Artist: Mary Cassatt
Studio: Printmaking
Artist: Rene Magritte
Studio: Surreal Journey Postcards: Collage
Artist: Do Ho Suh
Studio: Pop-up Homes and Habitats: Mixed Media
Unit 2 Relationships: Reflection
To start off this unit isn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. I thought that the unit would be more about relationships with other people, rather than the things around us. But overall I found this unit to be very enlightening with how we tied in everything around us as a relationship. As Johnson 2008 said, "a picture may be worth a thousand words, but these words can remain unsaid or misunderstood when adults do not attend to their development" (p. 79). This struck me as very descriptive to our relationship unit because many of the studios we did you must look into the meaning and emotion tied into it to see what the artists intentions were. The first studio was very fun for me. Whenever I was younger I always looked up to my brother and would always write in class that, "I want to be my brother when I grow up". My parents still tease me about how cute it was considering we are only a year and a half apart. It was a studio that brought memories I hadn't exactly thought about much recently. The second one, I did was just for fun, I had always admired the relationship that Lucy and Ricky had in I Love Lucy, and I wanted to depict that in my art. I think this would be a great studio for children to do that will tell us things about them that we wouldn't normally hear from them vocally. This studio allowed each of us to express someone or something important to us through printmaking, and doing this in the classroom can build a relationship with our students as well. The second studio was fun because we relied on the people around us to make art. And I think this activity itself let us see that the relationships we have with each other as students is important as well. Pink (2005) states, "Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in someone else's position and to intuit what that person is feeling" (p. 159). This is something that could very well be integrated into other subjects as well that can enhance student learning. And I think that is why this unit is so useful, we get to view how relationships affect us in many perspectives. For the third studio, I had a lot of fun with. Many people in the classes depicted a house they live in or a dream home. And I made my house with a playful theme symbolizing I want my home to be a place of comfort, fun, and a place where people want to be. I wanted to step outside the box and be more figurative than literal. I really enjoyed this unit because I felt that it gave us the opportunity to look at all the relationships around us and how they affect who we are and who we want to be. I think our use of how every thing interacts as a relationship can be useful in teaching science relationships, literacy character roles and even social studies. The postcards could be used for active citizenship in social studies such as a recycling statement. The popups could be used to tell a story in literacy class, or to create a display model for science. The studios weren't only useful for getting to get our emotions on to paper, but to look at the relationships around us and how they affect us as a person.
References
Johnson, M. H. (2008). Developing verbal and visual literacy through experiences in the visual arts. Young Children,
63(1), 74-79.
Pink, D. (2005). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Penguin Group.
References
Johnson, M. H. (2008). Developing verbal and visual literacy through experiences in the visual arts. Young Children,
63(1), 74-79.
Pink, D. (2005). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Penguin Group.