Action for the Delaware from william lamson on Vimeo.
THE SPELL OF THE YUKON
Robert William Service I wanted the gold, and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave. I wanted the gold, and I got it -- Came out with a fortune last fall, -- Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, And somehow the gold isn't all. No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?) It's the cussedest land that I know, From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it To the deep, deathlike valleys below. Some say God was tired when He made it; Some say it's a fine land to shun; Maybe; but there's some as would trade it For no land on earth — and I'm one. [...] There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting; It's luring me on as of old; Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting So much as just finding the gold. It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder, It's the forests where silence has lease; It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
Rationale:
“The state of the human soul and the environment are interconnected, with each affecting and influencing the other. The earth, all living things and the expanse of the universe all eloquently witness of God.” (lds.org) Teaching our students about our connect to the Earth is the moral responsibility of every teacher. We are part of nature and being stewards of the earth is our privilege. Teaching Art in a way that allows our students investigate our connection to the Earth will foster a respect for the natural world. Teaching Plein Air painting will ground our students in traditional arts and skills We have a moral responsibility to our students to expose them to concepts of nature and environmentalism. Learning Goals: Why are we taking student outside, learning about ecological issues and studying George Inness and landscape and wilderness, Thoreau, Wendell Berry, plein air? Connect research to art-making Increase appreciation, respect, reverence for the natural world So students will learn how to use oil paint, oil pastel, paint paper, learn about color. Learn to appreciate and understand American traditions of landscape painting and other landscape painting traditions And become literate in an artistic tradition Student will learn to persist, to keep going, to try things that might fail They will connect their artwork to broader contexts and important issues Like ecology, climate change, ecological devastation, extinction... Students will create personally meaningful artwork informed by artistic traditions, contemporary art and important ecological issues. They will become conversant with our culture's and other culture's ideas about nature, including how it is portrayed in visual culture. Knowledge: Artists to study: Christo and Jeanne Claude Robert Smithson Robert Morris Chris Jordan Agnes Denes Edith Meusnier Nils-Udo Andy Goldsworthy The Red Earth Environmental Art Group. Museums: Bean museum on BYU Campus (students can examine the vast diversity of life, we could probably arrange to have the insect vaults opened so students could draw insects) Springville Museum (There's many artworks at this museum about Utah and nature) Culture Guatemalan Maya Weavers Buddist Mandala Tibetan Buddhist san painting Videos David Attenborough: Natures Curiosities Gorillas in the mist King Kong Questions for Students: What is progress? Can art change the world? How do you interact with nature? How does nature interact with your daily life? How does culture construct “nature” and our relationships to “nature”? How does art and visual culture influence or shape ideas about nature? What is the opposite of nature? Do you feel a sense of spirituality in nature? When do you notice nature? How has our relationship to nature changed? How are we part of nature and how are we separate from nature? How is civilization progress? How is civilization not progress? How do people connect with places and what are our relationships to the places where we live? What are sacred places and how do they become sacred? What ideas about nature and our relationship to nature are revealed or hidden in collections? Learning Activities: 1: Drawing eggs A simple activity that allows students to study value, shape and traditional drawing techniques. 2: Painting paper Allows students to study color, expressionism and texture. 3: Replicated a Willem DeKooning Using the same techniques, we learned from painting paper we tried to replicate a Willem DeKooning painting and realized the complexity of brush strokes, emotion and abstraction. 4: Replicating a George Innes Using the painted paper from the day before students will choose a George Innes painting to replicate. 5: Digital Paintings We scanned our George Innes paintings in and created digital paintings. 6: Oil Pastel We were given images and used Oil Pastel to recreate them. 7: Plein Air Painting We took a trip to Rock Canyon and painted nature we learned about atmosphere and color theory 8: Travel Plein Air Painting We Traveled to Green River Valley, hiked partook in nature and plein air painted the gorgeous natural Environment of Southern Utah. 9: Sketchbooks We took sketchbooks on nature walks and made drawings of nature and the things we found along the way. 10: We could have visited the Bean Museum and looked at all the different species of animals and verity of life. We could have painted or sketched there for a day. 11: SLC Salt Flats We could have gone to the salt flats and painted or taken photographs. As well as created art in the salt and possibly gone to the Spiral Jetty. 12: Trash collection We could have collected all of our trash from a week or even a few days and taken pictures of it or even made art from it. 13: Environmentalism and Food We could have examined our food and what sustainable food sources really are. 14: Contemporary Environmental Artists We could have studied the work of Christo and Jeanne Claude, Robert Morris, Chris Jordan, Agnes Denes, Edith Meusnier, Nils-Udo, Andy Goldsworthy as well as the Red Earth Environmental Art Group. 15: Creating with environmental packing peanuts Allow students to build devises or hats from packing peanuts by licking them and sticking them together.
Final Project:
Students will create an artwork related to what we learned in this unit and will defend how it relates to environmentalism and shows what they have learned during this class. * For my final project I went camping in Southern Utah and went pIein air painting. I created 9 plein air oil paintings as well as water watercolor sketches of nature. I also collected rocks I like holding and had a connection with.
I read Tempest Williams book The Hour Of Land: A personal Topography of America's National Parks . It discussed America's National Parks with each chapter discussing her personal experiences in one of our nations parks. Her experience with land is extensive from experiences with her father camping and traveling to her own quests as an adult. She discusses seeing the damage that fracking has done and how so many people visit our national parks and love them. She had so many beautiful quotes in this book about how by saving nature we save ourselves.
Tempest Williams Quotes “Our public lands - whether a national park or monument, wildlife refuge, forest or prairie - make each one of us land-rich. It is our inheritance as citizens of a country called America.” “The irony of our existence is this: We are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of evolution, a tiny organism on Earth. And yet, personally, collectively, we are changing the planet through our voracity, the velocity of our reach, our desires, our ambitions, and our appetites. We multiply, our hunger multiplies, and our insatiable craving accelerates." “This is what we can promise the future: a legacy of care. That we will be good stewards and not take too much or give back too little, that we will recognize wild nature for what it is, in all its magnificent and complex history - an unfathomable wealth that should be consciously saved, not ruthlessly spent.” “The legacy of the Wilderness Act is a legacy of care. It is the act of loving beyond ourselves, beyond our own species, beyond our own time. To honor wildlands and wild lives that we may never see, much less understand, is to acknowledge the world does not revolve around us. The Wilderness Act is an act of respect that protects the land and ourselves from our own annihilation.” "Humility is born in wildness. We are not protecting grizzlies from extinction; they are protecting us from the extinction of experience as we engage with a world beyond ourselves. The very presence of a grizzly returns us to an ecology of awe. We tremble at what appears to be a dream yet stands before us on two legs and roars.” ― Terry Tempest Williams Some of the last chapters in the book are about her home state of Utah and the battles Utah has been fighting to keep Bears Ears National Park. She discussed one Undergraduates students stint in jail because he interrupted an auction to fracking companies bidding on newly available national lands. "The oil lease auction occurred in December 2008, just before President George W. Bush left office. Environmentalists accused the Bush administration of trying to ram through the sale on the environmentally sensitive land before President Obama was sworn in. An economics student at the time, DeChristopher said he was moved by a fellow environmentalist who was watching the sale and weeping. He hoped to delay the fate of 13 parcels, which he'd offered to lease for nearly $1.8 million before officials ejected him from the auction. "I sat there watching one parcel after another going into the hands of oil developers, and I knew the land would be pretty much ruined," he told The Times in 2009. "I got to the point where I couldn't sit there and watch anymore." Obama's Interior Department eventually ruled that its predecessor had incorrectly administered the lease sale and yanked the parcels off the auction block. (A federal judge later ruled that the Obama administration's actions were improper, but did not reinstate the leases.) The energy industry pushed for a prosecution, worried that DeChristopher would inspire future auction-crashers. After his conviction, federal prosecutors asked that he be sentenced to a "significant prison term" to "promote respect for the law." They maintained that he cost oil firms hundreds of thousands of dollars in higher bids for other parcels. In his courtroom address Tuesday, DeChristopher told the judge that prison would not silence him. "You have authority over my life, but not my principles. Those are mine," he said. "I'll continue to confront the system that threatens our future."" http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/27/nation/la-na-oil-leases-20110727 Williams discusses her heartbreak that someone who saved our lands from being destroyed was allowed to spend two years in jail. She discusses her reactions and feelings to these events and discusses how she plans to bring more attention to these issues. She has taken her fight not just to the Utah State court but to the National capital. Making National Parks her priority preserving it for all of us. Her Civil disobedience to protect our lands has so far delayed destruction of our lands so that they are currently still available to us but we need to continue her work and vote the right people into office to continue her work. “What you decide to teaches matters. It is the single most important decision that you can make as a teaching artist. It informs every other aspect of your teaching and is the place. To begin, always, when you are heading into a new teaching situation. It is also worthwhile to return again and again to this question and reexamine what matters to you as you develop your practice as artist and teacher.” Pg. 3
This is a question I’ve been asking myself almost every day in the Art Education Program. I’ve moved between Elementary or High School, Paint or Graphic Design, AP Art. The decisions seem endless and to have such different ramifications. What I’ve found is that I really need to look into myself find who I am and make decisions accordingly. I’ve been asking the Teacher I TA for what she thinks my strengths are and that was one of the most helpful things I did. She told me one of my major strengths was energy and Art History. So I’ve been curating my curriculum to include Art History. My entire curriculum is dedicated to showing students how Art moved from strict ridged representation to contemporary/ conception art. Finding something so suited to my personality and skill set has really changed how I was feeling about running my own classroom and I’ve been so excited about it all. “We don’t help students by making shallow connections between subjects and domains of knowledge. Shallow or forced integration can often distract students from learning what we are trying to teach.” Pg. 15 This quote really reinforced to me I was making the right choice for my curriculum theme by using Art History with it’s rich history and it’s connections with humanity in general. I really feel like my students will benefit from the thought provoking issues we will examine and why such institutional shaking art processes arose from the Art movements such as the impressionists and the Abstract Expressionist and how they lead artist to freedom and the contemporary art we have now. “We should see part of our job as teaching artists to reject both the stereotyping of our students and of all artists. We should seek the broadest possible artistic and personal experience for our students and kick open the doors to educational and other institutions where we work to allow access to all artists on their own terms.” Pg 20 I asked my self the questions he asked starting on page 19 about if there were ulterior motives within the classroom politically, it was an idea I’d never had before. I don’t think this will be a problem for me I tend to remain politically neutral. Though I do suppose I care a lot about ethical practices and environmental practices that benefit us all as the human race. The only things I could see pushing with my students is taking care of our planet and so it’s around for generations after us and avoiding toxic chemical processes in art making for their own health. “If you can’t read in the sixth grade it will mess with your head. If you have to dodge crossfire or go hungry or attend a completely segregated school it will mess with your soul, often deeply. If you dont’ have the funds, or it’s too dangerous, to travel outside your neighborhood, it will narrow your view of the world. If you have fear being regularly hassled or worse by the cops, or ICE because of the color of your skin it can wear you down and tear you up in a thousand ways.But although conditions, color and ethnicity make us, they do not define us. Each of our students is unique, and we find this out quickly if, as teaching artists, we relate to them as fellow artists.” Pg 22 This quote I just had to add because I love the empathy of it. It takes you and puts you right into how it would be. It helped change my perspective and open me to the idea the each of my students will be bringing in the outside world with them. Their own universes and I can’t just expect them to enter my classroom and leave it all behind. I’m really interested in the idea of compiling outlets for them to express themselves and to find themselves with in Art and the projects and studio time they receive while in my classes. This chapter was really inspirational I got so much out of it. I'd keep writing about all the quotes I highlighted and loved but this post is getting really long. I learned so much " Whatever their strategy, zombifying parasites are hacking biology. And so, with thier A/B-tested, keep-you-permascrolling tactics, are the titans of social media. Like any living creature, we are manipulable-our brains are chemical soups, programmed to need and be needed."
I understand were Matt Simon is coming from with Zombified Humans mindlessly scrolling and scrolling. I've felt that pull myself. I guess I feel like he's ignoring the idea of social media as a tool for connecting. I follow artist I never would have heard of without instagram. Living, Breathing, Working, Struggling artists who have incredible work. When I scroll through my instagram feed I feel inspired, motivated, and part of the bigger, beautiful community which is art. Living artist are often ignored in favor of dead artist who's work has already been analyzed and appraised as valuable or out of fashion. I love having access to contemporary artist who haven't always been admitted yet to a museum. Instagram is there "museum" and "Gallery" to get their work out there. I don't feel like it Zombifies me I feel like it Inspires me. This artwork was created by painting paper with tempera then cutting it up to mimic an Ennis Painting. The sencond painting is a digital one that has been edited.
|
Myleka Bevans
Classwork for Art 450 Archives
December 2018
Categories |