Day 1 - Early morning art making, High School Selfie Taking

Day 1 - Early morning art making, high school selfie taking, mixed with process planning.

Today I spent the day introducing Mankato West's studio art students to the schedule they will be facing for the next 14 days. Heavy hits of information might overtake the students at first, but little sparks of interest did occur. Within just 14 days, the students will be responsible for creating an edition of five multi-color relief prints, a handful of drawings, one t-shirt design, and help create one large art installation.

Does that sound like a lot?

I'm sure it does, but creativity comes in all sizes and sometimes we need to be pushed to excel to our next level.

Their multi-colored relief prints will be inspired by the thing I hope they know best: themselves.

But high school can be a trying time and identifying what makes you “you”, can be a difficult thing. Today students were asked to create a list of eight things that describe who they are. Several students flew through their list, but many struggled with these words. How do we better this???

We hope through this 15 day project students will grow in creativity, teamwork, and self awareness.

Why do we teach art?

You cannot touch art without touching values: values about home and family, work and play, the individual and society, nature and the environment. As an art educator we get the opportunity to work with all kinds of students with all sorts of backgrounds. We get to serve, teach and care for these students by developing their artistic skills.

Tomorrow – Day 2 - Demonstration Day