Creativity can be taught. It might not seem easy and assessing it may be challenging but it can be done. I strongly believe that creativity can be incorporated into any content or subject area, as well.
As I look at the breadth of my work in this course, I am amazed at the processes I have gone through and the products I have created. I don't think I have ever dug so deeply into a topic in this fashion; exploring it with so many different cognitive tools. Additionally, my definition of creativity has grown into a personal journey and is especially significant to me considering I am an art teacher and creating has always been so important to me. The best part about this journey is that all of the skills that I've learned and the activities that I have created are practical for my elementary art room and for my students to use... with some hard work, the activities could probably be altered to fit any classroom in a meaningful way, too!
Above is a fun video that highlights most of the work I have done over the course of this semester.
Teachers can support creativity in teaching and learning within classrooms by fostering an early and basic understanding of various these cognitive skills:
Perceiving - Deeply observing and completely understanding something in its entirety. Encourage students to not only see with their eyes but, when appropriate, smell, taste, hear, and understand with their minds and hearts. Teach active observation as opposed to passively looking. Patterning - Using one's senses and intellect to find or make an understanding of combination or order out of information or things that repeat in some way. Abstracting - Taking an idea, thing or concept and translating it into a different form that still demonstrates or communicates the essence of the original idea in a different way. Embodied Thinking - Representing a concept by using one’s body in a kinesthetic or physical manner. Modeling - Creating a two dimensional or three dimensional visual representation that demonstrates a concept or some type of reality in some way. Playing - Play, whether being done intentionally or unintentionally, is typically a no-rule, risk-free and experimental way of creating.
Above is an infographic I made on this topic.
On a final note, remember: it is not only important to incorporate these skills into our classroom for our students to learn but to do it in a creative manner. I hate to say it but things don't stick when they are boring! So, yes, this does mean that you will have to do some hard work and creative thinking, as well! In my opinion, the easiest way to do this is to, whenever possible, create lessons and activities that are not on 8 1/2" x 11" sheets of paper. Get creative. Box outside the think. You've got this!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cqHBWETj0pcQ5cU09vkrEbDAwyntZ21zDW7gwUVQt58/edit#
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My definition of Play within creative thinking: Play, whether being done intentionally or unintentionally, is typically a no-rule, risk-free and experimental way of creating. Play is an essential part of creative thinking because it allows one to feel less fear for failure. When a person is less afraid of failing, they are more likely to think a different way, take risks and try something they've never done before. Sure, it could go "wrong". But if it goes right, in my opinion, that's usually where originality and innovation come from. The significance of my introductory activity is twofold: first, the presentation gives a brief synopsis of the pop art movement along with some of the most well-known artists within the movement and examples of masterpieces from these artists. Secondly, it is a risk-free guided pop art drawing lesson. Let me explain the second part further.
While creating this activity, I knew that I wanted the students that participate in it to feel successful in creating their own pop art masterpiece. However, a blank canvas - or a blank drawing sheet in our case - can be intimidating. Furthermore, I needed to add a playful element into the activity. This is where the pre-decided backgrounds, subjects, and dice came in. These pre-decided elements take away any worry or intimidation an artist who has just been introduced to the topic might feel. Additionally, the dice add a playful component that leaves the whole masterpiece up to chance. I added in one guideline: If you'd like to use your own pop art inspired background or subjects, you may. The whole point of the game is to play and experiment! So if one of my students wants to put a Fortnite character as their subject, they should!! As long as the subjects and backgrounds are pop art inspired, they are more than welcome to add them. The topic of "Pop Art" was quite broad for this activity. It has history and depth that, at first, seemed to reach beyond an introductory activity. I knew I wanted my students or participants to get two things out of it: basic knowledge about my topic and a creative, risk-free experience in creating an art piece for themselves. Because of this, I had to create an activity that gave a concise summary of what was most important to know about pop art (defined, time period, well-known artist and masterpieces) and then have participants playfully experience creating their own. Abstracting: taking an idea, thing or concept and translating it into a different form that still demonstrates or communicates the essence of the original idea but in a different way. For this assignment, I was inspired by the artist Roy Lichtenstein. This is ironic because I was thinking of using him as inspiration before I even read his name and the example in our book, Sparks of Genius by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, in chapter 5. In a large quantity of Lichtenstein's artwork, he applies a process of making dots to create art. Roy Lichtenstein's Crying Girl. Click the image to go to the website that it was retrieved from. This is closely related to a type of art called pointillism but his end result is different because he creates a comic book style as opposed to solely using dots. I have always been fascinated with pointillism. I’ve done my own projects using this type of art in the past and I’ve taught it to students in my own lesson plans. Once I started reading the abstracting chapter, I almost immediately knew that I wanted to work with Lichtenstein's concept of using dots to create an object within an artwork. I had a couple of different ideas so it was convenient that this assignment required us to communicate our abstraction in two different manners. At the end of chapter 5, Robert and Michele suggest that the reader should "Inspire yourself by collecting examples of abstracting by masters. Imitate." (pg. 90). So, I did. I also wanted to do something similar to what Pablo Picasso did with his bull abstractions. My goal was to abstract something that is concrete and real using dots and pointillism. I decided on a rose. Attempt #1 There is no solid line in the finished project. The rose is made up completely of dots. Once I completed my first rose, I was happy with it and proud of it. However, I realized it was drastically more realistic than abstract - which is the opposite of the goal of this assignment. Abstracting has always been tough for me as an artist. I love drawing and painting realistically. I came to terms with the fact that I spelled the rose out way too cleary and I challenged myself to try again. Attempt #2 This attempt was better but I was still not completely content. In my opinion, the second attempt still spelled it out a little too clearly. I had to try one more time. I decided that if I were to minimize it even more, then I wanted to use red and green colors. Attempt #3 I believe my third attempt has finally met the goals of this project. I do not think my creation spells out rose too clearly and I believe without the colors added then it wouldn't be clear enough. For the second part of the project, I wanted to step out of my comfort zone. I’ve noticed a pattern within my assignments thus far throughout this course: I’ve played around a lot with fine arts. I was determined to challenge myself to make a poem and use words instead of my visual artistic side. Naturally, I had to incorporate some kind of visual aspect into my poem... I just couldn’t help myself! I created a poem that I titled "Dot". Above is a photo of my poem called "Dot" Author’s Note: A few words of advice - back up, stray; my poem is read best from far away. Despite the fact that the poem is made up of a singular, repeated word, it isn’t necessarily simple looking, like our book argues abstracting should be: "[Picasso, Wilson, cummings] reduced complex visual, physical, or emotional ideas to bare, stripped images..." (pg.72). My poem is visually complex when you are close up reading it. It might even hurt your eyes to look at. But from far away you see the extremely simplified abstraction. The audience will recognize that although the poem is overwhelming from close up, from a distance, the colors and words simply form a dot. I suppose some might argue this isn't necessarily a poem since it doesn't really have a specific structure but I thought it was clever and creative. I also liked the fact that my poem is basically mass producing the word "dot", which plays off of the idea that pop art uses mass produced objects to create art, as well. Something I’ve noticed about myself as an art educator is that it can be hard for me to come up with lesson plan ideas sometimes. You would presume that the art teacher would be one of the most creative when it comes to this but I definitely struggle. I look at a lot of other art teacher's ideas for help. I always felt bad about doing this because my conscience told me that teachers should be creating their own lesson plans. This assignment helped me realize that what other art teachers are doing is simply an inspiration and an abstraction from what other famous artists have done throughout history. Now, I would like to use this tool of abstracting and apply it to create a lesson plan for my students that is completely created by myself. References:
Root-Bernstein, Robert & Michele. (1999). Sparks of Genius The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People. Houghton Mifflin Company. New York, New York. Who is Roy Lichtenstein's Crying Girl? (2019, September 15). Retrieved October 11, 2019, from https://publicdelivery.org/roy-lichtenstein-crying-girl/. Finding Patterns in Pop ArtPop Art photo of myself Patterning: Patterning is using one’s senses and intellect to find or make an understanding of combination or order out of information or things that repeat in some way. For this assignment, I was asked to find some type of pattern in my topic area which is Pop Art. Then, I was given the challenge to create a new pattern that could apply to the same topic. I created a video that explains the original pattern and my new patterns. You can watch it here. This pattern definitely helps my students access pop art easily. In my very own art room, we can take images, objects and other resources that they see, use or interact with some way on a daily basis and create art out of it. This would actually make the project even more personable because they would get to choose a specific popular culture product, image, character, celebrity, etc. that is significant to them to use as the subject of whatever art project we are doing. Additionally, with technology today, popular culture is even more easily accessible in the art room. We can use computers, tablets, cameras, printed images, magazines, and so much more for inspiration. When I show this to a class of students or when I see something similar to this in a museum, a lot of reactions I hear are things like "Well, I could've done that!" or "That doesn't look that hard to do!" or "How is that art??". To which I typically respond, yes, you absolutely could've done that but Andy Warhol did it first. You're right, maybe it wasn't that hard to do. Does art have to be hard to create to be considered art? And it is art because the painting is making you have a strong reaction. Chances are, that's exactly what Warhol wanted you think! And now, he's got you looking closer at and talking about a soup can that you've probably seen hundreds of times in your kitchen cabinet and didn't think twice about. Pop Art challenges the world to look at ordinary objects in a different way. Anybody can be a pop artist. You don't need professional training or years of practice. The trick is to find your own way of creating the art - you know, the whole being creative thing! It just might take you a while to get as good as Warhol. References
Warhol, Andy. “Andy Warhol. Campbell's Soup Cans. 1962: MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79809.
I asked her six questions:
However, as noted above, him and I do not completely see eye to eye on one thing: Robinson defines creativity as “the process of having original ideas that have value” (Robinson, n.d.). I agree to a certain extent. Like I mentioned above, I would argue that creativity doesn’t necessarily always have to be completely original. I believe that ideas and inspiration come from something that has already been done or someone who has already done it. Whatever is produced in the end initially was a combination of inspired ideas and thoughts, which are then transformed into something new. I feel like I’m am still learning how to express how I feel about this idea. I’d like to dive deeper into this throughout the semester and build up a stronger argument with evidence and reasoning. For now, the reading and the interview have helped me shape my definition of creativity in a few ways. I do think that being creative takes hard work and practice, so I incorporated the "putting your imagination to work" in my definition. And I also firmly believe that creativity is within every human being; it is not something that some people are born with and others are not. My definition now includes this idea, as well. After talking with Claudia, I feel that creativity is a personal journey. Those who are open to learning how to be creative, can open many doors and apply creativity to many aspects of their life. THE EVOLUTION OF MY DEFINITION OF CREATIVITYFirst definition of creativity: Creativity is the use of a collection of ideas, thoughts and different inspirations that come together to produce something. Creativity is a journey of experimentation, questioning and remixing. Second definition of creativity: Creativity is putting one’s imagination to work through the use of a collection of ideas, thoughts and different inspirations that come together to produce something. Creativity is inherently within us all and is a personal journey of experimentation, questioning and remixing. Reference
Out of Our Minds Excerpts.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GGVABT9l9MnzZ0fz-BmbrjLVmURQWGqU/view |
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