JOURNAL #13
FINAL ENTRY (PART 2)
#BETHEHELPER
JOURNAL #13 (PART 2)
5/9/22
Today we hung our final reflective piece for our gallery show, The Making of Art Educators, Our Learning and Teaching Paths, at the Directions Gallery at CSU. I am sad to see this semester come to a close. I have met such absolutely wonderful future teachers and joined a beautifully close community of art educators, and yet I still feel like I have so much to learn about art education!
Not only has this semester been about different teaching techniques, readings, practical teaching applications. Yes, absolutely. However, I would say that this experience has also been about emotionally challenging my artistic core. About failure, letting go, about process, about emotional vulnerability and trusting myself to make dynamic, thoughtful and complex lessons. How to keep minds open, questioning and emphasizing process and meaning making in artwork. Trusting students and their learning processes, and questioning what I can do or change to better support them on their learning paths.
I am sure, from an outsider's perspective, that my final art art piece may not look like it makes much sense. However, everyone who participated in the class would be able to access the symbols one by one. Each symbol having a meaning that they might recognize, but is extremely unique to my personal experience, process and ideation throughout the class and the various lessons.
We have the visual symbols of the Campbell's soup can and the symbol of the hands holding the egg representing the Asen Royal staff from Benin. These symbols were a part of our Brainy teaching through the Gregory Allicar Museum. There is a Campbell's soup can outside of the building of the gallery, and the Asen staff is in their African room representing how that particular king sought to rule; a good king can't hold an egg (it's people) too tightly or too loosely or it may break. It's a ballance of focus and one of great care- and the symbolism and relation to that of education and pedagogy was not lost on me.
The symbols also are largely representative of each of the five peer teaching groups and the personal ideation I did in each group.
Each of the lessons my classmates presented challenged me on a significant personal level. I have profound thanks and gratitude to our Professor Claire Chien, my classmates and my peer teaching teammates, for showing me the depths at which art education can go. What we as art educators are capable of... and I feel like I am only just seeing the tip of the iceberg! To just teach art as a technique only craft or skill would be denying students deeper learning, understanding and connections to their world.
We also analyzed our own art learning histories in depth: the good, the bad and the ugly.
The droplets in the mobile are related to my journal #6: they symbolize the effort and care we give as educators; watering the thoughts, sprouts and growth. They also serve to remind me how sharing our personal experiences can connect ourselves and others to empathise with the experiences and challenges of humanity and the larger human conditions so that we might be the helpers and changers of our world.
The process of making this hanging mobile, you could say, took me the entire semester- Each step and symbol in the process significant to my learning, experience and personal connections. The idea though, to make a mobile started to formulate during my 10th journal, and I wanted to challenge myself and my abilities while also playing to my strengths as a painter and jeweler.
There were many scary unknowns for me however. Could I use the laser cutter and 3D printer effectively again? Could I make a hanging sculpture that was balanced? Could I make something that I liked? Could I fit everything I wanted to say into this one peice?
There were some snags: some of my 3D images didn't print correctly (I have Cecelia, the Woodshop Supervisor and Fabrications Coordinator to thank for helping me iron out my issues.) It took me longer than I would like to admit to balance the mobile properly. I changed the design several times because I was worried about the structural stability of the printed materials and further changed the design after I actually looked at the structure of Alexander Calder's mobiles.
I choose the symbol of the Ducal can of refried black beans, as my nod to my own "Campbell's soup can" referencing my Guatemalan heritage and a part of my identity. It serves as a symbol for home base; one that I can hang my hat and center myself on. This is a comfort food. It's a taste of the people that know me and love me the best, and from this center I can do and hang anything.
On a personal note about my reasoning for wanting to be a teacher:
I have taught and tutored throughout my adult life always. I may have left teaching temporarily, but I always returned to it; teaching at museums, outreach programs, tutoring in painting and art history, and teaching art through recreational centers in Austin. During Covid my teaching job was terminated, as I watched so many of my students and their families needs fall into dire conditions. Including that of my own, as my son did his Kindergarten year online in a heightened anxious state of our planet. As I made jewelry and art, I watched PBS Newshour as they reported doctors and nurses working endlessly and bravely through the pandemic with bruises on their noses and faces from the masks. Some of them losing their own lives in the service to others. I watched how parents worked from home and families juggled childcare, unemployment and food insecurity. How parents decided which one of them would leave their job and which one would continue to work. Covid exposed the long ignored cracks in our various societal systems and they were becoming engulfing pits and bottomless crevasses.
I was in the same situation myself, and yet I felt a call. It wasn't enough for me to be an artist (which is something that will never change) but I choose to be the helper. By utilizing my skills and creative problem solving It was time to return to teaching. To help, you have to think critically and creatively to see the holes and how to fix them. How to listen, ask, question, watch and activate- and by doing so, let the act of helping spread like wildfire with wind at it's back.
