illustrated writing on elementary Visual Art
This post concerns replicating primary source artifacts, firstly, Native American masks. A cohort of 2nd graders able to take some guided notes on particular sets of masks they both saw in person and briefly read about, also heard me tell them a general reason for masking in ritual dance, and at my discretion, made their own embodiments of supernatural power. Ideas such as gills for breathing underwater, power to meet Janet Jackson, as well as carnivorous teeth were volunteered via initial conversation.
Months after drawing, sculpting, then painting ceramic face coverings a closed-notes, Visual Art pop quiz followed up on Social Studies. Two topics included unspecific tribal masks and Mandan village huts that forewent autonomy of weight, force and balance–readymade bowl armatures were cast in paper mache then painted to imitate sod. Students chose to answer the typed questions likewise in writing, and handwrote legibly. Though most listed brown or round to recall the organically engineered lodges, and wrote a sentence to explain that Native American masks are for summoning supernatural power.
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| 2nd grader |
More time spent pencil drawing but with no assignment rubric proceeded spotting dozens of manufactured ceramic tile floors. On graph paper with 1/8 inch sided squares I first mimicked a few solid-color circle and square patterns. Next I further uniformly downscaled motifs into ruler measured, adjacent areas of a larger paper by setting up tile-to-motif length ratios and solving proportions manually. Planning a Greek key to perpendicularly intersect around the surface's 30-x-22 inch perimeter without breaking pattern entailed dividing it into iterations plus one half, so motif halves could be shared at the corners. Since I was not drawing tiles perfectly, I rounded unequal dimensions/iterations quotients 30/30.5 and 22/22.5 between 15/16 inch - 1 inch with a standard ruler and stretched some square tiles into rectangles. Single size squares should seamlessly circuit 30.5-x-22.5 inches in 1 inch keys and 30-x-22 inches in 4 inch colored keys. Around a center of regular hexagons are 16 copies of an irregular shaped logo–a bird with a rolled up certificate under its wing. A computer scaled these at 72 pixels per inch. It applied basic algebra before I cut out and collaged three sizes of inkjet prints.
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| Parakeet Diploma |
Accredited grade schools have shaped my integrated English Language Arts lessons. Including a few aforementioned 2nd graders who chronologically organized more than one mask schematic without any printed, scripted or keyboarded dialogue. After completing a comics exercise featuring a talking bird caricature, classes used rulers on 12-x-18 inch paper to organize their own supernatural power myths. Homeroom teachers have shared additional plot prompts plus differentiated writing goals.
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| 2nd grade time travel story with onomatopoeia |
A student's appeal for animating black holes instead of Indigenous, two-dimensional pictographs also merited exploration. Discussing potential motion pictures in an exponentially large or possibly infinite universe with 4th graders raised a question about the first monkey test pilot that led to independent reading then scrolling “1961” for Yuri Gagarin's spaceflight. Another pictureless sequence exclaimed "Oh no a black hole" while an experienced sketcher tried sublimation from pressure in comet tails. Twelve-column planning sheets and pre-numbered frames helped impart a frame rate, in addition to counting drawings of a gelatinous cube jumping up then accelerating down as if weighted by mass and gravity.
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| 4th grade animation cell |
Teachers have written about developing children's motor cognition. One attributes “sensory logic” (Burton, 1980, p.61) to students conceptualizing pre-representational art with language. My 2nd grade student's convoke Janet Jackson mask inferred this skill when their preparatory drawing with carnivalesque decorations became less recognizable as painted sculpture, and upon jotting down a title, near correctly spelled “Michael Jackson Face.” Maturity and practice might make more complex decorations, personally identifiable features, and wood carving feasible. Meanwhile this student wondered, "what happened to him?" Supposing classmates were asked this, they could also advise on costume and choreography for summoning Janet or consider traditional Native American funerary masks.
In short–I recommend elementary teachers plan inquiry-based, interdisciplinary dialogues followed by related, problem solving art activities. Then assess if creativity motivates learning objectives. To study art history I suggest schools prioritize literacy.
References
Burton, J. (1980). Developing Minds: The First Visual Symbols. School Arts. (October Issue), p.60 - 65.