14 Art Educators in a Pandemic
SAIC Department of Art Education
2021 Culminating Events Panels
Land Acknowledgement
Presenters Sydney Anderson..............................Panel 2, 20
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is located on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Many other tribes such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, and Fox also called this area home. The region has long been a center for Indigenous people to gather, trade, and maintain kinship ties. Today, one of the largest urban American Indian communities in the United States resides in Chicago. Members of this community continue to contribute to the life of this city and to celebrate their heritage, practice traditions, and care for the land and waterways.
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Sarah Bailey........................................Panel 4, 40 Jasmine Beal......................................Panel 2, 24 Kris Cain.............................................Panel 4, 38 Rex Cassidy........................................Panel 4, 36 Doreen Chan......................................Panel 1,16 Jacqueline Acevedo Colon..............Panel 3, 32 Emilee Davidson...............................Panel 1, 12 Jackie Guataquira.............................Panel 1, 14 Cordelia Larsen.................................Panel 1, 10 Nicolette Nijensohn..........................Panel 3, 30 Antonio Pazaran................................Panel 2, 22 Frank Quintero...................................Panel 4, 42 Colin Seikel........................................Panel 2, 26
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Welcome Dear members of the extended SAIC Art Education community, Thank you for joining us for the 2021 Culminating Event Panels of the SAIC Art Education Department’s graduate programs. As these Master of Arts in Art Education and Master of Arts in Teaching students graduate and plan for their futures as artists, activists, teachers, and culture makers, it is daunting to consider the events of the two years during which they have been individually and collectively studying, researching, analyzing, reflecting, making, and participating. This year’s graduating students decided to forgo the department’s tradition of referring to their final presentations as a “symposium,” rejecting possible associations with aloof academic or artistic gatherings that are not vitally connected to these complex times and to the ongoing traumatic experiences of individuals and communities. Also, rather than ending each panel with a traditional Q & A format, each group has chosen to focus on dialogue with each other, recognizing the importance of deepening their work through engaging in generous and generative critical discussions, identifying connections and contradictions. Each of these artist educators grapple with how to respond responsibly to the racial justice, political, and ecological crises in which we are immersed. Shelter-in-place and other Covid-19 precautions have created a new normal in which many people newly perceive themselves as vulnerable and limited, even as others experience a deepening and compounding of socially inflicted traumas.
The goal of such work can be described as supporting people in becoming aware of the harsh reality of multiple crises, without being overwhelmed by them. Strengthening and sharing each individual’s introspective, ongoing creative self is explored for its contribution to what education philosopher Gert Biesta has called “coming into presence,” learning as responding, “showing who you are and where you stand.” Please join with the faculty of SAIC Art Education in celebrating the work of these determined artist educators who persisted in their education and in their artistic and pedagogical work through the consciousnessaltering events of the past years. Their research with communities is a contribution to understanding what is now and what yet could be. Be well. Take care. Take care of each other.
Olivia Gude Chair of Art Education Angela Gregory Paterakis Professor of Art Education
An underlying theme of many of these presentations is how art education can contribute to the deconstruction of harmful narratives and promote self-reflection, unself-conscious sharing, and open democratic exchange.
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Tuesday, May 11th
Wednesday, May 12th
https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/85644734092
4:00 pm
Exploring Narratives in the
Conscious and Subconscious Doreen Chan
Emilee Davidson
Jackie Guataquira
Cordelia Larsen
5:25 pm
Break
5:35 pm
Thriving Resistances
Sydney Anderson Jasmine Beal
Antonio Pazaran
Colin Seikel
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https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/85644734092
Museums for the Future
Jacqueline Acevedo Colon
4:00 pm
Nicolette Nijensohn Break
4:50 pm
Who Says You Can’t Make
5:00 pm
History
Sarah Bailey Kris Cain
Rex Cassidy
Frank Quintero Virtual Reception
6:30 pm
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Exploring Narratives in the Conscious and Subconscious Cordelia Larsen Emilee Davidson Jackie Guataquira Doreen Chan PANEL 1
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Cordelia Larsen
Master of Arts in Teaching Domestic Interiors and the Self The Domestic Interiors and the Self curriculum explored how domestic interior space can be a site for self-reflection and serve as a secondary self-portrait. Through the examination of coded objects and collage in Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s work, high school students reflected on ways to contextualize their figure through the thoughtful inclusion of materiality. The research aims to guide and encourage students to disclose individuality and selfhood during a time of hyper-isolation and online learning. This project provided space for students to share personal stories and histories without having to physically reveal themselves online. The curriculum also aims to express race, culture, and ethnicity in a celebratory light. It asks: how can personal objects in the domestic interior space be linked to memories, culture, and lineage? How can collage be used to speak to stories, interests, and memories? How can we use Crosby to learn about history, colonization, and layered identity? The curriculum was taught to three different virtual public high school classes that ranged from 7th to 12th grade. Located in Hyde Park, Chicago, the school also includes a competitive magnet program and serves primarily a Black student body. The project was taught in four classes, with sessions ranging from 35 to 60 minutes of synchronous learning. Students first unpacked symbolic objects in Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s work, then photographed and reflected on significant objects in their own homes. These images were used as reference photos for their sketches which were then finalized in watercolor, colored pencils, and collage. Data was collected through reflection worksheets, photographs of their work, Flipgrid videos, and daily journal entries.
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Participants used watercolor, colored pencils, and collage to speak to memories, ethnicity, culture, and interests. Students drew from family heirlooms and cultural practices, used collage to speak to pop culture interests, and reflected on the current political climate. Individuals used objects to speak on their values and selfhood. This topic allowed students to unpack experiences and share stories in a time when communication is limited and often awkward. By offering different forms of communication, students were encouraged to share personal moments and reveal significant parts of themselves. I discovered snippets of many student’s lives, learning about ancestral coconut oil practices, memories rooted in mahjong, and the deep value of sentimental objects.
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Emilee Davidson
Master of Arts in Teaching Eye Spy Faces: Translating Patterns of the Everyday through Pareidolia to Create Illustrated Stories in Art Education We are people, in bodies, within the world. When we experience life, we connect to the space around us and discern its design. However, the world is filtered by individual perceptions and interpretations--moments that shape thoughts and identity. Today, from the educational standpoint, our physical day-to-day worldview has shifted. This is due to shelter-in-place and the virtually all-digital platform students engage with every day. For this art project, I worked at a CPS High School with a mostly Hispanic/non-white population. The Mixed Media elective I taught had 30 students participating. Students began by looking at crumpled paper, wrinkled tinfoil, or squiggles on a page and then based on their individual perceptions and interpretations, made an artwork. The students utilized the natural phenomenon pareidolia, a person’s tendency to recognize patterns where they don’t exist. We explored this for two weeks; I asked students to translate the patterns they saw into visual interpretations and then original narratives in the form of short stories, poems, song lyrics, etc. This experiment was to see if students could translate what they perceived into art and writing. I wanted to see if materializing personal perceptions was a helpful activity during a pandemic. I also wanted to know what parallels appeared in students’ work. Through analyzing photographs of artwork and audio recordings taken during class presentations, I found that most students included an antagonistic character or event. Also, most of the writing seemed unfinished or open-ended. I believed the villains were related to children’s stories students might have heard or possibly to the pandemic (something big and negative in their lives). The lack of specified endings also made me think of the pandemic and the feeling it evokes: an unending struggle–– emotional states stemming from a year of loss, isolation, panic, no cure, and new vaccines that bring hope, but no definite security as yet.
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In my future teaching, I will encourage students to delve further into their interdisciplinary interpretations to explore deeper meanings. Like Rorschach’s inkblot tests, psychoanalysts have used to interpret internal narratives, I would have the students use symbolism theory as a means to interpret their work. Students will keep journals and add to them weekly. Making this an ongoing introspective creative process, rather than one project, will foster ongoing artistic, interdisciplinary, and social-emotional development as well as provide a means for catharsis.
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Jackie Guataquira
Master of Arts in Art Education Breaking Down Stigma One Zine at a Time: Exploring Dialogue around Youth Mental Health Breaking Down Stigma One Zine at a Time: Exploring Dialogue around Youth Mental Health consists of a series of workshops I designed to engage a teen audience, utilizing dialogue and reflection through zine-making. Through the process of making zines, the workshops center conversation about mental health and the artistic expression of teen participants. Gleaning from the practices of art education and art therapy, coupled with the history of zine culture, my work culminated in workshop outlines, how-to zine-making videos, and zines produced within the workshops. A key overarching goal of the project was making the workshops accessible, therefore I provided all educational materials and resources on a website for interested educators. Community based, youth centered environments act well as spaces for teens to participate in the workshops, since traditional school environments play a role in affecting youth mental health. The workshops were designed to be implemented singularly or as a series and may work well in conjunction with community organizations with similar existing initiatives. The self-exploration that takes place in one’s teen years can be overwhelming and confusing and possibly more so for teens of color and in the LGBTQ+ community. By holding space for teens to participate in hands-on artmaking with a focus on mental health, this project actively pushed against the societal stigma surrounding mental health. Zine culture has grown and evolved over the past several decades, with a wide range of subjects covered, from Science Fiction to autobiographical tales. Breaking Down Stigma One Zine at a Time contributes to the personal narratives explored in the greater world of zines by guiding teens in translating their own stories into zines. Through these workshops, young people were able to explore their emotions and zine-making, establishing the next generation of zine-makers.
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Doreen Chan
Master of Arts in Art Education Connect People in Different Nations via Sharing Dreams and Matching Common Dreams Differences separate us. Political polarization reinforced social cleavage both in Hong Kong and the U.S. in 2020. People with close relationships didn’t communicate any more because of their different political views. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distance made connection among people even harder. With the rise of mental disorder and the over-stimulated emotions shared by people globally, more people had vivid and bizarre dreams during the pandemic. I believe dreams could be a subconscious connection between people due to the shared visual images in our waking life. As a visual artist and artist educator in a time when people all over the world were facing similar but differing turbulences, I looked at dreams as a medium to connect people. In this project, I was investigating the following questions: Could dreams be a common language for people to connect –– a way to know someone new, or expand or reconnect the relationships between people who know each other? How might it be possible to poetically connect people in different nations through their common dreams via an online platform? This project centered common images and themes in dreams as shared phenomena, which could build bridges between people from different backgrounds. In this research, I collaborated with participants to examine the shared territories between dreams and realities. In order to explore this, I collected dream content from people in Hong Kong and Chicago. What was the suitable medium or platform for people to connect with dreams? To extend the cross-nations scale, I decided to create an online platform with a design team to collect dreams of people in different nations and match common dreams. On this artificial intelligence facilitated online platform, participants experienced an artistic and intimate event. They shared their dreams by typing, voice recording, drawing and uploading video or images. They did not show their identity, age, class nor race.
https://halfdream.org
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Visual arts-based research practice was adopted to investigate the impact. The results of my research indicate that people in different nations felt connected through sharing dreams on the online platform. People were willing to share their dreams, knowing this was an art project which was interested in poetic connections and which also protected their privacy. This enabled them to be open to their dream partner. I plan on developing further iterations of the project, continuing to build connections through people matched through the medium of dreams.
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Thriving Resistances Sydney Anderson Antonio Pazaran Jasmine Beal Colin Seikel
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Sydney Anderson
Master of Arts in Art Education Otherwise-worlds: Stories and Strategies for (Re)imagining Reciprocal Ecologies My research is concerned with restoring healthy relationships between human and more-than-human communities, and with finding alternative paths toward interconnected and reciprocal futures. I investigated ecological consequences of colonization, climate injustice, mass extinction, and species loneliness through interviews, observations in nature, and creative workshops. My objectives are addressed through the following questions: What can we learn regarding our individual & collective responsibility toward climate justice, decolonization, and better futures from diverse land stewards? How can emergent dialogue and artmaking be conduit for creative solutions to intersectional challenges? And, what does it mean to navigate the ecology and advocate for justice as a white person on stolen land? During the 2020-2021 pandemic, I led workshops called “emergent art + entangled ecologies” with a group called the Feminist Bird Club that produced drawings and hosted dialogues about potential livable, sustainable worlds. Next, I interviewed land-stewards about their methods for envisioning and enacting decolonial, equitable, and interconnected futures. Experts I interviewed include: Tim Paule and Nicole Lindsey of Detroit Hives; Ma’raj Sheikh of the Chicago Food Policy Action Council; Rachel Kimpton of Star Farm; and Fawn Pochel of Chi-Nations Youth Council. Then I observed four Midwestern ecosystems: Cityscapes, Prairie, Woodlands, and Great Lakes through sustained looking and note-taking. Finally, I offered creative strategies to activate the expertise of the landscape and stewards, and to engage readers in ecosystem entanglement. I discovered that when concerned, committed citizens convene over a common goal, emergent art practices can support our capacities to envision and reach robust solutions together. Through the interviews, I encountered diverse approaches to performing reciprocity with nature and enacting decolonization through acknowledging the harms of the past and present. This is necessary if we are to stop committing harm against people and other living creatures. Observations and interviews brought me into closer understanding about ways that I am a part of these ecosystems and my responsibility as a settler on land that was colonized. Most notably, I learned that the work of healing and stewardship is unending.
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below: Emergent Drawing by Hannah Watson @hannahwatsontextiles Above: CAPTION??? Below: Image
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Within our artmaking and pedagogy, learning to incorporate decolonial methodologies and realizing ecological connections can aid us in recognizing our inherent interdependence. Generating a world where no one lives at the expense of another is not about going back in time; and our sustainable, equitable, and ecologically interconnected future begins with dreaming and commitment to doing the work. Artists and visionary land-stewards have the potential to bring this future into focus.
above: Emergent Drawing by Jenna Boyles @jennajunk
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Antonio Pazarán
Master of Arts in Teaching Printmaking as a Medium of Resistance! My curriculum project was rooted in my own artistic practice as a printmaker. I am interested in the mutual benefits that emerge when youth and community members create artwork and dialogue regarding local and global social issues that negatively impact communities of color. Printmaking has given me the opportunity to communicate and disseminate messages of hope, as well as learn about artists related to my culture and others who overlap with the similar message. For this curriculum project, I wanted to continue to explore how teaching and sharing printmaking history and methods can help our youth and the community have the necessary tools for resistance against anti-grassroot organizations and to promote healing. My project was taught at a CPS high school located in the southwest side of the city, with 9-12 grade students during virtual learning/teaching. Students were presented with a history of social conscious printmaking, in particular with artists who tackle issues that affect communities of color, including José Guadalupe Posada, Elizabeth Catlett, Carlos Cortez and the collective “Taller de Grafica popular.” These artists have set a very high bar to reach, a bar that defines a proper socially conscious work methodology. Examples were used to inspire students and allow them to find a social justice topic of personal interest. Students were instructed in methods of stencil printmaking using household items. Students were shown various approaches such as type design exercises, composition design methods, and stencil practices to develop the skills to achieve a final stencil print. They were charged with using this education to create art that resists oppressive ideas and conditions. Students are very current with issues that are of importance in their lives. Each student had an interest in something unique, which was gratifying to see. Students printed and composed written responses to their prints. I was pleased with their interest and the many approaches they took when researching issues.
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Art has allowed me to grow as an educator who is always striving to connect topics directly to our locally or globally marginalized. I use this approach in my artistic work and in my teaching methods. I try to use the past to enlighten our present, by using work from a wide array of artists, mediums and cultural origins as inspiration. I look forward to working with students in person again in the future to continue to develop more possibilities of creating art.
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Jasmine Beal
Master of Arts in Art Education School Dayz: Creating Culturally Competent Science Units that Engage Black Middle School Students This study analyzed the effect that intentionally designed curriculum has on the buy-in of science content by Black middle school students. This topic is important to study because Black students are not pursuing degrees and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics (STEAM) like their White, Asian, and Latinx counterparts. Therefore, I wanted to test the impact of having 92 eighth graders research and develop their own hair care product. This curriculum project was taught to 8th graders who attended a midwestern charter school in a major metropolitan city where 98.4% of the students are Black. The Hair Product Unit lasted four weeks and allowed students to engage in a handson approach that would offer them a culturally relevant learning experience. In doing so, I hoped to increase the engagement of my students in my middle school science class. Prior to and upon my arrival, students did not engage actively with the course because they did not feel any connection to it. Thus, I knew that I had to retool my curriculum in order to interest my students and motivate them to invest in what I was teaching. This research was an attempt to challenge preconceived notions of science curriculum and instead teach my students practical science skills through a lens that allows their every day experiences to be valued and factored into the lesson. When I started working on my curriculum, I tapped into my knowledge of Understanding by Design (UBD) to create lessons to make hair product creation a reality for my students.
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By the end of the unit, 88/92 students worked with their group to create their own hair product. Those that did not complete it were students with multiple absences during the in-class work days. This showed me that students gravitated to the project because I made science exciting and hands on. When I first arrived, 50% of students were completing work. This project gave me confidence that I could teach science skills through a lens focused on their cultural experiences. Based on my results, it is imperative that students’ needs are at the forefront of curriculum development. STEAM educators must become more intentional with their curriculum planning to ultimately increase the number of Black college graduates who enter the STEAM workforce.
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Colin Seikel
Master of Arts in Teaching Green New Visions: Trash Sculptures for a Thriving Future High School students are growing up in an age of multiple, interconnected environmental crises, with the threat of total system collapse looming over all life on Earth. This raises a series of questions about students. How do they interpret the 2018 Green New Deal Resolution from the U.S. House of Representatives? What do they envision when they imagine a thriving future? How do they respond to using trash as a medium for sculpture? On the teacher side: what are some best practices teachers can use to encourage systemic thinking and critique in students? How can a teacher engage students in deep understanding of the urgency and existential threats of climate crises, while avoiding student hopelessness? This curriculum project was taught at a high school on Chicago’s Southwest side, in a virtual, trilingual classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the students whose families came from China and Mexico are immigrants to the U.S. or are the children of immigrants. The strong majority came from a working class background. I taught this curriculum to two ceramics classes. They engaged in study and discussion of the historical New Deal of 1933-1939, the Green New Deal of 2018, and contemporary youth climate activism. I posed open-ended questions to the students which they answered in various written formats. I guided students through the process of choosing a component from the Green New Deal and sculpting their own interpretations of the proposal out of trash. My evidence includes: 1) the students’ answers to the open-ended discussion questions 2) the sculptures they produced and 3) their artist statements.
This project has a strong implication for the field of Art Education that we need to educate students to fathom systemic problems and solutions. If not, we will continue to leave students overwhelmed and under-equipped to have any sense of agency or security in the dynamic, possibly collapsing world they inherit.
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This project revealed students’ strongly held beliefs in the reality of our environmental crises and their deeply situated fears and anxieties. It also showed that teens today struggle to envision systemic solutions, often defaulting to suggestions of consumer-level actions. To respond to students’ struggles as well as our shared emerging understanding of the complexity of the crises, I frequently revised the project, extending its length and approaching the same conversations from different angles. Though not all students managed to envision systemic change, many exciting and positive visions of the future were shared. Students overwhelmingly expressed appreciation for the realness of our important conversations. Many students even expressed desire for future involvement in the movement for a survivable, thrivable future.
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Museums for the Future Jacqueline Acevedo Colon Nicolette Nijensohn
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Nicolette Nijensohn
Master of Arts in Art Education Historic House Museums and Educational Programming Small Town Big History is a project that gathered and shared the stories of a selected group of six house museums in small towns in Illinois. Because they are considered less formal and therefore are seen as more family-friendly and more inviting to explore, these smaller museums have shown great advantages in reaching audiences. These museums bring together their history and that of their communities, facilitating learning and networking. They contribute to society by providing inclusive educational opportunities, not only through sharing their collections, but also with the many benefits their programming can bring. This research project is presented as a written thesis as well as on a website: smalltownbighistory.com. Both formats share salient information for the art education field and are supported by photographic documentation, as well as audio and video interviews of museum staff and guest lecturers. In these interviews, professionals talk about some of their strategies, identifying current developments in educational programming considering them powerful tools that can be used to ensure the museums’ long-term sustainability. Historic house museum staff have adopted innovative practices in response to changing conditions, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020. They were quick to pivot from in-person to online strategies, reinventing the many initiatives offered, thus keeping their relationship with the public engaged and active. As they continued to expand their digital presence, museum staff have created virtual spaces that have encouraged new ways to keep their missions relevant, repositioning themselves as active listeners to the needs of their communities. By doing so, small town historic house museums are redefining the meaning of participation through educational programming giving their mission a purpose and a new life as cultural anchors to their communities.
left: The Schweikher-Langsdorf House Museum offers many events, ranging from tours, lectures, and painting classes to a recent collaboration with the famous Hubbard Street Dance Company, “The Sky was Different” by acclaimed choreographer Jonathan Fredrickson. The museum provides a unique space for learning in person and online.
above right: Smalltownbighistory.com showcases many possibilities for educational programming in historic house museums. The site presents programming details, interviews, and custom pilot programs for a selected group of six museums.
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bottom left: The Farnsworth House Museum creates inclusive, innovative educational programming where thoughtful discussions and meaningful learning can take place, even through digital interactions. Each event creates opportunities to connect to experts in the field and experience valuable human interactions.
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Jacqueline Acevedo Colon Master of Arts in Art Education
Museums and People with Disabilities: Shaping Education through Building Access Ableism is reflected in various forms and many museums have a shortage of equitable educational programming for people with disabilities. Wondering how museums can successfully engage people with disabilities in their design and educational programming, my research questions were: What roles can museums play in reshaping the perceptions of society about people with disabilities? In what ways have museums supported people with disabilities through their educational programming? What are other possibilities for successful educational programming and changing perceptions that engage people with disabilities? This project started in October 2019 with a literature research that described case studies of museum programming that supported people with disabilities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Wanting to understand more about how museum educators approach issues related to disability and access, I became aware of how ableism has permeated, not only historical societal perceptions of people with disabilities, but also the laws that designate what is fair. In a likely manner, these issues were experienced differently during the Covid-19 pandemic. For this research I conducted and recorded four interviews using the online platform of Google Meets. The people interviewed were an independent curator from Texas, an activist from Puerto Rico, an independent curator from Australia, and a Chicago art museum employee. Unable to create programming in a museum’s physical space because of the ongoing pandemic, the purpose of developing a website was to experience the design process of creating accessible virtual content for people with disabilities using the knowledge acquired from the Principles of Universal Design and Disability Justice theory.
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Analyzing the findings of my interviews and research, I found there is a growing understanding in museums of their current limitations in providing an equitable educational experience for people with disabilities. However, it is enheartening to recognize that museums are creating partnerships with local organizations, schools, hospitals, and community groups to address identified gaps. My research suggested that due to the unprecedented limitations and challenges the COVID-19 pandemic presented to the “normal” habits and experiences of non-disabled people in individualistic, capitalist societies, there is a greater understanding in many communities of what it feels like to “be limited”. This thesis concludes by offering some creative project ideas, contributions to reimagining the possibilities of post-pandemic museums that embody the Principles of Universal Design and fulfill the promise of equitable and inclusive spaces for all to access and shape contemporary cultural experiences.
above: Multiple books related to disability studies are spread over a mustard color blanket. There are a pair of a light skin woman’s arms. The woman is taking notes from an open book where the chapter’s title reads “bodies”
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Who Says You Can’t Make History? Rex Cassidy Kris Cain Sarah Bailey Frank Quintero
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Rex Cassidy
Master of Arts in Art Education Who Says You Can’t Make History: Creative and Experiential Pedagogy in Art History Classes This small scale study features art history faculty teaching at the post-secondary level who incorperate creative projects in their curriculum. In this paper I examine the evolving field of art history, and explore changing teaching methods emerging in the field. Through interviews with practitioners, this study aims to provide information and support to other collegiate Art History faculty, including ideas to help reinvigorate curriculum and share new and creative teaching practices that are already being used by other art historians. This study investigated six art historians working at private, public, and community colleges. These historians speak about their projects, and how their work speaks to the needs of their student populations. These interviews occurred over Zoom, and featured faculty teaching in Chicago, IL, San Antonio, TX, Colorado Springs, CO, and Cedar Rapids, IA. In addition to participating in interviews, these faculty generously shared syllabi and examples of student work. Commonalities across interviews were references to connecting the past to the present and commitments to including students with diverse experiences. This project sought to discern how the field of art history might evolve in the future. Faculty members are choosing more holistic approaches, in hopes that students will be able to see themselves in art history through art making and creative writing. Art history teaching methods are evolving to meet student needs, and incorporating established educational theories that value experiential learning.
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Kris Cain
Master of Arts in Teaching Digital Murals: Bring It To The Surface Chicago has a rich history of murals that address the most critical issues of today including mass incarceration, colonialism, and COVID-19. Murals reflect the nuanced understandings of the communities in which they exist, serving as affirmations of the rich culture within them. My research investigates the significance of murals within Chicago communities. By using technology and examples of contemporary Chicago murals my aim was to empower students to “bring it to the surface” in their own neighborhoods and make mural creation accessible in the classroom. My critical action research was conducted through remote online teaching with Chicago public high school students on Chicago’s Southwest Side. The duration of my curriculum project spanned eight days, with fifty minute class periods each day. I taught a condensed history of murals in Chicago, ranging from the inception of the community mural movement of the 1960s to present. I emphasized the use of text and imagery in murals as a means to convey a collective voice, claim space, and call attention to the needs, the pride, the hopes, the values, and the injustices within communities. Utilizing accessible technology (phones, Chromebooks, tablets, traditional drawing materials, etc.) in combination with free digital drawing apps, students created their own digital murals based on locations and themes of significance to them. Data collection methods I used included pre-work surveys, think sheets, postproject reflection questions, student artwork, and recorded presentation and discussions. These tools outlined project expectations, prompted questions to guide students through the development of their digital mural designs and provided a self-assessment for students to engage in. Google Classroom was utilized to post assignments, post process slides, and capture the development of their work, including their final digital drawing. The collection of data in my pre-work survey, allowed me to understand students’ technological needs and develop prompts that facilitated meaningful classroom discourse.
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Through this curriculum, I learned and taught the significance of teaching contemporary murals; work that is accessible to students outside of gallery walls and present within their own city. The curriculum that I developed shows the possibilities of integrating mural making art and students’ interests into the curriculum even in a remote teaching environment.
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Sarah Bailey
Master of Arts in Teaching Teaching Identity Affirmation Techniques Through Retconning of Personal Fables My curriculum project aimed to engage high school students in identity affirmation techniques through introspective art by which they could model sentiments toward self and “other.” The intent was that students would discover tools to express identity and explore concepts of self, gender, culture, and place in the current state of the world. In preparing for this project, two questions emerged: How are storytelling and narratives a valid form of communicating truth? How are narratives we tell tied to cultural and individual identities? For this curriculum project, I taught about transformation and “retconning,” or “retroactive continuity” at a public high school in the city of Waukegan. Retconning is the comic-book-inspired art of deconstruction of narratives. In the first lesson, students rendered a transformation with a transitional panel centered between two like or unlike characters or objects on their comic book page. Students focused on people changing to and from animals or to a “powered-up” or more powerful version of themselves. The second comic lesson started with creative writing, constructing a poem, either the form of a nature-based Haiku or the human-centric Sennryu. Writing the Haiku or Sennryu, the students had an even split of nature versus human-based stories. My students were experiencing a challenging time in history as they lived through the COVID-19 pandemic. They had a unique opportunity to create art in a pandemic by distilling and interpreting experiences while living them. Still, these students had a very cautious art-making approach. They held back, wanting step-by-step instruction and constant reinforcement.
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External factors play a pivotal role in “retconning” as a subject matter when encouraging student-driven learning. Students need easement into new material during a pandemic when they are already navigating multiple media narratives. Students then “scratch the surface,” starting to “play” with different storytelling techniques as they construct their narratives. At the heart of those stories are students who want to be out in the world, more powerful versions of themselves. They may not realize it, but they are already embodying these living narratives, not just surviving but thriving artists in this time of a pandemic. The deconstruction of harmful narratives and re-construction of positive messages, specifically regarding identity affirmation, can help students separate fact from fiction. Ideally, students who think critically will be better equipped to become citizens of the world who drive positive change. In a future curriculum project, I would like to tackle “revisionism” versus “negationism” with students.
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Frank Quintero
Master of Arts in Teaching Symbol of Knowledge Digital Murals How can students use their voices, both verbally and visually, to physically shape the world around them and convince community leaders to entrust them with creating public art? This thesis investigated how student artists can utilize digital software tools they use in class to create digital artworks that serve as bridges to creating future physical art spaces within their communities. Students use photos of physical spaces and digitally collage their digital paintings into the space. The research was conducted at a Chicago Public School located on the north side of Chicago. The five-day project worked with two Honors Digital Imaging I classes, with over 30 students in each class. The Knowledge Mural Project took place during the continuing 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, and instruction was conducted entirely in a virtual classroom with all students, my mentor teacher, and myself logging in via computers, digital devices, and smartphones. Classes were 50 minutes divided into 10 minutes of instruction, 30 minutes of independent student work time, and 10 minutes of student asynchronous time. The Knowledge Mural Project created individual digital murals that each student conceived and “painted” using digital computer software. Students placed their digitally painted murals on one of four different wall spaces found throughout the school campus. Students picked a space and chose a symbol representing knowledge. They wrote about how their symbols related to knowledge and used this as the starting point for their murals. Students explored the skills we developed in previous lessons to build personal narratives into their artwork. These digital murals serve as final pieces and as tools to initiate conversations that can create physical public art pieces in the future.
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PANEL 4
With most students participating and turning in their final murals, the research results were very encouraging. An essential part of the project’s success was allowing students to choose and write about their symbols before drawing their murals. These writings became the map for students when designing their mural. Several students wrote that their favorite part of the project was the chance to create personal artwork for a digital mural at their school. One of the research challenges was the limited amount of time with students caused by remote learning. Despite this, students created work that expressed a vision for their community and saw how their digital works could become a physical part of their school.
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Reimagining Education Amidst a Pandemic Sarah Ross, MAAE Director Adam Greteman, MAT Director
As you, MAAE and MAT graduates of 2021, conclude your time at SAIC amidst a global pandemic, struggles for racial justice, climate catastrophe, and more we first thank you for your criticality, creativity, and commitment to education and its possibilities. Education and art––art education–– have responsibilities to respond to the conditions we find ourselves in, conditions that are simultaneously ever-changing and exacerbated by systemic injustices and inequalities. You have all spent the last few years reading, writing, discussing, teaching, and making your ways into important critical conversations and communities. And you did this for the last year of your time at SAIC virtually, grappling with what we have lost while being attentive to new possibilities. Such work, we sincerely believe, will assist you as you leave SAIC and bring your diverse knowledge, skills, and imaginations to the work that lies ahead in our global communities. Education is never a process we encounter alone, so we acknowledge and thank the parents, partners, kids, friends and family that have provided innumerous kinds of support, kindness, and love during your time in graduate school. Such support made visible even more during our time shelteringin-place and working from home. We also acknowledge and thank our colleagues at SAIC - the faculty and staff - who have provided guidance, feedback, and helping hands in and outside
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of the classroom as we encountered education amidst the pandemic. When you all started your graduate education, we were in the midst of any number of challenges to democratic norms. Over your time at SAIC, you have witnessed two impeachment trials of a U.S. president, acts of white supremacist terrorism at the US Capitol and around the world, continued killings of unarmed black and brown people, increased hate crimes against queer and trans people, especially trans women of color, and continued forms of economic inequalities. Many of these issues laid bare the continued challenges we face in our classrooms and daily lives. Alongside these challenges, we have seen the continued movements for justice, often led by young people. A massive movement of people doing everything from forming mutual aid networks to organizing outreach to elders to protest in the streets has indeed shaped this moment. We all have been part of a resilience community of people who come together for and with one another. Combined, these realities have provided us with material lessons that our work matters and has challenged our imaginations to find ways to act up and fight back. The arts and education––as they happen in schools, museums, social centers, prisons, universities, and the streets––have provided us with spaces and ways to not only imagine the worlds we want to see, but also make demands that such worlds come into presence. For the last few years as students, faculty, and staff we have had the great opportunity of finding words, making art, developing our understanding, and much more through the work of art education. Such opportunity was and is an immense responsibility and privilege. Upon graduation, it is our hope
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that you go out into the world bringing with you the words, the skills, the ideas, and importantly the relationships you have built to imagine the world differently and help usher in new, more beautiful and just worlds. The SAIC Art Education department of which you will soon be alums is committed to critical, creative, meaningful, and transformative education and therefore the development of critical, creative, meaningful, and transformative educators. The real challenges that art education faces such as privatization of public education, the impact of neoliberal policies, systemic racism, poverty, sexism, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia and censorship have been ever-present in experiences, discussions, and readings. And in this we saw new and urgent meanings as we encountered and continue to encounter the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, encounter we must––courageously, imaginatively, creatively, and we think most importantly, with a radical love. And in that encounter we hope that we are able, together, to reclaim, argue for, and articulate the importance of education, of ART education and the possibilities that the worlds we inhabit can and should be different.
which you and your students see themselves, yourselves, in the curriculum, the art works, and the pedagogy, especially ones that have erased and excluded so many. To reimagine an education, to continue to reimagine an education helps us in the long pursuit of justice and demands that we think and make possible new practices and ideas that are attentive to our present circumstances. Through the work you have done here at SAIC and the work you have done beyond your thesis in your educational and artistic lives, let us continue to engage this necessary work with imagination, ethical integrity, political astuteness, aesthetic sensibilities, and perhaps a touch of humor and a dash of kindness. We sincerely thank you for your presence as students AND the opportunity to learn from and with you these past years. We very much look forward to hearing about your work in the future. But before then, a huge congratulations to you on your accomplishments.
Here, at the end of your time with us in the Department of Art Education physically distanced but digitally present, we hope that you have been able to reimagine not only your education, but the forms of education you will bring into the world. We hope that you will reflect on the time spent here to shape your futures as artisteducators. Further, we imagine that you, very soon, will be guiding your own students, in whatever contexts, to reimagine their own education within and through the arts. This reimagining is one in
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THANK YOU!
All panels can be joined through: https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/85644734092
to the SAIC Art Education community students, staff, faculty, alumni, families, and friends
Olivia Gude
Chair of Art Education
Adam Greteman
Director of Master of Arts in Teaching
Sarah Ross
Director of Master of Arts in Art Education
FULL-TIME FACULTY Adam Greteman Olivia Gude Andres L. Hernandez Nicole Marroquin John Ploof Sarah Ross
STAFF
Kathleen Mary McGrath Administrative Director Kristi Moynihan Administrative Assistant Valerie Vasquez Licensure Specialist
AFFILIATED FULL-TIME FACULTY
ADJUNCT AND PART-TIME FACULTY Cheryl Boone Salome Chasnoff Kendall Crabbe Rebecca Keller Paul J. Mack Tim Nickodemus Hayon Park Niema Qureshi Lavie Raven Lydia Ross Laura Sapelly Madilyn Strentz Kate Thomas Christine Thompson Georgina Valverde
Linda Keane
program design by Natalia Regina Marra
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