Using Images to Engage Students
In Linda Buturian’s PsTL 1312 Creating Identities Through Art and Performance class, students recently completed a Make It Yours assignment. Students were introduced to the many diverse art forms that the Weisman Art Museum is home to such as the burnished ceramic curves of John Balistreri’s human-sized sculpture Neocubic Figure #5 and the comic colors of the wall-sized pop art print M-Maybe by Roy Lichtenstein (1965). As part of the Make it Yours assignment, the students choose one of the art pieces to focus on, and then integrate a similar technique or subject matter into their own art. Accompanying their art is a statement that describes the original art piece, the technique or topic they adapted to create theirs, and what they want to achieve in their own art.
Buturian commented, “As a teacher, when you design a new assignment there is an element of discovery for both the student and the instructor. I was fortunate to create this assignment with Julie, who was my student in the 1312 course last year, so she could give me ideas for revising the Weisman unit. Though the assignment comes out of years of tinkering and researching, there is a launching, a trusting in the generative creative abilities of the students, as well as their desire to engage with and make connections to their experiences.”
For many of the students, the visit to the Weisman was their first time in a museum. Others had previously visited an art exhibit as part of a classroom experience to explore how art reveals ideas about culture, gender, politics, race, history, and religion. The Make it Yours assignment takes their analysis one step further by asking them to integrate their knowledge in order to create their own art. As students walked through the different galleries of the Weisman, whether curious, contemplative, or apprehensive, they were all viewing the same pieces of art but arriving at different visions. While one person saw a series of haphazard brushstrokes as “chaotic”, another perceived those same strokes as “complex” or “eloquent”. The beauty of this experience was that both of those interpretations were correct.
The assignment concluded with individual presentations of projects in class demonstrating the depth of students’ thoughts and the intricate detail they put into their final art piece. It was evident that the students took a great deal of pride in their work. From sculptures to spoken word, sketches and photographs, no two final projects were alike. Sinn and Buturian realized that the students did not simply take something and change it, they made it theirs, integrating lived experience with technique and vision.
The students’ art featured here represent a diversity of forms. The students who invested time working on their projects, attended to craftsmanship, and articulated the quality or topic they integrated, have succeeded in making this assignment their own.
