Entry #5
February 24, 2020
#journeyofgrowth
Even though I am a creative person and love all things art related, I’ve always been a bit intimidated by abstract art. It was hard for me to understand that sometimes a piece of art can be left entirely up to the viewer’s interpretation because I always have particular ideas, influences and inspiration for my work. I had a hard time seeing that, just because I have a clear idea of what my work means, doesn’t mean others will see that meaning and interpret it as such when they see my pieces. There is always room for interpretation and connection with a piece of art according to how the viewer connects with it, even if that is not what the artist intended. Karyn Olivier gave an artist talk at CSU in 2019 and shared her experience with a piece she created inspired by the underground railroad that helped free dozens of enslaved African Americans find freedom in Canada. Olivier shared that during one of her exhibits, an elderly woman came up to her and told her how she emotionally connected with Olivier’s piece because it reminded her of the railroads on which millions of Jewish people were taken away during the Holocaust, including her own family. Two separate concepts, from two different times in history converged into one experience with art through two different women’s perspectives. This brought the idea of interpretation to a different level for me.
In Art 326 we have been learning about art education in a museum setting through teaching and giving Brainy tours at the CSU Gregory Allicar Museum. When learning about our assignment, I recoiled at the idea of teaching abstract art to groups of fourth graders. Then I remembered Viktor Lowenfeld and his ideas on not imposing rigid aesthetic constraints or expectations of what children’s art should be and allowing for free artistic expression in children. For me, this connected directly to Brainy and the goal to teach about abstract art and how to appreciate it, interpret and learn about it. The focus on representational art in the past, and the shift to encouraging to create and exposing students to all kinds of art, and especially non-representational, has been refreshing for me to see. All artists have strengths and weaknesses, one of my weaknesses has been in drawing. Removing the barriers of what to expect from my art and what it should look like has been encouraging to also teach my kids that art is not confined to only representational imagery.
Precisely for this reason, I have pushed myself in keeping drawing as my focus for my journal. Since I have always been conscious and critical of my drawing skills, I’ve always been drawn to pen and ink as opposed to graphite or charcoal. I prefer an illustrative quality over more lifelike renderings and have learned to appreciate and enjoy creating art like this, whereas drawing used to stress me out before. I hope to be able to transmit this to my students and encourage them to be expressive without the pressure and frustration that can sometimes come with trying to create art that resembles the natural world. Rather, I want to be able to teach the skills necessary to be able to draw or paint this way if they so choose, but also help them see that artistic expression can range a much more vast gamut and that not being able to create realistic art does not mean that what they create isn’t art.
