Gleaming the Schools

This blog is about promoting art through education. I truly believe that it can be and is a gateway to further enlightenment for students from all walks of life. As I have probably already stated somewhere on this blog, "Art is Humanity, and when it is utilized correctly, and when it is respected and explored, the originality of each human being becomes a way to save schools from the irrelevance and boredom that prevails in so many classrooms." Art is the meaning behind the content.

These might seem like overbearing words, or maybe even extreme, but I truly believe that if schools accepted this philosophy that things would change for the better quickly. I find it disturbing that we are still in a collective mindset that focuses on math and science scores over everything else. Then schools cut funding to "electives" classes when the math test scores are low, and give that money into the those departments. 

How can we continue on this path when the evidence is so strong against it. My guess would be that it is just plain easier to look at hard data (found in test scores) than to really evaluate each student as an individual. Howard Gardner has pointed out how schools restrict the development of the human intellect by concentrating on nurturing only the linguistic and mathematical/logical parts of the brain. There needs to be a realization that students have many varying strengths. Gardner has exposed 7 different forms of intelligence that a person could have. If we overlook the 5 to focus on 2 then we are failing our students, and setting them up for failure.

Promoting the arts is a way of fighting this near sited perspective. The arts are a way to self-exploration and fulfillment. If a student is weak in math, but strong in art, how will they become more successful by taking them out of art and placing them in more math? When a student has confidence in their performance within the school walls, that confidence will extend into other classrooms. Art also overlaps with just about any area of study. Establishing connections from art to other subjects is a way of promoting the bigger picture and facilitating true learning.

So what does it mean to learn? I can tell you that it has nothing to do with copying data, or regurgitating information. It does however stem from exercising creativity and imagination.

The Crystallizing moment in education is that point when a student realizes their strengths and the brain truly begins to grow mentally. It is that click, or wow moment when everything makes sense. This just can not happen through studying for tests, or copying information down.

As an Art Educator, it is my goal to make Art majors and minors out of undeclared students who “see with eyes unclouded” the multiple sides of visual artmaking as opposed to the often intimidating and disempowering side of Art visible to many outsiders. I enhance students critical sense by arming them with a useful vocabulary with which to speak about art and the visual world. People miss understand art because they lack the language to understand it.

But enough about that. Lets look at some art.

Under Water Sculpture

Pretty darn amazing if you ask me.

Mixing it up a bit, here are a few photographs.

Though I am not a fan of Mark Rothko's art, but I do like some of the things that he has said. So, I end this post with a quote from him.

"I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on."