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As the dancer/teaching artist finished her demonstration with the small group of fellow dancers, she stretched her arm out, palm skyward, gesturing to one specific individual standing across the room from her.  “I always give thanks to one of my most influential mentors, MC.”  MC, a gracious and well-loved local teaching artist responded with, “It’s a joy to become the student of the student.  I always learn so much when I have the opportunity to participate with you.” The small group punctuated the brief dialog with satisfied sighs and applause.

This small gathering of Hawaii dance teaching artists happened as a part of our 2013 Teaching Artist Institute; the largest gathering of island teaching artists ever staged.  Although only ten of us experienced the above described moment, the tone of that dancer exchange permeated the entire Institute gathering. As one of the conveners, program designers, hosts and presenters (which was why I was in the room with dancers—checking out how our various sessions were going), I was especially pleased by the camaraderie of the two and a half day event, but essentially unsurprised.

This gathering, just 60 people in total, proved to be a microcosm of Hawaii.  The island state, with no one demographic exceeding 50% of the population, is a cultural crossroads with a deeply embedded Pacific/Asian sense of extended family. Our own teaching artist ohana (‘family’ in Hawaiian) has a rich collection of varied artists, educators, teaching artists, art forms and experience: from a few years to more than 40. 

Those differences matter only in how they inspire and enrich us in gatherings, such as the institute, that we too rarely experience. While we don’t always agree and there is certainly plenty of debate over varied topics the discussions are respectful, authentic and supportive, for the very reason that there is disagreement; few wish to come off judgmental of others. The differing ideas are rarely along art form lines but rather reflective of individual thoughts and opinions. In what seems very rare to me, when I compare this to my experiences outside of Hawaii, our local teaching artists don’t stake out territory by differences in their art forms, but instead look to how other art forms can be inspirational to improving one’s own.  Teaching artists of all media often comment on how they’ve incorporated ideas, approaches and strategies from other art forms within their own work.

Nick Jaffe, Chief Editor of the Teaching Artist Journal and our guest speaker and presenter at this Institute, said it best when he noted that the rest of the country could benefit from the intensely supportive atmosphere we create and how we keep ourselves so tightly focused on our practice and our constituents.

As a long-time island teaching artist, I willingly share the challenge of finding funding to put these gatherings together because I gain so much from both listening to the others and presenting for them.  It’s a treasure to have such friends and colleagues in a field that struggles to simply survive. Facing the daily challenges of keeping arts education vibrant, accessible and current is not so great a task when I know that I will meet with these folks to receive and offer the kinds of support that make our work stronger, give us new insights into our accomplishments and inspire us to continue to fight the good fight on behalf of the children of Hawaii and each other. As MC suggested, “It’s a joy to become the student of my colleagues.”

An ardent teaching artist, Daniel A. Kelin II is Honolulu Theatre for Youth Director of Drama Education and President of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE). He is on the Teaching Artist roster of the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and was Director of Theatre Training for both Crossroads Theatre for Youth in American Samoa and a Marshall Islands youth organization. A 2009 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in India, he has also had fellowships with Montalvo Arts Center, TYA/USA and the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America. Dan is co-authoringThe Reflective Teaching Artist: Collected Wisdom from the Drama/Theatre Field for Intellect Books. More atwww.DanielAKelin.com

Also by Daniel A. Kelin, II in ALT/space:
Christmas in March
Enduring and Essential
My 80%
I Write to Own
Partners in Purpose
Reflexive Ventures
Listening to Learn
Postcard: Shantipur, West Bengal, India

As teaching artists, we bring our experience in our respective mediums to the classroom. But, what about lack of experience?

This winter term at Marwen, I taught an experimental darkroom photography class in which the students drew on their 35mm negatives. The process involves manipulating the photo emulsion (magical light-sensitive bits) on film. Working with a negative the more transparent parts become black in the final print, and the darker parts become white in the final print. In order to alter the negatives you can block light (via Sharpie, paint, etc.) to create more white space, or scratch away the emulsion (via Xacto blade, etching needle, etc.) to create black marks.

Even though I’m not an expert in the technique, it was important to have solid resources and motivations before planning the class.

I have a colleague from art school who has mastered the drawn negatives technique. Kara Cochran draws on large format (4x5 inch) negatives, playfully inserting (mostly) animals into everyday scenes. She uses black Sharpie to white out areas of the negative, and then creates black lines by scratching out the photo emulsion with an Xacto blade. It was helpful to have an artist who has mastered the technique as a resource and inspiration for the class.

Photo by Kara Cochran, who visited the class as a guest artist.

Another big influence in creating the Drawn Negatives class was that, based on student work in previous courses, I knew there was interest in this kind of approach. For example, when a student in my darkroom photo class who liked to doodle felt done with his prints, I encouraged him to try and combine his skills by drawing on his negatives. In another class, a student was trying to make her photo reference a painting from the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting had a sunset, but our class was in the middle of the day. So I suggested that she try to lightly draw on the negative in Sharpie to look like the sun setting. It worked surprisingly well, especially because the photo was black and white.

Introducing the technique to a few students, and trying it out for myself, piqued my interest in the technique. It was exciting that I wasn’t able to find many other examples of artists using the technique, so the students and I could innovate together. Also, knowing that so many of my students had interests and skills in drawing, I was excited to finally introduce a class that solely focused on the drawn negatives technique.

Because this was such a technique-heavy course, there were two major skill building steps before students actually drew on images they photographed.

On the first day of class, students made photograms using transparencies. (Photograms are a way to make an image in the darkroom without using a negative, but rather by placing objects on top of photo paper.) This was a way of testing out the technique on a larger scale, since it is quite difficult to work on the tiny 35mm negative, not to mention the fact that most students didn’t have any experience working with a film negative before. With the theme of maps, students drew or painted on the transparencies to block out light; any blocked out areas would become white in the final image.

The first image is student Gustavo Tovar’s map transparency drawing (against a black background). The second image is the resulting photogram made in the darkroom.

After getting used to the negative process on the scale of the transparency, the assistant teaching artist and I gave students negatives of our own for them to practice drawing on. That way by the time they took their own photos, they already understood what it was like working on the 35mm negatives.

Student Chasity Rivera drew on assistant teaching artist Lee Kintner’s photo negative of a guitar.

Finally, after learning the technical aspects of the camera, students were prepared to take their own photos. One day was spent photographing outdoors, while another focused on indoor self-portraits using a studio light. Because the negatives could only accommodate limited detail, some students chose to combine the transparency technique explored on the first day with their photo prints to create the combined drawing-photo effect.

Student Jocelyn Reyes used black Sharpie on the 35mm negative to obscure the face of her subject. Though originally intended as a crown and veil, the final image takes on a darker feel.

The whole process really engaged the students, and their resulting images were unlike any other class I’ve taught. What surprised me most about this intensely technical process was how much it taught the students about the medium of photography. Most of the students had no analog photography experience, but in the intimate process of investigating and manipulating their negatives through drawing in the classroom and printing in the darkroom, they gained a better physical understanding of what actually happens when you take a picture, and the resulting negative.

Student Guadalupe Valladares used a combination of scratching directly on the negative (to achieve the black marks) and drawing with Sharpie on a transparency (to achieve the white marks) to make her final work. She was able to create lines of varying texture, value and thickness in her dynamic composition.

Ultimately, the most experience I have with the technique of drawing on negatives came from teaching this class. I think teaching a new (to you) technique can be an exciting teaching artist experience, as long as you know enough about the technique and have resources to support it. In my case, I had a guest artist come in as a resource and example, and I also made sure to test out the technique before teaching the class. But not being an expert in it myself made for a vibrant experience, and reinforces my intuition that we learn the most through teaching. The selfish goal of wanting to explore a new art process helped keep the students and I very engaged in the class.

Suzanne Makol is a teaching artist at Marwen. She is also an editor at Composite Arts Magazine, which is available as a free download atwww.compositearts.com. She received her bachelor of fine arts in photography at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011. Suzanne enjoys photographing small treasures that may go unnoticed.

Also by Suzanne Makol on ALT/space:
Photographic Treasures
Happy Accidents
Photography and Sound Collaboration
Teaching Artist Development Studio Part 3: Completing the Circle
Teaching Artist Development Studio Part 2: Design Cycle
Teaching Artist Development Studio Part 1: Fall 2011

My work with at risk youth began because I needed a job. I went in spite of being afraid and, over the course of the next three years, I met some of the most creative souls I’ve ever known. I even still have copies of the music they created. No, none of it is great by music industry standards, but I watched those boys struggle to recognize notes on a keyboard, to actually write out their thoughts on paper so they could record them as rap songs later, and to control their urges to strike out at others so that they would be allowed to come to my class and I hoped I could live up to their expectations.

I too was struggling in those classes. I had NO idea what I was really doing. Wasn’t it Sesame Street that had the little game “One of these things is not like the other”? I kept playing my version of it and thinking which of these things didn’t belong: juvenile jail, opera, teaching artist or all of the above? I struggled with frustration, fear, and doubts. I struggled to understand the slang that was an entirely different language from the English I spoke. I had to learn fast because they would try to insert gang related things in their raps. They would ask me about the music business and how to get a record deal. I had to tell them that I didn’t know but that I would try to find out. I shared with them my own journey in trying to find out the answers for them. I had to call friends and spend time in the library. I read articles and books on the hip hop industry so that I could give them a list of resources. One day we even took time to figure out exactly how rappers make their money and it’s not from the record sales.

Collaboration skills were nonexistent. I had to remind them over and over that they didn’t have be friends with everyone in their work groups. They simply had to find common ground in order to create this music. I spoke bluntly about my expectations for their behavior and boundaries. Actually, I told them that I knew they had to take their meds but they didn’t know if I’d taken mine that day so they should play nice. That sounds awful doesn’t it? Perhaps it was but these young men were in for serious crimes: assault, assault with a deadly weapon, rape of a 4 year old child, grand theft auto - stolen police car, etc. I couldn’t afford to show anything but truth to them. These teens were not the same people that I worked with in “normal” classrooms around the country. There were armed guards at ALL times in each class yet I never had any physical incidents within my classroom. As a matter of fact, the boys themselves made sure that there were no physical issues in the classroom. They would remind others of the rules that I’d stated on the first day and at least one time I know that there was a fight immediately after they left my classroom.

My heart bled for them and they taught me so much about loving the seemingly unloveable. I worried though that what I was able to give them wasn’t enough, would never be enough. One day, weeks into a particular residency, I saw a young gang leader, notorious in the city of Louisville, stand side by side with a young man from the mountains who couldn’t read, write or barely speak intelligibly, and help him record a “song” by writing down what he wanted to say and whispering the words to him line by line for him to repeat as I recorded his efforts. That day I saw the arts cross cultural and racial barriers, spit in the face of peer pressure and give voice to those from whom silence had been demanded and I knew that whatever I was doing was actually reaching them. I remember these young men and I smile.

It is my experience with these young men that kinesthetically shaped how I learn from my students and how I teach them. I learned that truth is the only defense I have in the face of a student’s fears. I learned that if I share who I am, they will not only share who they are but they will believe me when I tell them they have much to offer and that there are better ways to interact with the world. I learned that I could share my love of opera and they may not like it, but they could respect my love of it because I took time to share it with them. I haven’t worked with this extreme group of at risk youth in a long time but I try to use the most important lesson that they taught me every single day. What is that lesson you ask? It is simply this. The very act of sincerely, not superficially, attempting to find common ground with my students, lays a foundation of trust upon which I can build a successful residency no matter the age or demographics.

Allison Upshaw is also known as “MzOpera”, and for the last 13 years she’s worked as a Performing Arts Integration Consultant/ Teaching Artist in AL, AR, GA, TN and SC. Her background includes two degrees in Voice Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and Louisiana State University, a union card from the Actor’s Equity Association, years of studying African influenced dance, and a stint as a college instructor of voice and acting. Allison provides residencies, workshops and professional development in arts integration. In 2012, she had the privilege of being selected to present at the 1st International Teaching Artist Conference in Oslo, Norway.

As a school visual arts teacher, one of the questions I constantly grapple with is how to engage teenagers in learning about art and artists. Why should they care about art history? How can they build connections between art and their own lives as well as to the bigger world?  I have found that a linear system of teaching art history is ineffective; it’s the practical real life experiences that have, in my experience, produced the best results in every aspect of my teaching and my students’ learning. These were my thoughts when I challenged my Form IV students to develop their last project for the school year.

After their final eight hour exam, IGCSE Art and Design students are required to present a final project. The final product from this project involved students from my FIII and IV art history classes, but was mainly conducted by my Form IV IGCSE Art & Design class.  I gave students ample space to shape their project in any way they wanted but asked them to:

1. Center it on learning about art and artists (as opposed to art techniques)
2. Work collaboratively; students had been working individually throughout the two year course so it was very important that they interact with each other and experienced the team work and necessary conflict resolution and compromise that come with it.

Process: Making the surrealist dress

We brainstormed; I told students they would be in charge of their learning and that my role was more of a project manager. My students respond really well when given clear deadlines and a specific project and when they are treated as grown-ups in work environments with set responsibilities.

Pre-Hispanic dress fitting

Several ideas came up; I was not sure how the project would pan out because at this point, two weeks before the end of the school year, students were physically and mentally exhausted after sitting for an average of twenty grueling IGCSE exams over the past four weeks.  I helped them shape and evaluate the feasibility of their ideas and we ultimately decided on a runway fashion show, with garments inspired by twentieth century art movements. Students had to design the garment, style the make-up and hair themselves, make the garments and select one student to model the for the whole school community. I also asked them to not buy fabric or any other costly material for this but to rather use their creativity and try to recycle materials or use unconventional ones that could be easily found.

We decided on five art movements: Surrealism, Pop Art, Cubism, Abstract Art and Post Impressionism. Form III Art History students were asked to be guest artists and designed one garment inspired on Peruvian Pre-Hispanic cultures. We had recently visited a museum and studied the marvelous work of our ancestors and this was the base for their design. Students first researched the art period/style to be able to design the garment coherently and it had to be wearable.

At the same time, Form IV Art History students worked in pairs preparing exhibition panels with information about the featured art periods. Their job during the runway show was to engage the visitors in conversations around the styles before the fashion show began so the public would have a better understanding of what they were about to see.

Fittings!

Pre-show madness!

We did not expect the huge turnout we had; in past events of a similar nature we have had a lot of visitors but this event really caught the students’ attention and we had a problem fitting everyone in! The day of the event, the art studio was a whirlwind of creative energy and nerves as we prepped for the show; garments were being finished, make-up was being applied, walking was rehearsed-it was crazy!

The models are ready for the runway…

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There is a photograph of the late artist Francis Bacon sitting on a small wooden chair and appearing vaguely out of sorts. His surroundings are, at first glance, curious - he seems to be surrounded by garbage. Upon closer inspection, one can see a large circular paint splattered mirror behind him. It hangs over a low shelf jammed with cardboard boxes, small canvases, and newspaper clippings. Atop the shelf sit bottles of turpentine, jars of paint, and a dozen or so coffee cans from which protrude a thorny army of paintbrush handles. Paint is smeared on the walls. The viewer eventually realizes that Bacon is sitting in the middle of his art studio. For Bacon, “His own mess had some kind of order that he understood” [1].

My students thrive when they have a role in constructing the structure and determining the routine. In the back of my classroom we have two carts that contain a variety of art supplies. Surrounding the carts are four folding tables. The cart area does not look like a place of structured learning; rather it appears as a wild assortment of paint, brushes, scissors, glue, markers, drop cloths, clumps of string, and torn bits of wax paper. Teachers do not manage this space, nor is it dictated by a curriculum. This space belongs to the children. There is no set agenda or protocol and the students are allowed to engage with the space as they see fit, often blurring the boundaries between art, science, and play. As with Francis Bacon’s studio, this area contains an order that children understand.

During lessons that do not involve this environment, we always have one or two students who will quietly get up as if to sharpen a pencil only to segue to the back of the room and begin picking through various items in the carts. Soon another student will see this, pretend to go to the bathroom but instead make his or her way back to the art space as well. Like honeybees scouting for nesting sites, most students find a way to the carts throughout the day[2]. Although fascinated by their self-initiated creations, I am compelled to shepherd them back to their seats in an effort to ensure they are present for the direct instruction portion of the lesson.

After seeing my students thrive in a self-motivated setting, I decided to see what would happened if I let the students continue their creative investigations unimpeded. As expected, during our direct instruction time two students made their way to the carts. Two other students brought a few supplies back to their seats. One created patterns out of colored duct tape and the other stealthily mixed water, food coloring, and silver glitter in a paper cup. By recess, the swarm picked up in intensity. A lively group of students surrounded the carts and rummaged through the supplies, using their “free time” to essentially continue their education.

When the green paint ran out, a trio of girls began to replenish it by mixing blue and yellow. Likewise, they mixed blue and red to make purple. As they continued to experiment, they stumbled upon a pleasing array of original colors to which they decided to give names. Separately, but in the same space, another student was carefully adding drops of food coloring onto generous globs of Elmer’s glue. She then added glitter and used a toothpick to mix the concoction to create a kaleidoscopic effect. A third student dyed foot-long lengths of string by soaking them in tiny vials filled with food coloring. She then fished each one out with a tool fashioned from a small piece of copper wire and set them to dry on sheets of wax paper. Seeing this, the Elmer’s glue girl began to search for the vials and found them in a bin that I set aside for future science experiments.

Once the science bin was breached, the swarm picked up intensity. When a new hive is chosen, the bee scouts signal a final “buzz run” [2] which triggers a mass exodus to the new hive. Similar to a buzz run, lids were quickly flipped off of the remaining bins as children grabbed test tubes, graduated cylinders, pipettes, and other assorted items. This sudden unorthodox use of equipment allocated for science projects made me uneasy. I worried that the materials might end up lost or destroyed. I worried that an administrator or parent might stop by and disapprove of this unconventional use of materials. But I remained steadfast in my small-scale research project and allowed the buzz to develop.

By the end of the day, the girl who was dying string decided to integrate her idea into a science fair experiment. The group of students who were mixing their own hues ended up bottling samples to sell online under the name Professor Paints. The girl who had first found the vials continued to explore their aesthetic potentials by adding objects to the food coloring: tiny spirals of wire, bits of pencil eraser, and a dusting of glitter. She ended up creating a series of diaphanous works that were at once strange and sublime.

Every day I am torn between allowing the students to go to the carts when they feel inspired to create and making sure they remain seated in order to get the assigned classwork completed. Creative ways of thinking do not align with standardization or predetermined outcomes. Dr. James Rolling describes those who seek a collective self-knowledge as ones who are “willing to slog through the muddy ambiguities” [3] for a true educational experience. When there is a “controlled messiness…the wisdom of the hive emerges” [2]. Self-initiated experiences allow each student to indulge in his or her own project while also promoting a creative environment that benefits the whole classroom.

In his chaotic studio Francis Bacon created paintings that are now considered to be contemporary masterworks [4]. Students who thrive in a creative learning paradigm flourish in the midst of messy spaces and uncertain outcomes.

This narrative was originally prepared for inclusion in the upcoming book “Swarm Intelligence” by Dr. James Haywood Rolling, Jr. and published through Palgrave Macmillan.

References
[1] Edwards, J. & Ogden P. (2001). 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon’s Studio. NY: Thames & Hudson.

[2] Miller, P. (2010). The smart swarm: How understanding flocks, schools, and colonies   can make us better at communicating, decision making, and getting things done.  New York: Penguin.

[3] Rolling, J. H. (2009). Invisibility and in/di/visuality: The relevance of art education in curriculum theorizing. Power and Education, 1 (1), 96-110.

[4] Peppiatt, M. (2008). Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma. NY: Skyhorse   Publishing.

David Rufo is an artist/teacher/researcher working on his PhD at Syracuse University in Art Education. With seventeen years experience as a general classroom fourth grade teacher, David’s current research interest is the self-initiated creativity of children in a child-centered environment. In addition to being a full-time teacher, David is also an adjunct instructor at Syracuse University where he has created and taught a course titled, Art Educators as Contemporary Artists. His most recent article titled, “Building Forts and Drawing on Walls: Fostering Student Initiated Creativity Inside and Outside the Elementary Classroom,” was published in the May 2012 issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Art Education. His current paintings incorporate watercolor, ink, and antique letterpress to examine children’s literature. Contact David

Also by David Rufo in ALT/space:
When Checking Out is Checking In
Technique Schmechnique: Why Kids Don’t Need to Be Taught How to Use a Paintbrush
Masking Tape: The Artist’s Urge to Wrap
Colored Ice: A Child’s Self-Initiated Foray into Ephemeral Art
Drawing on Tabletops
Ophelia’s Fort
Paint Bomb Girls
Snowfall