Articles

Article

Editor's Letter: Structure

Friday, November 8, 2019

Architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, and Le Corbusier and artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky all shared a similar childhood educational experience, one that likely shaped their prof ...

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Article

Weaving Nature into the Art Room

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

There is a Lakota proverb that states, “When man moves away from nature, his heart becomes hard.” That said, the more we are drawn to nature, the more our sense of wonder flourishes. When ...

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Article

Exploring Bugs: Entomology as Art

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

According to scientific studies (see Web Links), there are more than 200 million insects for each human on the planet! This is an astonishing fact I discovered while researching ideas for a lesson tha ...

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Article

Mighty Morphs

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Many of our students are into tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons, card games such as Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering, and, of course, movies and video games of all kinds. Fantasy, scie ...

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Article

Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

In the decade or more that I’ve been leading my school’s art program, I’ve never been able to take my students on a field trip. The administration has approved visiting artists and g ...

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Article

Editor's Letter: The Natural World

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

For the past eight summers, CRIZMAC president Stevie Mack and I have been leading a cultural seminar we call Tres Culturas: Exploring the Artistic Spirit of Santa Fe and Taos. A highlight of this expe ...

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Article

Mail Art Madness

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

When I was a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, one of my favorite teachers, Ken Krafchek, told us to get in touch with a working artist. My classmates and I had to write brief reports ...

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Article

Putting It Together

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Many schools regularly stage musicals. Their staging invites creative art lessons that can complement musicals’ themes and songs. For several years, I coordinated art lessons and curriculum init ...

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Article

Editor's Letter: Joy

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Watching Marie Kondo’s Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, has me thinking about joy, but as it applies to art. Her method, introduced in her first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidy ...

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Article

Boxed Mythology

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

I collaborated with my student Sarah Oschmann, who wrote most of this article. This lesson, inspired by artist Joseph Cornell, is rooted in the theme of mythology. Students were required to dive deep ...

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Article

#YOURTURN: A Documentary Project

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

One of the first things we learn as children is how to take a turn. This past school year, I launched a collaborative project called #YOURTURN. This is a photo-based project about interaction, engagem ...

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Article

Don't Judge a Box by Its Cover

Friday, August 2, 2019

For this lesson, students designed the outside of a box to represent how they are perceived by others, and the inside to represent how they know themselves to be. They were encouraged to work symbolic ...

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Article

Reflections on the Future

Friday, August 2, 2019

How do our thoughts about the past or the future shape our present lives? How can our hopes and dreams cause us to reach toward our best selves? These were the questions I asked myself in designing th ...

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Article

Why Art Really Matters to Me

Friday, August 2, 2019

To kick off Youth Art Month last March, NAEA President Kim Definbaugh encouraged members to post photos and stories of Why Art Matters with the tag #VisualArtsEdMatters. I thought about it and realize ...

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Article

Robot Personifications

Friday, August 2, 2019

Have you ever wondered if we are learning more from the students we teach than they are learning from us? If we take the time to observe our students, we can see that they are filled with their own id ...

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Article

Editor's Letter: Testimony

Friday, August 2, 2019

When I taught preservice classes at the University of North Texas, I required my students to each write and present a mission statement, a kind of testimony to their philosophy of art and art teaching ...

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