Arts Explorer #3: Art Critique



F. H. Varley (photo by Yousuf Karsh, 1964)

For my art critique, I chose a painting by Frederick Horsman Varley, the "one member of the Group of Seven who 'did portraiture'" (Atanassova, 2007, p. 15).

Varley was born in 1881 in Sheffield, England. His father was an artist and and he encouraged Varley to develop his artistic abilities from a young age. After training in Sheffield, Antwerp and London, Varley immigrated to Canada in 1912, and became one of the founding members of the Group of Seven.

 The painting I chose is called Rocky Shore:

You must put your whole being into it. - F. H. Varley

doodle time #1

I think I'm at my most creative when I'm coming up with ways to procrastinate. My latest discovery is that I can scan the scribbly drawings I do in my notebooks and post them for your viewing pleasure here on this blog.

You may have noticed that there are some class notes next to my coffee cup doodle and maybe you're thinking that I don't pay attention in class...

Well, I'd like to take this opportunity to dispel some of the myths about doodling through the awesome wisdom of Sunni Brown:

She talks about visual note-taking and makes the case for doodling, redefining it as "scribblings to help a person think." She says doodlers retain 30% more information than non-doodlers! Whoa!

More scribbles to come. In the meantime, I also recommend this. Super amazing and hilarious.

Arts Explorer #2: Instant Sculpture (Vitamin Head)

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Current English (Soanes, Hawker, & Elliott, 2006), failure is:

n. 1 a lack of success. 2 an unsuccessful person or thing. 3 a situation in which something stops functioning. 4 an instance of not doing something that is expected: her failure to comply with the rules.

My first attempt at an instant sculpture was something of a failure. I thought it would be neat to make a DNA-spiral-tower out of red books, but it collapsed... so I'm going with another idea: vitamin head.
At breakfast, my boyfriend suggested I use all the vitamins we'll take this week to craft a sculpture. Yay, health!

The pile includes vitamin C, vitamin D, chlorella and zinc:

Here's my vitamin head.

My art word of the week is line, the first of the artistic elements.

According to Schirrmacher and Fox (2009), a line

• is a visible mark made by an artistic tool, such as a crayon, moved across a surface, such as paper.
• is a continuation of a dot.
• usually suggests direction, movement, rhythm, or form.
• does not exist in nature. Nature produces edges. Artists produce lines to represent edges.
• helps the artist define shapes and contours or represent edges.
• is something we use to make letters, words, numbers, symbols, and signs (p. 135).

I used raised lines to represent the edges of Vitamin Head's face.

What I'm wondering now is: is this really a sculpture? Is it just a silhouette? Or an outline?
The edge of a sculpture produces a line between the object and the space around it - my sculpture is comprised of lines made by laying vitamins in strategic positions. So, I'm not sure if it's just lines or really could be called a sculpture. For now, the mystery continues...
In connection to the field of ECE, I had a good time using trial and error to come up with an idea that worked. I think children are usually better than we older people at saying 'get over it, try something else', and we can learn from them. This assignment also gave me the chance to use everyday objects in a novel way, and I think the act of doing this pushes us creatively. How many ways can you use a paper clip? Or a vitamin? Or a pencil? So many possibilities...


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References

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art and creative

     development for young children. Belmont, CA:

     Delmar.

Soanes, C., Hawker, S., & Elliott, J. (Eds.). (2006). Oxford 

     Dictionary of Current English (4th ed.). New York: Oxford

     University Press.

olé to you nonetheless

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, talks about a new way to think about creativity.

Are we comfortable with the idea that artistry and creative work usually lead to pain and anguish? She asks us to consider this question. What if we were to get a safe distance from creativity - turn it into a "disembodied spirit"? Would that allow us to carry on with creative work without losing ourselves in the process?
Would that make creative work feel more accessible?

Arts Explorer #1: What does creativity mean to me?

Tough question. I'm going to bring in some experts...

According to Dr. Betty Edwards (1989), from her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain:

Creativity is the ability to find new solutions to a problem or new modes of expression; thus it brings into existence something new to the individual and to the culture. 

You'll notice she uses the word new three times in this definition. Must be important!

Going back to my first three posts, I think creativity in the sense of finding "new solutions to a problem" or coming up with "new modes of expression" involves allowing yourself to step into new ways of seeing or a fresh perspective. It also involves courage because this newness often comes with  uncertainty. We have to be vulnerable to be creative and that can be really scary. Finally, being vulnerable connects to the idea of being open: we have to accept Martha Graham's idea that we are each a unique channel of expression and it is our responsibility to stay open. She writes that it is not up to us to decide if what we are creating is good or bad, but just to keep creating and keep expanding...

Howard Gardner, in Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century, wrote that:

People are creative when they can solve problems, create products or raise issues in a domain in a way that is initially novel but is eventually accepted in one or more cultural settings...The acid test of creativity is simple: in the wake of a putatively creative work, has the domain subsequently been changed? (p. 116)

Well, Howard, we can't be sure if something we're doing will solve a particular problem or be transformative in a given domain, so for me, creativity is really about opening new worlds. Sometimes they're small, sometimes they're big. Sometimes we open new world for ourselves and sometimes it is for others. As educators, we need to be creative and make space for children to be creative. Every child is differeny and we need to respond creatively to their uniqueness. The children we work with will grow up to live in a world that doesn't exist yet, so they need to get into adaptive habits of mind in order to survive. Creativity is literally a survival skill and it doesn't just apply to painting, drawing, dancing, or playing an instrument. Everyone has the capacity to be creative and all domains of knowledge can benefit when we learn to tap into this capacity.

To close, I wanted to show you a video that a friend sent me today. An amazing example of opening a new world...

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References 

Edwards, B. (1989). Drawing on the right side of the

 

     brain. New York: Tarcher.

 

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple

 

     Intelligences for the 21st century. New York:

 

     Basic Books.

brand new blog part III

A quote from Martha Graham (source unknown):

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer. Image retrieved from here.

A third thought on creativity is that we all have a responsibility to let ourselves be creative. It's part of the deal!

brand new blog part II

Kent Monkman, aka Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, performs in Toronto for Nuit Blanche. That is one brave lady, folks.

My second thought is that creative endeavours require courage.

It's one thing to notice how things look from a new perspective and another to express what you've noticed in a meaningful way. It can be scary to try to communicate strange new ways of looking at the world.

brand new blog

Hi! This is my blog for Creative Arts I at Ryerson University. This course is part of my undergrad in Early Childhood Education and this blog will be linked to work in the field (particularly the assigned Arts Explorer posts). I'll also be tossing in some other stuff, related to creativity and interesting thinking in general.

About this photo: over the break I went to Mexico and took this on the plane coming home. There were so many different patterns in the patches of farm land and I thought it would make a good painting.

My first thought on creativity and inspiration is about perspective. Even though I'm afraid of flying, it does give me a chance to notice what things look like from a different angle. In some ways getting on a plane and going somewhere new seems so normal, but being in the sky is actually kind of nuts if you think about it...