BLOG NUMBER 3!!!!

After reading chapter two I have to admit that I was generalizing my ideas on the art work of children. I hadn't realized that their art could be categorized into such distinctive stages, despite that they flow together. I mean I understand that of course that their skill would improve but I hadn't understood that age group of children actually is at such specific developmental states. I enjoy even more that in response to these stages from scribbles and marks, to representation, to symbolism, to realism students will always be able to work within the 5 modes of representational performance. I believe it is so important though to know these stages because as I looked at the projects that I would enjoy doing with children such as working with understanding new mediums and creating narrative and experiential experiences with my students if I was ignorant to the levels of where students are at I could cause them to be frustrated. Sylvia Kind expresses something in these terms that follow what I believe in that I find it would be useful to show students how to use tools and mediums in a traditional sense because as she spoke about clay, first timers would enjoy their experience as it was experiential but that they were better able to spread their wings and take flight with creativity in their projects once they understood even basic skills. Off of that point I believe it is important to acknowledge the skill level of the children that I am teaching because at a young age experiential work seems to be the most suitable, not to limit the meaning behind the work as the children may again be trying to explore aesthetic, narrative, and social modes of representational performance.

A large part of why I want to teach Fine Arts is because it is ultimately a method of communication. Theatre is the human to human communication, and visual art is the kinesthetic, representative, and recordable way of communicating. To me I believe it is so important to bring the Fine Arts to students so that they can use them to question events in their own lives, so that they can understand the questions that they have and so that they can communicate their answers. Reading Kind's information about the modes of representational performance primarily the narrative, and social modes link entirely with the ideas I have about how students will use pictures, group socializing, or structures to explore questions that they have or to look into explaining events that have happened or creating relationships while partaking in these exploration. The psychological escapism of art is an unbelievable level that I hadn't thought of and it intrigues me as well as makes me hopeful as I want to help children through art. I want so much for art to be a happy and expansive experience for children. I want them to be able to find joys and answers and if they can find celebrations in their art work and create possibilities that perhaps seem unreasonable in art it can help them to be psychologically cared for. Such as when James from James And The Giant Peach drew his parents in crayon it was that happy world that he could leave to. I want to be able to bring this to my students and I hope that through 1.) not creating projects that are solely based on the product, 2.) enjoying the material by experiencing it for themselves and also learning how to further their skills, 3.) by making art that is important to them, and 4.) by working as a team I hope to help students achieve artistic euphoria.

Kind brings up that it is often the experience of using the mediums themselves that can create an experience and I am thoroughly interested in this. I believe that children need to stay in tune with their sensory experiences for as long as possible because as soon as technology enters their education children loose their physical interactions with texture, three dimensional shapes, dexterity, and consistencies. This too relates to the experiential contexts of art making but it is also a narrative which can help students to react to their project. Are they disgusted? How does that affect their paper mache project? Art they excited by the colours or the textiles? How does that further affect their project or perhaps does it change how they feel about their representation?

I find it interesting that there is so much focus in drawing at such a young age. I always feel like I need to take away technical barriers for children so that they can start expressing more, like in their projects I always want to pre-cut out shapes or make it so that they can collage paper instead of having to colour everything so then they can better jump from scribbles to representation. I feel awful for thinking this way because I realize now that it is causing them to jump a complete step of their early development. Instead I think it is more important to discuss shapes and see examples and work on ideas of how to work on shapes then to immediately thrust children into that symbolic level by disregarding their motor skill development by pre-setting everything in their artistic creations. Plus children again at a young age will want to understand how they can put a lot of crayon onto a page or what it feels like to use their entire arm to make a circle as opposed to just their wrist. I realize I need to work more on the journey to exploration with young students. I think I find myself losing that creativity comes with taking physical risks and isn't all in our heads. I think I pair creativity with imagination far too much.