and opportunities a child’s innate natural curiosity and creative gifts can be nurtured. A good teacher can and should act as a guide through this growth process. A master teacher understands this delicate balance between support, guidance and freedom. Using their own personal experiences and expertise to structure the learning environment the art teacher weaves together history, design, materials and processes to motivate and engage their students. Like a collection of brightly colored yarn each student responds and develops in their own unique way. Through choices and exploration the students construct their own knowledge and apply new meaning in their creative expressions. It is the ultimate goal of each art teacher to enrich a child’s future through opening doors of opportunity allowing their students to explore their own paths as creative individuals.

Brainstorming and Sketches

Original Sketches

Envision the Vision

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Statement

Education is a journey. It takes a long time to reach to the goal or accomplishment. No matter whom the individual, learners take many different paths like a rivers current going through education. Learners search for the goals using tools like people hunt. To go through the path is not easy. Like a river, it has a number of characteristics to go from one spot to the others. Sometimes, a river current can move fast to pass through an obstacle, and at others it flows slowly and takes its time. As becoming an art teacher, students need to go through the path of education, so they need guidance to help them on there journey. Like finding a star though a telescope, a teacher assists students using various tools and techniques as well as keeps them looking ahead to seek positive life results. All of these details are shaped and developed as well as viewed from ones own cultural background.

Brainstorm

Sketches

Art as a Treasure Hunt

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Artist Statement

Art class is like a treasure hunt. The students are the adventurers and the teacher is the map. The map guides the adventurers to the treasure and has information and tools, like a compass rose, the adventurers can use to help them on their journey. The map does not force the adventurers to use the tools; they must choose to use these themselves. On their quest for treasure, the adventurers will encounter many different things, have many new experiences, and acquire new skills. By the end of their journey, they will have changed. They will have grown as a class and as individuals. Treasure maps do not usually reveal what the treasure is, only that there is treasure to be found. Each journey is slightly different for each student and each class. Some journeys are more difficult than others and some are more enlightening. The treasure a student finds at the end of the journey depends upon the student: that is why this treasure map ends with a question mark. The student’s effort to work and willingness to learn determine the treasure he or she finds.

Sketches

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Brainstorming

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Apple Slices

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Statement

As the core subject for developing creativity, art enables students to develop the originality they will use throughout their life. Art helps students analyze the multiple aspects, perspectives, and possibilities of a piece of art.

An art educator is a giving facilitator, who works with all of the students and addresses the different needs and ideas of every student in the class. Just as an apple may be sliced and put back together to become a whole, art education becomes a whole when a fusion of creativity, production, history, and evaluation occurs. To have a successful art experience the art educator must be flexible, and continue to reflect on the various outcomes of each lesson. Through high expectations the art educator pushes students so they can fulfill their creative potential.

Art education, like athletics, is also a continuing learning process that demonstrates the importance of accomplishing skills to expand on new ones. Gymnastics is the art of strength and flexibility that requires dedication. This combination of dedication through flexibility and dynamic leadership strength is vital for an art educator to ensure a successful learning experience for the students.

Brainstorming

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Sketches

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The Key to the Door

Metaphorical Self-portrait

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Artist statement

A good education can open doors in a child's life providing a brighter future with more choice and more chance for success. Art Education can provide the tools needed to open these doors to new learning and new understanding. A quality k-12 curriculum must include a strong art program beginning in the earliest grades. Through the arts students can make visual connections between what they can imagine and create with their hands in art class, and what is learned in math, science, and language arts. Developing creative thinking through the arts helps to make complex concepts make sense on a new level, thus making academic success achievable to a wider range of students.

An art teacher provides the key to the door. He or she facilitates an environment that allows creative thinking skills to flourish. By offering the tools, demonstrating the concepts, making the connections, sharing the history, and allowing the students to experience the materials, the art teacher hands over the keys to unlock the doors of the future.

Brainstorming

Sketches

Expanding Thoughts

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Artist Statement

My metaphoric self-portrait is based on the idea of the universe. This is done because it also relates to my art philosophy. The idea of using the universe came about from always furthering our knowledge as teachers. We need to be up to date on artists, movements, styles, methodology, and materials. This relates to the scientific theory that the universe is expanding, well at least our knowledge about the universe is still expanding. The images in the foreground also relate back to my teaching philosophy and who I want to be as a teacher. The male figure represents all of my students he is looking into a galaxy, and the information that he is seeing is being produced on the left side of the image. These are images from art history both western and non-western cultures are being represented. Global art images are used because I believe that through art we can create a global community by interoperating and understanding the art of other cultures. This is visually who I am and who I want to be as a teacher.

My BrainstormClick on the image to see an enlarged view.
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SketchesClick on image to see an enlarged view.Click on image to see an enlarged view.

Nathan Detroit: Art as History, History as Art

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Metaphoric Self-Portrait

I’m a strong proponent of the idea that in order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been. History has always been my favorite subject in school, and I believe in a strong relationship between the production and history of art.

My metaphoric self-portrait reflects this as the gallery at the bottom represents the contemporary art culture, while the books and ivy represent history. I have chosen a few of my favorite artists to act as “ghosts” of the art past: Jean Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Auguste Rodin. Historically speaking, these four artists have played the most important role in my development as an artist, and I wish to share their history with others. The blue figure has always been a representation of myself in my artwork. His brain is exposed to the viewer, presenting the idea that the knowledge contained inside is accessible, as it will be to my students. The Warhol Banana halo represents my idea that studying Pop Art provides the best training and preparation for contemporary artists to reflect on the society in which they live.

My Kid Pix Sketches

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My Brainstorm Ideas

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Untouched

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Statement: The Untouchable

One of the most important factors in the portrait is the abundant connection to nature. Nature is the original art form, always in change. This is why there is snow, ice, rocks, leaves, sun, grass, sand, and fire incorporated into the portrait. These items are free to design themselves; artists can manipulate nature but cannot create it. This will be the message to the student’s; no matter what type of art they might produce, the reference comes back to nature. Nature is ever-changing, unique, and original. Also included in the portrait are some of my ceramic works. It is important to express to student’s what I have achieved, and incorporate that as an example of what I see in nature in my own works. In addition, the setting in which the portrait takes place, is a place of comfort. A true sense of security is what a classroom should demonstrate. Student’s can learn so much from nature and the environment around them, in a comfortable setting where we are a community.

My Brainstorming Ideas

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My Sketches

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Admiral Ahu and the Airship Astounding: Art as Adventure

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Statement: Art Education as Adventure

More than any other subject area, art education is an adventure into the fantastic. In today’s highly structured and concrete educational system, learning is frequently a bleak and passive experience where students are not given the freedom to think outside the limits of a standardized test. However, once they travel from their cold gray world to the vibrant sphere of the arts, everything changes. Suddenly, learners are encouraged to imagine, to create, and to consider realities outside of their own. Like sailors of old seeing mermaids in sea cows, it instills a sense of wonder in the world, the ability to suspend belief and truly feel that anything is possible. An luminous airship that takes us to legendary places existing only in our imaginations - where mythical beasts run free, a giant pufferfish acts as a balloon, and Ganesha is your co-pilot – the art classroom is a vessel of discovery. The thrill of innovation, the joy of charting the uncharted – this is what drives us to learn, experience, and grow.

Brainstorming

Concealing to Revealing

Metaphoric Self-Portrait

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Metaphoric Self-Portrait Statement

This metaphoric self-portrait is meant to be a reflection of my thoughts on art and, more precisely, art education. The basic idea is that art for me is an expression my feelings and thoughts, the bare roots of who I really am as an individual. This is represented by the naked crouching figures with the skeletons inside of them. The naked figures crouch as if they are hiding something, something deep inside and very important to them, the skeletal roots that make them who they are. The circle and sign in the middle of the portrait represent school and art education. Art classes sometimes have tight parameters and seem limiting and constricting, but when one is willing to work within certain restrictions and learn the methods taught there, the sky becomes the limit for the art they will be able create. The muscle sculptures thus represent the artistic strength one will gain after completing school. No longer crouched and concealing like the foreground figures, the muscle figures are not afraid to express to anyone who and what they are under the skin. This statement holds true for an artist as well.

Sketches

Brainstorm

Metaphoric Self-Portrait Brainstorming

Initially, both of my ideas were stuck on incorporating music into the work. Whenever I do art I have to be listening to music, my ideas just flow better and I'm more patient when I have music playing. However, after sitting down and thinking for some time, I decided that although music is very helpful to have around when I am create art, it didn't really deal with my thoughts on art education and development as an artist (unless one's a musician obviously!). Instead, the final portrait only included elements which dealt with my philosophies about the role school and teaching plays in the development of an artist. I decided to go with the more organic background from the second brainstorm idea, due to the fact that the earth is what has created us, and more importantly has given to us our organic nature. In my opinion, this organic nature is what drives us to be creative and artistic as we continuously attempt to adapt to and then manipulate our surroundings, leaving our footprints as we go. It thus seems not only appropriate, but actually necessary to use the organic background upon which the rest of the portrait sits.

The Way of Art

Metaphoric Self-portrait

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Metaphoric Self-portrait Artist Statement

Children need scaffolding and ways to reach higher levels of learning. Art education is the perfect platform for this process. Building on the knowledge through sequential classes where students learn skills, become meaning makers and eventually achieve a sense of self is represented by the stairs of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The higher one gets in the museum the higher the cognition is required.

Art Education has the unique ability to consistently make connections for their students. This aids students in achieving through critical thinking and problem solving and broadens their scope of possibilities. By providing students a base, represented by the tree of knowledge, students will see that there are many choices. After the age of 12, students prune their trees' to make a sense of self and develop to the next level. Making art a necessary tool since one creates oneself.

In order for this to happen Art Educators have to foster kindness and support in a safe and peaceful environment for students. Art Education needs to help our students become not only skillful and critical thinkers but visually literate of other cultures and the global community we live in today.

Brainstorming

Sketches