January | 2014 | Justine Yearwood

I hoped that this month could be named ‘the days of lesson planning’. No such luck. I’ve been hit with a storm of essay work, and nightly short assignments. When I can finally calm my mind to sit down, continue on with the process of accumulating artists, creating narratives for sequences of lessons that will guide students through steady paths of materials, techniques, and inspiration, I find that there’s always something else to do — another pot or pan to clean, another wind storm drawing me outside to go check on the boat at anchor…

Edible Building: Students will create the tallest, sturdiest, yummiest tower they can out of edible materials.

In any case, I have one unit plan ready. Here’s a quick over-view. It’s only part one because I created approximately 18 lessons in total under the theme ‘Ephemerality’, however I think it’s fair enough to start with the first 8, not make the thing too massive:

Title: Ephemerality: Part One

Themes: Ephemeral art-making, being able to ‘let go’, 2D and 3D, indoor and outdoor work, documenting work.

Rationale: Through various art mediums, including charcoal, conté, edible materials, sand, and biodegradable found objects, students will learn how to create work that they are willing to surrender to the passage of time, destruction by natural and/or artificial means. By introducing students to the concept of ephemerality through gestural drawing, they will develop a basis for creating technically proficient work that is also swift, and loose. Each class will also incorporate one group activity and one visual cultural lesson in order to build students’ understanding of their art-making in a historical context, as well as build a sense of community and social understanding.

Learning Objectives (by the end of the unit students will be able to):

Create high quality work swiftly and thoughtfully by developing both their technical and conceptual skills.
Surrender their work to deconstruction by natural or artificial means.
Document their work effectively so that the original creations are not completely lost. Recording the work may be important to them for portfolio purposes.

Prescribed Learning Outcomes: (Drawing and Painting, Sculpture 8 – 10 within the Visual Arts IRP)

mark-making materials for drawing (e.g., charcoal, conté, graphite)
surfaces (e.g., cardboard, wood, found objects)
single medium, mixed media
mark-making tools (e.g., brushes, pens, stylus)
manipulating tools (e.g., erasers, stumps, sponges, palette knives)
surfaces and supports (e.g., palettes, easels, boards)
drawing techniques (e.g., gesture, blind contour, continuous line)
surfaces (e.g., cardboard, wood, found objects)
single medium, mixed media
Documentation of development process: (e.g., portfolio of process drawings to accompany a finished work, using sketchbook to plan design process)
Visual Culture:
artists, artworks and movements
terminology, vocabulary and contexts
considerations for venue, audience, and purpose unique to drawing and painting (e.g., subjects appropriate to particular contexts)

Lesson List:

Lesson 1: Gestural Drawing and Paleolithic Paintings
Lesson 2: Gestural Drawing and Building Confidence
Lesson 3: Gestural Drawing and Animators
Lesson 4: City-building with Edible Materials
Lesson 5: Designing a Sand Mandala
Lesson 6: Making a Sand Mandala
Lesson 7: Collecting Natural Materials
Lesson 8: Building with Natural Materials

Students will build with natural, found materials to create ephemeral structures.

The question follows me around. How will I mix my outdoor, movement based practice with sedentary, art education?

So far, my best response to that question has been to bring the outdoors inside.

The following is an excerpt from an essay I had to write concerning this question, my inquiry:

Years ago, I first asked my boyfriend out by asking him on an adventure. I promised him quests, travel and glory. Now, he has completed a science fiction graphic novel based on our earlier travels through India and Nepal. He declared that he’d write more if I continued scheming expeditions. Approximately two years ago, we were invited to crew on a Chinese sailing junk that has been making its way across the world for the past 25 years. We had our camping gear ready to make our way down the coast on our bicycles to meet with the ship’s captain. The sailboat plan fell through however, because they were having repair difficulties on the boat. With no fixed dates, we opted for a cargo ship bunk instead, heading across the Pacific. It wouldn’t quite be the same kind of sailing experience, but offshore involvement in any case.

Two days before going to work out in the forest to fund our trip, my boyfriend received news that his stubborn back-ache was in fact stage four cancer. Honestly, I had never considered long term work outside of Tree-planting before this situation, and suddenly we were being told to make sedentary plans indefinitely. My partner was being informed about numbers, survival rates, and painful and invasive procedures. I was being told that I would have to reverse all my goals in life.
Throughout his treatments, I struggled to keep my outdoor practice alive. I enrolled in design courses, hoping to fulfill my interests through nautical design (in this way I could build boats instead of sailing them). I volunteered frequently at the a local bicycle recycling centre, acting as if learning more about the mechanical aspects would somehow bring the dream of extended bicycle touring closer to fruition. I’ve also always been drawn towards teaching, gaining experience through part-time work and volunteer opportunities, so when planning for my new future pursuits, it made sense to join an education program.
So this question of inquiry has been with me since my partner’s diagnosis; how do I maintain my motion-based practice in the midst of stationary circumstances?
My natural state consists of slogging through logs, mud and brush on a cut-block, carrying bags of seedlings on my hip, and sleeping under the stars. All through my adult life, working hard seasonally, and then focusing on my creative goals during the intervals has consistently been my routine. Creative outdoor endeavours are my passion, my guiding motivation, yet, teaching requires extensive time and energy.
As I have experienced thus far in this teaching program, my outdoor practice has been falling by the wayside. There are simply not enough hours in the day to attend classes as well as paddle out to the sailboat I keep anchored close to home. There are seemingly no opportunities to explore new places on foot or on bike outside of the city. I feel as though it’s impossible to create the conditions for adventure, let alone create the conditions for making artwork based on adventure.
In researching for this proposal, I looked into the processes undertaken by other educators to keep teaching and artistic practice in balance. One perspective taken by an educational researcher was to ask whether or not teaching and artistic practice are fused together, or separate endeavours (Sweat, 2006). My response to that idea is that for the most part, they have indeed been completely separate. I am now being asked to fuse outdoor exploration and education together, although they are not conventionally compatible. There are are of course examples of how the two endeavours have been combined successfully, namely robust outdoor education programs that emerge of out traditional school settings that foster true experiential learning (Zink, 2010) or programs that aim to make the entire world a classroom (Class Afloat, 2013). I strongly favour these concepts, and hope that one day they are normalized in education to the point where any teacher candidate with the same combination of interests as mine could easily say, well of course! I want to train to be a teacher-adventurist!