A product or a process

During my practicum in Richmond Secondary, I designed Emotional Life Project for Grade 8 students that incorporated expressive art, kinetic art and art therapy. Students will be encouraged to reflect on how their emotion can be expressed and explored through art. The goal of this project for student is to increase self-awareness of inner world and core-identity; to develop creative thinking; and to validate important life experience.

One of the project we did is kinetic art. Kinetic art allows the natural movements of body, stretching and contracting to create symmetrical shapes and patterns. The process of making involves dance-like movements that are just as much the main focus as the final, large scale drawings. Art making through therapeutic processes helps us connect to our identities and increase our self-esteem and personal expression. Art is a tool to help us experience beyond what we can imagine. Art has aesthetic standing only as it becomes an experience for human beings (Dewey, 1934).

kinetic art

Drawn in 2016 by Grade 8 students

The most widely used theoretical approach in art education is Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE), developed in the 1980s by the Getty Center for Education in the Arts (Dobbs, 1992). DBAE is based on four distinct disciplines: art production, art criticism, art history, and aesthetics. Dobbs suggested that these components could be reframed as “creative expression,” “cultural heritage,” “perception and response,” and “talking about art”. Within the context of DBAE, the use of big ideas helps to ensure our students’ own personal connections to their work.

The philosophy of DBAE also brings out contemporary approaches to teaching. Some contemporary artists have stopped creating recognizable art objects—like paintings or sculpture—in the interest of creating more ephemeral events, experiences, performances, or even conversations. From an interdisciplinary perspective, these new practices and the results they yield diversify how we can learn from and teach art. “Art today often defies purely aesthetic aspirations and instead can serve as a site for conversation, critique, or the development of new knowledge. Artists use collaborative, performative, interdisciplinary, dialogical, and even pedagogical strategies to communicate with and engage audiences” (art21). Thus, in the contemporary world, art education requires a shift from predominantly technique-driven instruction to idea-driven instruction. “Traditional art education is ‘object’ centered; it tends to place the ‘art work’ over experiences with art and the relationships that shape those experiences…the move from object to subject involves what you describe as students investigating themselves as subjects and a focus on ideas rather than technique” (Culp and Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2011).

Teachers should think about the process of learning about art as a long-term, ongoing project, so that students will be supported emotionally and educationally on their personal journey of expression. To meet the goals of promoting personal growth and acquiring artistic skills, teachers should value the process of making and the final product equally. Addressing larger learning goals nurtures critical-thinking and research skills, so that students can make meaningful works informed by well-developed ideas. Through the art-making process and personal art expression, students will gain a voice, self-knowledge, and a sense of self.