Monday, July 13, 2015

What's in your Heart?: Getting to Know You via Tattoo

Chiara Bautista's work
What's in your Heart? Really?
Yes, really. One of the biggest issues for me when I work with a new group of kids is names. I want to be able to learn my students' names faster but I also want to know them - know what their passions and interests are. I think I will be a stronger teacher if I learn to get to know my students and what they care about. Personality is a huge part of my teaching - personality of both the students and myself. Honestly I want to do this project myself -  on a lighter note - I plan on developing a selection of samples that feature my great love, pizza, and an addition of dragon scales which are what cover my mushy insides.. friends and family know this to be true. I have other ideas and I will post my results when I have some time to actually work on them!


Objectives
  • View and discuss work of contemporary illustrator Chiara Bautista
  • View anatomical studies of the human heart
  • Work from reference images/objects
  • Create well-rendered drawings
  • Incorporate humor and personality into final piece

 
Key Concepts

  • The heart is a common symbol in our culture
  • The heart is associated with passion, love, life
  • What we are interested in can become a part of us, our personality, and how we present ourselves to others

 








Essential Questions for Lesson

  • How do the things we love influence who we are?
  • How can we be identified by our interests? Is that a good or bad thing?
  • How big a part of us are the interests we have? Are they communicated outwardly or do we have other ways we view ourselves?

Lesson Plan

What's in your Heart?

Visual Culture: What associations do we make with images of the heart? As part of an inspiration board we will individually seek out images of the heart used in advertising, television, tattoos, iconography etc. We will discuss how the heart is used as a symbol of love, passion, caring, and life. We will also discuss the historical significance of the heart as an organ in different cultures.  
Example: "The Egyptians believe the heart, or the ieb, is the center of life and morality. Egyptian mythology states that after death, your heart is taken to the Hall of Maat, the goddess of justice. There your heart is weighed against the Feather of Maat. If your heart is lighter than the Feather, you join Osiris in the afterlife. If you fail the test on the scales, then the demon Ammut eats your heart, and your soul vanishes from existence." 
Example: "The image of the heart becomes very important in Christian theology. The Sacred Heart, which is usually seen emitting ethereal light and suffering from wounds, is seen as a symbol for Jesus Christ and his love. Devotion to the Sacred Heart reaches a high point in the Middle Ages, where it is seen in works of art and is mentioned constantly in prayers and doctrine. It remains an icon even today."


Symbols and significance
How big a part of us are the interests we have? Are they communicated outwardly or do we have other ways we view ourselves?: Consider illustrations by Chiara Bautista and how the artist has created her own language of symbology. Think about the use of different natural and man-made elements she incorporates into her work and how they communicate with the viewer. You are required to depict 2-5 areas of interest/personal symbols/images in addition to drawing a framework of the human heart as a base image.
Identity: How do the things we love influence who we are? Write a list of the activities you love most. Think about ways people describe you to others, conversely think about ways you may describe yourself to others. Examples: reading - books, working on cars - pistons or exhaust, riding horses - items of tack for riding, hiking - mountains or trees... you get the picture. You can use different reference objects/images for each image if you choose. Quality of the image will be judged based on the attention paid to detail, rendering, and time spent overall.
  

Artists and Resources
(Also do Google image searches for her work...)
Timeline: Heart in History 

Gather
Gather objects associated with your passions, interests, or hobbies. Do observational drawings of your objects - study them closely - notice their details, textures, shapes, and scale. Brainstorm ideas about ways you can incorporate your objects into the preexisting structure of the heart. Think about the function of your objects, if applicable.
Enlarge and Engage
Students will transfer their drawings onto standard drawing paper. After creating the framework for their compositions, students will begin drawing, rendering, and filling in with hue structures. Students should keep in mind the use of color scheme, texture, arrangement, etc..
 Elaborate
Students are required to create a statement about their work. Conversely, if they have somehow incorporated text into their drawings, that would also be accepted as a statement.


Moving Forward...
I am really excited to see the results of this lesson plan when I work on it with HS/MS kids. They have some great ideas for how to combine and reinvent existing objects. This lesson could also be adapted into a printmaking project or even screen printing. I would easily be able to modify this project for younger students by decreasing the amount of objects/alterations, simplifying the framework of the heart by using a less complex rendering or even a template, and incorporating writing more by requiring a statement or text. I would probably only require one image because it would also take them a bit longer to complete their drawings... 
Either way, I am eager to create my own samples and hope to showcase this lesson during student teaching in the fall :)

Until next time,

Ms. Kanak

 
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Sunday, July 12, 2015

403 Install and Updates..

So can we all just pause for a moment and take in the fact that it is already almost the middle of July!? Am I the only one who is starting to freak out a bit...... hopefully not.

The past few weeks/months have been so packed full of events and exciting news and other things that I often forget to sit down and provide updates - it's something I'm working on. I wanted to do a follow up/finishing post about my senior show before everything was totally crazy and I had no time at all :)

The seniors who were displaying work on the walls only received 5.5 feet of wall space - that's not a lot to cram in 9 different drawings, an artist statement, and some Foldscopes to play with! But luckily my experience and time in the SAG* prepared me very well for the inevitable panic that sets in when you are encountered with a big, huge, white wall. To be honest I was too busy being excited to notice the scary scariness of installing my final show at Northern - I was finally hanging my senior show!

I felt really bad for my boyfriend who was watching me struggle through the calculations of hanging the work. I worked hard diagramming the layout, measuring, scaling down. I am NOT a math minded person so I made a lot of drawings.. and then re-drew, and then re-drew again! I wanted to stagger the images in the space and (always and) wanted to hang the frames at an angle to create some visual contrast from the many many rectangles and squares in the show. Plus, I liked the diamond shape of the frames in that position. I do what I want! Especially when I have full control over the outcome, process, and display.

the master plans...
I made sure to reserve a shelf. I wanted to have the Foldscopes on display with the work - kind of an invitation to visitors to play with the technology and experiment like I did. I also wanted to showcase the sources of the images in a mix-matched way. I loved the idea of keeping the image sources a secret and having viewers try to decode what the drawings are or what their sources could be. 

 


We were given nearly a full day to install our work and the person next to mine.. took nearly every minute of that time. He had large printed photographs in frames and measured and re-measured a bunch of times before settling on an arrangement and making space for me to put up my drawings. I worked from one end to the other and rearranged a bunch of things more than once, but finally it was done!


One of the coolest things I was able to do during this process was sharing my work with a group of my peers and professors and members of the community. Museum members and a few of my invited guests were able to attend and a select amount of students shared and explained to their work to a panel. Some of the attendees were also in charge of judging the show for final awards and other honors - pretty awesome opportunity!

If there is one thing I love more than creating my work it's sharing it with others. I was able to explain my process from start to finish, the experimenting I did with the media and technology, my personal teaching philosophy... super exciting :) I was also able to see some of my former professors and that meant a lot.

The next few weeks were a whirlwind before the big night - senior show reception! My family and one of my best friends drove all the way up from Illinois and lower Michigan to see the work and visit with me. I truly have some of the best people in my life and I wouldn't be able to do what I have done without their guidance, patience, encouragement, and sometimes reality checks!

My family are the most matchy-matchy and attractive people ever. Obviously

I count these friends as family and these family as friends. So much love in that room!

I stayed next to my work for the majority of the evening. I encouraged viewers to come try out the Foldscopes and to see if they could match the images with their slides/sources. Some of them figured it out! I had a couple of doctors come up to me with concerned faces - mainly because they weren't expecting such accurate renditions of bodily product. I was overjoyed to hear that kind of feedback and it was fun to watch people's reactions when they got close - really close - to the work.

there were a few experiments with the Foldscope by visitors - this one was a nosebleed slide! I am very strange.

After the senior show... you guessed it.. things got crazy again! I had to start moving out of my apartment of four years, spent some time at home, went to some baseball games, said goodbye to the boyfriend who was off to Oregon... busy busy busy. I traveled to Tennessee and spent some time in the Smokey Mountains - which was beautiful and fun and amazing and I want to go BACK.
I passed my Michigan test for Art Education Certification and I can now OFFICIALLY teach Art! It only took, what, 7 years?! Worth every painstaking, dedicated, stressful, and crazy minute! I am so excited to move on to the next steps in my life - you know, after camp, student teaching, and graduation. No. Pressure. Oh, and the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, and I started moving to Wisconsin and and and..
I managed to squeeze in some time for shameless self-promotion as well and applied to ArtPrize in Grand Rapids! AAAaaaand I got in with my 303/ArtLab work :) SO EXCITED!

And now we're on to camp: I was promoted this year to Assistant Director. I feel like I have come a very long and far away way from Rockland and googly eyes -- but that whimsy and love for learning and teaching is still at the heart of what I do now as assistant. In fact, it's even more important because every day I am teaching new staff what I have learned over the years and trying to pass on my knowledge and patience to them - sometimes that is the most important skill to have. Especially with campers - and even more so with adults! Camp is a challenging but also a rewarding experience. I am often presented with problems and have to either find solutions or help those involved come to a meeting place - and it has not been easy going fun-fun camp life so far, let me tell you. I have had a fair share of personnel meetings and policies to re-write. Every day starts with a list and ends with a hearty and honest 'thank you' to everyone on staff and I do my best to keep my head and sanity in tow. You can only fix a toilet so many times before it explodes, people... think about that next time you visit a campground!
Every day is a new and unknown adventure from start to finish - good or bad, I learn from the experience and I try to put my best foot forward the next day. And my rule is to always clear my desk of work and papers by the end of the night before I go to my cabin and pass out. I like to start fresh in the morning - that goes for all aspects of the job. I feel like my experiences at camp are going to make me into an even better learner and teacher and that's why I keep coming back. I know that I am learning valuable skills for in the workplace and for my career with kids. It's also super fun to wake up to smiling faces who just can't get enough of your grumpy morning face before you've had your breakfast, or the way you have to consistently and repeatedly walk through the archery procedures, or even the way they roll their eyes when you tell them - even if they've been a camper since they were four years old - how we ALWAYS have to wear close-toed shoes unless we're at the beach or in our cabins or sleeping. All in all I am waking up and going to bed with a huge sense of purpose - to provide staff with direction, motivation, and a feeling that they have helped or learned or taught someone else. I make sure to thank them all every time they accomplish another item on the to-do list or if they offer to help a coworker, camper, or counselor with a project or problem.We are well into the season now and with only 4 camps left... it's kind of scary to think it's the middle of July already!
And on that note.. I am gonna sign off. I have the day off tomorrow and hope to accomplish a large (LARGE) amount of lesson planning, curriculum review, general life planning... like how the heck I am going to be able to drive all the way down to Chicago and hop a plane to Portland in a month!? Cannot wait for a bit of vacation mixed with adventures with my mom and the boyfriend. Rewards are important. I have learned to be kind to myself and recognize when a break or time away is needed. And I will leave off with this quote that I put on my board in the office yesterday:


I am grateful for every day I am given to learn, live, teach... all of it. Everything is very good right now and I hope that wave of good things will continue for a long time; I'm kind of loving the ride.

Ms. Kanak
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