First day of Art

As someone who's more of a Math/Science guy, the idea of teaching Art used to be quite intimidating for me. However, this all changed after a conversation and a trip to a museum. My aunt and uncle live in Minneapolis, and I usually go down to visit them (and the Minnesota Twins/Wild!) a couple of times per year. A few years ago, my aunt took me to her place of work - she is in charge of Youth and Tour Programs at the Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota. She gave me a tour of the museum, and told me about some of the wonderful writing activities they did with school groups that came to the museum. She also gave me their Artful Writing classroom resource package. She talked a lot about how to really view a work of art - to not just look at it, but to perceive it, and allow yourself to be 'drawn in' to it by using all of your senses to 'experience' the art. At first, I wasn't sure how the students would take to this (every year, there's an initial sense of disappointment when I tell them that sometimes in Art class, we'll be talking about and writing about art, as opposed to creating something). However, it doesn't take long for the students to jump right in, and use their amazing powers of observation to fully appreciate an artist's work. All of a sudden, the idea of teaching Art wasn't so intimidating! It became less about teaching the students how to create something, and more about helping them to 'experience' the work, and to use that knowledge to create their own works. Since that trip, I've really enjoyed teaching Art, and have found that the quality of the students' artwork has really improved.

Today we began studying B.J.O. Nordfeldt's Green Woods (1950), shown below. I always begin the year with this picture, and it was great to hear the students share with the class what they noticed with all of their senses, and how the image made them feel, or what kind of mood they thought the image gave off. It is amazing that, after four years of doing this, students constantly notice new things in the painting that I haven't noticed before. They (and I) are excited to continue working with this picture next week, and to begin to do some writing around it, before creating their own works based on the image. Art rocks (and that's something that I never thought I'd say!)!