Primary Art: Teaching A Sense of Purpose

In retrospect, whenever an art project is finished, one can do a sort of forensic evaluation to identify which basic learning requirements were met by the students and to what degree. Some projects, by their very nature, are specifically designed to meet learning requirements. As an artist, my challenge is to keep the art experience free enough so children experience their own creative potential, but structured enough so that there is a "principle/practice" component to each art exercise. I find some age groups to be a challenge when developmentally, they are at a threshold which some members have reached and others have not. One such challenging threshold to me happens in the primary grades when as a group, they are supposed to have moved from the concrete to the abstract. "The age of reason". To date, I have not experienced a primary group in which all the members were either still activity based concrete learners or had that magic mental ingredient which allows for mental constructs, reasoning, making the leap from the intangible to the tangible, and, as it pertains to art, visualizing something before it physically exists. This week I think, judging from the participation of all the children, I hit on a way to include a developmentally diverse primary group into participating in abstract reasoning skills. As the session went on, some of the children with blank looks on their faces said, "oh I get what you're doing," and added their contributions to the discussion. That was feedback for me that I was on the right track. My goal was to target the standard learning requirements related to sense of purpose and the formal art considerations involved in creating an aesthetically pleasing design. I approached the task by starting with a concrete object. I thought that if I went from the concrete, to the abstract and then back to the concrete again, I might be able to reach the learners who haven't gotten to the point of being able to start with the "unformed". I had the feeling that starting with balloons, strips of newspaper and flour paste was not reaching concrete thinkers. I sensed that they could start with raw materials and end up with something while having fun and engaging in the process, but did they use actual planning skills in the making of the object? I doubted it. In retrospect they could discuss their already made art objects, but how could I ever really know what degree of intention went into making them? This is what we did. 1) I brought in a good sized paper mache deer of the cheap craft store variety. 2) I let them paint a white base coat. This was process based painting which they could enjoy without thinking about. 3) While the paint was drying, we discussed deer in general and were we going to make a replica of a deer, or an imaginary deer? 4) They choose an imaginary one. Children aren't boring! 5) We placed the dry paper mache deer against a piece of paper and traced the outline. This was the first step in moving from the concrete to the abstract. The deer is a physical object and the outline on the paper is symbolic. 6) Immediately the concrete thinkers jumped in and said "do you want us to draw a picture of a deer?" 7) I said "no I want to use this paper to make a plan for the deer so that if new children come next week they can look at the piece of paper with the deer plan on it and know what to do to help us make our deer." That comment produced plenty of blank stares. 8) I pointed to the deer tail and asked a girl what color she wanted it to be painted. She said "brown, should I get the brown paint?" 9) I said, "no, take a brown crayon and color the tail on the paper. Next week when you look at the tail, it will tell you to get brown paint and paint the paper mache tail brown. She said, "oh, I get it". 10) The children in this art group all used English as a second language. They were born in Africa and weren't familiar with the qualities of pacific northwest deer, (which was revealed in discussion), or English vocabulary. So, I decided to really stretch their symbolic competence and asked the next child to select a color for the hindquarters. He said the words "bright red". I told him to write the words "bright red" on the paper deer hindquarters. I spelled out the letters of the words and he wrote them. Then I asked the children what he meant by bright red which sent them on a treasure hunt through all the reddish colored crayons and markers. They were actively thinking in order to discriminate the qualities of a color. They discussed the colors with him. He would say, "no that one is too blue, that one is too light etc., until they all decided upon a crayon which matched his mental vision of "bright red". 11) At this point, I showed them the deer and said, "if we keep dividing the deer into sections like a meat market poster, he is going to look like a puzzle. What are some other ways we can think of to divide the form into smaller segments which will equal one big deer design unit which will "look good from all angles" and express something "artistic" about the deer. Who IS this deer?" The "look good from all angles" discussion was based on art fundamentals: weight, balance, color, pattern, visual flow, etc while the "who is this deer" emerged from a design focal point created by the children: the bright red hindquarters, orange hind legs and belly, with flames drawn over the orange hindquarters, and the light blue chest and back with a rain pattern and violent blue hearts drawn over the rain pattern on the chest. We ended the session with a plan to execute next week. The deer design is blocked out on paper. We made many revisions and finished with a balanced pleasing high contrast (red/orange-blue/green) design with one major focal point: the visual tension between the heated fiery hindquarters and the blue rainy sad hearted chest. When I asked the children "who is this deer" they said he is powerful and his muscles are burning to run and it's raining on his heart. They are the artists.... I wondered if this was going to be a Greek tragedy or comedy. Will the deer run in spite of the rain on his heart, or will the rain on his heart stop him from running and will his burning muscles torture him? The children weren't able to put this dilemma into words, but by their facial expressions and conversation with each other, it was clearly troubling them. They backed themselves into a corner by creating a conflict for their deer which they didn't know how to solve. Finally, a boy brightened and said, "I know, we can put lightening and fire on the forehead of the deer!" A girl looked relieved and said, "I want a blue heart on the cheek and lightening and fire on the forehead." After the session, I went back and scanned the essential learning requirements for primary students and realized that I exceeded my expectations in what we were able to cover in phase one of this simple project.