Pedagogy

When teaching Art in the university context, one is faced with many challenges.  The standard model for academic study does not apply to the practice of art.  While some aspects are parallel, many are not.  In contrast to an art school context, the avocational role of art for many students makes the professional level of study necessary for majors more difficult to achieve.  Students understand and are adept at handling academic course work; they have been gradually training for college study throughout their primary and secondary school lives.  But, most students' artistic ability and study has been arrested at about a fifth or sixth grade level.  To raise the level of inquiry to a professional standard by the time a senior graduates is perhaps the most difficult aspect of teaching Art, especially at the introductory levels.  Preconceptions about art as being fun or easy also compound the assault on a sophisticated level of study. 

In addition to the content of a course, students must also be taught how to study art.  Students must be exposed to and embrace a different mode of thinking and working.   It is quite difficult for students to put aside the scientific model of analytic inquiry privileged in our society.  In art, "Truth" is the result of thinking aside or thinking parallel or thinking through analogues rather than as the result of analytical, systematic thinking.  Trusting and believing in an intuitive way of knowing as well as the intellectual is essential.  Students must abandon the idea of a "right" or "wrong" answer; they must develop a sense of "appropriate".   They must also acquire a visual sensitivity.  The only way to develop these essentials is to repeatedly and consistently confront the artistic questions and to practice the sleight of hand until it becomes part of the intuitive process.  This is made more difficult just because the study of Art is being squashed into a structure appropriate for more conventional academic study.  Students are faced with weekly class structures that are an accommodation at best to the need for large blocks of time devoted to making work. 

  Yet, despite these obstacles, the teaching of art at Carolina can be and is a vital curriculum of study.   In fact, I think that the study of Art in a liberal arts context is preferable to an Art school context.  To be interested in the world on many levels is an essential component for the artist.  In the long run, a good artist is not someone with impressive sleight of hand, but someone whose ideas are effectively conveyed by their virtuosity.  The ideas, of course can be any myriad of things, from a socio-political content to issues of the sublime.  I urge students to acquire the broadest education possible, one that enables them to approach the world from many perspectives and to be comfortable with a concept of indeterminacy; that there may be many viable answers, somtimes in conflict.  I urge students to grapple with the significance of the moment and their relation to it.  Ultimately, I believe that art is primarily about the definition of self. This is especially true of college students who are contending with an evolving independent, adult self.  This definition is not an end in itself, but a means to understanding the world and sharing that understanding.  While I praise work that is personal,  I challenge students to discover correspondences between their own experiences and the larger world.   I ask them to envelop us in their passion and their intellect, to move beyond cliche and conformity.  In that we are all unique, art that is derived from a personal experience is bound to have some component of originality.

My general approach to teaching art courses involves a gradual shifting of the burden of responsibility to the student.   Introductory courses are more structured; a primary objective being to acquire a toolkit of skills that they will put to use for various practices and purposes.  As students begin to understand the task of art making, there is a transition from an external structure of the course to one of self-discipline.  This not only happens within any individual course, but as students progress through the curriculum, a greater involvement of their own voice is expected in the composition of their course of study.

Learning in art classes takes place through a repeated cycle of discussion, observation, practice and evaluation.  An ancient Chinese proverb states “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.”  It is the doing- the application of ideas acquired from seeing and listening- that enables a student to “know” about themselves as artists. Implicit in the activity of repition is the act of "failure".  Contemporary neuroscience supports the idea that to truly learn something, a process of problem-solving - "fixing" mistakes, is the only way to truly learn.  

Being able to "fail" on some work or aspect of the work without the consequences of a grade actually liberates the explorative attitude essential to developing the artistic process.  I encourage experimentaion rather than consistency, so that students portfolios are often sprinkled with ambitious failures.  I prefer these results, for they reveal an artistic attitude in the making.  Though immature, such work demonstrates independent thinking; the ability to create and resolve their own aesthetic problems and their avoidance of caution.