Molly Sofranko TeachArt
The Grad School Blog
Creative Project-Visual Culture
So, this is project kind of turned into my visual culture creative project. My first year teaching I taught an 8th grade class Japanese stab binding and it went okay. This year my district switched to semesters. Because of the STEAM program I’ve paired down the number of traditional art classes I’m teaching to 3, two ceramic classes and one that I titled “2-D art projects.” So of course, one of the first things I do with my 2-D class if for them to create a 3-D object. My reasoning was that I could give them the power to create their own sketchbooks. I work in a school that just received a grant that allows for all students to receive free breakfast and lunch because of our high number of students who qualify. The drawing geeks most often do not have sketchbooks to draw in. SO, I created my visual culture project along side my students as they created sketchbooks. We are almost done with the lesson, and some students are flying through the Coptic stitch, other’s binding look more like a spider web, but hey, they’re proud when they finish and they can actually use it or give it to someone as a present.
I have all of these Contemporary magazines lying around, from my first years as a post BFA student, trying desperately to keep in touch with what was going on in the art world. Contemporary was a magazine out of the UK with a lot of crazy Avant Garde international art featured in it. I cut up the book, and incorporated each page, cover to cover. I like the way the pages are often incomplete, partial pages, only giving part of the information. As a result, the magazine pages that ended up in the middle of the sections have the effect of being like a glossy centerfold, where everything is revealed. I also included some ancient copier paper from the days of word processors. If anyone were to write in this book, the marks would penetrate paste the original page, further and further into the book depending on the pressure the mark maker puts on the page. I included sheets of my beloved trigonometry paper, used in math and also to draw in perspective. I enjoy working with pre-gridded paper, working within the structure and limitations and pushing the boundaries of the visual illusions you can create within such grids. The covers were taken from a donated calendar of graffiti tags. Graffiti is one of the ultimate examples of mainstreaming subversive visual culture. There are so many meanings behind the history and art of street art, but street artists always start as vandals, rebellion against the status quo, an instance that the individual’s voice be listened to.
September 22nd, 2015
What steps toward media literacy and media education can you think of that we should teach children to help them critically evaluate Disney and other popular culture products for themselves?
I don’t think art educators are the only educators responsible for this huge undertaking. I know that in my district the social studies departments and the language arts departments do a good job of incorporating current events, popular culture and teaching students to look at the world with a critical gaze. I co-taught an LA/art class with a teacher who had previously taught an entire term on deconstructing Disney in Illinois.
I can imagine that in elementary school an undertaking like deconstructing Disney would be tricky. I know one 4th grade teacher who is a Disney-aholic and her entire room is decorated with toys, posters etc. I wonder if any parents have walked in there aghast, or if any parents ended up spending more money on Disney merchandise that year. I like the option of offering different alternatives, like Miyazaki films, PBS shows etc., but I also believe that children are totally capable of getting something out of a conversation about stereotypes, gender roles and body image.
At a high school level I think that teaching how to critically evaluate works of art and the visual media around them is a vital skill and adds to their feeling of independence, creativity and sometimes even appeal to them by framing it through a rebellious/subversive/critical context. If we leave it up to the students, depending on the culture they have at home, and the choices they are presented by popular culture, I believe many of my students anyway would not get there on their own.
It wasn’t really until college that I really developed the skill to look at information critically. In college I remember deconstructing Shakespeare, which was almost torture, but in the end made me appreciate the art of a close read. I remember being heavily influenced by writing research papers about artists in my high school art class, Frida Kahlo and Eva Hesse to be exact. A place where critical reading didn’t occur very much unfortunately was in my high school social studies classes. I think that is something that’s happening more now- exploring the biases of history book publishes and curriculum creators. I think teaching students to think twice before they believe what they see, or read, even if it is in an academic setting is critical to creating independent, creative, thoughtful and responsible citizens of the world.