Transformatives
Transformative Courses
Artmaking as Encounter, Dr. Sydney Walker
The Artmaking Process, Dr. Jennifer Richardson
As I am nearing the end of the Master’s Program at Ohio State, I can find things from [almost] every class that I took that has had incredible influences on who I am as a teacher, how I interact with my students, and how I design and reflect on my curriculum. I chose to go into the Master’s program only a year and a half after finishing up getting my Art Education licensure through Ohio State, so I kind of knew that my teaching would change. The thing that I didn’t expect was the way the courses influenced me. I expected large wholesale changes but instead I found more of a overlay of changes onto what I was already doing.
Two of the most transformative courses in my Master’s were actually very similar but seen through two different lenses. In a lot of ways, it seemed like The Artmaking Process with Dr. Jennifer Richardson was tailor made to go right along with Artmaking as Encounter with Dr. Sydney Walker. Both dealt with how artmaking affects, is affected by, and creates thought. Using artmaking as a catalyst, we explored ideas such as Deleuzian and Rhizomatic thought and thought creation. These two courses opened my curriculum up into what it has become and really showed me how I wanted to apply art and artmaking in my class.
Before I officially applied to the Ohio State Online Master’s program, I took Artmaking as Encounter because I had received a fee waiver through my school and had already started to make plans for the Masters. I was incredibly lucky enough to have Dr. Walker as a teacher in my Bachelor’s classes and then again for this summer Master’s course. For this class, it was my first foray into graduate level courses and it quickly blew my mind. As I wrote in one of my reflections, “Today was an interesting day and I’m still 100% sure what was the most fruitful part or if I really understand everything. I think part of the learning of today was understanding that it’s ok that I don’t fully understand.” I feel like this quote was an ongoing theme of the class for me. I was constantly just starting to understand something when something else would throw me off balance. This continual readjusting of thought to maintain balance really drove me to push deeper into the material. By reclaiming the balancing act I was able to move forward and this gave meaning to our learning on things like territorializing. I underlined this section from a Deleuze and Guattari article, “This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization… experience them…” This course gave me that stratum to lodge into as I jumped into the abyss of thought.
As I started working through The Artmaking Process with Dr. Jennifer Richardson, I had the advantage of already being introduced to some of the material we were reading and discussing by Dr. Walker. It was exciting for me to see an extended list of readings By Dr. Walker and some of the familiar stuff that I had already started to look into. The Artmaking Process became more about going further and digging deeper. It almost became a second part of the first class. With Dr. Richardson however, the learning became a little more nuanced and in depth than the one week cram had allowed for Artmaking as Encounter. One thing that really stuck with me was the concept of Rhizomatic thinking. It was something I had never really thought about or come across and to begin to understand it, I made a series of mini artworks to conceptualize it. I think that this idea of a continued learning, a branching, an interruption of regularity, really began to have an affect on how I viewed teaching. While talking about a day spent searching for sticks and weaving baskets out of them on a beach, Tim Ingold said, “Later they would tell me that they had learned more from that one afternoon than from any number of lectures and readings: above all about what it means to make things, about how form arises through movement, and about the dynamic properties of materials.”
“As an art teacher it is my job to not only teach things like the elements of art and different media. It is as important (or more so) that I teach students how to interact with the world and create meaning within it. Teaching a student to think differently, creatively, and with intent enables them to have success whatever their chosen path. So often I tell students that a good scientist that knows a lot might be able to tell you a lot about something, a great scientist that thinks creatively will be the one to discover something new. I need to make sure I am creating great scientists, amazing philosophers, and creative physicians; a couple talented artists would be good too.”
[excerpt from my Final Paper for The Artmaking Process]
