Principles of Possibility - e-Learning Institute · Principles of Possibility: Considerations for a 21 st-Century Art & Culture Curriculum "... to hold out, even in times of deep

Principles of Possibility:Considerations for a21 st-Century Art & CultureCurriculum

"... to hold out, even in times of deep pessimism,for the possibility of surprise."

-Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the United States

as any art teacher ever reviewed the national or

state standards for art education or the prevailinglist of elements and principles of design and then

declared, "I feel so motivated to make some art!" I don'tbelieve so and this is why using standards as they are conventionallywritten is not an ideal structure on which to elaborate a curriculum.Contemplating the main topics of a curriculum ought to stimu-late students' and teachers' anticipation and participation. Modernistelements and principles, a menu of media, or lists of domains, modes,and rationales are neither sufficient nor necessary to inspire a qualityart curriculum through which students come to see the arts as a signif-icant contribution to their lives.

An art curriculum is not a mere container of aesthetic and culturalcontent; a curriculum is itself an aesthetic and cultural structure.Students should be able to sense, examine, and explain the structureof the art curriculum; these explanations should emphasize impor-tant ideas and themes associated with traditional and contemporaryartmaking practices.

BY OLIVIA GUDE

Structuring a Quality ArtCurriculum

The essential contribution that arts educa-tion can make to our students and to ourcommunities is to teach skills and conceptswhile creating opportunities to investigateand represent one's own experiences-gener-ating personal and shared meaning. Qualityarts curriculum is thus rooted in belief inthe transformative power of art and criticalinquiry (Blandy & Congdon, 1987; Carroll,2006; Efland, 1995, 2004; Freedman & Stuhr,2004; Gaudelius. & Speirs, 2002; Greene, 1991;Gude 2000, 2004; jagodzinski, 1997; Neperud,1995; Sullivan, 20,04; White, 1998; Wilson,1997). Despite their frustrations with lackof resources, cutbacks, and the necessity to,once again, prove the importance of the artsin students' lives, the daily witnessing of thetransformation of 'materials and minds keepsart teachers engaged and deeply committedto their work. It is important that we identifyand focus on truly foundational principlesof art education- meaningful ethical, intel-lectual, and artistic principles that inspiredtalented and dedicated people to become artteachers in the first place. As we exemplify thebest practices of contemporary arts education,methods to assess and showcase our students'growing aesthetic and intellectual sophistica-tion and their increasing interest and joy inlearning will be developed (Boughton, 2004).

The structures on which each art teacher,school, or district elaborates unique curricularapproaches should have in common that theyinvestigate big questions about the uses of artand other images in shaping our interactions

6 ART EDUCATION / JANUARY 2007

Playing. Students discovered and developed images in coffee-stained paper. Byronic Brine! by Kelley Leung.Spiral Workshop 2005.

with the world around us. No one can sensiblyclaim to give a definitive answer to questionssuch as "What is art?" or "What is art educa-tion?" By its nature art is an open conceptthat is always evolving and changing (Weitz,

1962). Similarly, art education as a field willcontinue to expand and shift, incorporatingnew artistic practices and important contem-porary discourses such as cultural studies,

visual culture, material culture, critical theory,and psychoanalysis.

All state and national standards for thearts include a "culture clause." For example,Content Standard 4 for the Visual Arts in theNational Standards for Arts Education empha-sizes the importance of "understanding thevisual arts in relation to history and cultures"'i

It is difficult to see how complex ideas relatedto art, history, and culture can be meaning-fully interwoven on curriculum structures

based on standards related to media use orformal properties. Planning a unit on lineand then deciding to add to it, the study of"cultures that use line in their art" is unlikely

to provide a complex, thoughtful approach tothe role of art in societies. It makes a lot moresense to plan a curriculum focusing on under-standing the role of artists, artistic practices,and the arts in reflecting and shaping historyand culture and to then incorporate objectivesrelated to formal properties, analytic tech-niqiAes, or media processes into these larger

themes. What is at stake is making use of thestructure Ofi the curriculum to exemplify thevery heart of the art educational experiencefon the student, for the school, and for thecommunity. D)o we really want students to saythat art is "about" line, shape, color or contrastand repetition?

Principles of PossibilityArt educators whose research involves

contemporary art, critical theory, or youthempowerment do not consider modernistelements and principles to be uniquelyfoundational to quality art curriculum orto making or understanding art (Chalmers,1987; Efland, Freedman & Stuhr, 1996; Gude,2000; Paley, 1995; Tavin, 2001). Indeed, it isdifficult to find support in serious academicwriting (as opposed to commercial textbooks)for using the elements and principles of designas a curriculum structure (Parsons, 2004).2 Itis time for teachers, professors, artists, admin-istrators, supervisors, museum educators, andothers committed to the field of art educationto articulate categories of studyworthy of beingthe day-to-day conceptual structure of a visualart curriculum. I do not envision that such adialogue will easily arrive at a consensus struc-ture, nor do I believe that such consensus isnecessarily important. There are many mean-ingful ways to understand and make culture inthese complex times.

In "Postmodern Principles: In Search ofa 21st Century Art Education," I exploredthe modernist roots of the current elementsand principles, arguing that these were notsufficient to understand contemporary art orto guide students in learning contemporarymeaning making strategies (Gude, 2004).I also identified a number of principles bywhich contemporary art works can be under-stood and constructed.' Yet, I argued thatthese postmodern principles ought not beused as the structure of an art curriculum bythemselves or as addenda to the modernistprinciples because the field of art education

needs more comprehensive frameworks forplanning art curriculum. After much thoughtand experimentation, I offer these Principlesof Possibility, derived fromn my understandingof the research and practice of colleaguesin the fields of art, media studies, art educa-tion, and community arts as well as frombest practices of the Spiral Workshop, theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago's Saturdayyouth artist program for 13-19-year-olds andthe Contemporary Community CurriculumInitiative, UIC's programs with in-service artteachers. I believe that these principles are auseful structure or checklist that art teacherscan use to determine whether a curriculumprovides a range of important art experiences.The list is structured, not according to princi-ples of form, media, or disciplines, but from thestudents'point of view, imagining what impor-tant ideas about the uses and making of art wewant students to remember as significant.

PlayingLearning begins with creative, deeply

personal, primary process play. Such play mustbe truly free, not directed toward masteringa technique, solving a specific problem, orillustrating a randomly chosen juxtaposition(Lowenfeld & Brittain, 1965). Students of allages need opportunities to creatively "messaround" with various media-to shape andre-shape lumps of clay or to watch as dropsof ink fall upon wet paper and create riveting,rhizomatic rivulets. However, experimentingwith media is not enough to truly stimulatestudents' creative abilities.

JANUARY 2007 / ART EDUCATION 7

It is difficult to see how

complex ideas related to art,

history, and culture can be

meaningfully interwoven on

curriculum structures based

on standards related to media

use or formal properties.

Forming Self. After discussing the sometimes disappointing gaps between expectationsand reality, students created real life holiday stories. Stabby Christmas by Linda Wong.Spiral Workshop 2002.

Today's students, over-constricted byan education system that often focuses onknowing the one right answer, need guidancein reclaiming their capacities for concep-tual, imaginative play. At Spiral Workshop,each course begins with several hours ofcreative play based on the gaming methodsof the Surrealists (Brotchie, 1995). Studentslearn Dali's Paranoiac Critical Method, inwhich they access their unconscious mindsby looking for and developing images frominkblots, smoke marks, or wax drippings. Theymake composite characters by passing foldedpapers and adding a body part without seeingwhat others have previously drawn. They makepoetry, using methods of chance and collabo-ration (Breton, 1933).

Initially, students may be confused andsuspicious-claiming they don't see anythingin the blurs and blobs, but as peers andteachers model an experimental attitude, soonthe classroom is filled with exclamations asnew images and combinations are spontane-ously discovered. Students who are taught toaccess the creative unconscious don't driveteachers mad complaining, "I don't have anidea:" These students have learned the impor-tant artistic lesson that artists do not know theoutcomes of their works before they begin.Artists immerse themselves in a process ofmaking and sensitively interact with imagesand ideas as they emerge.

Forming SelfArtmaking can be an important opportu-

nity for students to further their emotionaland intellectual development, to help formu-late a sense of who they are, and who theymight become. Quality projects aid students inexploring how one's sense of self is constructedwithin complex family, social, and mediaexperiences.

Unfortunately, many projects in art class-rooms do not actually promote expandedself-awareness because students are directedto illustrate or symbolize known aspects ofself-identity, rather than being encouragedto consider themselves in new ways throughinvestigating content that is often overlookedor taken for granted. Projects in which studentsinclude "symbols of themselves" promotenarrow, limited, socially pre-defined categoriesof identity. Illustrating ideas with images avail-able in commercial magazines further narrowsstudents' choices, making it highly unlikelythat some nascent idiosyncratic aspect of selfwill emerge in the artwork. Asking students toreveal "the real you" is essentialist-empha-sizing a largely discredited notion of a unified,real self hidden beneath social constraints, inopposition to a more postmodern conceptionof self as performative, constructed, multiple,and shifting (Mitchell, 1988). Which aspect ofa teen's self is more real-writing existentialistpoetry at midnight or running cross-countryat dawn?

Authentic insight into self is more likelypromoted through indirect means, askingstudents to reflect and recall experiences throughmaking art. Projects such as reconstructingmemories of childhood spaces, designingtrophies for labels that have been assigned tothem by families or schools, depicting a "leastliked" body part, or describing how their iden-tities are constructed in part by the objects thatthey desire often afford students unexpectedinsights into the self (Gude, 2000). Througha repertoire of projects in which students usediverse styles of representation and varioussymbol systems to explore various aspects ofexperience, students become aware of the self asshaped in multiple discourses, giving studentsmore choices about consciously shaping self.

Investigating CommunityThemes

Great art often engages the most signifi-cant issues of the community, calling on eachof us to bring our deepest understandingand empathy to our shared social experi-ence (Tolstoy, 1898/1996). In today's inter-connected world, these themes encompassthe global community. Students whose workinvestigates issues of real concern to themare more engaged in the learning process.Through collective identification of generativethemes, teachers can draw all students intopersonal engagement with the curriculumcontent because learning new skills becomesan important skill for exploring significant lifeissues (Freire, 1968/1970).

Expert dialogical teachers use a wide varietyof techniques to identify important generativethemes in the community and to structurecurriculum in which students discuss andinvestigate the complexity of these themesin relation to personal implications (Beane,1990/1993). Sometimes new themes emergefrom student artworks on other assign-ments. Noting thai several students in pastclasses had made pieces about being warnedof various dangers (real and fantasized), theChromophobia' group in Spiral Workshop


Investigating Community Themes. Students learnedskills in presenting ideas dramatically through croppingimages and editing text, while exploring significantgenerative themes in their school community. The Powerof Advertising project was developed and taught byteacher Tracy Van Duinen at Austin Community Academyfor the University of Illinois at Chicago's ContemporaryCommunity Curriculum Initiative.

2005 invented a project called Warnings inwhich student artists created painted woodplaques of warnings theyd been given byparents, 'Ihe project proved a rich source ofpeer discussion about issues related to conven-tions of behavior, safety, morality, financialMnanagemenit, and appropriate gender roles,

l)ialogical pedagogical practice is based inpraxis--the unifying of thought and action.Students identify themes, pose problems,consider barriers to change and then createpositive actions to alter circumstances(Wallerstein, 1987). In art classes, the obviouschoice of action will often be art-based commu-nity-education-individcial artworks, thematicshows, documentaries, posters, flyers, instal-[ations, Murals, zines, comics in the schoolnewspaper, etc. all designed to involveothers in reconsidering the inevitability ofthe status quo.

Imagine a project in which students investi-gate waste at their own school. After researchingissues related to production and disposal, aninstallation made uip of every plastic sporkdiscarded in a single week in the school cafeteriacreates an arresting visual display. An accompa-nying zine contains facts and figures about theplastic used in sporks, documents interviewsin which the principal and cafeteria managerexplain why the school stopped using metalutensils (in part because students often care-lessly threw them away), and showcases severalamusing comics about how utopian and dysto-pian societies of the future will feed students inschool cafeterias. Rather than merely espousingcliches against pollution, such a project wouldground students, families, and the larger schoolco111u1Inity in considering how many seem-ingly small choices contribute to a creating ourthrowaway society.

Encountering Difference. Students rettnies in which the culture of the school seem

out-of sync with the students' commun(ulture. Selection of pages from Cinco de Maat School Coloring Book by University of Illin

at Chicago pre-service teacher, Lisa Pere(

Encountering DifferenceGood multicultural curriculum introduces

us to the generative themes of others-helpingus to see the world through the eyes of othersunderstanding the meaning of artworks interms of the complex aesthetic, social, andhistorical contexts out of which they emerge(Anderson, 1990). It is far better to introducestudents to fewer artworks or cultures in depth,than to present many artworks with little or nocontext (Desai, 2000; Young, 2002).

In his classic work, Orientalism, EdwardSaid identified the many ways in whichWestern culture created binary oppositionsthat assigned such qualities as timelessness andsensuality to Eastern cultures and conceived ofthe West as progressive and rational (1978).Sadly, much multicultural curriculum todayre-inscribes stereotypical notions of otherness.These may be "positive" stereotypes-close tonature, spiritual, etc. -nonetheless they arelimited ahistoric, essentialist depictions of

Students in a democratic

society need to be able to

understand and participate

in important cultural

conversations generated by

the visual arts, film, and

other imagemaking practices.

Empowered Experiencing. Studentsexplore the dialogical space surrounding

an artwork by recording the responsesof four "non-art" viewers. Based onthe interview responses, pre-service

teachers generated a question sequenceto facititate understand&ng the artwork

and exploring related aesthetic issues.Foundations of Art Education course,

University of Illinois at Chicago.

others. Creating multicLIltural studio projectscan easily lead to such deeply problematicsimplifications and misrepresentations of othercultures and/or to violating others by visuallymimicking their sacred practices.

An excellent way to ensure a more thought-ful and comprehensive approach to othercultures in the curriculum is to not limit thestudy of others to historical artifacts and undif-ferentiated representatives of "the people:"Do represent "others" for your students asdynamic individuals and groups who arechanging and evolving in contemporary times.Explore complexities of race, ethnicity, gender,sexual orientation, and class (Cahan & Kocur,1996; Check, 2005; Desai, 2002; Garber, 1995;Grigsby, 1990; Gude, 2003; Keifer-Boyd, 2003;Lampela & Check, 2003; McFee, 1995). Ensurerespectful representation of difference byutilizing guest visits, videos, or written mate-rials to include the first-person voices of theartists talking about the reasons they maketheir art, how they developed their workingmethods, the relationship between innova-tion and tradition, and how they judge theaesthetic quality of completed works. Thegoal of good multicultural curriculum is toeffectively encounter other points of view inorder to question the centrality or norma-tiveness of one's own (also culturally specific)point of view.

Attentive LivingAttuning students to vitally experiencing

everyday life should be a goal of any system-atic art education. Students will learn to noticeand to shape the world around them. Whethercreating a community garden, setting the table,arranging tools in a garage, or remarking onthe architecture in their home towns, studentswill understand that artistic thinking is notseparate from daily life, but rather can informand enrich every aspect of one's life (Lemos,1931; White, 2004). Attentive Living curric-ulum can take many forms, including suchdiverse areas as the study of nature, designstudies, household arts, traditional crafts, andbuilt -environment curriculums.

Drawing, painting, and photographingnatural objects and phenomena such asplants, shells, rocks, clouds, or landscapessensitizes students to the complexity andbeauty of the world around them. Manyartists feel refreshed and creatively inspiredby immersing themselves in nature (London,2003). The contemporary study of nature alsoleads almost inevitably to consideration of theways in which human societies impinge uponand potentially threaten the natural environ-ment. This directs students to one of the mostimportant generative themes of contemporarylife-the tension between development andpreservation (Anderson, 1999).

Through architecture and design curric-ulums, teachers and students examine theways in which person-made environmentsshape the quality of life. Students can conductpsycho -geographic investigations to explorethe psychological impact of spaces on indi-viduals and on social interactions (Debord,1958; Gude, 2004). Mapping and localresearch create opportunities for students tobecome grounded n a sense of place throughunderstanding the style and evolution of thebuilt- environment and through sharing thisinformation with others, thus becoming aresource for building community and inter-generational networks (Hicks & King, 1999).

Theories regarding design and culture arean important aspect of empowering studentsto make choices in their lives. Comparing themodern formulation "form follows function"with traditional and postmodern aestheticapproaches that value the decorative, studentscan identify what they consider to be pleasingdesign, define theii own tastes, and imaginenew design solutions. Considering modernto postmodern design from the Bauhaus toTarget (or from Arts and Crafts to MarthaStewart) encourages students to consider theinterrelated discourses of design and consum-erism. The study of contemporary artists suchas Andrea Zittel whose artworks suggest thepossibility of radically pared down lifestyles orPeter Menzel's Material World photographicseries in which he documents families from


ar1ound the world standing in front of theirhomes with all of their possessions, engagestudents in considering material culture issuesof design, need, and desire (Grosenick, 2001;Menzel, 1994).

Empowered ExperiencingA quality art cUrriculun gives students the

knowledge they need to notice and interpreta wide range of visual practices. Students in ademocratic society need to be able to under-stand and participate in important culturalconversations generated by the visual arts,filn, and other imagemaking practices,

I)iscipline- Based Art Education establishedits reputation on the argument that it is impor-tant t(0i students to have access to the methodsand practices of professional fields in theirstudy of the arts. Responsibly introducingstudents to today,s discursive practices in arthistory, aesthetics, and art criticism meansinitroducing them to the analytical proceduresof the emerging field of visual studies or visualculture (l)ikovitskaya, 2005). Such context-based methodologies of art history/criticismhave the advantage of building in an awarenessof the environment within which the imagesor artifacts were made-an important aspectof introducing the art of other cultures in thecurriculUm (Anderson, 1995).

Using the expanded analytical methods ofthe tield of visual studies does not necessarilymean that art can no longer be the chosenorCLIs of an art curriculum. It does mean thatstudlrits will understand art images withinthe larger context of living in a society satu-rated with images, produced for a wide rangeot purposes. Increasingly, truly understandingcoriteiiporary artworks includes an under-standing of the tropes (rhetorical devices)drawn from other fields (such as movies, TV,news media, advertising) as much as on theability to analyze modernist formal principlesof' description. For example, a painting of adangling telephone could not very sensibly beinterpreted as a phone accidentally knocked

All students of the 21st century

need to know how to construct,

select, edit, and present visual

images.

off the hook by the dog, but rather, consid-ering the conventions of horror or mysteryfilms, as a sign that someone has been unex-pectedly (and violently) removed from theconversation.

Terry Barrett's "Principles of Interpretation"are an excellent framework by which teacherscan organize instruction and students cansearch for meaning within artworks. Principlessuch as "Artworks are always about something"and "Artworks attract multiple interpretationsand it is not the goal of interpretation to arriveat a single, grand, unified, composite interpre-tation" focus students on making thoughtfulevidence-based investigations of the meaningsgenerated by visual images, including theartworks they themselves make (Barrett,2003, p. 198). His principle "Some interpreta-tions are better than others" gives teachers amethod by which to graciously explain thatsome associations, unsupported by examina-tion of the image, are just too kooky (Barrett,2003, p. 198). This is crucial to involvingstudents in meaning making. I've seen theenergy in classes dissipate when a teacherleading a discussion pleasantly agrees to anutterly irrelevant remark about an artwork. Ifteachers demonstrate that meaning making isnot merely open-ended, but utterly arbitrary,why should students invest their time andenergy in trying to make meaningful art ormeaningful interpretations?

Empowered MakingMaking should remain at the heart of K- 12

arts education. Careful consideration of theimplications of visual culture writings tends tosupport this position. WJ.T. Mitchell, a leadingscholar in the field of visual culture studies,examines images as a "significant other or rivalmode of representation" to text-based knowl-edge (2005). In this increasingly visual world,many people, including those not officiallydesignated as artists, will make and distributeimages as part of a wide range of work-relatedand personal practices. All students of the 21 stcentury need to know how to construct, select,edit, and present visual images.

The current teaching of artmaking in schoolsis a hybrid practice. Typical art courses todayinclude the teaching of observational andperspective drawing (modeled on academicpractices), teaching color theory and prin-ciples of design (based on modernist curric-ulum), and teaching crafts and media (basedon various traditional forms). Many excellentstudies on the history of art education explorethe reasons why various artmaking practiceswere deemed important in a child's educationat different points in time (Efland, 1990; Smith,1996; Stankiewicz, Amburgy, & Bolin, 2004;White, 2004). All of these studies remind usthat the decision of what to include in a basicart education curriculum is profoundly histor-ical. Contemporary curricula that describe

Empowered Making. In the Reality Check group, students develop strong drawing skills andquestion the relationship between images and one's experience and interpretation of reality,Desirable Food Still Life by high school student Terrence Byas. Spiral Workshop 1999.


Art teachers are now faced with

the dilemma of designing "hands

on"projects that authentically

introduce students to methods

used by contemporary artists

in conceiving and constructing

artworks, rather than continuing

to teach outmoded paradigms.

Empowered Making. As a prelude to expressionist painting, each student painted dozens of black andwhite paint studies on white and black paper as well as on newspaper pages. Installation view of theBad and Beautiful Painting group. Spiral Workshop 2003,

drawing or elements and principles asfounda-tional are echoing the values and theories of aparticular era, not objectively stating universaltimeless truths. Artists and educators whoare responsive to the needs of their currentstudents must consider contemporary as wellas traditional artistic and critical practice andask what students need to know to successfullymake and understand art and culture today(Duncum, & Bracy, 2001; Freedman, 2003;Freedman & Stuhr, 2004; Gaudelius & Speirs,2002; Gude, 2000; Tavin, 2000).

Consider structuring general artmakingcourses to introduce six areas of artmaking-expressionism, mimesis, formalism, applieddesign, craft, and postmodern (includingdigital) practices.' I selected these areas torepresent a wide range of aesthetic practices andtheories (Efland, 1995; Smith, 1989). Initially, Ihad hoped to write a section on each aspect ofempowered making for this article. Realizingthat such an endeavor is the work of a book, Iwill focus here on discussing some theoreticaland practical gaps in much current curriculum,encouraging teachers and researchers to reviewtheir curricula and rethink their commitmentto ineffective and outdated paradigms. I believethat planning more equitable emphasis amongthe above listed areas would ameliorate thecurrent curriculum problem of overempha-sizing some methods of making and under-standing, while virtually ignoring others.

I began the list with expressionism because,despite stated goals, judging from the artworkI see produced in schools throughout thecountry, students are often not given sufficientopportunities to make artworks that are nottightly controlled by realist or formalist param-eters. Just how expressive can an artwork be ifyou must make the figure in cool colors andthe background in warm colors (or vice versa)or if you must use "correct perspective" todraw a remembered place? I have often heardteachers despair that students only evaluatework by the criteria of realism, yet I do notsee much curriculum that engages studentsin authentic expressionist practices. Sadly, itis also common for students to spontaneouslyproduce beautifully expressive works that theteacher thinks are wonderful, but that arerejected by the student and peers as "dumb"and poorly drawn.

By introducing students to expressionisticartworks that students will perceive as "cool:'such as those by Baseman, Sue Coe, PatssiValdez, or the many graffiti -inspired streetartists, teachers can draw students into valuingand creating artworks in more spontaneousand deeply felt manners (Baseman, 2004;Coe, 1986; Romo, 1999; Bou, 2005). Standarddecontextualized exercises in "expressive line"or "color symbolism" actually undermine theteaching of meaningful form because, by defi-nition, for something to be expressive or artis-tically symbolic, the students must be sincerelyinvested in trying to express something.

Before the age of postmodernism, artistsmade works within established studio prac-tices, so it was easier to design new art projectsbecause teachers could follow the artists' studiomethods and procedures. Now many contem-porary artists work in, what is described as apost-studio practice, utilizing multiple meansof expression (Weintraub, 1996). These artistschoose the best materials and fabricationmethods for each work.

Art teachers are now faced with thedilemma of designing "hands -on" projects thatauthentically introduce students to methodsused by contemporary artists in conceivingand constructing artworks, rather thancontinuing to teach outmoded paradigms. Forexample, many teachers still require studentsto make hand drawn thumbnail composi-tion sketches-a practice now rarely usedby contemporary artists and designers-as aprelude to making a poster.6 Contrast this withthe methods described in the Spiral Workshopposter project, I Can Change the World, inwhich students use the postmodern princi-ples of juxtaposition and layering-projectingand overlapping found images in variouscombinations, creating striking compositionsthat would not have been conceived usingmore conventional compositional means.

Other Spiral Workshop projects explore suchcontemporary practices as surprising pairingsof image and text or the use of found objectsin installations.8


It an art teacher is committed to not justencouraging students to produce simulacra(copies empty of authenticity), s/he mustfocus on the actual investigatory procedureof artworks and not solely on the final look ofthe artwork. Perhaps the worst example, I haveseen of this approach, was watching a class-ro01)l1 of students use a grid system to hand-draw multiple copies (!) of candy wrappers tomake a Pop Art project. Why had the teachereschewed methods commonly used to makeactual Pop Art works-photography, screen-printing, collage, or projection-in favorof early academic methods of copying andenlarging? What did these students learnabout the actual methods or reasons thatartists of the 195 0s and '60s began introducingeveryday commercial objects into their art?

To design a meaningful project, one mustcarefully analyze the process of the artisticinvestigation and then structure similar inves-ligatory opportunities for students. In the finalprojecCt, the students may make a completelydifferent sort of object, but will meet the coreobjectives of understanding and seeing thingsin new ways based on a particular form ofaesthetic investigation.

Deconstructing Culturel)uring the latter half of the 20th century,

analyzing how notions of "real" and "natural"are constructed in social discourses becamethe locus of disciplines such as cultural studies,feminist theory, and critical theory. ThesedisCOurses profoundly influenced traditionaldisciplines such as art history and anthro-pology and shaped today's emerging field ofvisual culture studies. Knowledge of visualculture theory gives art teachers powerful

tools to engage students in exploring howtheir thoughts and desires are shaped throughimmersion in local and global cultures ofvisuality. When analyzing the cultural originsand cultural effects of images, teachers are notintroducing extrianeot1s non-art" content intothe classroom because our business has alwaysbeen teaching students to be nuanced observersof how meaning is made through images.

Visual culture concepts can also help teachersto structure contemporary aesthetic investiga-lions Of the stuff oa our everyday lives. RecentSpiral Workshop art projects have been basedOn visual Cultural terms such as Bricolage/Counter-bricolage (the practice of makingnew meaning out of the pre-made materials athand and advertisers re-appropriation ofyouthbricolage styles) and Encoding and Decodingcultural consumptiOn (Sturken & Cartwright,

2001). These projects did not merely illustratetheoretical concepts, but rather utilized theoryto examine the construction of meaning andto empower students to generate alternativemeanings. In a project called PostmodernPostcards, students collected typical touristpostcards of Chicago and then made inter-ventions on actual cards or created their owngigantic postcards- depicting Chicago loca-tions as places where friends lived, memorieswere evoked, or danger seemed to lurk. Thefinal exhibition created a striking visual recordof how notions of place in terms of race, class,and culture are constructed within varioussystems of meaning for differing economicand cultural purposes.'

Another rich source of inspiration for decon-struction projects are the writing and images ofthe Situationist International (Bracken, 1997;Knabb, 1981). Framing students' artwork astaking place within the "Society ofthe Spectacle"and using techniques such as the derive (tobecome aware of its psychological impact) andthe detournement (to reveal significant culturalsubtexts through surprising juxtapositions)connect students to a rich tradition of subver-sive avant-garde artists (Debord, 1958a, 1958b,

Deconstructing Culture. Noticing thatthe ubiquitous iPod ads usurp the notionof first person agency, the Spiral facultyof the Counterfeit Evidence: Re-renderingReality group, Michael Radziewicz andMadilyn Soch, created the iRonic projectin which students created faux ads thatreclaimed the "I" of individuality Fromtop by Aleia McKay, Coco Millard, MadiSoch. Spiral Workshop 2005.

1967/1994; Garoian & Gaudelius, 2004). Bookssuch as Lipstick Traces connect the practices ofthe SI to the DIY (Do It Yourself) aestheticpractices of Punk music and collage. Studentsthus learn to see the critique of contemporaryculture, not as a current academic exercise, butas an ongoing avant-garde tradition of chal-lenging empty materialism and unsatisfyingsocial structures (Marcus, 1989).

Subjects typically studied in art classes suchas representations of nature, beauty, women,families, or "the Orient" can be investigated interms of popular and fine art imagery. Studentslove to "talk back" to dominant discourses bydetourning such images-juxtaposing text andpictures that cause us to reconsider establishedmeanings. Contemporary artist groups suchas the Guerrilla Girls and the Yes Men, whichuse many artistic methods, including perfor-mance, are also good models for collectiveartistic investigations. Visual culture theory inart education does not designate pre-conceivednotions of what is good, appropriate, or usefulin art or other cultural phenomenon. It doesgive students the ability to analyze how image-making practices shape their own sensibilitiesand those of the society in which they live.Deconstructionist artmaking reminds studentsthat they are not mere passive recipients ofmanufactured meaning, but active interpreterswho can generate alternative understandingsand communications.

Reconstructing Social SpacesIt is not enough for youth culture makers to

deconstruct aspects of the current culture thatdo not support a sustainable global culture ofjoy and justice. Young artists must also learn toconstruct new spaces in which caring, coura-geous communities can emerge.

Artists create social spaces -temporaryand permanent opportunities for people toconnect and interact. Art teachers can becomecommunity-based artists-identifying commu-nity themes, working with students to makeaesthetic investigations of content, and creatingnew spaces for discourse through engaginglocal and dispersed communities throughstudent artworks.

One can escape the society of the spectacleby stepping into worldviews generated outsidedominant paradigms. Including the perspec-tive of artmaking practices that arise fromwithin local communities into the schoolcurriculum honors the most traditional andthe most progressive aspects of social life-preserving what is good, challenging the status


quo, and imagining new artistic and socialpossibilities (Burnham & Durland, 1998;Congdon, 2004; Jacob, 1995; James, Gonzalez& Mamary, 1999; Klein, 2003).

Creative teachers build on and expandlocal traditions. The yearly student show ofindividual artworks can include collaborativepieces that investigate community themes.Local interest and knowledge of quiltingmight be combined with curriculum studyingthe Names Project (a gigantic quilt/public artpiece that commemorated those lost to AIDS),Chilean arpilleras (narrative needleworksdocumenting the everyday lives and politicalissues), or various Peace Quilt projects. Thefinal project could be a collaborative quilt fora local public building, documenting localhealth issues affecting area children.

Working collectively, students and teacherscan literally reshape their schools and commu-nities through creating murals, mosaics, sculp-tures, pavements, and seating installations."Such projects also reshape the image of youthin the public imagination. Youth are seen (andsee themselves) as contributors to public life,not as public nuisances. Exhibitions, art sitedin community settings, banners, magazines,pageants, projections, websites, installations,and countless other art forms can be usedby students to share their investigations ofpersonal stories, community themes, culturaldeconstructions, and meaningful culturalexchanges with others.

Not KnowingMy goal in writing this article is not to

create a new canonical list of art educationprinciples. I do want to provide a frameworkthat teachers can use as an outline of the sortsof meaning making experiences that shouldbe included in a curriculum that engages andempowers today's students. I believe in arts-based art education, and I believe that qualityarts-based education in the 21st century willinclude a wide range of technical, theoretical,and cultural perspectives.

A quality art curriculum does not justdisseminate art historical, technical, or formalknowledge. Through a quality art education,students become familiar with, are able touse the languages of multiple art and culturaldiscourses, and are thus able to generate newinsights into their lives and into contemporarytimes. These abilities to investigate, analyze,reflect, and represent are critical skills forcitizens of a participatory democracy.

Let's cycle back to the beginning and includeanother Principle of Possibility related to theprinciple of Playing-Not Knowing. Through aquality art curriculum, students will learn thatthey do not know many things that they oncethought were certain. They will learn to seemany things differently. They will learn newstrategies of making meaning through whichthey can interrogate received notions of "thereal:' They will learn how to play, not just withmaterials, but also with ideas. Understanding

that our notion of reality is constructedthrough representations in language andimage, students will not mistake representa-tions for reality as such. They will be able toentertain new ideas and new possibilities.

BelievingWhen I present or write about art educa-

tion curriculum based on these Principles ofPossibility, I am frequently asked how parentsand administrators will respond to such aradical re- envisioning of the basic tenets of arteducation. I believe the Principles of Possibilityare not shockingly new. They articulate someof the most important goals of 20th-centuryart education, restated in terms of 21 st-centurytheoretical perspectives. These goals are widelyaccepted as important by art teachers and othereducators, though they are often underempha-sized in current art curriculum structures thatare based on formalist and media checklists.The goals of the Principles of Possibility areespecially well understood in diverse commu-nities in which the arts have traditionallyplayed an important role in shaping students'self concepts and sense of agency.

Inr my experience, school principals do notfeel a lot of concern about whether studentscan recite the K-12 canonical list of elementsand principles of design. Principals do takenote when they visit an art classroom in whichthe students are passionately comparinghow a sense of character is developed in thevisual metaphors of both Surrealist and realistportraits. Parents pay attention when their

Through a quality art education,

students become familiar with,

are able to use the languages

of multiple art and cultural

discourses, and are thus able to

generate new insights into their

lives and into contemporary

times.

Reconstructing Social Spaces. Students and faculty at Evers Elementary School in Chicagoworked with visiting artist Olivia Gude to transform the school cafeteria with images and texts intoa space that stimulates wonder in the process of learning. The Marvelous Surrealist Cafe, 2002.


Not Knowing. Paradoxically translating the quick medium ofcollage into the ancient art form of mosaics, neighborhoodteen artists led by Olivia Gude and Juan Chavez created asignificant question to greet Lowell Elementary students eachday. Chicago Public Art Group, 1998.

children bring home artworks that recordsotries about special moments in familylifI'. Other teachers are impressed when thehallways are filled with vivid collages accom-panied by thoughtful artist statements. TheseP rimiplcs of Possibility emphasize developingstudents' abilities to engage in sustained

iiiquiry without requiring a clear right answerand enable students to utilize a number ofapproaches to interpret meaning in a widevariety of visual and verbal texts. These qUali-ties are characteristic of exemplary students inall disciplines- qualities that will be noticedby administrators, families, and students.

Art teachers have a healthy suspicion ofoverly prescriptive educational initiatives aswell as a deep commitment to creative living. Inrecent decades, art teachers have been increas-ingly stymied by forimalist curriculum that isout-of-sync with today's students and today'scultural avant-garde. 'they've also encoun-terecd traditionalists who suggest that teachingcontemporary theory with which studentscan investigate conventions of constructinggender, race, beauty, or normality is an aban-donment of their roles in fostering the creativedevelopment of children! Yet youth need theseinore open, reconstructed social spaces inorder to have the freedcom to develop their full

potential.

Let us now collaboratively choose newcurricuh,um categories that give central placesto the diversity of creative thought and actionpossible in postmodern times. Most artteachers I riteet have a quality of "radical proac-tivity.'" Art teachers are optimists. They believein the possibility of a more playful, sensitive,thoughtful, just, diverse, aware, critical, and

pleasurablc society. '[hey combine the sensi-bilities of artists with the social awarenessof contn1unity organizers. I1 it is indeed truethat our notions of the real and the possibleare shaped in cultural discourses, art teachershave the potential to change the world.

Olivia Gude is associate professor and SpiralWorkshop Director at the University of Illinoisat Chicago. E-mail: [email protected]

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ENDNOTESI National Standards fir Arts Education. '1le stan-

daris Outline what every K- 12 student should know

and be able to do in the arts. 'flie standards were

developed by Ihe Cnsor tilni of National Arts

Education Associations, through a grant adinin

islered by 'lhe National Association for Music

IF' ducation (MF ' NC). Available on-line through the

Kennedy Center ArtsFc1ge website:http://artsedge.

keititedy iceter, og/teach/staiidards.cfimn

2'l1e I lanudbook ot Researcih and Policy in Art

I ihhucion, a comprehensive collection of important

topics il art CdLCationi lists only Iour rei*erences to

the elei'enis and principles ol -cesign. 'Ihree are

included it texl and tables in which Arthur Efland

narrates a history of art education curriculum and

the Iourth is in a thoughtful article "Art and theIlltegiatCd (CrricutL1in'" by Michaiel Parsons in

which fie ollthandedly notes, "The ideas sometimes

called thic elements anl principles oJ design [this

atilhor's emphasisl (such as line, shape, color, and

balance, contrast, and tocus) may be unique toart hut thiy are in longer thought to be the most

important" (p. 786).

3'1 lie origimilly published edited list of postmodern

pinciples included iappropriation, juxtaposition,

teconfextualizalion, layering, interac tion ol lext and

iniagc, hybridity. gazing, and rcprcsentin'. Recently,

I have been working on an expanded list thatincludes more principles such as provocation,investigation, uncanny, indeterminacy, and abject.4 Chromophobia: Painting in a Culture of Fearcurriculum was developed and taught by AliciaHerrera and Brenda Vega in collaboration withSpiral Workshop 2005 Co-directors Olivia Gudeand Jessica Poser.5These remarks are specifically written thinkingabout elementary and middle school art classesas well as introduction to art courses at the highschool level. However, this approach can also beeasily modified and adapted for specialized coursesin high school such as photography, ceramics, orpainting-emphasizing concepts of artistic practicenot based solely in the exploration of various sub-categories of media.

61t is vitally important that art teachers regularlymake teacher sample projects of assignments. Ifteachers fear that students will be overinfluenced bythe teacher's style choices, don't show students theteacher's projects. However, do make a new sampleof each project at least every two or three years.When following this proceedure, many teachers arefascinated to note that their own working practicesare radically different from those they recommendto students.

71 Can Change the World project on the Spiral ArtEducation website: http://spiral.aa.uic.edu8 Many of the projects on the Spiral Art Educationwebsite are designed to stimulate the kinds ofconceptual artistic play that preceed makingartworks in post-studio styles of working. Forexample, see Evidence, Materials-based Self-Portrait, Memory Museum, Video as Installationand Word Pictures projects on the Spiral ArtEducation website: http://spiral.aa.uic.edu9 See Spiral Art Education Website: SpiralWorkshop: Reality Check Group, http://www.uic.edu/classes/ad/ad382/sites/SpiralWorkshop/SW 02/SW 02.html

I0 See the on-line Chicago Public Art GroupsCommunity Public Art Guide: Making Murals,Mosaics, Sculptures, and Spaces, (Ed.) 0. Gude.This is a comprehensive guide to techniques forcommunity involvement, collaborative design andexecution, and technical considerations as well ashundreds of examples of high quality communitybased artmaking from the archives of the CPAG.www.cpag.net

If u teach full time,-ay qualify

r alf-tuition

schoarship to SCAD!"T"lar m r, vsit

www.scad.eu/educators.

"Fee pm offeredviaAD e-Learning. Learn more at

mail [email protected].

vannah CollegeSDesignmr OAV - E-LEARNING


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