Concept
A vision for the creative future of our State Role of the Artist in Today’s Creative Learning Spaces
Essential Question
What happens when artists foster understanding between self and others through critical awareness, social responsibility, and the exploration of empathy?
The artwork created in fulfillment of the course requirement is a direct response to the concept and essential question; exploring my role as Teaching Artist as it intersects with my personal artmaking practice. I teach visual art and work as a Teaching Artist with a wide variety of communities and populations, including incarcerated mentally ill men at a county jail. My personal artistic expression artwork is often in response to personal experiences or social justice issues, but I have never before created artworks expressing my experience as a Teaching Artist working in confined spaces. The journey of creating the artwork started with the facilitator training for MC3 Art Educator Studio and I continued to explore it as part of this Micro Credentials course. I have been teaching art in correctional facilities of over 10 years, but have never considered my experiences and how it may impact me personally and artistically. I started reflecting, documenting and paying closer attention to my physical awareness, feelings and experiences of entering and teaching in the maximum secured facility. I have also attended the Art in Corrections Conference: Reframing the Landscape of Art in Criminal Justice that underscored the need to change the language and narrative around incarceration and returning citizens, highlighted the staggering statistics of inequities and institutional racism and created space for those in or working in the system and those on the outside to have frank conversations. Exploring the essential question aligned with my critical personal awareness of the institutional environment in which creativity and artistic expression exists. I first captured my experiences in my journal which then evolved into a poem. Parts of the poem along with visual data regarding incarceration is integrated into the artwork “Slamming Doors/Safe Spaces�
INSPIRATION
• • • • •
*Due to institutional and organizational restrictions artworks cannot be sent to families or kept by inmates. It has also been suggested that I paint over the paintings with gesso to reuse as future painting surfaces.
Narratives surrounding Incarceration Experience teaching in correctional facilities Personal Artistic voice: Social Justice Symbolism: Collaborative paintings as discarded objects* / found materials Paintings “repurposed” as objects for social justice advocacy and research
• Draw inspiration from Arts in Corrections Conference experience • Include available data regarding incarceration • Include experiences teaching art in Correctional Facilities and its intersection with personal artistic practice. • Explore using the collaborative abstract paintings that cannot be sent to family or kept by inmates as discarded/found material.
INVESTIGATING IDEAS
EXPLORATION
VISUAL RESPONSE
REFLECT & REFINE
EXHIBIT / PRESENT
“Slamming Doors / Safe Spaces” Carien Quiroga 2019 Mixed Media 90” X 24