Day Three – Idea Pushing, Paper Pressing

Day Three – Idea Pushing, Paper Pressing, Murphy Stitching

Day Three was filled with the exchanging of ideas, confusion conversations, and image understanding. It seems like these three things wouldn't always go together, but when creating a work of art that's meant to speak about yourself, they have a tendency of colliding.

Today students were able to finally speak their minds through pencil on paper after two days of presentations and demonstrations.

Students are finally given the freedom to work, and it can be difficult for both teacher and students. All of a sudden you have ideas too small and ideas too big, pushing to add lines and take away. Where do we draw the line of what is creative? As art teachers we have ideas and hopes of where we want our students to land. But unlike topics of math and science where things are based on facts, Art is in the eye of the beholder. We constantly work to help them progress, supporting our students in understanding not just art, but creative thinking.

Do we push teaching technique or creativity? Both will always be present, but there's a struggle of balancing art freedom with grading and guidelines.

On this third day I was able to sit down and talk with students, and try to understand their own process versus just listening to mine. Seeing new ideas of what self image is, is always exciting to me.

Ideas of snow skiing reindeer, music jamming pizza, and cows riding in wheelchairs.....are these the images we picture when thinking self portrait? Probably not right out of the gate, but norms are meant to be broken. These student works are meant to express the ideas of what really happens inside a teenagers mind. Self reflections is meant to be funky and odd, filled with bright colors and Darth Vader Masks.

After only three days i've started to connect with these students, having conversations from sports, to puppy obsessions. Nothing better than seeing one of your students with a patch of your dog sewn onto this pants....Gotta love Mankato.

Tomorrow students will start carving into their plates, no turning back then. Let the problem solving/art making begin!