Identity through art
Making Marks
I consider art-making to be an adventure of creating marks. Marks can be line, shapes, color, movements, affects, thoughts, or even accidents. My students and I make art by transforming materials and ideas into visual expressions that send a message. The creative process is like play, in that children are experimenting, imitating, and testing out what the world has presented to them. In my classroom students spread their time across brainstorming, sketching, art-making, and reflection.
I view art as the first language. From the early years in human history, as discovered in the Lascaux caves of France, pictures were used to communicate. The language of pictures spans the constraints of spoken and written language, allowing communication between people of different walks of life or cultures.
Creating images or objects allows my student to think visually, to express their thoughts, and to learn by making changes to the space around them. This can be drawing a line across the paper, or curating their own collection of artworks, sketches, and inspirations. Art is a class about an activity; by physically doing, art-making is appealing to a wide spectrum of learners. As artists, students are synthesizing the imagery and experiences they have before them into an understandable visual sentence or story.
The scribble
Every child in their early stages of development makes scribbles. I am talking about those chaotic and fast marks made on a drawing surface; whether they be circular or linear, the scribble is an important stage of development in children and has been the study of many theories. The benefit to allowing this stage to prosper in children has shown to be positive. In the book Analyzing Children’s Art, Kellogg states, “Adults who encourage copywork and who forbid spontaneous scribbling may harm the child’s development in learning as well as in art. My observations of children suggest that the child who has frequent opportunity to draw without adult interference learns faster and increases his cognitive ability more that he would if he were denied opportunity.”10 I believe that the proper development and exploitation of this new ability is greatly beneficial to the development of the child as a learner and individual.
To the parents of my students I explain to them that the scribble is an essential step to take. I would like to see scribbling phased out by the time students come to me in kindergarten but this is not always the case. Children should naturally be done with their scribbling stage towards their fourth birthday if given enough opportunity to experiment and create. When a parent is concerned with the amount of scribbling their child does at age five or six, I explain to them that it is my interpretation that each child has a pre-set amount of scribbling that must come out. Some students may scribble from age two to four, gradually upping their artistic ability as they become more aware at the world around them, while others might get over the scribble quite quickly. I phrase it in hours for my students’ parents; some students need 100 hours, while some need 500. To help the phase along I suggest providing their child with different art materials and drawing surfaces.
The scribbling stage begins as an amazing discovery for the child. The child discovers that they have the ability to make a mark, or to change their world. This amazement can be argued to burn eternally in artists for a whole career as they pursue their craft. Using their newfound techniques, the child may explore different scribbling directions, amounts, and surfaces. Sometimes this exploration leads children to draw on other objects like books, the walls, and themselves, in their testing of their new ability. The enlightened scribbler now has an idea of the effect they have on their environment and the ability to change it.
Collecting
Children of all ages collect and save a variety of, what may seem to the outside eye, random and assorted stuff. From trading cards to rocks, children are naturally born collectors. Why do we collect things? We are all guilty of acquiring items that for one reason or another mean something to us. From a psychological point of view collecting has been described as “…[a] quest, in some cases a life-long pursuit that is never complete. Additional collector motivations include psychological security, filling a void in a sense of self. Or it could be to claim a means to distinction, much as uniforms make the ‘man. ‘Collections could be a means to immortality or fame...”11 There are a number of reason we all begin collecting. I consider my collections of random findings to be a great part of myself. As an artist, I often visit my collection when I need to focus or adjust my thought. Being around my personal narrative of items creates a great sense of comfort and familiarity. I have a growing collection of artwork, objects, and visual memories from places I visit or people I know. This personal curation is loaded with my individual aesthetic and creative interest. This desire to collect things of personal interest can be seen in the story of Chris Sanderson.
Born Christian Carmack Sanderson in 1881, Sanderson was a lifelong collector and curator. Sanderson grew up in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and spent most of his life in the area. Sanderson was interested in history and devoted a great amount of time and energy in making history live.12 Sanderson started collecting objects that interested him at an early age. Collecting for 75 years, each of his objects was accompanied by personal annotations of their history or his relationship with them. Being an educator himself he naturally invited visitors into his home to experience and learn from the assemblage. Sanderson’s home in Chester county, Pennsylvania has been turned into a museum where patrons can come to experience his collection of art and artifacts. Almost every item in the museum is accompanied by Sanderson’s personal annotation of its significance or history.
Curating
A curator is a collector who organizes their collection into order and groups. The job of a museum curator is to assemble a collection of works or artifacts relevant to each other, an agenda or idea. Curating on a personal scale is intrinsically motivated and gives joy to the organizer. “For some, the satisfaction comes from experimenting with arranging, re-arranging, and classifying parts of a-big-world-out-there, which can serve as a means of control to elicit a comfort zone in one’s life, e.g., calming fears, erasing insecurity. The motives are not mutually exclusive, as certainly many motives can combine to create a collector – one does not eat just because of hunger.”13 The previous is an excerpt from a psychological analysis of the practice of collecting. The difference between curating and collecting is the thought that goes into the selection. Anyone can assemble a pile of items, but crafting a meaning and a story to these artifacts of life calls for higher level thinking. Curating and presenting artwork is recognized by the national art standards and core standard: Anchor Standard #4. Analyze, interpret, and select artistic work for presentation. Anchor Standard #6. Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work.14
Children as collectors
I want to look at children as collectors. We all collect things, even if we do not mean to. I personally have a terrible habit of saving any usable material, hence… art teacher. My classroom is loaded with things I’ve found that I think might be good for something, even if I don’t know what that something is yet. I have a shelf in my basement full of stuff, just random stuff that I have collected because upon seeing the object I felt compelled to keep it. Sometimes I race downstairs to reclaim an object in my catalog and bring to fruition the reason for this collecting, and other times I walk by the shelf and toss a few objects. It’s not hoarding by any means, believe me I am all about the cleanse. My students also exhibit similar behavior, as I’m sure most humans do. I remember as a child collecting objects I would find as we hiked through the forest at my family’s cabin. These objects ranged from bird feathers, strange seeds, animal bones, interesting rocks, and other random things; a habit that reigns true to this day.
This psychological desire of children to collect things defines the activity as inherently personal, but it can also be a social act. In a study of the social aspect of collecting from 1932, the author states “...there is further evidence that collection activity is not something isolated from all contacts with other children but in many cases may be a social or cooperative venture. It even may be the result of group pressure…”15 The idea of socially collecting can be considered natural among children. I remember as a child, before I truly nailed down my interest, looking for something to collect. I was intrinsically driven to acquire objects and form a personal reliquary. In today’s society both social and individual collecting can be seen in the practice of buying or finding souvenirs when traveling. It is common practice to distribute gifts after returning from a trip.
Durost’s study goes on to explore the role of authority figures in children’s collecting. Asking several teachers to fill out a questionnaire and interviewing children about the influence of their parents on collection, he published a list of “Collections Teachers Report Having Instigated”.16 Originally published in 1932, the availability of such an old study on the activity of collecting goes to show the inherent and timeless drive that is exhibited in children. Even more so, I find it interesting the number of commonalities of collected objects between an eighty-five-year-old study and that of which I witness in myself in my students (rocks, stamps/stickers, marbles, etc.). Whether the motivation for the collection is social or individual, to satisfy a desire or to own a physical representation of a memory, collecting can be looked at as a curation of a narrative identity.
Identity in collecting
In the summer of 2015 I participated in a workshop at The Delaware Center of Contemporary Art, now named The Delaware Contemporary. Led by Italian artist Patrizio Travagli the workshop was on gilding, the practice of covering an object or surface with gold leaf. I learned the very basics of gilding. The Golden Touch was displayed installation style, taking over an entire space. The walls were adorned with Travagli’s personal gilded works, framing a table of gilded object on a central table. The objects on the table were gilded by participants in the workshop. When an object is gilded it take on new meaning, adding value and reflectiveness. It is these qualities that the artist mentions in his statement which can be found below the artwork.
“The act of gilding is an act of memory. Covering the surface of an object with the noble metal exalts it. What is light and shadow becomes part of the environment through an anamorphic distortion. In the act of covering the object, you are also revealing it. Like a mirror it becomes a reflection, your own personal reflection. Over the centuries, Gold has been used in many cultures around the world as a main decorative material; Its historical value is also related with its high cost in the market, it is aulico. The aim of the project is to see and feel how people respond to a shift in their perspective through the use of gold in gilding. This happens by bringing outside a part of their lives, showing it and sharing it in a public space. During the workshop, participants are asked to select an object that means something to them. Something they love and is part of their life. The object status is elevated by the metallic layer, but at the same time it's going to become useless. Once gilded, the objects are exhibited together, as if they were in a warehouse (note: place full of memories), to establish a dialogue with each other and with the visitors of the exhibition. At the end of the show, each workshop participant recovers possession of the object, so it can go back to its own dimension of everyday life with the added value of gold.”17
Travagli’s work is a collection of different parts of its participants’ identity. In bring an object that was part of our life, part of our collection, we the participants were expressing our individual identity in a collective work of art. The Golden Touch will be used as a springboard, to help the idea of curation develop in my students.
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