What child is not delighted with writing down her or his words, ideas, phrases, or stories, or of a hand-drawn image of the surrounding world? What happens when the writing and the drawing partner with a stapled group of pages? Voila! A spring (perhaps botanical?) journal of thoughts and drawings to express one’s own experiences of spring.

To help children begin, perhaps give them daily themes (tall and thin plants), project questions (What flowers represent rainbow colors?), or ask them to describe their favorite plant (using at least three adjectives).

Sketches of flowering plants, maybe accompanied by a taped-in sample leaf now and then, and some description or statements become a kid’s own world expressed. Some children may want it to become their first book! Why not provide children with multicolored construction papers, have them create their front and back journal covers (with title and art), between which are stapled in sheets of notebook paper. With this journaling process, perhaps a pink flower will become a crayon drawing or a black-and-white sketch. Interpretive art!

 Another idea might be to create a botanic mosaic, drawing a tree picture next to a flower petal next to a grass blade. Playing with composition, color, balance, and points of interest, a child will begin to see how forms and shapes can create a montage picture out of many pictures. If you want to try your hand with some of these ideas, click here.

 Enthusiastic questions may burst forth from the young artists, reflecting the exuberance of spring itself. What is artistic? What famous artists did this first? Do I know an artist in my neighborhood? What kind of tools does an artist use?

This journaling activity might also contribute to a group project. After they have worked on their journaling individually for a few days or weeks, have a piece of posterboard on a table or taped to a wall. The board would represent a culmination of the journaling project: a class garden wherein each child would draw (or paint) in her or his favorite plant into that garden. My guess is that, at the completion of this project, the garden may be worth framing! Gradually, children will gain confidence in their writing skills, take pride in their emerging journal, and learn botanical lessons in the process. Not everyone will be a Botticelli and produce a “Primavera,” but the emerging children’s art will certainly be more contemporary art!

Thank you to to interplast for the child’s photo, to rkempjr for the photo of a lovely pink flower; and to nextvangoghfor the spring flower mosaic.

Growing the artist within!

As discussed earlier this week, one of the 7 Da Vincian principles put forward by Michael Gelb in his book, “How to think like Leonardo da Vinci” is the principle of Sensazione or the refinement and development of sensory intelligence, especially sight as a way of enlivening experience.Recently, I was working with medical students and my colleague was discussing how different visual and auditory learners were in terms of the ways in which they approached the classroom, whether they took notes and even how they paraphrased what someone was saying. In this digital age, what kinds of learners exist and where does learning occur? How can we provide them with the necessary literacy tools to make sense of the sheer volume of information coming at them?

We recently had the opportunity to pose such questions to Dr Rhonda Robinson, a renowned educator and trainer of teachers and an international expert in visual literacy (look for her podcast coming to this blog next week!). In the realm of the mash-up where any image can be modified using photo shop, Dr Robinson has spent years encouraging children, young adults and graduate students to consider the ways in which images are produced, interpreted and consumed. Whether cutting up comic strips from newspapers as she did with middle school students or using Creativity Express to encourage the artists within her masters level graduate students, Dr Robinson has been a strong advocate for improving visual literacy, media literacy and now also digital literacy.

So what is visual literacy? The term “Visual Literacy” was first coined in 1969 by John Debes, one of the most important figures in the history of International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA). Debes’ offered (1969b, 27) the following definition of the term:

“Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication.”

In an environment where “learning occurs everywhere” because of our access to technologies such as the television and the Internet, it would seem that improving Sensazione by paying attention to the images presented to us on a daily basis, asking questions about how they got to be the way they are, de-constructing them to see the alternative ways they could be put together and appreciating the perspectives different ‘readers’ of these images bring to bear might open up some interesting conversations about the world around us. It can be as simple as clipping out a newspaper cartoon or two and having your children rearrange them; or taking a variety of images and creating a collage; even buying a disposable camera and allowing children to take pictures of their daily lives (I did this once and it was so enlightening) a la Born into Brothels, a film sponsored by the organization Kids with Cameras. And just in case you think it is only children who appreciate such activities, click here to expand your own Sensazione (you have to love the way that word sounds – what image comes to mind?)!

With thanks to Mzelle Biscotte for their wonderful work!

At the end of our beloved 2008, we posted a series of 5 wishes for 2009 — we wanted arts funded, we wanted them in our schools, we wanted them for all (young and old, big and little) and we wanted to hold onto the arts of love and hope.

WOW – that’s a lot to accomplish in one year so we thought we would start with something fundamental – what is Art? Notice the capital letter. I ask this question of you based on my reflections over the last 48 hours — first, my 5 year old and I completed our questionnaire for his well child visit and he was asked to draw a person (I have never seen him do that – he usually does watercolors at school – highly impressionistic, kaleidoscopic whirls of color, with no body parts in sight!). Second, I read on the web that in my country of birth, a major art gallery had had one of its large concrete public walls graffiti-ed (is that a word?) on by the same artist twice in a month. When asked if they would be removing the artist’s poetry, the curator of the museum was disgusted — it was art, an expression of an artist’s love for someone else, how could he remove such an expression of human emotion? Finally, as a writer and as a mother, I was creating a blog, adding images, adding a trailer for a movie about something I was passionate about. Humming away, completely in flow (art as meditation), on my ‘piece of art’, I was completely floored when asked – so what purpose is that serving? Why are you doing that again? Hmmmm art. Art is something difficult to hold onto it seems.

And so I turned to my old friend, wise distributor of words, the dictionary. What is art? I asked it. Here is what it said, imagine a staccato machine-like voice –

” \ˈärt\. Function: noun. Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin art-, ars. Date: 13th century.

1: skill acquired by experience, study, or observation <the art of making friends>
2 a: a branch of learning: (1): one of the humanities (2)plural : liberal arts b: archaic : learning , scholarship
3: an occupation requiring knowledge or skill <the art of organ building>
4 a: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects ; also : works so produced b (1): fine arts (2): one of the fine arts (3): a graphic art
5 a archaic : a skillful plan b: the quality or state of being artful
6: decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter.”

Righty-o then.

My dictionary friend then added, ” art implies a personal, unanalyzable creative power; skill stresses technical knowledge and proficiency (OK….); cunning suggests ingenuity and subtlety in devising, inventing, or executing (uh-oh….); artifice suggests technical skill especially in imitating things in nature (definitely not to be confused with art) whereas craft may imply expertness in workmanship.”

So which one was my son being asked to fulfill in that questionnaire?

Whatever it was, it was different to “a personal, unanalyzable creative power” as suggested by my dictionary friend. Hmmm. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? When we revisit our five wishes we now begin to see them as follows – we want this power funded, we want it sustained in our schools and education (after the word educare, to lead out), we want everyone to possess this power or have access to it and we believe that two of our strongest emotions — love and hope, are its wellsprings. Over the next few months, we will be working some more with this vision of art in this blog and speaking to some fine scholars of visual literacy and active agents in making this power of art available to all, especially encouraging it in our younger generations. We will also explore ways to recover this power in our everyday lives with those big/little/old/young people we love and we will see what kind of thinking, minds and characters emerge as a result.

We look forward to your company on this journey!

With thanks to Denis Collette , jbrownell for, well you know, art…..

Let’s start 2009 with Art!