I was always attracted to the idea of working with young artists. Inspired at first by wonderful teachers I had personally experienced as a student and later as my artist peers pursued and found success in careers in art education. I spent several years flirting with the idea of becoming an art educator before putting a plan into action to seriously pursue my teaching career. I now treasure my newfound art career and seek to become a successful educator in my own right, melding my own art experience into my philosophy of teaching.
Why I am a teacher? That is an easy question for me to answer: Catherine Goodwin, my high school art teacher. I was always a successful art student, but I had no idea of how to translate that talent into a higher education opportunity or even any type of career. I grew up in a rural farming community digesting a steady diet of action-trash movies and comic books of the late eighties and early nineties. I had it in my own head that to be involved in a creative career, one would just have to work one’s way into an industry by juxtaposing oneself closely to another creative person or project. The idea of studying illustration or design was completely off my radar. Ms. Goodwin changed my life by guiding me through the creation of a successful portfolio that resulted in multiple offers for scholarships to art schools. Not only was I previously unaware of these opportunities, but also it was financially improbable for my family. I hope to have the same impact on students in my own teaching career.
I personally see art education as having multiple roles in school. First, to teach skills and techniques to demystify art and talent. Secondly, to provide exposure to, and an awareness of art and design all around us. Lastly, to present and justify the creative process and how it can be applied to multiple facets of learning and play.
I use the term demystify frequently when I talk about teaching art. I often hear students say, “I can’t draw,” or that they don’t “have any talent.” They often refer to artistic talent as some sort of superpower bestowed at birth that cannot be acquired through learning. If a student says, “I can barely draw a stick figure,” well then let us start there. If you want to draw a person and have a head, two arms and two legs, then so far you are correct. I teach digital art and many students think of the tool as some sort of magic wand. A prevailing theory that I have and share often is that talent is the accumulation of practice and hard work. A support network to nurture that hard work is also necessary and should be one of the key roles of art education. Unraveling the mystery of how to move paint or pixels around a canvas and build a composition creates a learned skillset that can be used in other art forms and applications.
Providing an exposure and awareness of art, design and artists is also a crucial element of art education. I was totally ignorant of current modern practicing artist when I was young and thought of artist only as local artisans and folk artists which I had seen. I now find myself instructing at a working-class high school very similar to the one I attended where the only prevailing idea of an artist is of long dead Italian guys and whoever is topping the pop charts. Although some students have put together that everything from the sneakers on their feet to the game design of their smartphone interface has an artist or designer behind it, they do not usually know how to define or acquire an education towards that career. Current career opportunities in the arts and media are vast and an art education is crucial to engaging in those opportunities.
Tied into awareness is also the ability to appreciate and critique design. Bad design is all around us. Likewise, brilliant art and design should be easily identified, and a well-rounded student artist should be capable of commenting on it. Constructive critique is difficult for some students to receive and digest and often equally challenging to give out. The student artist should also be prepared to defend their design choices when they believe them to be effective and justified.
The creative process is not solely parked in the art class and should be expressed in all learning. I am in public education and I am one of three art teachers in my high school. I have a job and I am grateful, but I do see one of the challenges of art education as having to constantly defend our place at the table. Justifying that creative process and challenging the unknown or bizarre path is part of my responsibility as an art educator. It is involved in the STEM fields and it is hard to separate out the value of the creative process in any learning environment. Galileo, Newton and the Wright brothers would not have gotten off the ground without creative process and exploration.
The article from the first discussion assignment (Martinex, U. & Nolte-Yupari, S. (2015). Story Bound, Map Around: Stories, life, and learning. Art Education: The Journal of the National Art Education Association. 68) excited me to learn of actual experiences directly related to art education. I found the idea of drawing before writing and using maps as a segue into a drawing exercise very intriguing. I use some of these tactics in my second-year digital arts classes focused in storytelling. Use of creative writing, brainstorming and group discussion are tools that aid my students in critically thinking about the best way to illustrate a character or express the situation.
I spent twenty years as a freelance artist, and I have accumulated a nice cache of skills in my artist toolkit that I am bringing into my career as an art educator. I consider my drawing skills and draftsmanship my greatest asset. I love to share my comfort with drawing with people. I have worked with troubled youth and have seen how art can quickly bridge a social awkwardness and give kids an outlet like no other. I use art as my own personal therapy as well as my tie to multiple peoples and communities. I am hoping to bring some of my experiences into the classroom and approachability is important to my process of art education. I plan to utilize tools learned in this graduate program to better allow students to reach a sense of comfort with their skills and learn to build on their own experiences to become better artists and designers.