THE USEFULNESS OF ART IN EDUCATION IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM Patricia Faith ...

THE USEFULNESS OF ART IN EDUCATION IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

Patricia Faith Goldblatt

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Education Graduate Department of Education University of Toronto

Q Copyright by Patricia Faith Goldblatt 1996 THE USEFULNESS OF ART IN EDUCATION IN AM) OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

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Doctor of Education 1 996

Patricia Faith Goldblatt Graduate Departmen of Education University of Toronto ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the role of a n from many perspectives, pioposing an argument for its value as an educational tool. I begin by presenting John Dewey's concept of "experience" which is at the heart of his philosophy. His ideas of anti-racist, interactive, co-operative learning by doing and reflection anticipate Elliot Eisner's programs of DBAE (Discipline-Based Art Education), school as

a place for opportunities, qualitative insights into education that mirror techniques used in art. Howard Gardner's concept of Multiple Intelligences, with an emphasis on practical, "intelligence-fair" assessment as developed and evaluated in his Key School, Spectrum, and ARTSpropel program, continue Dewey's theories into present day. From the theorists, I move to the world outside the classroom to point out the many uses art has had as criticism and self-expression over the years: from Goya to Judy Chicago to the contemporary artists, Conwill, DePace and Majozo. The need for authentic voices representative of society has prompted schools to realise that multicultural education, although problematic to implement in the curriculum, is a reality that must be faced. I present art as an applicable entry into that area, whether educators employ an "issues" or "themes" approach. I continue with discussion of school programs that have successfidly used art as core, criticising one approach that again relegates art to the position of being a handmaiden to other subjects. My own drawings, created in storybook format, and piqued by courses taught at ONE, explore frames, DBAE, imagination and hope for the hture, are included. Through my discussions of many places ii

and people in this thesis, I amve at a definition of art and reinforce the validity of an arts approach to curricula through specific reference to quantitative studies. As well. I direct the reader to traditional, metacognitive, and hidden curricular proof that supports the qualitative benefits. I conclude as I began with my own journey, one laden with metaphors, poets and personal experience that has informed my work as an action researcher.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T.S.Eliot once wrote, We shall not cease fiom exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. "Little Gidding"

Eliot's poetry has been my background music throughout this paper. The rhythm of his words and the insights into the cycles of growth and development have been a constant refrain of comfort and wisdom for me. What I have always loved- the picture and the word- are where I began

as a young child . Like two frends, they have accompanied me on all my journeys, providing joy and sustenance on numerous occasions. Poets, I believe, are the clairvoyants of the soul, who can guide us into and during our quests.

But this paper is about the poetry of art, not words. And yet, whom should I meet early on

in my search, but T.S. Eliot. deployed by Howard Gardner as an exemplary "Multiple Intelligence". One realises that in life nothing is separate: there are no demarcations, "no signposts up ahead that designate and delineate what is and what is not. Life flows, and entwines, and our work is to make meaning of diversity, and understand how the parts fit. Beauty and understanding can unite the disparate, if only we look in a way so that we may see. My interest and delight in art and word as a young girl have never left me, and I hope that I have shared that love with the people in my life. My good Friend, critic, and supporter, Howard (another H.G.-isn't it funny the patterns one encounters in life?) has provoked me on to reveal what iv

1 was really capable of. Our give-and-take verbal tousles have born fruit in many mysterious and

surprising ways, always illuminating and educating me. I know that love was the motivation for his interest. My wondefil children, Ariel, Jordan and Erica have been guiding lights so I could revisit and

see with the eyes of a child. Sharing their insights- at Allenby French Immersion Classes with Ariel, at the Salvador Dali Museum in Venice with Jordan, or cuddled with The Goo, delighting over illustrated storybooks - has made me richer. Their excitement to contribute idea and comment, as well as their constant support, encouragement and pride in me always reassured me in the wisdom and wealth of childhood. It is for them, all the Ariels, Jordans and Ericas who deserve the breath of art, the intellectual challenges, the expressive output, the pure joy of art that I write this paper- so that other children might understand how art permeates all areas of life.

TABLE

OF C O N T E N T S

TITLE ABSTRACT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

How Art "Means" in School: The Education Value of Art for Life Early tife The Need for This Study 11.

METHODOLOGY

Research Techniques Grounded Theory Action Research Reflective Practitioner Logs and Journals Interviews Explanation of Methodology Used The Theoreticians: Theory The World Outside of the Classroom: Practice The Classroom : Practice My Drawings: Personal theory and Practice Implications and Conclusions

m.

MAJOR INFLUENCES IN ARTS EOUCATlON

John Dewey The Theory of Artistic Learning A Religious Beginning Art as Religion

How To See Like An Artist Artistic Revelations The Religious Contexts of A n The Many Contexts of Art Art As A Language The Artist's Role in Society Conclusions Application of Theory Barbara Hepworth

Experience: From Hepworth's Own Life and Her Creative Processes Experience: Landscape Experience: Artists and Art Experience: Words and People Experience: The Artistic Process Dewey's Relationship and Influence on Dr. Albert Barnes

Elliot Eisner Theories of Art and Education The Development of D B A E

The Theories of Harry Broudy The Impact of 0 C A B On Schools

Elliot Eisner's Views on Art

Opportunities for Cognition. Decisions, imagination and Literacy Connoisseurship and Criticism Into the Real World Assessment and Evaluation A Qualitative Approach Conclusion Theories in Practice Art Production

Art Criticism Art History Aesthetics The Interaction of D B A E's Topics

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The Application of Art to All Education How Art Can Be Applied to All Education Some American Schools and Programs

Howard Gardner Theories of Artistic Intelligence Multiple Intelligences The Influence Of The Chinese Way Of Schooling Theory in Practice The Schools Spectrum The Key School Arts PROPEL Discussion Reasons To Develop New Tests To Identify Giftedness In Diverse Populations Teacher Stories of Implementation DISCOVER, an Assessment that Grew Out of Multiple Intelligence Theory Conclusion IV.

ART IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD ART ISSUES Art as Social Protest The Artists The Artist's Role in Social Change The Dictates Of The Patron As Voiced By The Artist How People Can Take Charge of Their Own Voice An Example Of An Artist's Voice The Voices Of Propaganda How Signiticant Voices Shape Our Times The Rise of The Artist's Own Voice

Women's Art Mainly Judy Chicago

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Art in Advertising The Advertisements Quoting Fine Art The Use Of Artistic Principles More Artistic Principles and Art Tools The Use Of Body ln Advertising

Art in Children's Books Artfil Illustrations that Complement Stories Art and Artists as Topics in Children's Books Conclusion V.

ART IN SCHOOL THEORY AND PRACTICE

Three Case Studies o f Art A Controversial Case Of Art The Mabin School Avenue Road Fine Arts School Pre-School Program Kiddiggers: An Innovative Program Madame Munn's Class How Art Can Aid in Multicultural Studies? What is Multicultural Education? Why Art and How Art? Howard Gardner's Concept Of Multiple Intelligences And Multicultural Education

Conclusion

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PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE THE COURSES Seminar: Play, Dranlil & Aris Colloquium In Arts And Education Introduction To Transformative Studies

Art and Education: Planning and Implementation

Conclusion VII.

IMPLICATIONS OF ARTS 1N THE CURRICULUM

How the Study of Arts Benefits All Areas of Life and the Curriculum How Dewey, Eisner and Gardner Envision the Benefits of Arts Education Implementing Art Education Results of Art Studies Expression and Learning in Art The Traditional, Metaphysical and Hidden Curricula Implications and Conclusions

VIII. TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF ART What is Art Introduction Drawing Lines The Artist's Integration What Makes Art Exceptional? The Separation And Lntesration Of Art Conclusion LX.

PERSONAL INSIGHTS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THIS STUDY Personal Insights

APPENDICES The drawings

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1.

INTRODUCTION

How Art "Means" in School: The Education Value of Art for Life

This short section is an expfunatior~behind my thesis. I list the strank that will entwine to become my research and cl'iscussion. It is an introdtc~ionto what willjbilow. This thesis is about an. Framing my discussion is my personal narrative, an essential component of my work. I begin with educational researchers and philosophers, John Dewey, Howard Gardner and Elliot Eisner: they are the backbone of my search and provide the support for my thinking on and about art. I follow with examples of art in many areas of society, in and out of school. I examine art issues that confront society today, from multiculturalism to assessment to mass media. I explore "art" from a number of perspectives, focusing on the various ways in which art is perceived and how art forms part of the fabric of society. 1 examine the development of art critique as both a part of our world and as an educational tool, a way of enabling and encouraging children to feel as well as to see and to express their feelings through a variety of media. This thesis represents my attempt to express the meaning of art to educators, to children, to the public, and most importantly, to myself. It is through art that we strive to achieve not only a new way of seeing, but a new way of teaching, and of course, and a new way of learning. In my personal quest, I present as well my own visual interpretations created as responses to my classes at OISE. My journey inward into my own work and journey outward into art in society are the double strands of my thesis that, in the end, have reaffirmed my belief in the power of art to communicate and express a human's dialogue with the world. 1

Early Life It] this i)itro&tisn

. I reject on art 's pivotal role in my ii$k From earliest dnys to the

present, /present the c o ~ ~ rthat s e brought me here to OISE.

My first painting of memory was an acrobat. He moved gracefblly through the air, not just one daring young man on the flying trapeze, but a series of h i s bodies, hurtling through space .My kindergarten teacher hung it up high on parents' night and told my mother that the concl;jr was quite remarkable for one so young. I can envisage that child's painting, but I wonder now if l am only putting images to words? Why i s it that in days of our life that only a handhl of precious moments emerge from our consciousness?Connelly and Clandinin (1 988) report that we remember those moments that are fraught with emotion. and Jerome Bruner ( 1 990) explains that we remember those times in which we feel embarrassment, excitement or those we think must be justified. Many of my early memories are organized around my art work for exactly those reasons. No doubt my mother was proud of my early endeavours and I shared in her recognition that my artwork displayed for all to see was indeed important. A special night, out past bedtime, walking to the school, hand in hand with an adored parent was a special event transformed into magic by the praise of my teacher. There was a red leatherette nook in the kitchen at my first house, a friend named Alice with whom I shared a blanket Saturday mornings to listen to "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", but they were minor reminiscences in comparison to that night at Ledbuly Park School.

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Most writers discuss their childhood as the golden time of their life, and Eva Hofhan in Lost in Translation (1989) has even entitled her early years before leaving Poland as "paradise". The security of childhood is bound up with the smells-even if it is Campbell's soup-, the sounds, the tastes and the sights that are familiar and warming to the child's senses.

I do not know if I was encouraged to draw and paint when I was young. No doubt I wassince my parents knew about the theories of Gesell and Piaget fiom my aunt and uncle, a musician turned school teacher. However, when 1 was older my parents referred to my doodling as "muckapucka" and it connoted a useless activity. Now I can see the connection between my messy entwined lines and my father's endless search for the perfect electrical circuit as he ceaselessly covered empty cakeboxes with his pencil sketches. I think he would have rejected this comparison. expounding that his drawings had a purpose whereas mine went nowhere. And yet at his shiva after his fheral, a medical professor noted that both my father and I worked in symbolic languages. When we moved From our first house, I was thrust into a new school with a witchlike teacher who raked my hair with her sharp nails. We were, one day, to make leaf people. For some reason, I was unable to follow directions. actually a trait I still possess. Miss Young was moving 60m desk to desk, checking on the students' progress, and I froze in horror because I knew that soon she would swoop down on me. Behind me sat Michael Cooper, an expert on creating perfectly formed leaves fiom scraps of green paper. Deftly he cut and combined, producing for the shivering girl that I was, a perfect leafinan. Years later, I ran into Michael Cooper in an American Express Office in Denmark and 1thanked him for his help in Grade one an class. He smiled. no doubt thinking 1 was quite mad. But as Bruner has said, this was a memoty driven by

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my embarrassment, my inability to perform the task, a task in a area that I had been praised in. My grade three teacher, a Mrs.Jean Trott, was more encouraging to all the budding writers and artists in the class. We made THE BIG BOOK of stories and illustrated them. Mine was chosen to be read in the auditorium on Friday morning. I had written the story about a curious monkey who mistook the cherries on a lady's hat for the real thing and so he ascended to her head to taste those shiny red berries precariously poised on her hat. A feeling of fulfilment perhaps, a feeling of pride I must have had that day because my story was worthy of being shared with an entire auditorium full of squirming grade ones, twos, threes. I suppose 1 must have exhibited some talent for my mother enrolled me in an afternoon an program and 1 attended every Thursday after school. Not instructed but allowed to interpret the theme as we desired, 1 painted Jack and Jill in their journey up the hill. Again this depiction earned me the right to be exhibited in a small a n show. And do I remember this memory- first, because of the pride I felt in my art work, and second. the horror I felt because I knew a hideous little boy was waiting for me at the end of each class. These early memories stand out in a way that no others do. I don't know if l progressed in my early artistic talent, for there was no formal art instruction at Forest Hill Collegiate. Howard Gardner states that there are important times in a child's life when skills are needed if they are to feel validated in their pursuit of art (1982). Like Prufiock, we oAen stand at the edge, ready but fearfid of falling unless we are thrown a lifeline. With no formal training to speak of, the reinforcement needed to continue with my art perhaps sublimated into that "muckapucka". I copied beautiful ladies from magazines and I continued to doodle.

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Somewhere in the jumble of time, I do recall my father going down to Loomis and Toles on Richmond Street to buy me a book of nudes. This was no mean feat since he would have had to somehow carry a large volume under his arm, while making his way on crutches back to his car. Since the book contained drawings of naked women, I assume I must have been considered old enough to contemplate the naked form. Forest Hill Collegiate attempted to produce as many fbture doctors and scientists as possible. Maths and sciences were known as the important subjects, and art not worthy of instruction. My art activity had become a dribble, a mindless activity while I chatted on the phone. This was 1963- 1966. Ironically, I returned in 1971 to teach Art and English at Forest Hill. Apparently someone had finally decided that art deserved a spot in the curriculum. However, my interest in art was again fed by an aunt and uncle, and in 1966 they took me to Europe. My aunt fancied herself an authority on many issues and her knowledge and excitement, as she talked nonstop for literally hours, on a n and books made me feel favoured because she spent undivided time, educating me about what she considered important in life. My special visits were conducted in her comfortable home on Forest Hill Road. There was always English tea, a perfectly laid table with exquisite flowers and a spectacular desert. One of my cousins described my eccentric aunt as "Miss Haversham", for piles of newspapers and magazines lined the walls of her library and living room. When we toured Europe, we had a private car and guide for the many major galleries sculpture parks in Amsterdam, Norway, Copenhagen and London. My thirst for art was renewed by the exposure to incredible original works of art. I felt caught in a whirl of beauty, breathless from seeing and experiencing such mastery, such depth of emotion. And I felt special to be singled out for the gift of my aunt's time and attention.

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At University of Toronto, I studied English, but also took Art History classes, and at night 1 drew at Central Tech. At the College of Education, I decided that I would like to teach both Art

and English, and every summer that I could I returned to Europe to see the paintings and the sculptures of the Masters. My art classes taught by Peter Mellon at University of Toronto were good sources of background information for my exploration. My trips, paid for by working at two jobs during semester, were constructed on the basis of art galleries and museums: they were the points on my compass, and I was privileged to be at the centre. Here was a girl with no sense of direction, careening through Europe in search of art she could not find at home. During my years teaching in the Jane-Finch corridor, I was fortunate to find mentors in my colleagues. Kathy Oliver (now Butcher), my department head and friend, was a fine artist, always willing to help me. Her infectious excitement about all things connected with art shone in her face. Alan Madter, who was impeccable in his immaculate suits, was an illustrator who encouraged me to apply to York for a second Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art. He would critique my assemblages and paintings that I was preparing in a portfolio for admittance at York. Most tenderly, 1 remember Mr. Francis Crack. our Department head before Kathy. He was a small gnome of a man, gentle and caring. The kids took terrible advantage of him. He was killed when he stopped to help a dog on the 40 1 and was, himself, struck by a car. Mr. Crack used to say ,"You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." During days when I am angry and upset with my students and on the verge of being sarcastic or irrational, I remember his words, and I am calmed by the presence and wisdom of Mr. Crack. The students in Jane-Finch were not an easy lot. When 1 was hired for my position, the principal asked me, with a twinkle in his eye. how did 1 think I could get Grade 10 Tech boys

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interested in art. "That was easy", I said, "All you have to do is show them Salvador Dali's grotesque paintings of a body tearing itself apart, or Leonardo's inventions." The principal attempted to hide his smirk, no doubt at my naivety. But I was right. Those boys did love those tortured, anguished bodies and amazing machines. And in spite of that very difficult area where youth congregated in malls (they still do), we had students who went on to study art. It was an incredible accomplishment for these students to continue on and we were very, very proud of their achievements. After teaching four years at Westview Centennial in Jane-Finch conidor, I returned to university and found York to be in a state of turmoil, not the blossoming Fine A m centre that it had been described to be. Tim Whiten, Ken Lochhead, Ian Baxter, Joyce Zemans werc some of the talents at the school. At the time. the accepted mode of expression was Abstract Expressionism and I must admit not truly understanding what that style was about. I experimented with cut, coloured and torn paper, but never received any feedback from my professors. Some classes were poised only to paint in that manner of colour juxtaposition. Others were incredibly rigid. For example, in printmaking we were concerned with the techniques of lithography and etching. We were to copy The Masters, and reproduce their wondefil works. In Historical Techniques taught by Barbara Dodge-Bauman, we were again to copy. I ground eggshells, fooled with goldleaf and collected burnt wood to concoct my own charcoal to duplicate the methods of The Greats. I sat in on a figure drawing class where the teacher taught me to crosshatch. There was an an criticism class where Ken Carpenter helped me understand the theories behind Abstract Expressionism and one of our assignments was to interview a real artist. I contacted John Meredith at the Isaacs Galley on Yonge Street. He was working on mandalas and was an artist of

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some repute in Canadian circles. Unfortunately, he also drank quite a bit and I would return home to hear that "John Meredith had called again." I saw tirsthand how artistic frustration can penetrate and destroy a person's life. As 1 reflect on my art education at York University in 1971, I have a feeling of separateness, that the course subjects did not coalesce. Certainly there was art production, with not much instruction, and yes, there was art criticism, but no real art history or focus on aesthetics, unless you consider Ian Baxter's conceptual art pursuits in the N.E. Thing Company where truly N.E. Thing was considered art. Perhaps he considered himself a latter day Duchamp! In terms of philosophy, Abstract Expressionism was the mode, but not the philosophy that bound

the school. Maybe worst of all, York Campus was too far away from the heartbeat of the city where art happened. 1 did the B.F.A. in one year and returned to Forest Hill to teach. With the birth of my children, 1 stayed home, but taught at a summer Fine Arts program where all the arts were integrated. The pupils were ages 3-5 and we tried to use themes to organize their activities. At the same time, my own children attended Lola Weistubb-Rasminsky's Fine Art Kindergarten. Allan Morgan, the children's author, had written stories that were a touchstone for music and art at Lola's school. Paintings were left on easels for entire weeks so that the children lwned that art was something to be worked on, contemplated, critiqued and enjoyed. Art did not wind up in the garbage after several mindless scribbles decorated the surface. Teachers discussed the drawings with the students, affording them respect and treating them as artists. Teachers and children were engaged in co-creating together. Thoughthl and considered criticism bound teacher and student in lively dialogue, with the children often being the more insightful of the two. The children were fully immersed in the creation of wondefil work.

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Sometimes they collaborated and created works of fantasy; most often they did their art work by themselves. I recall the magic of my children searching for elves in a nearby park and the splendid drawings that resulted from that search. When my children were older, I became involved at my children's school, Allenby; however, I credit Lola's Fine Arts Kindergarten with stimulating and developing my own children's sense of wonder. One of my daughter's collages hangs fiamed in my living room and people mistake it for a famous artist's. My son's desire to read was certainly engendered by a desire to retell Allan Morgan's stories in the privacy of his bedroom by himself In a desire to promote excitement towards an for other children who had not been as fortunate as my own to attend Lola's, I became involved with the Parents Association. I was head of Enrichment. 1 created a file of artists in the community so that any teacher at Allenby could bring a specialist into the classroom to teach art. A small stipend was paid to these visiting artists, usually mothers who were temporarily at home with children. I set up an International Week in which each class selected a country to study and professors, travel agents, writers, cooks, etc. came in to work with the children. The arts were a major focus during the week and it was a great success. A turning point occurred in my life when I began to visit various classes at Allenby school.

I would go in and bring works of art by the French Impressionists, tell a little about Paris at that time and about the artists. I' Id talk about the style of painting and then the children would take a scene from their own lives and paint in the style of the Impressionists. I would go from child to child and discuss their art with them. One day the teacher in one Grade three French immersion class began to criticize and tell the students their work was wrong. It was not wrong. I had to keep my mouth shut but I felt I must do something to try and alleviate the dearth of incorrect

10 information the children were receiving.

I decided 1 would return to University for a Masters in Art History and then, credentials in hand, go to the Board of Education with a plan to teach and develop art programs at the primary level. I did obtain a Master's Degree, and I did approach the Toronto Board of Education who informed me that there was no money for my plan and that was that. But, while at Allenby, I had observed children doing Art and f was surprised to see how

many used cartoons in their work, refusing to draw anything else. I subsequently discovered by reading Howard Gardner's Art, Mind & Brain (1982) that even Gardner's own son manipulated the same Star War characters over and over again in his drawings because he felt comfortable using them to explore new positions and space related arrangements. I had thought that perhaps intimidating teachers had caused the Allenby youngsters to use an accepted and recognisable form to avoid a teacher's rejection of their artistic creations. However, Gardner also explained that there is a "U"shape in the development in children's art, a time when creativity wanes and children require rules in order to feel that their art is satisfactory. This is a time when they would not dream of painting an upside down house or a bird with six legs. He added that if an adolescent is ridiculed by her peers, it is unlikely that he or she will feel confident enough to continue drawing. My own education was growing and I was continually learning more about art through art. Although I had graduated with an A average From University of Toronto's Art History department. I felt rather adrift. I had applied to be a volunteer at the ROM and the AGO, offering suggestions for new programs. They were not interested. I suppose they figured I was another matron with time on my hands. Having been away from the work force makes a woman feel that

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she cannot compete and that she has little to contribute. I applied to be a supply teacher and was accepted. Through the caprices of the system, 1 had three long term occasional jobs in three years, but at the end of each year, I was told, "Thank you very much, and don't come to the final staff meeting." It was at this point that I decided to apply to OISE.

In my QRP, I examined the many problems in the primary art program in The Toronto Board. I used as alternatives, Lola's classes, as well as an outstanding teacher from Allenby Public School, Mme. Sandra Munn who used art in every phase of her grade two and three program. She said, "I do it because it works!" 1 photographed her class that was full of drawings, papier mache. constructions and assemblages all related to New Orleans. The students had studied varieties of architecture, right down to the wrought iron railings that were based on mathematical combinations. I pondered why more teachers did not use the arts to provide excitement in their classes.

I was fortunate to be assigned to David Booth at OISE, a twinkling man who makes his students feel they are like the little train who puffs continually up the hill, singing, "I think I can... I think I can..." I was surprised to discover that my responses to OISE classes seemed to be initially visual, and I was delighted. It had been years since I had picked up a pencil. I had been returning to Central Tech in the summers to do figure drawing, stained glass windows and printmaking, but I thought of that as "summer delight" not a serious approach to interpreting my learning. Several classes at OISE allowed me to draw as long as I had an accompanying journal to explain my thought processes. When I complained that stopping to think when I was drawing conflicted with the drawings at hand, I was told to look at Mary Coros' thesis in which she creates a form of poetic dance ianguage in words that represents a combination of dance and word. In

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this way, she stayed on the right side of her brain. But for me, it was a kind of "artis intemptis" and I think both my written and visual imagery suffered. I wondered why it was that art was not an acceptable language to respond to assignments. Do we not read the sad story of Swan Lake in the dance, and do we not understand Renoir's pride in his family in his paintings? There are recognisable symbols that are understood by all people, even those who cannot read, and yet 1 was not permitted to visually interpret my own ideas on paper. Was it the fault of the artist or the reader/interpreter/ visualizer? Was it that the symbols would not explain and represent our world clearly enough so that they could be construed as a common language -or was it the fault of the person who refused to look and participate in a new kind of dialogue? Howard Gardner postulates that there is a creator ( we could call that magical person an artist), a thing (the magical thing. an) and a receiver or audience ( that lucky person who allows herselVhirnself to be drawn in). These are the dynamics at work as one sparks the other in a continuous cycle. How we represent our world, how we respond to that world, and what we make of it are the questions that motivate me. Perhaps I'm like my acrobat I once drew so long ago, on that trapeze, in flight between a world that has cast me out, and the world that I hope will catch me, and allow me to use art to tell my story.

The Need for This Study

Why do artists go to OISE in these days when the a m are thought to be of little importance to society? Indeed, since arts in education as a focus have been phased out at this very

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institution ,what is the purpose in artists and teachers who are involved in the arts, pursuing their ideas in a manner that is considered to be unnecessary, irrelevant or not cost efficient? Because to quote Picasso, "Art is..."- and will always be! No matter how hard some in society may try to ignore it, art has a place, an integral place in the life of every person. The ancient Greek who glorified his athletes, the illiterate mediaeval serf who rested in church after a backbreaking day of toil, the townspeople who gathered in the Renaissance square, modem societies that have built mammoth museums to house civilization's treasures, know. People in societies who fashion, see and place each element of their daily life in an artistic way know, as well as the propagandist who

knows that art can play an influential role in a person's life. What role does art play? Art is the door through which possibilities can be gleaned, questions provoked, answers entertained, thoughts, ideas, and emotions felt and expressed: insights and knowledge discerned. No longer are people thought to be Descartes' machines; they possess not only heads, but toes and minds and spirits and the healthy integration of all human pans result in an individual capable of living purposefblly, but also artfully. Often art is referred to as "the touchy-feely" primitive expression of artists who cannot keep their emotions in check. They are criticised for pouring out on paper what best be hidden or kept unexposed. OAen, the public who sees and does not understand a work of art will say, " Any child can do that." What is being suggested is that an requires little thought or skill and anyone, child or idiot can participate. What is not understood or appreciated is the connection between the mind and the body: the body that senses and comprehends for the mind in a visual, sensual language. Conversely, the

mind expresses in visual form what the cognitive has processed. Beyond splash and dash of paint,

14 and behind a thought that is only imagined, art is the paradigm that can unite mind and body. Often the artist employs the word and the drawing together, and they work as a mamage to inform or explain each other. But oAen they are &red

so that the viewer can better

understand the creative processes at work. I believe that art is important and it must be known in the context of the societies that produced it. Children to-day are presented with images that have been dislocated from the past. Those images are used as a means of manipulation for consumer exploitation. Instead. I propose art as a unitjling force, that aids in multicultural education and bestows voice to those who have been made silent. We must think an, and talk art. We must continue to show through support and study that art matters in education. Art is the purveyor of dreams and fbtures. It is the silent scream as well as the smile of the Mona Lisa that makes sense , but also poses the hard questions. Students at OISE must continue to investigate civilizations through artwork: art links mind and body; art reveals our pasts so that we might know our futures. To give up the struggle to keep art in schools is to close the door to our students.

U.

METHODOLOGY

Research Techniques

I begin the methodology by explaining why I initiated this study with certain educators /philosophers. Their ideas and practices "ground" my paper. This is what I consider the theoretical part or major influences in arts education of my paper, although Dewey, Eisner and Gardner also present practical implementation of their arguments . The theoretical part is followed by the practical part or art in the outside world and art in school portions of my paper, in order to locate examples that embody the ideas of Dewey, Eisner and Gardner. I want to point out the value of art in diverse situations in our world and in the classrooms of our schools. We must remember that all life is an education and that art in and outside of classroom educates us in a meaningfbl way. My next focus is from a personal perspective since I examine my own use of art. Although 1 deal with my own educational responses to courses at OISE, I believe my discussion is

applicable to all students and educations. I next describe the implications of arts in the curriculum by referring to successful school programs and case studies where art curriculum is presently in effect. I present proof that an is effective in learning. Although I believe in a qualitative approach, I admit to using some quantitative measures to validate my work.

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1attempt to define art, examining what art is and art is not. This is an extremely difficult question because culture and taste come into play. Here I consider Staniszewsi's definition ( 1995).

In my final chapter, 1 draw my personal conclusions from the quest of this thesis, and reiterate how art has been a usefbl tool for my education. My purpose is to describe how and why I went about my search in order to answer my thesis question: Is art a useful tool in education? The first part of this section on methodology outlines and deals with the various t5csories and research techniques utilised. The second part describes the thesis, itself. My methodology is comprised of several ways of dealing with my information. My ideas have been generated by grounded theory in which I consider Dewey, Eisner and Gardner as the basis for my investigations. As well, I used action research and considered myself a reflective practitioner to guide me in my thesis. Within my explorations, I have also kept field notes and journals.

Grounded Theory Simply put, "grounded theory" research generates theory fiom data (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, 79). My foray into the theories of Dewey, Eisner and Gardner provided me with practical empirical information fiom their illustrations and research to ground my investigations. Their theories describe relevant behaviour that is observable by this art teacher and student of education. Usually, a particular area of research is selected by a graduate student because the student

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has hunches, notions, concepts that have been suggested by her interest in that area (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, 94). Her experiences in the field lead her to suspect and query whether what she has studied and observed are, in fact, true. This is the case for me. I have been involved in teaching and observing children making and thinking about art throughout my life- as a teacher, a parent. a student, and as an artistic child myself. Knowing about art and how it affects me was my starting point. Since I am a person who "does" art, I am a biased, but informed and knowledgeable 'participant- observer."

I have often thought of art as personally oeneficial to myself and observed how it affects others involved in the making and talking about art. I am, therefore, already open and responsive to art, making me a better researcher since, I believe I begin with my own tools already wellhoned. Although some of my research is "anecdotal", it is all-the-same "lived" and experienced by myself and others, so that it has validity as theory played out on the field of practice.

I have deliberately set out to discover examples that are consistent with Dewey's, Eisner's and Gardner's ideas, as well as to seek proof that art is an effective tool in education. I acknowledge the library as source information. Using comparative studies (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, 82), we can begin to identify generalizations that emerge from different areas that possess similar characteristics. When I examine protest art, women's art, children's literature, art in advertising, I can see that all these areas contain art, and that art is easily accessible to many people in many walks of life: Depersonalization is minimized and minimal in grounded theory because this theory is based on the data from many substantive areas, and may lean heavily on a substantive area for only one area. This is not really far removed from the real world. (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, 93)

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My examination is open ended since there are many more areas than the ones 1 have presented that use an in a meaningfbl way. For example, I felt that art therapy was too specialised and "end-oriented" in terms of the results that a trained practitioner hopes to achieve in her therapy so that I did not include it in my study. I discuss several areas in art while fblly realizing that topics such as art in advertising, women's art, social protest art, could themselves be separate areas for thesis research. Since art is found in so many locations, I have divided my discussion into subgroups of where art can be seen and by whom. However, I think that the variety of groups presented wrijrs my data. My examples are diverse, yet and similar. I look at various age groups, general

and specific elements of the population, in many locales and settings at varying times in history, even using myself as pan of the sample. Glaser and Strauss refer to this continuing discussion as "'discursive developmental'-merely the continuing discussion of cumulative analyses" (1 967.130). Art is a non-traditional area, I believe, because people hold many attitudes without

studied or reasonable information. They are often uninformed (believing that art only exists in museums or is for the rich) or prejudiced ("Any kid could do that!"). Yet, art is readily available to all people, not restricted. I hope to point out t o readers that they can find art anywhere and everywhere (even graffiti, or h i t arranged on a table). As in all Grounded Theory dissertations, I present the basis of "the generation of theory,

coupled with the notion of theory - as seen in my examples- as process" (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Glaser and Strauss say that all three operations should intertwine as much as possible. I

believe I do this and often the reader will see Dewey's, Eisner's or Gardner's names in brackets or

in the text to account for my examples that reveal themselves as effective teaching tools. I explain

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the relevance to education and why students can benefit by using various aspects of an as process

in their learning. One idea generates the next en route to discovering how hrther developments can occur.

Action Research Almost fifty years ago, Kurt Lewin suggested learning about social systems by trying to change them (Marrow, 1969). He proposed "cycles of analysis, fact finding, conceptualization, planning , implementation and evaluation to simultaneously solve problems and generate new knowledge" (Brown and Tandon, 1983, 278). This process of linking theory and practice is called action research. Lewin's model is understood as a spiral mode of reformed plan, revised plan, more fact-finding and re-analysis. This transformative model can be applied in art classes because the art product is a result of planning, revising, fact-finding, and analyzing; indeed, art becomes an excellent metaphor for action research, for an idea (theory) is realised in a form or product (practice). The action researcher, taking clues from the ethnographer, began to consider that, rather than total reliance on numbers, abstractions and generalizations, she should venture &Q the field to observe, audiotape, perhaps col!shorate and make notes of "thick description" (Geertz) in order to better know her subject. Thus, possessing special and valuable knowledge, teachers feel they are empowered to take control and become a strong voice in change. As an art teacher myself, I do feel that 1 possess "insider knowledge" that someone who

has not been in an art classroom does not. "The action researcher claims that in educational matters, teachers are more likely to transform their approaches to teaching and learning as a result

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of data they collect and analyse "(Taylor, 1993, 65). Therefore my work will ultimately make me a better teacher as I redouble my efforts to use and preach the use of an to others. The rise of teacher narrative as suitable research validates teachers' personal practical knowledge as valid educational research data. Wanda T. May is an an teacher who agrees that teachers can be researchers and critical inquirers into their own practices (1 992, 1 14). May encounters examples daily of how theory can be applied to practice in specific contexts. When students involved in an are faced with a problem, they must apply theory and experience, often stopping to reassess work, to change directions in order to implement an idea. They are involved in a dialectic discussion with themselves as critic and artist (Schon's reflection-in-action. 1 987): planning, acting, fact-finding, and analyzing their work. These "four basic moments" are, in fact, Lewin's model for action research. This dialectic among parts occurs not only internally, but with their media because it visually responds to the changes made: " a reflective conversation with the materials of a situation" (Schon, 1987, 42). There is no gap here between mind and body, nor cognition and affect (Eisner, 1982, 27). This is excellent evidence against those who believe art is a "body" thing alone. My research in this paper is an example of action research because of my status as a teacher, an art teacher, a teacher who uses art in all her teaching (i.e. English) and as an artist who must undergo the same processes as my students of transforming idea into practice whenever

I do art.

Reflective Practitioner

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There is often confusion between the terms, "reflection=

practice and "reflectionin

practice. As we tell our stories, we often reflect on times past, embellishing, inadvertently changing those moments of meaning in our earlier lives. We think on those events and re-story them in the light of present activity or experience. In education, we pause after a difficult class to ponder what elements were successfid or which need revision. We reflect on practice. However, Schon's term "reflection-in-practice" (1987) concerns changes that are made during the class, not after: a lesson plan is forgotten when

a student takes the lead in a discussion that is not exactly on topic, but nonetheless important to her. In making art, teachers work with students to be reflective on their work, changing, redefining and adapting as situation arises. It is an immediate problem solving tri silu, a skill necessary not only in art but in life. The work of the artist is a matter of "back-talk (Schon, 1987, 72) in which art, the medium of an, talks back to the maker, engaging the artist in a dialectic. My examples of an are not works created in a vacuum. Always there are "voices" that speak and interact with the artist: often they are collaborating peers, an angry society, the past, or the quiet one of the artist, herself The artist must always reflect on these voices, contemplating and transferring their concerns and queries to her work. The artist's work by nature is reflective. Reflection suggests the meeting of two minds since one requires something or someone to reflect upon: the art, the practice, the society. Reflection takes place during the creation of the piece (reflection-in-action), and after (reflectionon-action).

My work as the author of this paper also comprises a reflection in and on my writing. I

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begin my thesis with memories of my love of art as a child, and I conclude with my reflections on having to use the written word to describe the processes that I have used in making my own an. Writing a thesis is, of course, a continual rethinking of position as new and exciting information is revealed in classroom observations or journal study. Logs and Journals Artists are forever jotting down ideas, and sketches. Ofien a simple diagram speaks volumes to the writer. I used logs to organize my hectic life of teaching, child care, taking courses and thesis writing. Like a list, my log set priorities and I had a record of what I had accomplished each week. Important articles were underlined for later reference. "The log was a forum through which 1 could document significant aspects of the action and particularly my role in that action" (McNiff, 1988, 77). Since I was required by my professors to explain the artistic processes involved in my drawings, I attempted to record my meta-cognition: these are reproduced with my drawings.

Interviews In order to write about schools that actually use art as a method of teaching, 1 visited and interviewed teachers and students at The Mabin School and The Avenue Road Fine Arts Kindergarten. Lola Rasminsky (The Avenue Road Arts School) even provided me with a film that explained the philosophy of her school. I had first hand information about her program since two of my children previously attended her classes. At one point, 1had actually taught for her. As always, she was very happy to talk and share her insights with me. Interestingly, Paola Cohen (The Mabin School) was the first person, I had spoken with

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before I decided to embark on a doctorate at OISE. Now at the end of my journey, she reappears, excited as ever to talk about art, its benefits, and to introduce her students who are the recipients of her program.

Explanation o f Methodology Used

The Theoreticians: Theory In this section, I present John Dewey, Elliot Eisner and Howard Gardner who have focused their attention on art in various ways. By the time the readers have finished reading my thesis, I hope that they will have arrived at the same conclusion that 1 have: art not only has value in our world, but is an erective and usefil educational tool in and out of the classroom. I began my study with John Dewey, the recognized and extremely credible father of

became the basis for many of my modem education. His little discussed text, An, ideas: he grounded my research. His ideas written almost 80 years ago were as far reaching then as they are to-day. He believed art should not be locked away in museums; art from

cultures is

valuable; the medium of art changes the message; art is democratic; art cannot be measured by "standards", but qualitatively; art is more than just emotional release; technology has a role to play in an; experience is the cornerstone of art, and each person's interactions in life should be modelled upon the artist's. He spoke of "being acted upon and [oneself] acting" (Dewey, 1934) in Nature, and the necessity of being receptive and responsive to one's environment. This transaction, he believed, resuited in a more hlfilling life. Known for his belief in learning by doing, Dewey's views are the backbone of my

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argument because his attitude towards art is neither dismissive nor denigrating. He understands and expounds the value of art. Indeed, he recognises the oece*

of a n in life. His positive

insights have stood the test of time. His words in 1934 were prophetic since we have lived to hear Marshall McLuhan tell us that, yes, "the medium is the message" and "we live in a global village." Andy Warhol (photo silkscreener), Cindy Sherman (photographer) ,Barbara Astman (xerox artist) and others have reproduced their images using technology. They all might have been reading Dewey's book to herald their insights into art. Dewey's acceptance as a revered, intelligent, knowledgeable mentor begins my search. His far reaching philosophy presents an encompassing philosophy of education in the school of life.

I follow the chapter on Dewey with Barbara Hepworth as an example of a person whose many "experiences" were transformed into her artwork. I used Barbara Hepworth in my chapter as an application of Dewey's concept of experience for many reasons. She is eloquent talking about her art. She provides insights into the artistic process, explaining what experiences have stimulated her. Her insights through her writing preview my own journal entries where I attempt to unravel what the artistic process is for me and how a n becomes a language, perhaps often analogous but as valid as the written word. This chapter on Hepwonh probes her deep interactions with nature and herself, and how she merges the two in the process of her an. I remind my reader of the many threads that unite my paper, in particular John Dewey's concept of experience that informs all art. I introduce Albert Bames at this point because of Dewey's effect on Bames' Foundation, art collection and ways of thinking. Bames was a man whose understanding of artistic principles gleaned from Dewey, has likewise stood the test of time. He understood Dewey's principles and

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applied them in order to educate others through the medium of art. In recent exhibits in Washington and Toronto, Bames' arrangement of paintings were restored in the gallery settings to teach spectators how to look at the paintings in order to see visual connections. In fact, Dewey thanks Bames for his many insights into art; so, it is likely that Albert Bames actually initiated Dewey's interest into art. Present day curators must have thought Barnes' method worthy since they were apologetic that all paintings could not be displayed in his original arrangement of the hanging of artworks. As well, Barnes' appreciation of African art makes a strong statement on the value of multicultural art. Elliot Eisner contributes to the spine of my work's backbone for many reasons. He concurs with Dewey's excellent ideas, expanding and adapting them to practical settings. His involvement in DBAE (Discipline-Based Art Education), a cumulative and structured art program from kindergarten to Grade 12, shows the public bow an art program as part of the daily school curriculum can work effectively. Art production, an history, an criticism, and aesthetics are the indissoluble parts of the program that establish the relationship of a child's mind and body to see, think, ponder, solve problems, change, and adapt: all en route to arriving at solutions. Eisner's numerous articles are "how to" manuals on becoming a "connoisseur" (learning to look to see), and a "critic" (how to interpret and evaluate in word or writing what is seen). He encourages the development of skills that are not only beneficial in art, but that are applicable to life. He delves into the qualitative aspects of life when he approximates the processes used in an as educative paradigms. His varied interests in all areas of school life are many, and he considers everything from the hardness of floors to the racial mixture in schoolyards in order to create an optimum school community. Like Dewey, he views the world as a classroom and suggests

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numerous cross-overs between the worlds outside and inside the classroom. He allows me, as does Dewey, to go outside the classroom to find examples of art. And like Dewey, Eisner is extremely well respected. Both men's commitment to education and their desire to ameliorate education is an unquestionable fact. No educational course would be compete without prescribed reading of both Dewey and Eisner. Both Dewey and Eisner are required reading at OISE. If Dewey has presented the precepts, Eisner the "hows" , Howard Gardner has explored the "whys" for justi@ing art as an occasion for intelligence, worthy of teaching and testing in the classroom. His concept of Multiple Intelligences- interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, linguistic, spatial. logical-mathematical, and kinaesthetic- has expanded the limits of what has been acknowledged as intelligence. Like Eisner, Gardner's work is practical, and he has translated theory into actual classroom settings. ArtsPROPEL, Harvard's Project Zero, and ATLAS are some of Gardner's living laboratories backed by the most respected universities in the United States because these institutions of higher learning accept Gardner's theories that showcase an. Gardner has also written and published widely, tackling the ditticult questions of "What is education for?" and "How can we tell whether we have achieved success in attaining this goal" (Gardner and Boix-Manilla, 1994, 2 16)? He has introduced the concepts of "disciplines" (Gardner and Boix-Manilla, 1994) and "domains" (Gardner, 1982; Komhaber and Krechevsky, 1990) into the scholarly community. Always interested in the accountability of his theories, Gardner has devised ways to measure the success of his programs (1982; 1989a; 1989b; 1990). As well, he has examined the lives of Stravinsky, Martha Graham, Picasso, Einstein, T.S. Eliot, Freud and Gandhi (Gardner, 1993) as verification of intelligent art-filled lives. Gardner's work

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concerns what and how we perceive intelligence and how to best develop in the classroom the many intelligences children possess (1 989a; 19%). Like Dewey and Eisner, Gardner discusses many ways to access the interpenetration of life inside and outside the classroom such as apprenticeships and assessment ( l989a; 1993).

The World Outside of the Classroom: Practice From the university spokespeople to the classroom, I move from "the authorities" in education and step out into society to locate practical examples of the issues that I raise: where do we find effective use of art in everyday life? Because "voice" is such an important issue in our post-modern society, in this section I examine the many emergent voices that use art to educate the world about various matters. I refer to art that has been used for the purposes of protest in my first chapter in this section Art as Social Protest, Goya, Kollwitz, Picasso and others translated their fears and revulsion at their societies into art. Their silent language of protest that documents and recoils at the injustice of government dalliance into war stands as manifestos of artistic expression against the bitter treatment of humanity. These works of an teach our students the enduring power of active peacefbl protest. However, in a later chapter, The Artist's Role in Social Change, I discuss artists who not only reflect their civilizations' downfalls and developments, but represent the social fabric of their times and cultures, sensitive to rhythms within their ever changing worlds. Picasso and Braque's cubism heralds a time of breakup and dissolution of values that is mirrored in their fragmented cubes and blocks. The artist is the vehicle that expresses and embodies that societal voice. These

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important ideas of self-expression differentiate the artist's role as reporter who documents the events of society and the artist who must express her own personal response. I wish to briefly clarify the difference of purpose between a public (protest) and a private (expression) although both voices are still expressive and meaningful. In The Artist's Role in Social Change, the artist looks inwards to her responses, reaching towards her innermost thoughts and conscience. The artist examines herself in society and asks many questions that are explored in painting, drawing, sculpture. etc. In a sense, the examples included in this chapter are scientific since the artists are like explorers and reporters, investigating for themselves to discern cause, effect, action. They are participating in their own genesis. By comparison, Art as Social Protest, deals with the artist's voice as universal, as an "Everyman" proclamation that uses art to address injustice, and speak for many: the artist's direction moves outward towards an audience to document and teach something. For both chapters. the outcome is ultimately the same: a piece of art with a message for society. However, the impetus for the a n work has differed: one to give voice to many; the other to give voice to an individual. There is democracy in a n because each person can partake equally and pursue her own search because she is the initiator, the power behind her own personal quest. The outcomes (the artistic products. the paintings, for example) are similar in both chapters, for artists most often search their souls for what is meaningful, locate within themselves a need to challenge accepted cultural norms and transform that desire outward into media. These two chapters encourage the child's development of skills that are beneficial in life as well as in art. In both cases, the student responds, participating in a dialogue with herself in

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society, moving both outward to the event and issue, and inward to the self Feelings and thoughts are not suppressed or ignored: they are given visual form, and, in my examples, I believe, they are powefil and enduring. Qualitative aspects are considered. Students must look at their world, respond, evaluate, comment and consider the actions of society; alternatively, they must ponder themselves and their own place in her world. Important meta-cognitive skills are fostered in all the ans, whether drama, writing, music or the visual arts. However, expression of individual responses is not limited to only these "fine arts". Cooking, flower arranging, quilting, carpentry, pottery and many others are also useful artful ways to learn about oneself. In all cases. education of the self is the goal. Although 1 have leaped centuries to my discussion on Women's Art, I continue to maintain my focus on similar art issues and the artist's access to her socioculture symbols. Judy Chicago's development through her an is the main subject of this chapter, although I refer as well to Georgia O'Keefe. Representative of feminist art, Chicago proclaims her feminist stance in an, using female genitalia to assert its message. Chicago is a product of a post-modernist world that demands that former victims of silence because of their gender, race, religion, nationality speak out. Focusing on the self, and dismissing the past as patriarchal and confining, Chicago looks to her own experiences as a woman. She uses the medium of art to express her voice, and those connections bring her into my study. Chicago's art has become mainstream since she has been exhibited in institutions and art galleries. She has become part of popular culture and enters into people's lives through her media, and media that multiplies and reproduces her imagery. Because of media attention, her views have become popular in many places. She is my bridge to popular culture and mass media, in particular,

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advertising. Art in Advertising focuses on the use and misuse of art in mass media: how art has been

misappropriated in order to sell products. Principles of design as well as outright theft of images and actual paintings make art a valuable commodity in the hands of advertising moguls. Here I uphold Eisner (1982; 1992) and Robert Stake who mandate that students should study art history and art criticism so they can be knowledgeable and informed citizens, wary of being exploited by historical images separated from their original contexts : Madonna poses used by Benetton to sell jeans; Manet's aflernoon excursions to promote the sale of Chinet paper plates. The issue of advertising is critically important since the manipulators who use an for the sole purpose of sales influence the populace who are unaware of art images' power to persuade. I reflect that without knowledge about an, we return to medieval days where the church's wall paintings told The Complete Story, and the bedazzled viewer ignorantly accepted the views of others who directed her life, 1 now present a powerfir1 way that art can be introduced into children's lives even before

or outside of school: children's books. 1 highlight examples where picture and word coalesce to make meaning about many imponant issues, concerning a n or not. Children's book illustration allows for children to develop their ways of knowing. Through visual symbols in a book, children can discover and extend their understanding of stories. I conclude this section with books because as the standard method of instruction, books unite life in and out of school.

The Classroom: Practice In my section Art in School, I present contrasting approaches to teaching art in the

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classroom: Ruth Dawson's thesis diminishes the power and value of art to tying knots; the Mabin and Avenue Road Arts schools introduce art as the basis of their curriculum, a viable way of thinking about childhood education. Paola Cohen , Lola Rasminsky and Madame Munn view art as a valuable teaching tool, the frame for all learning. Students focus on the numerous processes of creativity en route to making the product that is called art. As educators, we must be vigilant to become Paolas so that art does not become the Friday afternoon handmaiden to the so-called important subjects of math or spelling. My chapter How Art Can Aid in Multicultural Studies discusses how multicultural art provides for numerous ways of seeing, and considering similarities and contrasts to a child's own culture, by deepening and expanding horizons (Dewey, 1934). Here I focus on the dangers of various approaches of implementing multicultural studies (Grant, 1992; Sleeter and Grant, 1987; Stuhr et al, 1994). Our children participate in a world of pluralities. Eisner's methods and his curricula are effective ways to process this new information in our "global villagev(1982;1985; 1991). As always, we are mindfbl of Dewey's statements on eclectic art from all places ( 1 943),

and Gardner who understands the child influenced by her own foreign culture has her own special way of seeing that may not gel with the dominant culture in the U.S.(Maker et al, 1 994; Gardner, 1989). So, standards of intelligence or giftedness might seem to not apply because a student's life

has been lived differently. This is a chapter for teachers and students who must refocus their lenses in order to see through the eyes of a child from another culture.

My Drawings: Personal Theory and Practice This section entitled A Personal Perspective deals with my own artistic process in

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response to the courses at OISE: what 1 thought was occurring when 1 made art, and what processes went through my mind as recorded in my drawings included in the Appendix. When 1 switched from the right brain to the left to write, the flow of ideas was interrupted. I present my journal entries and later reflections in an attempt to explain how and why my drawings came to be. Christopher Pratt has stated, The artist's job is to paint, not to interpret." "

Interestingly, of my own volition, I chose to amalgamate word and image in children's stories as a result of several courses for Jack Miller, Ed O'Sullivan and Jo Aitken. Art, as in the pictographs that indicate "children crossing", "bumpy roads aheadm,and"men's washrooms" is, itself. a language. a valid way, as Gardner has said, of expressing meaning. These chapters deal with my dilemma of explaining how and why I create as 1 do in my children's picture books. I continue to avow in Implications of Arts in the Cumculum, the next section in my thesis, that art is valuable for the many uses I have shown in the preceding sections for expression, cognitive development and teaching other courses of study. Here I give proof of the effectiveness

of an. My many examples from many studies and schools in the United States impart a quantitative measurement to some immeasurable aspects of an programs in schools. Gardner and Eisner are aware of the need to prove the validity of art programs to parents and administrators. Researchers in Arizona, Florida and New York, practitioners in Massachusetts, Kentucky and Louisiana document and explain their testing procedures that establish art as an authentic teaching vehicle. I continue to focus on the value of art in the traditional, metaphysical and hidden curricula

in education, again validating through accepted studies the benefits of an in the curriculum.

Bringing together many strands woven through the thesis, I show the positive benefits art yields

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in society, in and out of the classroom, where art continues to communicate and teach. Ironically, the sciences use ultrasound, and computer language, business relies on charts, graphs, maps to utilize pictures that convey without words, and no one considers for a moment that art is being harnessed to express what words cannot. In this section, I raise more questions about art, particularly when it is being deployed by the powerfbl who would manipulate the artistically illiterati consumer. When art is so extensively used and accepted by societal giants, why are school children not afforded courses that teach them that visual language, in its many forms? Art is not only desirable but necessary in their education. Finally, our children must be educated to think and see like artists so that their lives can be enriched, expressive, responsive and so that they can function as cognoscertti, not illiterati and pawns in society. This section is entitled Towards a Definition of Art. Some may wonder why I did not begin my thesis by defining and differentiating an from imagery, mass media, or pictures. In fact, I have presented numerous examples that blur categories purposefully. I reflect that one of my reasons for delaying a definition of art is that by defining or naming, we circumscribe and demarcate what is and what is not, excluding rather than encompassing ideas: all is grist for the artist's mill. 1 have decanted the essence of art to be, not part of nature, but coming from, or being in contact with nature (i.e. "experience"); made by humans; and something that communicates. Art cannot exist in a vacuum, for it concerns an emotional or intellectual response by the maker in a society. What an is is a perplexing question. This chapter deals with my own questions about the nature of art, its processes and products.

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Implications and Conclusions In this final section, I reflect on my journey, my own metaphor of the acrobat who has catapulted through time and space to arrive at this particular ending. I ponder certain moments of epiphany at OISE, and as always. 1 think of T. S. Eliot as my guide- as he mused , "In my endl Is my beginning." And each ending, or completion of a task, as in doing a n or writing a thesis is the starting point of another journey.

III.

MAJOR INFLUENCES EN ART EDUCATION

John Dewey Irr this chapter,I examine Johm Dewey's theories on the use of art as the hasis of experience: what Dewey means by "experience", how reclfection tran.$orms and makes meaningfom @'environmenf': how technology plays a role are some of the issues disctcssed in light of the artist who prevents the artist 's way of seeing as the model .for society :(. cit izerts. Theory o f Artistic Learning

Esthetic experience is a manifestation, a record and a celebration of the Iife of a civilization, a means of promoting its development and is also the ultimate judgement upon the quality of a civilization. ( A m @ A Religious Beginning

John Dewey's "My Pedagogic Creed published in 1897 is a succinct summary of his ideas. In several shon pages, he asserts his belief that education, its subject-matter,

pedagogy,and the school are intrinsic parts of the social web of society. He says, I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. (1897, 5) Like a religious prophet, Dewey reiterates his beliefs which take the form of an utopian democracy where parent, and teacher reinforce children in order to create citizens who will act for the betterment of civilization. Dewey would like to see school life "grow gradually out of the home lifen(1897,9),providing the bedrock for student powers, interests and habits. With "eye and ear and hand..@] tools ready to ~ommand"(l897,7)~ he will work towards "social service". 35

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Sounding as if the children are little soldiers ready to fight for the good cause, Dewey presents his views like a steadfast general. Dewey concludes his Credo with references to teachers as "the prophet[s] of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of G o d (1 897, 19).Toignore Dewey's religious fervor is to miss the passion and belief that Dewey feels must accompany his mission to transform through education in society.

Art as Religion

When Dewey wrote Art as Experience in 1934, he no longer invoked the same religious zeal as in his Credo. In fact, he reminds the reader that the second Council of Nicea,787, censored the church for using sensory appeals in the form of statues and incense that distracted the worshipper from prayer. In this interesting turnabout, Dewey removes dogma from the church. but leaves the sensory details of religious experience as his "experiential" focus.

Art becomes Dewey's religion,and he wonders with owe at an which "explain[s] the

feeling that accompanies intense esthetic perception. We are, as it were, introduced into a world beyond this world which is nevertheless the deeper reality..."( 1934, 195) . Using words that suggest religious or spiritual mysteries, Dewey underlines the depth of his commitment to an order with values so intense that they might be sanctioned by God. Although overcome by his deep response to works of beauty which initiate him to "intense esthetic perception", Dewey nonetheless is a pragmatist whose attraction to art is really a means to an end because the "end " is just and fair: democracy. Above all, Dewey is a socialist whose every view is embedded in a

system that equally empowers all people.

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How To See Like An Artist It is interesting to note that Dewey has no problem bringing together art and politics. For Dewey, every person is capable of being an artist, capable of living an artful, beautifid life of social interaction that will benefit and beautifi the world. He feels that in a true democracy, art must be taught in schools because it is central to democracy, "art is the most complex expression of longing and aspirations of a society"(1934). But, experience is always at the heart of Dewey's arguments: it is the process of living continuously, the everlastingly renewed process of interaction whereby a person acts upon the environment and is acted upon(1934, 104). Doing and undergoing. "Environment" is defined here by Dewey as "the whole scheme of things. ..the imaginative and the emotional"(1934, 333). It is not just "outside" person. but the combined legacy of civilizations, our collective past, as interpreted and reinterpreted by anists. However, Dewey's concern for "recovering the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living"(1934, 3 12) may, but does not have to take the reader "outside" to "the running brook of the natural world. It is in this way that authors and artists pass their insights and experiences on to the reader or viewer whose own experience grows because of another's. Experience at home, in nature, with books, or friends is always an intercourse which can enlighten. Strong belief and commitment to the pragmatic world of social organization replaces, for Dewey, faith in a religious deity who guides actions. In its place, Dewey enshrines Experience. Reiterated by John Fisher in Svmoosium on J&

Dewey, "Aesthetic experience is the

construct of the relations of interactions of persons and objects"(1989, 57). Patrick Diamond also examines G. A. Kelly's debt to Dewey's words when he states "that people interact with their

38

world and actively process rather than passively store their experiences" (199 1, 22). The human organism is not at rest during this interaction of self and environment, for it is constantly reflecting and reorganizing everyday events and impressions, the chaotic confitsion of sense information that is filed and reinterpreted by the person in her daily interactions until a sudden illumination makes sense of the haze of spurious data. Unlike a stamp upon "inert wax", or merely "subjective or objective", this interaction results in the integral relationship of both (Brigham, 1989, 15). The perceiver continuously transforms her environment's input, applying it anew to each situation that arises.

Artistic Revelations Dewey refers to Keats' concept of "Negative Capabilityn(1934,33) to explain the ongoing process of " being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any imtable reaching after fact and reason"; the words " without any irritable" suggest there is no conflict or frustration in this state, describing, perhaps, the storehouse of imagination that pervades the mind, until suddenly, memories and ideas combine to reveal what we did not know we knew. Not unlike Polyani's "tacit knowledge"(1967), Dewey invokes the feeling of the mystical or even the spiritual to remark that, all of a sudden, sense or revelation is made of spurious data. The notion is similar to what Csikszentmihlyi refers to as "the flow7'experience in which a person loses awareness of herself and becomes one with her art. Dewey concludes that the role of art operates because some transcendental essence (usually called beauty) descends upon experience ( 1934, 185). Joe Burnet (1989) explains that as the organism responds in order to restore its equilibrium (in the act of "Negative Capability"), it preserves the notions of structure, unity and

39

object by reconstituting them in a hnctional, contextual form of a new experience. Art is the means that unites the outgoing and incoming energy, shaping and reshaping it in the human "until it is goodl'@ewey, 1934,49) and satisving because something new has emerged in the process. This act of interaction between "environment" and self eclipses time, since knowledge or memories of the past are transformed by the perceiver in the present who reconstructs them. Suggestive of T.S. Eliot's verses in "Little Gidding", Dewey might be reiterating the idea that "the end of all our exploringNill be to amve where we started/ And know the place for the first time." It is in this sense that the perceiver is an artist, constantly re-creating fiom the matter of her own life, understanding it anew through a work of art, and presenting her insights and speculations for

others to consider .Thus, her re-constituted experiences may exist as fodder for someone else's hture. The world is always the starting point,and each closure of experience may be the beginning or the awakening of new experience. Dewey's examples of artistic enterprise as represented by the merging of "doing and undergoing", of self and environment, in the form of poetry or painting is the paradigm of an experience. The ordinary person, the perceiver, can re-create the artist's experience in her every day life by noticing what is unique about ordinary objects and experiences: her seeing is transformed. The perceiver becomes like the artist, imbuing life and artworks with her own memories, comparable to those which the original artist underwent (1934,54). The perceiver is invigorated, modifying the perceptions of others, actively assimilating and re-experiencing the past

in her own particular way.

The Religious Contexts of Art

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We might consider ourselves the little artists, whereas those who built the Parthenon or painted the Gothic chapels were the exemplary thinkers, great Artists who formed the touchstones for our experiences, for they

expressed their individual experiences "through means and

materials that belong to the common and public worldW(1934,144) of their time. Dewey elaborates when he states, What is called the magic of the artist resides in his ability to transfer these values from one field of experience to another, to attach them to the objects of our common life and by his imaginative insight make these objects poignant and momentous.(l934, 1 18) Not surprisingly, Dewey also draws his examples from religion when he says, "Frescoes were meant to inspire faith, revive piety and instruct the worshipper concerning the saints, heroes and martyrs of his religionn(l934, 222). He focuses not on the message of the church, but on the sensual depictions that arouse faith. Sacred or secular, it is through art, and the appeal to the senses, that people respond and translate experience into meaning. Joseph Campbell's (1988) view was that the church was the centre of life in medieval times for it united culture, time and place in one building. Each person's daily life was involved with production for and government by the church. There was no separation between a private or spiritual life. This idea would be pleasing to Dewey since he disparaged any separations, or divisions in life. The Church as the hub From which all facets of life emerged is consistent with Dewey's focus; however, Dewey sees art in the church as the starting point for experience whereas Campbell steps out of the church itself to view the church as the place where experiences could occur.

The Greeks as well as the Chinese, identified the good with the beautiful.They believed that the action of grace and proportion in right conduct was a "fusion of means and ends"(1934,

41

198). In Dewey's utopian world, these values would exist.

In "Symposium on John Dewey's Art as Erperience," Richard Shusterman (1 989) reports that Dewey argues, that art's special function and value lie not in any specialized, particular end, but in satisfying the live creature in a more global way, by serving a variety of ends, and most importantly by enhancing our immediate experience which invigorates and vitalizes us, thus aiding our achievement of whatever further ends we pursue. (1989, 62) As always, Dewey is practical, forseeing a transformation from contented person to worldcitizen and enhanced global existence that benefits all people. The feeling of religious zeal and the importance of participation in community life is extended to the individual through art. Empirical experience or memory of the triumphs of the civilization as documented in the artists' works combines the hopes, aspirations and life of the society (Bennett, 1987/8). Art is an important and respected extension of citizen life, as religion once was. The works of art, "saturated with story" @ewey, 1934, 344) are not separate from the lives of the people, nor hoisted upon pedestals in museums and sought by the highest bidders. The content of life- its histories, sagas, events, rhythms, the living of life, day by day- are the media, the content, fiom which the art work is formed and shaped, providing the expression for the work of art. For there must be no distinctions, no ranking between high and low art, asserts Dewey. Rather, the experience of art is continuous and contiguous to society where it plays an integral pan, accessible to all in a variety of forms: architecture, painting, sculpture.

The Many Contexts of Art Dewey's art must be located in context,so the viewer might understand the culture fiom

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which the work of art was formed, and expressed by the artist, responsive to and in dialogue with her world. The artist, continually readjusting herself to society, its conventions, and expectations, participates in the world, making her artistic experience (Dewey, 1934, 266), merging her inner and outer social and physical worlds. Artists' explorations of other cultures by "entering sympathetically into the deepest elements in the experience of remote and foreign civilizations",represented in their art, aid the perceiver to broaden and deepen experience, "rendering it less local and provincial as far as they grasp...attitudes expressed in the art of another civilization" (Dewey, 1934, 332). Picasso and Hepworth's interest and use of AFrican art exposed Europeans to a new non-representational format, It broadened the sensibilities of the viewers. Dewey's commitment is so far reaching that he sought art beyond known boundaries to discover new ways of looking, perceiving and understanding life. As Proust said, it is not new places, but new eyes that we need. Dewey felt that the art of other civilizations would allow people to look at life from another's point of view so our way of seeing could be revitalised and expanded. There is almost an evangelical feeling of "brotherly or sisterly love" hinted at in Dewey's words that does not promote religion as such, but speaks to viewers religiously. But when we, ourselves, have become thoseforeign artists, assuming another's desires, interests and modes in order to install ourselves in apprehending nature that we had never seen nor understood, we build into our own structure the views of others so that we truly comprehend what it is like to extend a web of meaning and walk around in another's shoes. Barriers that divide human beings are dissolved; "Iirniting prejudices melt away" @ewey, 1934, 334).

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Art as a Language Art is a common expressive language; for as humans re-creating the artists' perceptions,

the viewer undcrstands by duplicating the artistic process that links the human with her "environn~ent",her reality, that is entered through imagination and emotions. She sees tiom another's perspective in order to understand better and see more. Art provides a means of catering and understanding the world. It is a language. simplified

through symbols, saying more than literal words that can be misconstrued or mistranstated. Symbols encode meaning and generalize, causing the individual to connect with her own cultural experience. So strong are the messages in art that Dewey is aware of the moral environment needed to support the morality of art. Dewey envisages the best of all possible worlds where "values that lead to production and intelligent enjoyment of art have to be incorporated into the system of social relationships"(1934, 344). The manifestos of the Dadaists and the Surrealists were all intended to repair and remake society, ridding it of war and evil. Yet the Futurists' manifesto championed militarism. business and war, the ways of fascism. Dewey's idealism did not consider art could be used for evil, destruction as promoted by the Futurists or Hitler. Dewey's belief in the Good, however, leaves the door open for those who would define morality in a different way- as would Neitzche -to persuade for evil.

The Artist's Role in Society Dewey, like the artist, lived at the edge of society, sometimes naive or detached from the real world so he could observe from the outside in order to repair the workings of the inside. This detachment yet fbrvent belief in the possibilities that will fix the problems of the world makes him

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sensitive to the future. Almost apostle-like, the artist is the one who sees the glimmers or intimations of immortality in the experiences of life, and expresses that heightened sensitivity in her work, for she "opens new fields of experience and discloses new aspects and qualities in familiar scenes" (Dewey, 1934, 144). Using new materials provided by burgeoning societies, fitting "in a way that yields esthetic results"(1934, 342) the artist meets the challenge of incorporating old experiences in new ways. responding to the friction of old and accepted materials and means, and transforming those perceptions into a new language of expressionThe Bauhaus Group hoped to transform society by employing the mass production techonology of the day, radio, newpaper,etc. Manet, in adapting his views of 1900 Parisian life to the techniques of Japanese Ukiyoe prints, available in Paris because of commercial ventures and expanded trading, combined the experiences of his life with the visions of the Oriental past. What often happens in the movement of a n is the emergence of

new materials and themes of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving the artist in a quest to express her ideas through new forms and techniques (Dewey, 1934, 143). Not only visible changes provoke new art; psychological states and changes also require new modes to express that difference. Picasso and Stravinsky, in order to express the fragmented quality of their lives each responded differently to their worlds: Picasso created Cubism, an entirely new way of presenting multiple views of an object; Stravinsky returned to the past for lullabies and to other "primitive" cultures to create a new discordant music that represented his emotional reaction to the days of his life. Paradoxically, the artist desires to leave a monument to the past that will live on through her deeds. The artist looks to her past, remembering, drawing on her own life and on others',

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reinterpreting them from her own unique point of view to say what she feels is important in her own personal way. The human puts her own very special mark on every experience, changing it and making it more than the original experience. The perceiver, too, like the artist, remakes each experience through her eyes. The artist's choice of media deepens and empowers the experience to resonate her feelings and insights: "One strand in total experience is what it is because of the entire pattern to which it contributes and which it is absorbed"(Dewey, 1934, 290). The subjectmatter in a work of an, is, in fact, life's experience. As well, the media and the individual rhythms, or strands of living cannot be discretely separated out from the entire tapestry of experience because each part contributes to the bigger picture.

Conclusions Dewey's ideas begun with religious fervor seem to have outlived traditional religion. Both sets of ideas on religion and education through art share the emphasis on the person, belief-creation and equality of all kinds of people, yet, ironically it seems we must be constantly reminded of the tenets of both in everyday living. 1 am mindfbl of Thomas Berry's (1988) Gaia theory of how all systems come from the Earth. It is often the case that the most powerfhl messages are the simplest, and yet we must work the hardest at learning and remembering the basics.

Application of Theory

Barbara Hepworth

This chapter focuses on Barbara Hepworth as an example of how experience is trat~siatedittto art. Hepworth's owtt lve, her response fo la~t&cupe,and her it&ractiort wifh art and artists of the past attdprese~~t firel her visiom that become her art. By im&uting the ways artisfssee arid experience t~utureas well as their owti lives, our students can model their hehmiour. Hepworfh lirtks her inner and otrter worI& creating a point of balance ,hat is her art.

I cannot write anything about landscape without writing about the human figure and human spirit inhabiting the landscape. For me, the whole art of science is the firsion of these two elements-the balance of sensation and evocation of man in the universe. -Barbara Hepworth Experience: From Hepworth's Own Life and Her Creative Processes Barbara Hepworth's sculptures translate John Dewey's words into meaning, and hint at what role art plays in the development of an artist's self-expression. For Hepworth, experience takes many forms. Her own lived life, her interaction with the places she lived, her use of materials, her reliance on the works of artists who preceded her, and her friendships are all touchstones to the art she creates: the experiences she herself absorbs to become the continuing basis of her art. The echoes of Dewey's definition of experience as the interaction between the sentient human and environment ( described as nature as well as memories) , informs the reader's understanding of this woman. She relied on visual cues, and experiences of her world to meld with her own perceptions and memories to create art that satisfied her needs as a sculptor, accruing visual language in her development of artistic expression. Her joining of outside and inside worlds becomes an integral part of self that is offered to others in the medium of an. Hepworth's sculptures, like a personal narrative, mirror her own development,

providing a wealth of experience that explains her work. She writes, All my early experiences are of forms and shapes and textures. Moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the form. Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of fullness and concavities, through hollows and over peaks-feeling, touching, seeing, through mind and hand and eye. This sensation has never left me. 1, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour. (Hepworth, 1970, 9) The seamless interchange between Hepwo~hand her "environment" explains how deeply she responds to her setting even as a child. Not surprisingly, her carved landscapes serve a s a human extension. She asks, "Could I, at one and the same time, be the outside as well as the form within?"(Hepworth, 1970, 8 1)- the dancer and the dance (Yeats, "Among Schoolchildren"). Dewey's definition of experience resounds in Hepworth's words. Perhaps born with special insights, a kinship or sensitivity to nature, Hepworth recalls her excitement as a schoolgirl at new places and ideas. Hepworth isfirrd by slides of Egyptian sculptures. "Basking in the new bright light" of Italy gives her "new eyes" (Hepworth, 1970, 12) and visiting Greece "opens her eyes". Running up and down the hills "like a hare", she might be a woodnymph or spirit, declaring her joy and connection with the landscape, expressing new insights into places that are revealing their secrets. From these passionate reactions to Greek hills, Hepworth is able to translate drawings into new sculptures called Delphi, Epidauros and Santorin. She feels a pull, a tie to the ancient architecture and place. Her emotions arousd, her mind, too, she notes the spaces between the columns at The Acropolis, precisely calculated to achieve an appearance of balance to the building by classical artisans, entasis. She notes the fluting, their depth, breadth, weight and volume, even

assessing the warm colour of the marble for its "all-pervading philosophic proportion and space".

48 Perkins in The I n t e u n t Eve (1994) exhorts people to learn to stop and really look, not merely pass their eyes over the surfaces of things. "To see the world in a grain of sandW(Blake)is Dewey's hope that the ordinary person will learn to emulate how an artists sees. Hepworth's passion is thoughtfidly transformed into her sculpture. More than just an openness to civilization and nature, Hepworth transmits the power of her sensual experience into her sculpture, but always details her responses poetically into words. As early as her first visit to Venice, she had watched how people respond to the architectural proportions of the Piazza (Hepwonh. 1970, 57). In their reaction of people in space, Hepwonh approximates in her art the movement of people in relation to their physical setting by seeing paratleis in the structures of nature, spirals of shells or rhythms in crystal structure (Hepwonh, 1970, 67). She discovers an instinctual purpose, an automatic human response to nature that she first records in her drawings, and then portrays in her sculptures. Like the quiet or insight that occurs after Dewey's "booming bustling confusion" (1934), Hepwonh perceives an intuitive response and connection between person and place, instinct and action, and develops her insights into her mediums of wood, bronze or ivory. Noting, transmitting, watching, approximating, recording, and discovering are how the artist sees into the hean of things. These are some of the elements of the artistic process by which the artist looks deeply into life in order to transform nature into art. Recognisable figures are confined and limited by the materials from which they are carved, often limestone, sandstone or alabaster in Hepworth's early work. She relishes the resistance the material provides to her chisel. Knowing what she wants to carve, she allows her forms to emerge: Mother and Child (1927) and Musician (1927) reflect the stifiess of stones used. The

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upright positioning of people echo the hard vertical woods and the monumental quality of the forms, not allowing the viewer to forget that the material employed by the sculptor may be as important as the image that is realised. The base of Mother and Child is covered with scratches, scraps and chisel marks dug into the resistant stone. Process is usually revealed in the final product through the visible marks made by tools. Arriving at the artistic solution through interaction with the medium is the journey

necessary to realize Hepworth's ideas in her chosen medium. But, finally refusing to permit her material to limit her, Hepworth's representational forms disappear and her imagination delimits her style. Hepworth explores the place where inner and outer landscape meets. For Hepworth, a lingering memory, idea or emotion may be sparked by a shape or form that emerges from the landscape to inspire her art. Hepworth's explains her insight in Cured

Form (Bryher), Bryher is a relationship between the sea and the land. But I don't start with a title: I make a shape and there may or may not be an association with i t - h this comes afterward.(Curtis and Wilkinson, 1994, 84) First, she perceives a symbiotic relationship between sea and land that comes f?om her response to Bryher. Next she creates a shape that embodies what she feels. The place is the starting point for an experience that is part yet apart form Bryher. Later, she may return to her initial catalyst and revisit why her artwork has developed as it has -bestowing the name that has given rise to the sculpture. Like Van Gogh who is said to have dreamed before nature in order to make art, some artists need the landscape as a means of reverie to illuminate their ideas. The interpenetration of a responsive mind to nature is a transaction that becomes a transformation into art. Hepworth seems to be always searching for the point of balance, the moment where

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humans stop and nature begins. Hepworth's sensitivities are extended and melded into her mature piece for Dag Hammarskjold in 1964. Again she reflects, "This fonn is the delicate balance, the spirit man maintains between his knowledge and the laws of the universe"(Hepworth 1970, 95). It is as if the artist attempts to go beyond human capabilities and enter the realm of nature.

Other artists repeat or see in humans, echoes of the natural world. Henry Moore also used the flowing, curving rhythms of the nature of the Yorkshire hills to suggest the shape of both mountains and breasts, positive and negative spaces in his sculptures. In this way. the artist contemplates and meshes the inside, private memories of a childhood place, female affection or an external landscape, in an attempt to interpenetrate human and nature into one space. Hepwonh reiterates this fusion of contained and container when she refers to the "special accord" between a nut in its shell and the child in the womb, bringing together diverse areas . As always, st~eis the sculptor, aware of the interplay between space and volume (Hepworth, 1970, 27). Hepworth creates her own symbolic language. She uses and re-uses certain shapes and formats in her sculptures. Her repeated use of twoforms might be the protective relationship of two nestled rocks. She sees them as gestures in Nature, but equates them to the loving embrace of mother and child, personifyingthe encircling shapes of larger form to nestled smaller form. Organic shapes move from the sphere of the landscape to the human world effortlessly because she sees the arcing movement that both possess. The tensions between the larger-mother form and smaller-child form are similar, compatible in shape and idea. Hepworth's series of Mother and Children in 1938 span many worlds and interpretations: anthropomorphic, natural, organic, imaginary. The resonances of landscape and human can be discerned in flowing shape and surface that entwine to suggest connections and metaphors.

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Yet, in spite of this conscious bringing together of two worlds of human and nature experience, Hepworth's pieces appear less studied, more emotional and intense than other Western representational pieces. This ease of representation creates a naturalness and flow to her work that invites the viewer to participate as she is swept along by the undulating, changing forms that appear and disappear into the thing called sculpture. The artist never stands alone. She is the watcher and the critic, the voice within the voice, involved with the creation of the an, but at the same time she directs emotion into expression that should make sense to the viewer. It is Hepworth's mind and body that combines to give emotion an understandable and readable form in order to transmit the sensations gathered and felt by the artist. Art is the explosive medium that holds and conveys the experience for both the artist and hopefblly, the viewer.

Experience: Landscape

In pursuit of an, artists use landscape and transform it into art. The sculptor, Henry Moore is often thought of as employing the shapes of Yorkshire in his work; Paul Gauguin's images, patterns and colours are forever associated in the mind with The South Seas. Barbara Hepworth's locale of experiences is a solitary Cornwall, with St. Ives' abandoned tin mines, set in outcropped, soaring rocks. Virginia Woolf also described her responses to Cornwall in a manner reminiscent of Hepworth's own words. Both Woolf and Hepworth sense the rugged personality of the Cornish coast in their works. Both focused on the barbaric and magical countqside of rocky hills, fertile valleys and dynamic coastline. Hepworth said,

We beheld the curve which seemed to enclose a great sweep of bay f i l l to-night of liquid mist, set with silver stars.(Curtis and Wilkinson, 1994, 83)

A desire to share what they feel about their environment propels artistic expression- Woolf in her

writing, Hepworth in her art. For Woolf, the locale causes her to explore a new form of narration composed of many voices, each one contributing to a universal chant that relates her stories (See

To The L i e h t h u ) . For Hepworth, too, her deep emotional responses to place are forged into her sculpture, personal yet universal: the world we have experienced becoming an integral part of the self that acts and is acted upon in fbrther experiences (Dewey, 1934, 104). Many of Hepworth's experiences in the landscape of England, in particular Yorkshire and Cornwali, are evoked by her titles that refer to specific places. She looks beyond landscape to forms and details that live and participate in the landscape. In Sea Form (Porthmeor)l958, ,Hepworth incorporates a twisting form that suggests a seashell, a primitive fish form or a wave about to crash on shore. Rolled and curled spirally, the sculpture might have been shaped by the forces of nature. Hepworth comments on this piece: " The form I call Porthmeor is the ebb and flow of the Atlantic...the forms seem to enfold the watcher and lift him towards the sky" (Hepworth, 1970, 75). Here, too, associations go beyond specific place, and are propelled by the artist's reactions to the power of nature of Porthmeor. Hepworth is not only aware of her own response to the sea, but to the viewer's own experiences that will be evoked by the artist's hands and eyes, shaping experience into form. Hepworth is fascinated by old places, and as an artist responds, perceives, and intuits their significance in her art. In Single Form (Chun Quoit) 196 1 and Figure (Chun)1960, Hepworth uses

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the prehistoric Chun Castle hill fort and Chun Quoit tomb in north-west Penzance in Cornwall to stimulate her work. Thinking not only as a sculptor, but as the viewer, she concerns herself with the placement of forms to one another and the landscape, and the sculptures' relationship to the viewer: she wants to see as "the other", not only as the artist immersed in her creation. Hepworth understands that people respond to the proportions of place, walking differently, and "discovering their innate dignity7'(Hepworth, 1970, 57) in landscapes of varying sizes. At Les Antiques in France, watching people move among olive trees behind which was an ancient arch, Hepworth considers their grouping in relation to their surroundings. As sculptor, she is aware of space in landscape and how one responds to it. Hepwonh desires her work to impact physically and emotionally on the viewer, resonating the voices of the past. Ancient standing stones, their arrangement in rings, the fons and tombs of Penwith peninsula impact on Hepworth personally and thus, her bronze sculptures possess the artist's interest in form, story and magic that she wishes to transmit to her viewer. Cornwall's

mrthirs and prehistoric monuments, like Stonehenge's, are fragments of a past not filly understood, but replete in messages from times past. Hepworth reproduces her own fascination to provoke her audience's unconscious memories of earlier times through evocative shapes and placements that echo the Neolithic monuments. If the viewer is sensitive to Hepworth's resonances and enigmatic sculptural presences, she can participate in making her own experiences (Dewey, 1934).

Experience: Artists and Art But, besides the power of place, people are a rich source of Hepworth's well of artistic

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experience. Hepworth, herself, experiences a mamage of mind and body to a fellow artist, John Skeaping: his work wins first, hers' second at the Rome Scholarship in 1924. Later in an intimate relationship with Ben Nicholson, Hepworth begins to see through Nicholson's eyes to transpose the abstraction of his paintings into her own sculpture. With Henry Moore, Hepwonh collaborates, much like Picasso and Braque, or Monet and Renoir. In fact, it is unknown whether Hepworth or Moore was first to pierce the sculptural form with a hole that has become a trademark of Moore's work. The influence of other artists can be glimpsed in many of Hepworth's pieces. Her use of strings is thought to be a result of seeing Naum Gabo's constructivist drawings and his many constructions made with nylon filament, red thread, silk and elastic thread (Curtis and Wilkinson, 1994); Brancusi's soaring forms of birds, and emphasis on the beauty of the material he shapes into his a n are precursors to Hepworth's sculptural unity of form and material. And visiting Arp's Meudon studio in France causes Hepwonh to rethink her approach to form. Seeing an example of Dadaist sculpture in Arp's studio catapults her to free landscape from representational form which materials of sculpting have previously limited: "The flowing, curving rhythms of the figure.which echo elements of landscape as much as the human body, may owe a debt to Arp's first three-dimensional sculpture in the early 1930s "(Curtis and Wilkinson, 1994, 39). The interplay of shared experience with her artist-friends stimulates Hepworth to proceed in her own directions. Some critics have commented on the similarity between Hepwonh and Picasso's broad boned women. In Avignon, Hepworth spoke with Picasso where she was affected by more than just his work and words. Again, the totality of experience that combines person and place

ensnares the artist who understands the implicit relationship that connect a person and her environment: I shall never forget the afternoon light streaming over roofs and chimneypots through the window on to a miraculous succession of large canvases which Picasso brought out to show us and from which emanated a blaze of energy in form and colour. (Hepworth, 1970, 23) For Hepworth, it is an encompassing experience. Hepworth, like Picasso, is excited by Nigerian wood, African masks and furniture. In 1927 she exhibits in Modem and African Sculptures at The Beaux A r t s Gallery. Hepwonh feels the intensity of primitive art that reaches past the surface into deeper recesses to extract a global and spiritual significance. She becomes "an inheritor of the finded capital of civilization "(Dewey, 1897, 77-80). Hepworth is also attracted to Oriental animal& and nektrkr (small button-like ornaments) sculptures, fascinated by rhythm and abstraction. An almost supernatural or beyond

worldly representation is expressed by her emphasis on broad undulating strokes that suggest rather than reproduce an exact likeness or reproduction of subject matter. Dewey's ideas are recalled: his belief in the importance of many kinds of art from many places that broaden and deepen experience. Hepworth, also influenced by many cultures, said,

We all felt the fast growing understanding of art round the world and the international language which had been created-we may have [been at] Lands End but we were in close contact with the world. (1970, 76) And Dewey explained the effect of different kinds of art in this manner: We begin as artists ourselves as we undertake this integration and by bringing it to pass. our own experience is reoriented. Barriers are dissolved, limiting prejudices melt away. (Dewey, 1934. 334)

Experience: Words and People Hepworth gives her sculptures the names of places, although the viewer may wonder at the actual connection, for there is often little or no naturalistic detail that explains the titles. Written language for Hepworth is very important, and words are almost an equivalent to form: "her words came to stand for her art"(Curtis and Wilkinson, 1994, 27). She met with Herbert Read and Adrian Stokes, critiquing their work as authors and asking them for help with her own words for texts she was compiling. Hepwonh's " gentle nest of artists"(Pau1 Nash, Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian, Adrian Stokes, Roland Penrose, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Geoff Gregson and Herbert Read) worked together in Hampstead in 193 1 making art. and writing magazines and articles to educate people about their ideas on an. In 1937 the group of artists published Circle, a book divided into four sections: Painting,

Sculpture, Architecture. Art and Life. The emphasis was on the numerous connections that these areas espoused. The group understood how life stimulated and was permeated by art- much as Dewey believed. They understood the necessity of varied experiences in life that fuelled their art,

from which they derived image, icon or sensation. Transferring experience from one field of experience to another (life to art or art to life) causes a dislocation; then a re-integration of object and experience allows the viewer to see events in a new and startling light, the juxtaposition yielding insights. Imagination renders the experiences "poignant and momentous"@ewey, 1934, 1 18). This "nest of artists" hoped their explanations would stimulate others to see new

connections between their own lives and artworks, providing a continuing chain that broadened horizons.

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Experience: The Artistic Process Hepworth's many writings concern the artist's special way of seeing and locating form in not only space, but time. Hepworth's experiences, her receptiveness to place are transposed into the medium of sculpture through light, volume, material, colour, texture, etc. The artist is intuitively aware and receptive to what nature is offering, perhaps because her avocation is to translate into her own (wo) manmade medium what it is that she is receiving from nature. For Hepworth, the language of art is caught up in her language of words. Both hold and enfold her excitement. The poetic words she uses are specific, held in place by specific events and personal reactions, yet her sculptural art is a universal expression that conveys the shape of emotion but does not rely on immediate locale. Describing a place in Greece, she says, The site itself is of great beauty and majesty- a high throne thrust from the higher hills and facing Argos Plain-The vista so great in depth and breadth that the gods command all. (Hepworth, 1970, 7 1 ) The artist's imagination soars beyond the physical site to include a mythical, historical perspective, imagining gods are there. Her use of the word "throne" exemplifies how she sees herself- as smaller, subservient to those who have created this spectacular landscape. She recreates in her work the magic of the scene on her. This is the artist's special intelligence: to give shape, form and expression to felt things, rendering and sharing her experience with others through the medium called art. Dewey saw this re-creation as the power of the artist and wanted every person to aspire to see the secret life of things that artists seem to sense and re-create in their work. Hepworth's written, but primarily her visual language provides insight into how she feels, gathering experience into herself in order to project it larger and more intensely into the realm of others. For Hepwonh, art is a metaphor that expresses the relationship of a person to her world.

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She cannot breath without being affected by people, places, nature, activity, thought... All is a process. Life is taken into the art and re-produced, re-created into another form that takes its place in the cavalcade of the continuing show of life. All is a process of living, growing, cracking the shell, developing, changing and bearing artistic fruit that is offered to others so they might participate in those same processes. Hepworth's transactions between herself and her world are continually transformed into her artwork. "Through art, meanings of objects that are otherwise dumb, inchoate, restricted and resisted are clarified and concentrated"(Dewey. 1934, 1 32-3). ..by the creation of a new experience... art!

Dewey's Relationship and Influence on Dr. Albert Barnes

In this section, I look at Barrres' implementation of Dewey's philosophies at The Barnes' Foz~ndatimwhich becomes a worhng Iaboratory of Dewey's theory. Dewey's theories of democracy are particufariy evider~tin Barnes' approach to African art. The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase in knowledge; secondly to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others. (John Locke, 1703) One cannot help but wonder at the friendship sustained by the shrewd. tyrannical Dr. Albert Barnes and the socially idealistic John Dewey for more than 50 years. Perhaps Dewey's theories and Barnes' practices cemented a relationship where the one provided a practical testing ground for the theories of the other: Barnes made a "conscious attempt to put into practice the ideas of John Dewey "(McWhinnie, 1994, 22). Yet, there is no doubt that Barnes' introduction of art to Dewey enriched the latter's life- who acknowledged the debt in Dewey's writing of Art as Experience in 1934. No doubt, Dewey was attracted by Barnes' belief that an could be analyzed in a pragmatic manner because Barnes presented "a very clear and logical set of comments, and observations about the creative process, the artistic style and the critical aestheic...no matter what the age, country, style of the specific historical period" (McWhinnie, 1994, 23). For Dewey, this scientific method not only yielded a structure of discovery, but brought Art and Science closer together. Dewey believed in learning by doing in informal, relaxed social settings and the Barnes Company where he produced Argyrol was unique in its treatment of the workers in 1910: paintings were hung on the walls; art appreciation courses and philosophy seminars were offered between 12:3002:30every working day because Barnes surmised that six hours was sufficient to

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do a proper job. His plant employed 5 white women, 3 colored men and one white man" "

(Hollingsworth, 1994,42). Barnes was actually putting into practice ways that would allow a person to deal better " with his environment and the needs of modem society" (Greenfeld, 1988, 55). Having based his ideas on the pragmatist, William James, as well as having organized his

business on a co-operative basis, Barnes decided to recruit his employees from the poor in Philadelphia: "each participant [at Barnes' Company] had evolved his or her own method of doing a particular job in a way that fitted into the common needs" (Greenfeld, 1988, 23-24), suggesting that a worker was allowed imput and a certain amount of freedom. Teamwork, generous pensions, attention to psychological needs were some of the unusual perks for those days at Barnes' Argyrol factory. Many years later, The Body Shop and Patagonia use some of the same approaches in their businesses to include the workers in the life of the company. Barnes also allowed workers with special talents or interests to move towards those jobs where their interests could prevail. He even sponsored the writing of the first book on

African sculpture by his employee, Thomas Munro (McWhinnie, 1994, 33) and became a mentor to an employee, Nelle E. Mullen who joined the tirm in 1902, educating her through books, trips and incentives to build her own art collection. At the Argyrol plant led by Mary Mullen (Nelle's sister), a group of nine workers was comprised to direct aesthetic development of company workers. Mullen's "role was to suggest rather than to impose solutions in order to present knowledge stripped of its academic trappings in a form relevant to actual problems" (Greenfeld, 1988, 56). Well grounded in Deweyian principles, the group espoused Dewey's belief that "shared education as growth toward more and better experience...was the creation of good thinking habits "(Greenfeld, 1988, 56).

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Impressed by Dewey's stature as a thinker and as an educator, Barnes had enrolled at Columbia University in New York in 19 17-19 18 in order to participate in Dewey's weekly seminars. Dewey who was almost 60 years old, at the time, had laid the foundations for progressive education and Barnes had followed his ideas, successfblly implementing them in his factory. When the seminars at Columbia ended in April 1918, Barnes suggested that he and Dewey continue their affiliation. They formed a group of well-educated men who came together to study why Philadelphia's Polish immigrant population resisted assimilation, preferring their own culture, language and places of worship. Barnes' earliest interests had focused on creating art as an artist, himself, but he had realised that his talents were limited and so he had turned to collecting art in 1912. Barnes was influenced by the writing and collections of Julius Meier-Graeffe and Bernard Berenson who were knowledgible collecters, the Steins (particularly Leo) and the Durand-Rue1 Gallery in Paris that handled the then-fledgling Impressionists, and the American artists. Glackens and Prendergast of The Ashcan Group. Barnes absorbed as much art as he could from the sources who were directly in contact with an, and those who understood the creative processes as well as the business realities in making art. Barnes and Dewey worked together to create "a systematic program of art education" that culminated in March 1925 with Dewey being named the Director of Education of the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, the home of Barnes' excellent art collection. Throughout the years, Barnes had honed his collecting skills, purchasing Picassos, Renoirs, Rousseaus, Van Goghs. He is credited with discovering Soutine and Modigliani, most at good prices , astutely recognising them as promising before their acceptance in the International Art Community.

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It is interesting to note that the European art community in the early 20th Century rejected so-called African "primitive art', preferring representational styles. Part of this prejudicial attitude had to do with Europe's expanding colonization in Afiica in which the Black man was at best a curiosity, at worst a slave whose art was unworthy of the European community's superior glance. In contrast, Barnes realised its value and importance in affecting European styles of Expressionism He felt, moreover, that primitive art held intrinsic worth. However, the introduction of African masks into Parisian cafes piqued Picasso's and other artists' interest. Paul Guillame. a French art dealer who handled Picasso and Modigliani, introduced Albert Barnes to Mican art when Barnes went to France with William Glackens to purchase the Impressionists : "It was the human qualities in black art, the freeing of the black aesthetic that Barnes perceived as being relevant to his time "(McWhinnie, 1994. 33). But Barnes, growing up poor in Philadelphia had all ready been introduced to the black gospel singers, musicians and artists in his youth. Barnes had purchased the paintings of the black American, Horace Pippin for his burgeoning collections. Barnes and John Dewey had been original supporters of the N. A. A.C.P., with Barnes being a founder of the Harlem Renaissance. Barnes had even been honoured by Alan Locke to write an article, "The Negro Art in America" in The New N e a (Hollingsworth, 1994, 42). From the outset, Barnes was interested and aware of the contribution made by and on mainstream art by diverse cultures. "What Barnes and Dewey tried to show the viewer more than 60 years ago, was the universality of artistic expression, the common aesthetic qualities in the artifacts from many different cultures." This interest extended beyond black an to include Indian and native American pottery and silver, New Mexican primitives, and Egyptian, classical, Romanesque and oriental art

Dewey's acceptance of all art, rather than the ranking or exclusion of some of it, and his belief that art was an integral part of life would have predisposed him to accept Barnes' use of African art as pivotal in the development of his teaching theories. However, shortly after the Foundation's inauguration, Dewey severed his official ties with the Foundation in order to pursue his own interests and travel. However, the impact of Dewey's name on Barnes' Foundation was important, and the reader surmises that Dewey did in deed believe in the goals of the Foundatiom for he continued to act as consultant. When called to testify at the Tax Board that the educational work done at the Barnes Foundation differed from other places, so that the program could qualify for special tax benefits, Dewey said, ..the ultimate desire was to break down the separation of fine an from other things, and show what it could contribute to ordinary livesthe enrichment of life...as far as this method was concerned it was one that he had worked out through years of personal study and contact with pictures and artists, and also the qualities that make painting what it is, so that the ordinary person could be trained to see pictures...that would also enrich the life of the individual. (Greenfeld, 1988, 152) Consistent with his ideas of social democracy, better lives for all, connections with real life, Dewey in his speech extolled Barnes' Foundation: through paintings, ordinary people will better undertand the cultures and the views of others, living more hlfilled lives as a result of their contact with art and artists. Dewey, in fact, had left his imprint and direction on the collection by recommending that Bertand Russell and Roderick M. Chisholm, be hired to the Foundation's faculty, both who had no direct interest in art, but who possessed philosophical ideals. ScornfLl of the critics and the academics, Barnes refused entry to T. S. Eliot, Meyer

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Schapiro, Le Corbusier and surprisingly, Jacques Lipchitz who had been commissioned by Barnes to make att for the decoration of the Foundation. Barnes rehsed entry to those he felt lived off the works of artists, for he wanted "the plain people, that is men and women who gain their livlihood by daily toil in shops, factories and similar places [to] have free acess to the art gallery" (Higonnet, 1994, 66). Although Dewey felt art should not be contained in museums and there should be no separation between "high" and "low" art, these sentiments to encourage the man on the street to enter an art gallery appealed to Dewey whose aim ,was above, all to educate all people in all places. Knowing Dewey's approach to life and education was through direct empirical experience, Barnes felt that photographs or slides could not evoke the richness of colour or involvement of the real work, and direct contact with a work of art was best. Andre Malraux in his book,& Vo~cesof Silence. (1 953) maintains that the quality and size of works of art are altered in slides and reproductions so that even antique works will often look modern in photographs. So, it becomes impossible to compare and contrast paintings on the basis of copies. Barnes did, in fact, stipulate in his will that no reproductions of his collection ever be made, and only in 1993 were the terms of his will broken when the paintings toured Washington and Toronto and were reproduced in books and posters. Barnes is credited with leading Dewey to an understanding and appreciation of the world of art. So rigid were Barnes' rules that students who missed two classes were dropped from the roll. Yet, Barnes' program of learning puts the learner at the centre of the program so she is the one who must see in order to learn. She is the discoverer who will organize the pieces of the puzzle by intelligently combining and juxtaposing works of art in order to visually assess and

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understand the resonances of paintings arranged together in Barnes' eclectic groupings. At the Barnes Foundation. furniture or decorative pieces such as doorknobs or candle sticks are placed near or on armoires that repeat lines or forms seen in the arrangement of pictures that overhang them. Described as "demented confusion" and "totally idiosyncratic", the absence of tittes, signage and wall text caused viewers in the 1900's anxiety and disorientation, according to the critics (Supplee, 1994, 35). Barnes' hangings are not composed chronologically so his students must learn by looking, by finding the common denominator, by engaging in a dialectic with the paintings. Barnes said, The appreciation of works of art requires organized effort and systematic study...Art appreciation can no more be absorbed by aimless wandering in galleries than surgery can be learned by casual visits to the hospital. (Supplee, 1994, 38) Artistic, critical and historical relationships among an and artifact emerge as the student becomes what Elliot Eisner would herald as a "connoisseur" because the finegrained nuances become obvious with continued perception of the works. In one combination, a Kota reliquary figure, two Bamana masks, several cubistic heads by Picasso, and a Modigliani portrait are all connected with African art. The viewer might observe how each element in the arrangement is translated by the artist to reflect the African influence.The language of art blatantly reveals the impact that African sculpture's elongated skulls seen by Picasso and Modigliani had on their paintings. One is mindful of Dewey's discussion in Ex~eriencewhere Dewey explains the benefits of seeing many kinds of an that promotes understanding from many perspectives. Barnes, himselc followed this credo as seen by his use of African sculpture and tribal masks to assert the "central presence of African culture" (Hollingsworth, 1994, 41) on the fiont door of his foundation.

Some might say that Barnes foresaw a post-modernist approach by bringing together diverse art works from many places- exotic,oriental, european, as well as from the realms of paint, wood, and metal to present multiples view of many traditions and cultures. Charles Hollingsworth says of Barnes, There are those exceptional individuals who are capable of grasping the ontological substance of another's culture, sensitivity, sanctity and language...Unfortunately. through the process of socialization, they are later racially brain-washed by...school, literature, media, politics and religion, into believing that their skin color determines whether they are superior or inferior. From a very early age, for the remainder of his life, Dr. Barnes saw the world through color-blind eyes. (1994, 4 1) Dewey and Bames exerted influences on one another in so many ways, racial democracy being only one important basis of their friendship. Dewey was kept informed of Barnes' growing collection and Bames consulted with Dewey for advice concerning the education of his educational programs

Dewey's thenries and Barnes' art combined in a concrete empirical, real

form whose purpose to educate was manifest in the doctrines that the two friends esposed in their discussions and decisions concerning the art of education and the education of art at The Bames Collection.

Elliot Eisner Theories of Art and Education

h this chapter, Ipr~.smtlhe roots of DBAE, the program that developedfiom Bruudy, Burkati and Eisner 's theories. Eis~terv: views on schools as places of opportrr,~i@, his methods of co~~noisseurship and criticism are seen to be applicable to many areas of the curric~ilumas well as ro lifelong learning. I examine Eistier 's prejrence for qualitative measurement. Dewey 's infltrence 1r1 Eisner 's argametlts is acknowledged hew. The Development of DBAE (Discipline-Based Art Education) For many years. Elliot Eisner has been a driving force for what is called DBAE(Discip1ine-Based Art Education). Creating, appreciating. and understanding art in relation to culture and making judgements about its aesthetic nature are the foudations of Eisner's program that divides the teaching of art into four equal components: production, criticism, history and aesthetics. This sequential, cumulative, and developmental study of art in the United States from kindergarten to Grade 12 is felt by Eisner and others to be intrinsic to every child's education. So far reaching have Eisner's insights been- not only in instruction, but in the language of an-that some educational researchers are considering the use of art as a way to teach other subjects. It is neccesary, however, to consider the background of this program to the development of DBAE.

The Theories of Harry Broudy

DBAE had its roots in the theories of Harry Broudy whose contention was that art was "not nice, but necessary"(Klempay Di Blasio, 1992,2l) and should be moved from the periphery

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of filling in empty spaces in the curriculum into the core of school cumculum. Few before Broudy, in 1954, had focused on aesthetics as a foundation of education . He felt that by "acquiring images of art that function as associative resources", art could provide contexts that broadened and deepened sfudentcomprehension, "illuminating every other mode of experience"(Klempay Di Blasio, 1992, 22). What students needed was to build stores of images as a basis of widening their experiences. Broudy's vision, like that of Dewey's, foresaw the possibility of broadening the appeal of art: "If there is to be a democratization of 'elite' art, it will be accomplished by public schooling that encorporates an instruction into the general curriculum.". Broudy said. He sought "excellence without snobs, and equality without slobs "(Klempay Di Blasio, 1992, 32). By offering a program to all students that judiciously featured competitive and compassionate exemplars from multiethnic and multicultural sources, Broudy hoped to provide touchstones that would connect students to art in larger global arenas. He believed that, "There is no doubt that art, in touching our imaginations, shapes our actions and characters"(K1empay Di Blasio, 1992, 29).

Mindfbl of stereotypes and the pressure of the marketplace that can impact and influence student attitudes, Broudy believed that studying art empowered students to interpet mass culture, "rather than be unwilling servants to its trends."Understanding where images were derived and how they could be manipulated for profit provided students with insight and information for the making of better judgements, and becoming better informed citizens. Broudy, not only proposed the content of art, but the method of acquiring the repetoire of images. Not dissimilar to Eisner's approach of connoisseurship and criticism (to be discussed),

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Broudy advocated a method of scanning, which systematically directed attention to sensory, formal, technical and expressive properties perceived in the aesthetic object (Klempay Di Blasio, 1992, 22). Broudy's instructive words on art and education were taken seriously both at the community and federal levels of government. He was a consultant to federal Arts and Humanities Programs in the United States, and was asked by Frances Hines, in 1975, to join an L.A.(LosAngeles) group that produced The Aesthetic Eve (hnded by the National Endowment for the Arts). When, in 1982, Dwaine Greer submitted a proposal to the Getty Trust for what became the Getty Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts, Broudy became a member of the Institute's Advisory Committee and one of the first faculty members (Greer, 1992, 53). Broudy's

. .

continuing commitment to education was seen in his books, Build~rga Philosophy of Education and Democracy md Excellence in A

ion, From his theories, his

rationale of aesthetics and his belief in the centrality of an in the classroom, the character of

DBAE was moulded (Greer, 1992, 50).

The Impact of BCAC (Balanced Comprehensive Art Curriculum) on Schools Manuel Barkan, in Ohio, twenty-tive years ago developed an art curniculum concept that, Broudy's, was the forerunner of DBAE. Supported by the Rand Corporation, BCAC palanced Comprehensive Art Curriculum) made use of an criticism, art history, art in society and art production in education. An example of implementation of Barkan's program can be seen seen in a classroom, where the specific theme of "Self-Portraits" is used as the focus for all the activities that

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surrounds the instruction of art (Tollifson, 1987/88). Children select media to use in their work to create self portraits. They have been exposed to the formal qualities of art :colour, shape, value, space, texture, line, mindful they would employ these qualities to express their own individual concepts of themselves. Either before or after this an production exercise, self-portraits of anists were shown to the students so they could make connections with artists' works that might inspire or suggest similar visual designs, colour treatments to them. Students emulated, thought about, discussed and compared the impact of those portraits with their own visual interpretations. Even at a preschool stage when children are learning language systems and vocabulary, talking about an widens language usage and helps develop minds (Douglas, Schwanz &Taylor. 1994,24). Through comparisons and reflections, students could see that artists like Rockwell, Rembrandt. Durer, and Chagall had all painted self-portraits in different ways to evoke meaninghl expressions of themselves. Afler looking outside of themselves to an history, students shifted their focus inwards ,responditig, describing, interpreting and eventuallyjudging their own work and those of their peers. This process of comparative examination provided an opportunity for students to notice how artistic elements, such as colour can be effective in portraying an idea. Continuing on with the portraits as the basis for discussion, the students notice how a painting can embody values or beliefs: art in society. D.N.Perkins, a colleague of Eisner's, says that art is invisible in two important ways: what awaits to be discovered, and what hides, requiring deeper examination, in a painting. Through engagement and attention to details, students can discover what the artist saw and understood, the purpose of a painting to be (Perkins, 1994, 23). Like a game, students must "decode" the meaning "encoded" by the artist in her portrait. Clues may reside in the placement of hands or a slight smile on the lips. Even a background provides

information. But students must learn to take the time to really look. Jerry Tollifson, a researcher as well as an art teacher, in, "A Balanced Educational Comprehensive Art Curriculum Makes Sense" uses this approach of "decoding". His students , in extending the definition of art to encompass business logos, realised that MacDonald's golden arches used "visual characteristics [tolexpress motherhood, sex and power"(Tollifson, I987ll988,

2 1). Recognising the myths and manipulation of society's visual signs in our environment empowers students to think and judge why and how visual schemata are being deployed in the world for purposes other than appreciation (art in society) (Broudy, 1967). Not only artists , but businesses, too, create self portraits in order to influence and relay significant information about themselves to society. Being cognisant of society's uses of art and of the importance of context enables students to understand how context effects meaning. Making connections between art and societal usage is an important goal of Barkan's program. Opportunities to encourage students to think creatively are shown in a Virginia Beach art program that continued Barkan's objectives, and eventually metamorphosized into Getty's

DBAE. The hope was that students in Virginia Beach would become more aware of their personal lives and their environments, heightened by exposure to the arts. This school district felt that engendering knowledge of cultures and heritages would establish a qualitative way of thinking about everyday life (Bricknell et al, l987/1988, 15). Eisner's approach also stressed qualities not quantities, whether in discussing schools or schooling. These ways of looking extend thinking by broadening student realms of context, culture, and heritage that make life a necessary part of school room activities. By developing critical awareness in art projects and related fields that impinge upon their

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own production of art, students at Virginia Beach learned to make reasoned judgements, applicable not only to other arts, but to their lives. Besides firm time allotments and the attitude that art is ajust self-expression and production, staff, principals, superintendents and the community in Virginia Beach supported a curriculum that was more than just "back to basics7': art was basic to their learning. Other communities that have embraced an arts approach to learning see the benefits strengthen not only activities in school, but the community as well. Students became more involved in organizing arts events in hopes of spreading and sharing their excitement towards art. Fund raisers, consciousness raising events, crafts meetings united inschool and out-of-schctol participants. Thus, the impact of art education is doubled. So important were the arts to a rural town in Pennsylvania that the Assistant Executive Director of Central Intermediate Unit 10. I.B.Nolan, implemented a program in 1972 to "expand and enrich existing arts curriculums and improve schools in area districts." In 1988, "approximately 23,300 students, 1,500 teachers.37 elementary and 2 1 secondary schools participate[d] in the program "(Sturtz-Davis, 198711988, 45-46). In spite of high unemployment, far distances, fog, ice and unmanageable roads, art services and resources, exhibits, special education ,special materials and artists were provided to this community. An art team that consisted of educational leaders, university faculty, community members, teachers, artists, board members, etc. pulled together "to improve the quality of life and education for students through the arts"(Sturtz-Davis, 1987/1988,45). This tram created a program in an area that easily could have gone unnoticed because of its inaccessibility. However, the rewards that resulted from this arts curriculum were many. In this rural community, it was noted that student self-esteem, improved concentration, imagination, verbal and students' nonverbal communication were

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enhanced by brainstorming, developing ideas and planning in their art classes (Sturtz-Davis, 198718, 48). The cause of arts education has even captured the attention of people in high political places. William J. Bennett, U. S. Secretary to Education in 1981, stated, " the arts are an essential element of education, just like reading, writing and arithmetic...Music, dance, painting, and theatre are the keys that unlock profound understanding and accomplishment" (Bennett. I987ll988, 4). Bennett allied himself to arts programs because, he said, they provide documents of the past ( as seen in Rafr of ihe Medtisa and Lascatrx), are resplendent with values in depictions Crossing the of past lives and events ( as seen in The Arnofini Marriage Porfraif and Wa.vhi~~gfot~ Delmvare), reveal the complexity of human emotions that are not always observable in every child's everyday life, ( as in Van Gogh's self- portraits or Jackson Pollock's paintings), and because arts are democratic: every, single citizen has the right and freedom to voice her views in whatever media she so chooses (Bennett, 1987188). The Getty Institute's aims are to raise awareness through seminars, curriculum publications, ongoing lectures and numerous resources. The Institute creates a network that continually builds people's confidence in the power of an. They continue to fight financially and morally for arts-based education. The Institute, aware of the many b.-nefitsart can contribute to a child's education. has based its program on the tenets underlined by Bennett, manifesting them through art production, art criticism, art history, and aesthetics. What was envisioned by Harry Broudy, continued by Manuel Barkan in willing communities and schools developed into DBAE.

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Elliot Eisner's Views on Art A painter takes the mrr and makes it into a yellow spot. An artist takes a yellow spot and makes it into a sun.

These lines quoted from Pablo Picasso begin Elliot Eisner's essay, "The Role of DisciplineBased Art Education in America's Schools"(Eisner, 1992b. 2). Eisner is a person who is constantly asking questions. His book, The Ed

Eve ( 1991) is a discourse wherein the

reader can almost hear Eisner continue to dialogue with himself and his audience as he ponders how to make more people ask more questions that will finally assure art its rightful place in the curriculum. In the DBAE booklet, Eisner addresses all the pertinent areas in school and curricula. He tells the reader that, when a child graduates from an American high school, she will have spent 12,000 hours there ( 1 W2b, 3). Long considered a Friday afternoon event of self-expression or

only for the talented ones, art has been thought of as an emotional outlet or expressive occupation for those who cannot excel in math or language arts: "Unlike mathematics, the arts have too often

suffered from being without goals, structures, without any sense of continuity and developrnent"(Brandt, 1988, 8). Aware that a case had to be made to include an as a regular curriculum subject, Eisner began a systematic way to counter these criticisms.

In refuting those who consider art to be a purely emotional or expressive outlet, Eisner was very clear that it was inappropriate to separate cognition and affect because an is very much a cognitive activity, for cognition is an on-going process of being conscious, noticing, recognising, perceiving and distinguishing (Arnheim, 1989; Eisner, 1982). Through cognition, one gains understanding and makes meaning. The very act of perception is a kind of visual thinking, perceptual in nature. The eye is part of the brain's system "which converts neural signals from the

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retina of the eyes into its own language " (Eisner, 1982). lnfonnation is processed and a precept (items of knowledge obtained through the senses) is translated into a concept (abstract notion) (Faraday, 1990, 73-86). The process continues as long as the organism is in tact and mentally hnctioning. Dewey, too, maintains that "experience occurs continuously because the interaction of live creature and environing conditions is involved ir. the very process of living "(Dewey, 1934, 35).

But the child is more than an eye, and Eisner maintains that the eye is only one part of a system that is reliant on its environment to cause it to function fully: "The main point here is that the sentient human is not simply a passive material that, like moist clay, receives the impress of the empirical world, but is an active agent that selects and organizes aspects of that world for cognition"@isner, 1982, 32; Dewey, 1934). The human creates and constructs categories and generalizations fed by prior sense perception, again incorporating the senses, the hands (painting),the mouth (drama),the ear (music) to express their message (Eisner, 1982). Art is the symbolic form that entwines the empirical experience with the experience or information that was perceived by the senses, conceptualized and caught in media by the artist.

Opportunities for Cognition, Decisions, Imagination and Literacy Eisner believes in the necessity of offering opportunities to students for learning and applying skills, and identifies school as the place where challenges and new experiences should be offered. Therefore, time must be allotted for this encounter to occur. One would not expect student to become proficient in chemistly without practising the application of the Periodic Tables. Similarly, students must be given time to apply cognitive skills to art. While the child

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evolves and grows, fresh ways of looking, seeing, and experiencing can be developed and practised. Before society's conventional ideas and images become the accepted norm, a student should have the chance to see and consider her world through her own "innocent" eyes. In school, a student can learn how to capture impressions, transforming, and expressing her conceptions in media that express their essence. The student learns to stand outside of her emotions, aware of her inner reactions to her experiences and her responses to her media and her world. She must pause to decide how she will communicate her ideas so they will express her intent. As long as the environment is stimulating and supportive. the child will want to respond. She will be encouraged by what she sees. supported by an environment that promotes her creativity. In fact. at risk students do incredibly well in arts programs because when art is a staple, students enjoy school work. All areas of the curriculum benefit since it appears academic scores increase as a result of exposure to art and students stay in school longer manna, 1992; Sautter. 1994; Sturtz-Davis, 1987/88). The heralding and acceptance of an, in turn, affords the chance that more positive situations may occur because the child decides there is value and meaning in remaining in classes (Sautter, 1994). By bridging the inner world of student emotion and the outer world of classroom appearances, the student makes decisions and becomes the voice that combines the two worlds in order to express her revelations, her ideas and her dreams. These "meta" activities of revelation, reflection, decision making, and chance taking are focused, thinking activities that prove to a student that she plays an important role in her own education because what she thinks is the worthy substance of her own curriculum.

By permitting the student the opportunity to cultivate her senses and contribute through

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her art to the expanding consciousness of others (Eisner, 1982, 3 9 , a student stabilises and makes public her ideas , employing more meta-cognition skills of selection, communication and organization to communicate her intent. All the while, the student makes decisions, setting and solving problems as she continues on her artistic journey. Dewey says art results from this interaction whereby the artist translates the precept into concept (Dewey, 1934,3 5). The process is on-going, involving many transformations in which decisions are made en route to creating art. Important judgement-making skills are involved because a student who wants to express a precept must somehow translate an idea into the materials of a three-dimensional world and express that idea two-dimensionally to fit onto the world of paper or canvas (Faraday, 1990) . In each transformation, ideas must be accommodated to a new venue so they make sense: an individual who wishes to externalize a concept must find a way to construct an equivalent for an idea in the empirical world (Eisner, 1982, 228-9). Arnheim refers to these activities as "representational concepts" (Eisner, l985,2 10; Eisner, 1982, 22) and considers this transformation an intellectual activity (Faraday, 1990, 77). Imagination is the link that compensates for the transformation of the multidimensional empirical world into the flat paper one that lacks real colour, depth and smell. How does a child make things fit? The world of an provides the student with the sense of mastery because she controls every aspect of the world she creates on paper: shape, dimension, colour, size-and that world exists only if she chooses to make it exist (Eisner, 1978). And like God, she creates, bringing fonh and deciding when those images are complete and "good". By bringing her experience and perception of what she has seen in the real world onto her paper world, she has bridged both worlds, and used a powefil system of symbols, a language, to represent what she

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has seen in the real world. With practice, she can break the rules of design and perspective, changing or adapting them to fit her purposes. Rather than rule and rote, her syntax is "figurative", for she must decide and judge on the 'rightness7of a fbnction (Eisner, 1985, 209). Instead of relying on stereotypes and experiential knowledge (See Perkins) to make decisions, the student can break new ground and provide new ways of responding in an class, forging new insights to express her personal vision. Once opportunities of time and stimulating space are considered, students are able to meet

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new challenges. In Q g m t ~ oand n C u r r i c u b (1982), Eisner suggests what he feels fosters and thwarts the minds of students. First, the opportunity to make art and talk about it must be given in schools because schools are places of possibilities and change. He maintains that art as an important form of representation is integral to education because it transforms the inner "felt world"(Henry James) into the outer realm of the public world: an often indescribable reaction can be shared visually and known by many through symbolic representation. A school program can provide opportunities that expose the student to new and multiple situations students might not have encountered before, stimulating and providing ways and suggestions for consideration: new opportunities to make connections with her own life and those of her heritage, her peers, and what she deems important in her life are afforded by the school. School is a place where literacy can occur through broadening student exposure. John Hirsch Jr. suggests in "Reflections on Cultural Literacy and Arts Education" the need for cultural literacy lest people's "common artistic experiences" be restricted to cereal boxes and the television screen. In seeking to provide a specificcurriculum, schools should make available a cultural history, all ready known by the so-called educated masses, thus extending this information to

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more classes, and making it mainstream. This was Harry Broudy's hope, too; that art would not only be the property of the elite. In developing a curriculum, a teacher must balance tradition and innovation, recognizing "the complex heterogeneity of cultural origins7'(Hirsch, 1990, 5) and offering a specific cumculum so that, spiritually and practically, all the members of a society can share in common knowledge and experiences in all domains of life. A q e c i f c curriculum is only a starting point, and like DBAE, it should initiate an exploration that will unfold as the child discovers an area of interest. However, who determines the original specific curriculum is indeed problematic. The influence of a changing population has caused the Getty Institute to rethink the content of DBAE because, for curricula to be relevant , it must be meaningful and reflect the lives of the people who will study it Why should only one elite group have access to this cultural enrichment when it is applicable to all peoples? It is incumbent on educational institutions to feed the minds and souls of all equally. In 1990, Broudy reflected that multicultural art "now seems on its way to connotative redemption as suggestion of equality, thanks to prominence of multicultural goals in social, and educational enterprise "(Klempay Di Blasio, 1992, 3 1). Literacies- cultural, visual, oral, artistic- of many orders are important goals of education because a student must have knowledge of who she is, where she has come from and where she belongs in an often codking and unsettled society. However, if the content of an art program has been problematic, the skills and method of instruction have not. Through discussion , the student can compare and contrast her earlier interactions, reflecting on how she acted in the past and how she can act in the future in new situations. She

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learns to classi@,to recall and to re-consider past experience. Her knowledge of her world and of herself affords her empirical and imaginary information upon which she is able to draw in order to test out new behaviours that will figure in her on-going education.

Connoisseurship and Criticism The school by teaching an promotesprapatism because art is the doing, realism because an deals with the here and now of real materials in a real setting, and idealism because it provides means that deal with, and has the possibility of transforming future events. These multiple philosophies provide the student with many ways to practice and lead a filfilling life, as modelled by doing and thinking about art in an art class. Students are not passive. but active participants in making discoveries for themselves. Eisner proposes that the student take the role of the art critic in order to organize and direct ways of thinking. He calls his technique connoisseurship. By looking closely and observing nuance, and details, the student begins to see how the elements in a work of art constitute a whole through the interplay or combination of its elements (Eisner, 1975, 585-6; Eisner, 1982). As critics, students practice discussing the work verbally through language, drawing on simile,

metaphor, innuendo, description, hypothesis and connotation to explain what they see. The methods of connoisseurship and criticism provide a way to make comparisons, for looking for details and paying attention to nuance enlivens students' understanding because they take time to consider and think about relationships and meaning. Jerilynn Changar, a teacher in Nerinx Hail High School in Webster Groves, Missouri, provides her students with enriching experiences so that they can understand art of various cultures (Changar, 1990, 87-96).

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Changar's purpose is not only to teach her students to value arts for their intrinsic beauty, but to provide a sense of appreciation that sparks insights and promotes an attitude of peaceful coexistence between nations and people. She says that a notion of global holistic education emerges when students thoughtfUlly consider themselves connoisseurs and critics. Rather than promoting a divisive, elitist attitude, students look beyond differences towards mutual understanding through the vehicle of art. Changar's approach of examining the historical and cultural context as well as questioning her students about aesthetics is an example of DBAE at work. Her approach reflects Eisner's desires for a cumculum that considers the need for centring art in its historical context so that the discussion of social and behavioural attitudes fosters the understanding of a particular painting which was conceived and created in a specific time, place and period. Art history in DBAE has been criticised in the past for maintaining a predominantly

Western focus; however. with recognition that this selection has been restrictive and biased,

DBAE has expanded its scope to include more and varied examples of art. Eisner says that meaning secured through the arts requires "artistic literacy without which artistic meaning is impeded and the ability to use more conventional forms of expression is hampered"(Eisner, 1985, 20 1). Artistic literacy depends on the involvement of the student in many ways; she can employ connoisseurship and criticism. She must look to see, to note, to appreciate, to criticize and become a connoisseur so she , indeed, can know what she is looking for, and then rely on her judgements to make a thoughthl and substantiated opinion in explaining how she arrived at an answer. Her interaction with a work of art gleaned through her exposure to historical, critical and aesthetic discussions causes her to ask new questions and formulate new

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problems, comparing her work to other artists who have faced similar problems. As well she is able to imagine new ways to express her ideas and possibilities by drawing on, observing and reflecting on her prior experiences. She controls the course of her cognitive activities. She discovers, that as in life, there is no set answer, and that multiple solutions may be desirable. for

no one solution is "right". A r t ' s special qualities of thinking, problem-setting and solving connect the world beyond the classroom with the real world outside.

Into the Real World Eisner extends his considerations to a larger world canvas that spirals and expands with each stroke of his brush. Moving from a painting's formal qualities into the realm of the student's and on into the world of the artist, and the world community of artists expands the contexts for the student to ponder. Each new area of expansion requires the student to change her focus, adapt to new information, and think in new ways, all about the same piece of art to be reinterpreted from a new point of view in a new context. In each case, the student must return to the painting and herself because she is the one dialoguing with the work, shading and tinting the thrust of her argument as she applies it to each unique situation: "Every experience is the result of interactions between a live creature and some aspect of the world [slhe lives in" (Dewey, 1934,43-44). And there is emotional satisfaction in the parrying that occurs. The ability to discover new dimensions

in the artwork causes the student to grow in her self-esteem because it feels good to learn something new, and feel in control of that process. As if to foreshadow the dialectic interchanges that occur in spirited discussions with oneself and with others, the reader might consider Dewey's comments : "An experience has

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pattern and structure because it is not just doing and undergoing in alternation, but consists of them in relationshipn(l 934, 44). The student in her investigations makes judgements and provides the connections. The dialectic can continue as long as the student chooses because if she selects to research further, her attention will be drawn to new dimensions. Participation, appreciation and excitement are the features of Eisner's cumculum. Consider, for example, that a student is asked to design a clay pot. First, she must decide on the form and structure it will take. Will the student hand build it? Use a slab technique? Employ coil? Or perhaps she might try her hand at the potter's wheel. Will the pot, once formed, be utilitarian or purely ornamental? In either case, should there be decoration? And what of the decoration? Should it be figurative or abstract? Should the technique be the same as used to form the pot or might it be an alternative approach to benefit the final aesthetics of the pot? Maybe looking at Greek Red and Black pots might provide stimulation. Or perhaps the Japanese or ancient Chinese would offer suggestions for the pot's design. Seeing pots of other cultures might make the student ponder the role of the potter in the particular society. Was the artist a craftsperson? a shaman? Were the pots part of special ceremonies? In every case, the student must work to satisfy herself, relying on her own judgements to stop or continue her on-going process of investigation into the creation of a simple mud pot. If she chooses to explore local artisans or craft guilds, she will enter into new exchanges that will impact on her work. Exhibiting her pots in a gallery will also afford her new contexts and bring her into new awareness of what styles, standards and expectations the world beyond the classroom holds. For these artistic conundrums which cause a student to venture into cultural or societal contexts, time must be allotted for thinking, planning, executing and practising art.

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The benefits of DBAE are multifold. " 'Languages of thinking' [conceptual, verbal, written, graphic] for students to be engaged in higher order thinking processes are necessary for students' understanding and application of knowledge "(Sullivan, 1993. 9). It is only through this profound engagement that students will be able to see explicit conceptual connections across subject areas and be able to practise these skills of transferring learning to new contexts.

In an interview with Ron Brandt, Elliot Eisner reiterates that it is mandatory to protect "

some time during the school week for focused instruction in each of the arts "(Brandt, 1987/ 1988, 9). As well, time must be offered for art exploration beyond the classroom walls so that ~ interpenetration of school and the world outside the school walls. students can h . 7the

Continuity, time and sequence are necessary for the development of expertise in art in order to provide links with the outside world. Apprenticeships, gallery and museum visits in regular and unusual places and interviews with artists are essential to expanding the realms from which a student understands the interconnection between life and school learning.

Assessment and Evaluation Eisner maintains that time given for art in the curriculum must be shown to be justifiable. He stipulates that assessment is necessary to measure what is actually occurring when children do art. All areas of the curricula must be accountable if the public is expected to support and become

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enthusiastic about an arts based system. The E u e n e d Eve: Q u w ~ v lnquie e and thp Enhancement o f Educational Practice ( 1991) considers the issue of assessment. If the curriculum assessor, the teacher, the principal, the school board and the community agree there are multiple forms of intelligence, [see Gardner) they can acknowledge that there are various means to assess

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that knowledge:

A lot of intelligence can't be tested for, in the sense that we use the word, 'test'. What we need to do is to create environments where you can observe a lot about what kids are good at, what interests them, and where they show substantial growth.(The Report of the Royal Commission 5, 1994, 138) Just as art students can be schooled to be connoisseurs and critics, so the researcher, too, can draw on these same techniques to examine the validity of school programs and determine their accountability. As in the learning process that allows for many and varied interpretations so analyses from researchers' many points of view is also encouraged by Eisner.

A Qualitative Approach

Eisner's approach to education, whether in the school, or on its sidewalks, is qualitative. Like John Dewey, Eisner is aware that " an is a quality of an activitym(1934).Dewey explains how, in an, all pans of the process and the final product are interdependent:

A total qualitative impression emanates from it (the work of art) as it interacts with the organism through the visual apparatus. But this is only the substratum and the framework within which a continuous process of interaction introduces enriching and defining elements. ( 1934, 220) Eisner's perspective influences how he sees and measures situations. The Report of the Royal Commission on Education in discussing how to evaluate achievement in "For the Love of Learning" concurs with Eisner by recommending that assessment should be "consistent with the kinds of learning desired and the approaches to cumculum and instruction that will support such learning" ,adding in their-first paragraph, that is "easier to mislead than to inform with statistics"(l994, 13 1).

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What is important in making art is the process. The objectives cannot always be predetermined because the nature of the activities, problems, and the solutions constantly shift. The Royal Commission feels there are no codified answers for students in art. Rather than relying on quantitative data, standards can be created assessing whether the work is above, below or appropriate to Outcomes established for each grade level. However, assessors must be keenly aware of sex, class, race and individual differences in garnering examples. John Dewey's statements in Art as Experience come to mind in his discussion of standards because of his insistence that real events, whether external or internal, public or private cannot be measured by yardsticks, that record static size, weight or volume (1 934, 307). Eisner promotes the use of portfolios as "biographiesW.Theyare visible records that track over an extended period of time student development:journals, notes, sketches, logs, work in progress, completed assignments all reveal how student skills have progressed and how well they have employed symbolic language to convey ideas- in and out of context. Certainly, students must learn skills in applying paint or sculpting clay. There are many ways for teachers to measz~re student progress: slides, photographs, portfolios, teacher logs, interviews, videos. Gardner suggests "domain projects9'(SeeGardner) in which peers and teachers critique student work together. Graeme Sullivan (1993) also promotes student exhibitions in order to show there are many responses and ways of looking at the same problem. Defending those multiple reactions elicits a vocal, analytical procedure of thoughtful reflection and defence of ideas, considered and organised throughout critical cognitive processes. Becoming a cont~oisse~~r, whether as a student or a teacher teaches a person "to experience the significant and often subtle qualities that constitute an act, work or object and ...to relate these to the contextual and

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antecedent conditions "(Eisner, 1991, 85). Eisner's critic learns how to observe, illuminate, interpret and appraise in words what she sees. These are valuable skills for students, teachers -any human being. However, the teachers' role is not to direct or enforce one vision of a finished product on the student. As suggested by Paulo Freire (1973), students should not be depositories for other's knowledge, but co-creators in their own education. As well, a hands-off,"do your own thing" approach is likewise not advocated. The ongoing process of discovery should be a model for lifelong learning: "Portfolios are...records of intellectual travel "(Sullivan, 1993, 1 0). Since the DBAE program is sequential, certain skills and information are thought appropriate at certain times in the students' career as she progresses from kindergarten to Grade 12. A specific but flexible curriculum reinforces that there is a program, a curriculum that guides

the student into various areas of discussior. and masteries. The open-endedness of the program allows each student to pursue her investigations as far and in as much detail as she desires, enquiring into what aspect of the problem interests her. Becoming self-critical of her own work provides the best kind of analysis. Through consideration of past and present work, class discussions, comparisons and contrasts with the work of their peers, and other artists from many cultures, a student becomes aware of what is good and what is better artwork and which criticisms may or may not hold true for her work. It is the discussion, the dialogue with self, with art work, with peers that sets the scene to inform the student of her growth, lacuna or stasis with the assistance of the teacher as facilitator and fiend.

In assessing the student's work, the teacher or educational researcher must consider many aspects of the classroom situation. Noticing what is situationally specific allows for

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contemplation of what is pertinent Considering the hard surfaces in a school, the number of times a loudspeaker interrupts, the tone of voice used by a teacher, the looks students cast at one another when the teacher's back is turned and the number of extracurricular activities that are encouraged all impacts on the environment that an assessor should consider when determining the success or failure of cumculum. It is impossible "to isolate one strand in total experience, [for] a strand is what it is because of the entire pattern to which it contributes and in which it is absorbed "(Dewey, 1934,290). Learning to read the signals in a classroom makes a researcher aware. Eisner uses videotaped sessions to sensitize his students, and in mock classroom situations, they discuss what they have seen. OAen familiar situations cause one to label and take for granted what is germane to an educational scene so it is important to look to see. The thrust of Eisner's educational criticism is four pronged :description to provide a vicarious experience: irrtcrpretatiorr to examine meaning; evaluation to foster growth or change, and thematics to identify repetitive trends. Although the result is not numbers, data produced reflects student and teacher experience in a context that does measure what is or what is not being accomplished (Eisner, 1991, 103).

In teacher education, Patrick Diamond suggests that permitting teachers to be their own critics is extremely helpful (199 1). Watching videotapes of teaching, writing scripts, or contemplating the teacher I was, the teacher I am,and the teacher I worrld like to he can be illuminating and enhances personal practical knowledge in a way that no outside researcher can. Mentoring and journalling with respected peers also allows for dialogue and exchange that is invaluable for teachers whose ameliorated knowledge provides greater understanding in their assessment of students."All direct experience is qualitative... yet reflection goes behind immediate

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qualities, for it is interested in relations..."(Dewey, 1934, 293). Reflection and discussions are investigative tools that bind past and present together, making them a sensitive means to investigate, control and predict future events.

J.J. Schwab, too, presents what he calls "Polyfocal Consensus" in which multiple points of views based on varying sources are compared and contrasted so that thoughtful evaluation can result, and multiple viewpoints endorsed to benefit educational situations (Schwab, 197 1). It is important to remember that what a researcher is looking for will always influence her report. Evaluation must always be appropriate to the context and to the student if meaningfbl assessment is to be the outcome.

Conclusion Eisner, as well as Dewey and Gardner, has taken cues from art, and its qualitative nature. Arts integrated learning benefits the learner in many substantiated ways. In seeking "to inspire and instruct", the arts "encourage students to learn in as many artistic and creative ways as they can imagine "(Sautter, 1994, 434). Rather than rules ,hypothetical explanations and rote learning, the arts invite students to participate and discover traditional, meta, and hidden curriculums (see Sautter, 1994). In the 70's Christopher Lasch decried an educational system marked by "steady decline of basic intellectual skills"(Lasch, 1970). Elliot Eisner ironically commented that parents' solution to failing literacy was to have their children spend longer hours in the very places that actually caused the children to secure low scores in the first place. Eisner scoffed at critics who called parents "consumers" as if each child to be educated was like a model to be replicated on an

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assembly line. Individual differences are ignored and critics blythly believed that each "product" was identically shaped and motivated by the identical input. With the public's ranting of "Back to Basics", I reflect on my own son's early years in

Lola Weistub-Rasminsky's Fine Arts kindergarten. The curriculum was composed of integrated arts. Since my son wanted to read the wonderfbl stories he was told, he learned to read; since he wanted to write his own stories, he learned to write and compose images that communicated his ideas in word and paint. Like all excited and stimulated children, he wanted to participate. transform and share what the arts had bestowed on him. The richness of life's many experiences cannot be contained by only quantitative research. Rather than the tip of the iceberg, we need the shivers, the snow, the sleet and the songs. Eisner's methods of connoisseurship and criticism are the keys that teach students how to unlock the doors of art, and the world beyond.

Theories in Practice Art Production There are many anticipated outcomes in DBAE, but perhaps the most important is "providing the condition that will empower the young to shape their own development after leaving school "(Eisner, 1992b, 14). The school, curricula, and teachers are the means through which the child becomes the "architect of her own educationn@isner, 1992b, 27). Meaningfhl activities that are problem based invite the child to take risks and face the challenges that will initiate her learning. Seeing, imagining, judging, understanding and creating are the building

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blocks that are as pertinent to artistic endeavours as to problems faced in life after "school" education. In the production of art, the child embodies her idea in an expressive form. She must meet the needs of the medium through the acquisition of skills, perceive relationships between parts, and parts to whole, anticipate steps en route to realizing her conception and perhaps shift goals. stopping to reflect if her art says what she intends it to. And if it does not, she must consider how she can change her an, maybe even beginning again. These are the on-going problem-setting and problem-solving processes that arise in art creation, a marriage of mind and body to impart a message to a viewer. The artist embodies in (herself) the attitude of the perceiver while she works (Dewey, 1934, 48). She becomes her own critic, making public her private world.

Art Criticism In art criticism, the child describes the visual world she sees in the works of artists. Like Harold Rosenberg in his criticism of Ben Shahn (Eisner, 1991. 87; Eisner, 1982, 5 1) or Linda Nochlin on Seurat (1994), the child learns "to identi&, categorize and locate**(Eisner,1992b. 17). Through looking more closely, the child visually explores, seeing more and becoming more conscious of formal relationships in, for example, painting (Perkins, 1994). Not just labelling or recognizing that there is, for example, a tree in the painting, the student attends to the fact that it is bluish in colour and is bending to the right of the picture. She notices that beneath the tree, a mother's curved arm repeats the angle of the branch. Nuance, relationship of pans to one another and to the entire scene are ways to look and train the eye to wander within the painting. Soon the child will ponder how well or fit these elements are to "the occasion and to the situation "(Dewey,

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1934, 49). The sum of all the parts should impart more than themselves individually, to be like a symphony of resonating shape, colour, form and texture. To enable a student to discuss art, she must be taught basic artistic principles of line, form, colour, shape, etc. Knowing a piece of art is about something (Barrett. 1994), like a story, precipitates a student's interest to ponder what she sees. Familiarity with other pieces of an artist's work, as well as the times in which the artist painted and developed her thoughts, creates a richer context for the student/critic's inquiry: art is always a reflection, a response, or a reaction to life. "Art critics bring to bear upon works of art a deep understanding of their culture, and the traditions in which they participate "(Eisner, 1991, 127). Students with knowledge of art history will be better able to place and understand art because " no art ...emerges within an aesthetic vacwum"(Elarrett, 1994, 12). Most artists are aware of other artists and their contribution to the developing f h d of an. So, students, too, in discussing artwork will be able to make connections, understanding the impact of one artist on another. The practice of talking or describing art is another an form that translates experience into words, adding a new dimension replete with its own unique syntax to a n production. Art criticism offers a challenge to first, see, and then, say. By using words to describe, interpret and discuss what the student sees, she will take possession of another language- a verbal one. Besides transforming idea into media, a wordless, but nonetheless expressive language, the student who makes art will now also endeavour to describe the processes that she, herself, has empirical knowledge of, transforming idea again, but this time from idea into word. Because one knows more than one can say, the art production is not equal or replaced through language; however, talking about art is another exercise that

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student cognition will grapple with, selecting and rejecting the words that will best describe her understanding of the art work. The critic relies on words that describe the art. Those words of metaphor, simile, nuance, connotation, suggestion , and inference should direct the viewer's eye and mind to discover deeper meaning than what is just noticed by any person simply glancing at the work. An criticism , therefore, involves two tasks: first noticing, and understanding the meaning of the work, and

second, using language that will expound, clarify and substantiate what has been seen. Students taking the role of the critic learn how to transform ideas about art into words Like the artist's transformation of idea into media, the critic's interpretations are the words offered to a viewer who must grasp their meaning. The critic presents an aesthetic argument that must be judged by the viewer's acceptance of visible facts. "stabilizing the evanescentW(Eisner,1985, 206). The critic's responsibility is to illuminate and reconstruct. opening doors and paths of discovery to the viewer. "Teaching interpretations within art criticism is probably the most difficult aspect of teaching criticism.. .judgement of a work of art without interpretation is both irresponsive and irresponsible"(Barrett. 1994, 8).Ideas must be supported in context and by reasons that can be empirically proven if the viewer is to be instructed to follow the critic's argument. The viewer must see what the critic describes. However, students should be encouraged to discover their own responses and interpretations, aware that there is never only one correct way of looking at and understanding art. In this way, the student learns to be her own critic, relying on herself Since a critic and a viewer can never know for sure what the artist exactly thought or intended, the criticism must stand on its own merits (as the work of art must), complete and

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verifiable. Indeed, a work of art expands in the minds of its viewers to suggest and say more than its literal material. This occurs through the viewer's openness to look and respond to the work, but the viewer is often helped to enter the work through the critic's words. The artist is the producer who places her work in the public domain, but when she has completed it, she leaves it there, retreating to create again. The work remains alone, awaiting what the viewer will bring to it: experiences, memories, dreams that will prompt a dialectic interchange with the piece of art (Dewey, 1934). If the art is evocative, it will speak to each viewer separately. The work of the critic is to hear the voices and transform them into words, for "Good interpretations invite us to see for ourselves and to continue on our own" (Barrett, 1994, 13). Although the artist has disappeared fiom the scene, her echoes and resonances should be

present in the work, perceivable to the viewer who can emulate the critic's role.

Art History

"All art is part of culture. All culture gives direction to artV(Eisner,1982, 20). In situating paintings socially, in time and space, students begin to understand how art is shaped by the beliefs and values in their culture: "Images contain ideas that reflect sociai structure and how each society at every phase of its existence makes meaningn(Sullivan, 1993, 1 1). Graeme Sullivan ( 1993) in "Art-Based Art Education: Leaning What is MeaningM, Authentic. Critical and

Pluralist" draws attention to the fact that "human beings live in an environment transformed by the artifacts of prior generation". Through cultural repositories, like setting, dress, and mannerisms depicted in art, the student discerns culturally bound secrets and revelations, all historically tied to what was once lived and experienced by particular people in specific places. Artists transmit and

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are influenced by ideas that form the conditions and scenarios of their everyday life, their personal cumculum. Students perceive varying or repetitive states and circumstances that emulate or reject the previous ones in a chain we call civilization, a chronicle of history lived and experienced.

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Eisner in -1t1on

and Curriculum (1982) discusses the varied forms of representation

that make cultural ideas public. Mimetic, expressive, av~dcortver~tionalmodes of expressing societal ideas (Eisner, 1982, 56; Eisner, 1985, 2 10) are employed to transmit information, modes that must be heuristically interpretated according to the setting, era, place and history of the artist so that the viewer can make sense of the art work. "The process of working ...clarifies, confers details, provides material"(Eisner, 1982, 52), revealing the ideas of the day as exemplified by the artist who is not only shaped by society, but who shapes society through her art. Since post-modernist thought influences our notion of those who have been badly treated by society, our schools endeavour to deconstruct history, presenting multiple views from multiple sources (Stuhr et al, 1992). Gender, race, ethnicity are central to the discussion that gives voice to these groups. The effect might cause some children confusion. For others, the panoply of views will be profitable. Had these children been educated 100 years ago, their understanding of history would be very different: directed and rigid. Considering paintings or artwork in context, the student is offered another world wherein she can look through another's eyes, and walk in another's shoes to perceive symbols, signs, clothes, artifacts that signify cultural meanings. Einfirehling (Dewey, 1934, 101) facilitates understanding, compassion and insight. History is more than a collection of dates and battles taught by forces of government, climate and social convention to behave in certain ways.

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Aesthetics Judgements affect every aspect of a child's life-what she chooses to wear, buying a blue or a yellow budgie, adding red or purple to her drawing . Each decision is conditioned by a prior experience, empirically or imaginatively driven. In thinking and doing art, the student will accept or reject certain aspects of a painting (Eisner, 1978). By thinking and reflecting on why she likes or dislikes something, she will gain insights into her behaviour. As well, she draws on cultural cues, her perception of the world, and what affords her joy, or sorrow. The relation of art and culture over time is intrinsic to what she values and why (Billings, 1995; Kaneda, 1994; Stokrocki, 1994).Comparativeexaminations with other cultures feed the dialogue in order to determine what is beautiful. and satistjling in life, and why. The study of aesthetics in arts stimulates a student to see how her environment and world are aesthetically constructed and what makes them pleasing to the eye. A student considers the hard edges of the school room. the layout of her living room, the intersection of the streets she traverses en route to school and thinks about their visual relationships (Eisner, 1991). Perhaps, this examination, this looking will provide an overarching philosophy of beauty that will lead her to consider aesthetics in other areas of thought and language. John Hirsch makes that connection when he says, "The aesthete who finds value in the beauty and richness of design is no less a formalist than the pragmatist \rAo finds value in the social utility of shared knowledge" (Hirsch, 1990, 3). The fabric of life is woven with exquisite arguments as well a s beautifil colours. The absolutes of design and structure as well as harmoniously developed moments are jewels whether they appear in art or language. Beauty resides in numerous forms for which a painting may provide a model. The aesthetic values of sport, like the aesthetics of painting, are

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also instrumental values in the sense that they are satisfying to people, and therefore, not truly ends in themselves (Fhrsch, 1990). One discussion of beauty informs another.

Interaction of DBAE's Subjects Each area in DBAE is not complete in itself. First, it requires the interest and participation of a child to make the program come alive. Surrounded with a plethora of accruing possibilities, the child embarks on a process, a journey that provides a paradigm for lifelong questing and learning. Like a painting, DBAE is more than its parts, for it imparts the knowledge that art cannot be categorised into discrete disciplines. Through pleasurable activities, problem and inquiry-based challenges, students' intrinsic satisfaction of discovery, intellectual and sensoty can be accomplished. This program allows for envisioning new horizons, learning about cultures and contexts, and developing skills that will last a lifetime. Fresh ways of thinking, multiple views, and multiple solutions are intertwined Students can become competent and independent, modelling their education through life on an art program called DBAE.

The Application of Art to All Education How Art Can Be Applied to All Education What occurs in a classroom. student development and assessment can be best measured and considered qualitatively, rather than in numbers. A qualitative approach, however, can be extended beyond the art class. Elliot Eisner's n e Enlightened &I

makes a cogent case for using

art as the means to teach and assess all other school disciplines. His examination rests on the

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application of qualitative research. Using art as his example, Eisner establishes that doing art requires cognitive processes, and thereby is a subject equal to language and math. However, what makes art special is the kinds of thinking that occur in art programs. Alex Faraday concurs, "...art is an ongoing process rather than a set of correct answers"(1990, 8 1). And Howard Gardner's insights into Multiple Intelligences have certainly extended what can now be considered viable ways of knowing. The study of art, whether pursuing it via DBAE or not, encourages each child to think about solutions, and not rely on a code of memorised answers. There is respect for the process and not the regurgitation of facts. Problem solving and interpretation are important ways to arrive at solutions : "moving around a topic allows for several takes and gives voice to individual differences and competing conceptions"(Sullivan, 1993. 8). Whether in art or science, considering a multiplicity of views and answers helps provide novel insights through a variety of approaches. Few solutions in the work place demand the same repetitive patterns. In fact, one idea may cue another. And not all answers can be translated into numbers. Rather, they rest on qualities, essences of experience. The discovery of penicillin, the vaccine for rabies involved departures From regularly followed methods. So an allows for various interpretations and unorthodox procedures to arrive at solutions.

So, in life, the answers are not always readily available by parroting the view i; ideas of another, or standard procedure. Situations will arise, and one must respond, basins those responses on past experiences, recalling glimpses of patterns that impart suggestions or reflectionon-action (Schon, 1987). Perception and participation will be the means to encounter dilemmas.

In art production, a child asked to create a self-portrait will decide how best to respond,

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reflecting on her past experiences skills and explorations, considering what is germane, sequential, and cumulative. Every foray into a task is a step on the path that ultimately liberates each student from repeating the exact same path that others have tread.

In art, flexibility in responding to problems is an important quality. Gaining competence in dealing with life's situations necessitates new constructs. Ingenuity, the freshness of applying old rules in new ways rewards a person. The student can see that innovation is possible and desirable. Her involvement in education is personal because she brings her own unique insights that are gleaned From her experiences in life outside the classroom. Using this "extra-curricular" information in the classroom assignment teaches her that there are important connections between life and school. and one nourishes the other. Taking risks to meet challenges in innovative ways, employing imagination, and being encouraged to do so in a safe and supportive educational setting will fbrnish a base of self-confidence and self-esteem, a practice ground for which she can compete in the "real" world outside of school. Learning to rely on oneself, rather than following the teacher's direction on the accepted methods makes learning child-centred and child-directed. an event that fosters the growth of independence and self-esteem. These are the desirable qualities for persons to possess in any endeavour because they allow students to think for themselves, make decisions, and provide leadership when necessary.

Art also provides access to new technology. In order to respond to burgeoning developments, people must use and be conversant with society's new ways of communication. Artists use cameras, lasers, film. computers, video cameras and machines, printouts: all culturallybased tools. An acceptance that technology is an important facet of the world fosters an early understanding that a person must use the tools of the environment in order to be effective in the

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marketplace: "children's intuitive theories of mind, matter and life...are not only influenced by external character such as attitudes and values of others, or the nature of the environment"(Sullivan, 1993, 6). Certainly what is said is greatly influenced by how it is said and by whom, "for the kind of meaning students can secure is influenced ...by the kind of tasks in which they have an opportunity to engagen(Eisner, 1982, 179). Children must be given the opportunities to know the various "languages" of communication ,practising with the technology that is deemed acceptable and desirable in society, whether in mastering computers for geography graphs or videotaping a science experiment. In this way, their messages can be powerful because students know the limits and lengths to which they can employ society's tools. Dewey (1934). too, expressed in his writings the importance of technology in schools.

In art, there is a give and take (Eisner, 1982, 55), a united effort of student and teacher to arrive at solutions. Teachers must participate in the process, becoming like "coaches"(Schon, 1978). The learning of art often occurs through the rnentorship of teacher and student. Like an apprentice, a student learns skills, receives support and acknowledgement. Praise. and criticism are integral to the development of attitudes and supports that allow for taking risks, failure and renewed attempts, Not only teachers share their knowledge and insights and facilitate their students; student peers do so as well (Freire, 1973). A mural will be the combined effort of many students who all contribute towards a finished product (Goleman et al, 1992). Artists' co-ops, Feminist groups, Gay workshops ,among others, appreciate that they must all work together, raise issues. and consciousness in order to arrive at solutions that will profit all members in society. Most classes today, no matter the subject, have learned that some of the best learning occurs when students

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work together in group situations. This give and take of peer interaction is more effective than the teacher always lecturing at them. The use of dialogue allows for and encourages each child to become involved and participate in the formation of solutions.

In art, as in life, for topics to have meaning, they must not be trivial; they must be relevant to their needs, worthy of the time spent and the effort subsumed in study. For language to make meaning, its content must be rneaningfbl and pertinent to students' needs. Not only does the child develop fiom the "inside out", like an emerging caterpillar towards the beckoning environment, but she should also develop fiom the "outside in" (Eisner, 1982;Gallas. 1991). Stimulated by others and a challenging curriculum, she is sparked and excited by what she can make her own in her development. Unlike a blank slate, the child unfolds with her own special qua1ities that will react and progress in response to her environment. And if that environment is stimulating, there is a greater chance that the child will respond. Experiences, in Dewey's sense of the word, are continually on-going, feeding the combined inner and outer growth of each person (Dewey, 1934). In doing an, students note relationships: pan to part, and parts to the unified whole that says more than its parts. Words must make sense in their sentences, sentences in their paragraphs. Artists must understand contexts. Becoming a connoisseur by really looking at the relationships among parts in an artwork, and a critic by explaining what she sees, whether in life or art, profits the person involved, for she learns to look beyond the borders, considering the boundaries beyond and within that frame. In An as Ex~eriencc,Dewey explains what looking intensely can do for a person's perception (Perkins, 1994): "...he sees them [lines] more distinctly than he did at first. Similarly,

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colours which in nature have almost always a certain vagueness and elusiveness become so definite and clear..."@ewey, 1934, 87). A student can become a connoisseur in life or art by paying attention- to internal dynamics and the overall effect that occurs because of the interplay of those parts. "It is not a detached, value-neutral descriptive vehicle concerned with something called disinterested knowledge"(Eisner, 1982, 1 10). Connoisseurship is the art of noticing, being aware of "complexities, nuances, and subtleties"(Eisner, 1991, 68). Connoisseurs and critics participate in a dialectic, attempting to penetrate the art work to grasp its meaning. Awareness of heuristics. culture, religion. dress, etc. plays an intrinsic role in understanding not only the artist's message, but the society and civilizations from which the art emerged. Similarly, students must make the important connections with the outside world, the one location where they will spend most of their days. Eisner's concepts of connoisseurship apply to all educational endeavours. Appreciating the qualities that constitute classroom events can be closely perceived in the same way that a work of an can. Making use of empirical sources that suggest a pluralism of views can only enhance and stimulate student activity in classrooms. Evaluating on an on-going process instead of standardized testing underlines that knowing and learning are occurring in many forms that reflect a child's understanding. Awareness of the outside world as exemplified by the use of technological materials taken From the real world shows the student that her skills practiced in school will not be obsolete and there are connections between work and school. Interactions and dialogues with teacher and peers model situations in which

everyone in family, business ,or the professions work together in order to co-create and arrive at the best possible solutions: these are outcomes of a learning approach based on the principles of doing art.

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Using varied examples tiom many sources not only substantiates that there exists connections between many places that are applicable to the classroom, but that, again, there are multiple ways to look at the same problem. An acceptance of various models stresses the applicability of seeing the world in different ways from many points of view. This focusing and refocusing tiom multiple tenses allows for the transference of ideas from one situation to another where there are similarities, metaphors, links or contradictions that enhance the understanding of both life and art (Perkins and Saloman, 1988). Like words, art is a language (Dewey, 1934). Like any other language, an has its own syntax (an arrangement of parts used to construct a whole) (Eisner, 1982, 63;Eisner, 1985, 209). In art, the parts must all contribute to the successful portrayal of the authenticity of the work. For

any answer to be understood and to provide meaning, a person must learn how the parts combine to work, and make meaning in their arrangement. Deciding what must be included in the artwork, and what must be rejected in order to accomplish the artist's intent is part of the on-going process that speaks to a clear, persuasive visual argument that enlightens and persuades the viewer of the truthfblness of the presentation. Similarly, the critic uses languages to describe and interpret an artwork, thus, aiding or enhancing another's understanding of an artwork. A critic "build[s] a bridge through language that makes a work visible to less sophisticated viewers"(Eisner, 1991, 236). Perception gives rise to consciousness and interpretation confers meaning upon it (Eisner, 199 1, 129). To use Perkins and Saloman's expression, this is "teaching for transfer"(1988). Education and art share many metaphors: process; discovery; integration and relationship of parts; teacher and peer dialogues; implementation of technology; connection with the outside

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world. Not only do they share the language, but education can be assessed as art is. and we can anticipate the fkture by establishing patterns from the past as a guide (Eisner, 1982, 96). Although, we might expect to have seen Eisner's analogies welcomed and applauded by the educational community at large, they have not received total acceptance. H.A. Alexander picks and chooses his support and rebuttal of Eisner's artistic metaphors. Alexander, does, however, applaud Eisner when he (Alexander) proclaims, "His artistic model holds significant potential for religious educators who are concerned with the interpretation of tradition" (Hirsch, 1986, 57). Alexander hopes to revitalize and reclaim the teaching of religion on the basis of

textual and artistic means, providing a forum of multiple views in which discussion might be renewed. Alexander rejects Eisner's use of many insightful "artistic" metaphors, quibbling about meaning. What he seems to forget is that a metaphor, like a gourmet concoction, takes a little of this and a little of that to create a new taste, and provides meaningfil transfer. Finding unexpected ways of connection makes the taster suddenly aware of new possibilities. To be a connoisseur, one must pay attention, and allow for new insights. Alexander's drawing on Eisner's argument only for religious purposes causes concern because it smacks of the narrow-mindedness that typifies the findamentalist who only sees her own way of seeing things. Reluctantly, Alexander must admit there are paradigms afforded by a n instruction. Art education holds many clues for the curriculum: multiplicity of views, flexibility, use of

technology, class interaction, relevance to the outside world, freedom and choice. These qualities like a good conversation stimulate thought and action. To want to learn, students must be interested in what is occurring in the classroom. Broudy, Lanier and others believed in starting

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where the student is.

By using familiar "user-friendly" materials, art curriculum has the ability to interest and involve students. One has only to visit art classes to see the success of art programs. Our public school system has lately been enlivened by research into small group learning, self-evaluation, and narrative study. It's time to look at the art class and extend its power into other areas of the curriculum to revitalise them. Dewey, Eisner and Gardner have provided the research and shown the application. Now the schools and public must take up the fight.

Some American Schools and Programs 1960's-North Carolina School of the Arts -South Carolina: Appel Farm Arts and Music Centre -Louisiana: Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts 1962 -Michigan: Interlochen is begun by Joseph Maddy

1970's -Ohio: Cincinnati Public Schools: The School for Creative and Performing Arts. 1980's -Nebraska: The Lincoln Schools Gified Children's Program -Kentucky: The Kentucky Governors' Scholars Program

Howard Gardner

Theories of Artistic Intelligence

This chapter looks at Howard Gardnerfrom severalfoci. We see the de'vehpment of his theories throrcgh his exposure fothe Chinese culture and his examinatiort of sevm outstandittg people whose creative lives hnve affected the 20th Century in Art and Science. Gardner's own doing, perception and reflection model his apprwch to wtderstartdirg and assessing hirefligence. inchded it?this chapter are several teacher models to reveal how Gardrlers' concepts h a been implemented in school sitlrations. Multiple Intelligences For me, Howard Gardner is a pivotal character in my study of the importance of art in the classroom. In fact, he was the person who catapulted me into OISE and the study I am presently pursuing. Only three years ago, I am ashamed to say, I had never heard of Howard Gardner. And now Gardner is a major reason in my desire to extend his influence in schools : visual arts as a way of knowing, and a way that intelligence can be ascertained through looking at the visual output a student provides, for even patterns, and spatial arrangements of lines and shapes reveal ideas that reflect learning. As a child, as I have indicated earlier, I drew and wrote stories. Rather a poor mathematics student, I was never considered to have special skills. Had 1 gone to Spectrum or The Key School, schools that employ Gardner's methods of teaching, I might have been recognised as excelling in two of the "Multiple Intelligences" that Gardner says all people possess. Unsatisfied with the instruments that measured human intellect and the nature of what the 1Q tests by Stanford-Binet, Terman (1 9 16) and Weschler (1939) actually recorded, Joy P.

Guilford (1 967), a psychometrician, considered that creativity was not equivalent to intelligence,

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and she set out to design measures that would record creativity: The key idea in the psychologist's conception of creativity has been divergent thinking. M e r considerable debate and experimentation in the decades following Guilford's challenge, psychologists reached [several] conclusions. While these traits were correlated, an individual may be far more creative than he or she is intelligent, or far more intelligent than creative. (Gardner, 1993, 20) Robert Sternberg (1 977, 1982, 1985) focused his studies on information-processing in psychological testing (in Gardner, and Hatch, 1989). And Howard Gardner's interest "in the development and breakdown of cognitive and symbol-using capabilitiesV(Gardnerand Hatch, 1989, 4) caused him to challenge Piaget's ideas. In Royaumont, France, in October. 1975. Noam Chomsky had, in fact, debated Piaget over this very issue, saying that the brain was a collection of brains or organs where language, one symbol making system was separate and divorced from the others. Brain damaged patients, able to draw, but not to speak, bore out this idea that speech, and drawing reside in different loci in the same hemisphere of the brain (see Gardner's An. Mind dr Brain (1982). For Gardner, there was not one symbol-making and -using system, but seven: Multiple Intelligences. "He defined bi~elligeuceas the capacily fo so/w prohlerns or

lo fmhiotr

products that are valzled in o m or more cultural setti~~gs"(Gardner and Hatch, 1989, 5). Psychologists like Howard Gruber and Howard Gardner examined case studies, in order to search for ~rrambigiousways to document creative behaviour. In fact the Gruber team uncovered "a number of principles that seem[ed] to characterize the work of major scientists, like Charles Darwin or Jean Piaget [the later was Gruber's own teacherJn(Gardner, 1993, 23). Howard Gardner in declaring that people possess and exhibit creativity in various ways also set out to provide a profile that drew on Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, T.S. Elliot, Martha Graham and Mahatma Gandhi as examples of his theory of

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Multiple Intelligences. Each of these well recognised individuals had made definite contributions in his or her domain, changing, altering or extending the knowledge in his or her field forever, and each person represented one or more of what Gardner refers to as Multipie Intelligences:

linguistic, visual-spatial, logical-mathematical, musical, kinaesthetic,

interpersonal,

intrapersonal.

By examining these ways of knowing, we open the field of intelligence to visual artists as well as athletes, and accept that there are more ways of measuring and recognising student progress and prowess than formerly conceived. We focus on the importance of the spatial arrangements among other intelligences that combine with other intelligences to enlighten us about how learning is an integrated thing that draws on an individual's dominant intelligence as defined by Gardner, but also calls upon those lesser ones. All intelligences can be directed at artistic learning. Looking for clues from creative thinkers, Gardner located reoccurring themes that unite the lives of his exemplary masters. As children, they all revealed an initial interest in their particular disciplines. The child in the adult is an important theme for Gardner's study. Albert Einstein was fascinated with the delightful questions of how he might travel beside a beam of light, and he pondered, as all children, why do things move as they do. The young Picasso, too, anthropomorphized numerals, and drew outrageous cartoons, dislocating and juxtaposing people, places and objects in a whirl of childish pleasure of playing with paper and paint. And the child Gandhi first revealed his interest in equality and fairness when he selected for himself the role of peacemaker at school and at home. In all these cases, the precocious childhood behaviour was not only noted but accepted and encouraged in the families of these unique personalities. Even

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Freud approached his unravelling of his patientst dreams through the stream of consciousness, used childhood sexual dreams and fantasies as keys in pursuit of adult traumas. Interestingly, Gardner felt it was difficult to undo stereotypes or ideas learned in childhood. He suggested carefblly selected topics of study, many points of view, and diverse approaches in order to rectifL and change established notions. He proposed on-going feedback with teachers to promote a dialectic in which it might be possible to alter views. What Gardner valued in these childhood activities is a wholeness of experience, simple questions and visions that strike at the face of convention. Usually dismissed as childish nonsense, the notions of these outstanding people persisted when most adults would have dismissed their ideas as silly or worthless. Posing and reposing unanswerable questions, holding firm to a stance is most often referred to as stubborn ,rebellious or challenging childish behaviour. Passion or rage is most often thought to belong to the child who is unable to control her emotions or behaviour, for, it is thought that grownups should present a controlled, confident air to the world because of her sum of knowledge is finite, unchanging and predictable. Gardnertsapproach to education is child-centred since all work proceeds from the young child's interests, responses. Just as Paul Klee and others admired the innocent eye of the child, Gardner hopes for the freshness of the childhood vision before society has imposed its conventional ideas. Interestingly, the families of Freud, Einstein, Graham, Stravinsky, Eliot, Picasso, and Gandhi were considered by Gardner as somewhat cold, bourgeois and concerned with a strict morality and appearance that the children behave in an acceptable and correct manner. Yet each child examined followed her own code, ignoring or rebuking accepted ways of looking at the world.

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Perhaps it is this coldness that eventually marked each child to see or actually position him or herself as an outsider, a marginal person. T.S. Eliot chose to leave his well respected American family and education, and live in England. His interest in the French poet of the late nineteenth century, Jules Laforgue, sccmed at first peculiar to the Harvard student. Laforgue experimented with many voices of despair, decadence and boredom. Referred to as "elective affinity" by Goethe, Eliot identified with the alienation that Laforgue projected of his lost souls in his poetry. Eliot would later use the clash of voices to span the worlds of the rich and common, all disjointed fiom their various societies: as heard in "The Wasteland and "The Lovesong of Alfred 1. Prufrock." Eliot's own voice is not distinct from the many others he conjures in fragmented bits of speech; however, it is his stance as the objective recorder who unifies and projects himself as the speaker for the displaced persons in his poetry, unable to fit in either world that marks him as apart or a pan from the worlds created in poetry. In Gardner's system of educating by addressing

a child's Multi?le Intelligences, he anticipates his students will not only express their personal voices. but use a universal language that speaks to and unites those of similar feeling, providing as these exemplary 20th Century people universal chorus. Investigating the cultural context is another area Gardner proposes in his method of applying Multiple Intelligences. Like Eliot, one might consider both Einstein and Freud as marginal because they were Jews in German-speaking countries, countries with histories of antipathy towards Jews and countries that took drastic measures to rid their countries of Jews. No doubt, ethnic tensions during childhood and adulthood must have pervaded the lives of these men, who ultimately were exiled fiom their homes in Germany and Austria . Martha Graham, too, was an outsider because of her gender in a male dominated field of

111 dance. And yet, I think it is this "being on the ouiside" yet being familiar with the field or discipline that yields the new insight, "the innovative." The perspective of the outsider who spans her own discipline or field as an active participant but as well, assumes the role of a critic outside the field to force a re-evaluation from the viewpoint of someone who has special insights in that field, yet can fairly and knowledgably peruse knowledge in its own special terms. Perhaps most important in Gardner's prescriptive methods of immersing and nourishing artistic thinking is his idea of reflection on student work. Gardner uses the term bbasynchronies"to explain "the lack of smooth connections" that result from the individual's conflict with herself, her field of expertise, and/or her domain. In all cases, the individual does not fit with the established way of doing things, either selecting or rejecting established methods of approaching problems. Aware, and reflective of themselves as anomalies, these creative persons set out to formulate a new symbolic language to say what they need to say or express. Fortunately, it seems there are always supportive individuals who have an inkling or understanding of the intent of the person who yearns to go beyond the known and accepted. Hopefilly these are teachers or fiiends who act as teachers, facilitate student confidence to withstand peer pressure. Discussing work, giving feedback and hearing other artists discuss and defend their points of view helps the student; teachers have an important role to play in the development of independent thinking. Gardner suggests apprenticeships where the student is observed, made a "journeyperson" and eventually a master. In Igor Stravinsky's case, he was trained by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, heralded by Diaghilev with whom Stravinsky worked for twenty years, during which time he wrote "The Firebird" and "Petrouchka". In the spring of 1910, Stravinsky collaborated with

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Nicholas Roerich, painter, archaeologist, ethnographer and Nijinsky, dancer and choreographer to fashion "The Rite of Spring". When performed, "The Rite of Spring" was heckled by the audiences and critics who said, "Surely such stuff should by played on primeval instruments- or. better, not played at all." Others lambasted the piece by saying, "A crowd of savages, with knowledge or instinct enough to let them make the instruments speak, might have produced such noisesm(Gardner,1993, 205). However, Ravel, one of Stravinsky's friends, understood what many did not: "The orchestra had to be seen as a single multiregistered instrument seeking a single effectm(Gardner,1993, 206-207). And Debussy also ventured, "An extraordinary, ferocious thing. You might say it's primitive music with every modern convenienceW(Gardner,1993, 207). Based on simple childhood lullabies and tunes culled from the memory of his nursery, Stravinsky was propelling music into a new brilliant discordant mode as if reworking his past into something that "capture[d] the feelings of everyday experience...through pulsing rhythms and sharp accents"(1993, 397). Stravinsky's accruing tacit knowledge made him break with established and accepted modes of music. He retold his story of music by incorporating childhood melodies. He threatened and startled the music community by breaking with established patterns. Freud, too, with his early encouragement by Wilheim Fliess, a physician from Berlin, was nurtured and encouraged through his "scientific speculation"( 1993, 62). Jean-Manin C harcot introduced the young Freud to the world of patient neuroses in his clinic at the Salpetriere hospital in 1885- 1886. Led by Freud's discussion papers, the Wednesday Psychological Society met weekly to review new developments in the field. Developing techniques of free association, dream analysis, and therapeutic interventions, Freud attracted new converts to his theories: Jung and Adler, to name just two. Motivated by a need to create his own vocabulary, Freud wanted to

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establish a new language, that traced various neural connections and energy fields... he was playing with ideas that could not be readily explained in the technical vocabulary of his time-he needed to create his own linguistic and graphic language through which he could convey exact meaning. (1993, 68) In all scenarios, the creative individuals steep themselves in their respective fields. developing

mastery, often through apprenticeship, and then step, or as Martha Graham did, or dance from the past into new light. Established and old ideas combine to produce unexpected and spectacular new ways of expression. Graham reported that she was absorbed by many paintings, for example, Sandro Botticelli's Renaissance work, "Primavera". As well Greek myths were germane to her stories put to dance. "Electra"(193 l), "Cave of the Heart"(1946), the story of Medea, "Oedipus Rex", "Errand into the MazeV(1947),the story of Jason and his love, and "Clytemnestra"( 1958) drew on old mythological themes to present a unique way of moving the body in space. using it as the primary tool of narrative expression. Influenced by life and burgeoning ideals in frontier America, and the vast expanses of native American lands in New Mexico, Graham expressed the American spirit in her open, free movement of the body in motion. Agnes de Mille said of Graham, ...[she] made the greatest change in her an -in the idiom. in the technique, in the content ,and the point of view-greater, than any other single artist ...It is probably the greatest addition to dance vocabulary made in the century. (1 993, 307)

T.S. Eliot also, returned to myth, the Bible, ancient sources, Shakespeare and other

notable authors to convey the emotional void of everyday existence. Gardner reflects that heredity and environment interact in the creation of individuals who change how society thinks. It is impossible to dismiss the era in which these creative personalities

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lived (ca. 1885- W O ) , for "Guernica" by Picasso is a direct reaction to the bombing of the Basque town in Spain caught in wartime fire. Gandhi's concept of satyawaha is a direct response to British repression and restriction on India's rights. Turbulence, industrialization, isolation, and constant change mark this era as one of restiveness and discord. Yet, the "spirit of the age" does seem to impact on the thinking of creative minds, although perhaps it is the coming of new technology that influences trends in modernity. In "An Integrated Approach to Teaching Modernist Literature and Painting", Francis I. Ryan (1 992) stipulates that art and literature have reacted similarly to changes in Western culture. Where once madwoman saw themselves as part of the cosmos, he/she now felt cast upon the sea of life, untethered and undone, seeking home, shelter, a connection with place. Slawhterhouse Five by Kurt Vonneyt organizes a storyline spatially, not chronologically, as stories were once strppomi to be presented. T.S. Eliot responded to the chaos of 20th Century life in his poetry. Ezra Pound was T.S. Eliot's most important sympathetic encourager, as well as his editor so he hnctioned not only as a friend but as a master-teacher who reviewed Eliot's work with him. Most importantly, Pound must have empathized with Eliot's view of society. Eliot understood and used in his imagist poems a new means of organization that provided a framework to his "poem parts." Bits of poetry torn from antique, classical, Shakespearian works revealed how fragmented Eliot's own time was, unable to connect or communicate with the traditions of a meaningful past. Like bits of overheard fragments of speech, the poems are a comment and a criticism of his age. The inability to communicate was shown by juxtaposing poetry lines from diverse times and places. Form and content come together to express the idea that Eliot wished to impart.

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Going outside of the verse, itself, was not needed since the work was only integral, entire, to itself, "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant in tirnem(Ryan,1992, 48). Allusions could be complete since contexts were missing. In the poetry, only a name or a fragment remains of what was once an entire work. In painting as well, formalist concerns replaced landscapes and naturalistic backgrounds where once madwoman was depicted as part, as belonging to hidher environment. Picasso, and his famous friend, Georges Braque, understood this dissonance or feeling of fragmentation, and sought a new way, a new vocabulary to express the resonances between life and art in their development of Cubism. Through their desire to show more of the world, they presented the front, backs and sides of objects, inventing the use of papier mache and collage to intermingle with the painted surfaces of their canvases in an attempt to make art and life come together- at least on paper. Gombrich, in refemng to James J. Gibson, says this paradox is the most complex since we never see the world as a flat picture. But strangely, we do see a flat picture as is if it were the world (Gombrich and Erbon, 1993, 98). However, instead of revealing a truer a d more accrirate perception of reality, artists put on view a fractured, disconnected one which disoriented some viewers completely. Making sense of collage. photographs and pictures is difficult for students, comments Ryan. He says, ...perceived as a whole, they generate a gestalt message, that is at once, emotionally

arresting and intellectually engaging. In the wake of this immediate response, students can then analyse how discrete pieces of collage are interrelated and how the overall network functions in making a unified, visual statement. (Ryan, 1992, 48) And so it seems that what pervades the works of this modem era is paradox. In a desire to

represent a fullness of the times, the artists' images are fragmented, truly representative of their

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days. The unifying factor exists only in the artists' minds because they see the connections, making those accords on paper in a world that appears to them to need an expression that consolidates the experiences of isolation and angst. For this problem, Picasso, Eliot, Stravinsky and the others presented in Gardner's profile of the creative personalities, concocted new languages because the feelings experienced required new words to convey separation, and angst. Like the theme of the marginal perspective, a sense of not belonging pervaded the artist. She was an outsider from nature in urban centres, away from rituals and recreation in the family, seeking - but ultimately having to create a home in the artform's limited space and time. The Ife is found within the art as whole and satisfying, perhaps a substitute for being an onlooker to a world that cannot be understood in its immensity and its confirsion. In a sense, art fblfils this function for the child at school, separated from her family and home, particularly if the student is not a member of the majority. There is an infantile pleasure in extending and making bigger by one's own efforts the margins of one's world: naming, defining, giving form where there was none before. In this way, these artists extended their domains and lay claim to a heritage that would remain after each had gone, but which asserted, "I was here. I made a difference." From an early age Freud sought an area in which to make his name. Gandhi used the media to spread the success and failures of his cause and confrontations. And Picasso was, as well, self-promoting by his liaisons and antics in the public arena. Creative, intelligent individuals- all. People who might not have scored well on the Stanford-Binet tests: Gandhi was a mediocre student; Einstein, dyslexic, a late speaker, his early failures in the regimented German schools, and Zurich's Polytechnic Institute are history; Picasso,

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too, hated school, avoided attending, and performed badly, always " want[ing ] to treat numbers as if they were visual patterns3'(Gardner, 1993, 14 1). And yet, these are the individuals who have shaped the twentieth century and through whose eyes, we see our world. Gardner's theory through his case studies examines creativity, intelligences that had not been identified previously. Interestingly, in every case study, the artist drew upon more than one "intelligence". Martha Graham was strong in her bodily and Iinpistic intelligences. Gandhi's

personal and lilqpiistic intelligences set him apart from others. Picasso's strengths resided in his spatial, personal, bodily intelligences. Bolstered by supportive families and encouraging friends, possessing for the most pan, confidant, often childlike personalities, these exemplary individuals were not deterred by conventional ideas on brightness. Not only did they master their chosen fields, making comprehensive strides. but they continued to make radical breakthroughs ten years after their initial insights, not satisfied "to go gentl[y] into that good night0@ylan Thomas). Even thiny years after initial discoveries, many were still engaged in important avenues of discovery.

The Influence of the Chinese Way of Schooling on Howard Gardner Goethe speaks of "elective affinity". For Margaret Mead, it was the South Seas, for Erik Erikson, it was India. For Gardner, it was China. He sees similarities between the backgrounds of the Jews, his religious and cultural background, and the Chinese: the importance of family, tradition and education. He says that both Jews and the Chinese possess "a gentle, irreverent sense of humour,... and guilt about [their] misdeeds.. .[that provides them with] a willingness to step back and think in terms of the long hauln(Gardner, 199 1, 137). His comfort in the Chinese culture yields him a second home, a standpoint from which he can speculate about what is good in

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the Chinese educational system so that he can suggest improvements or compromises to his own American one. Gardner responds to the Confbcian sensibility which is the ideal for the Chinese artist: an amalgam of scholarship, sensibility, rectitude, and aesthetic allusiveness ( Gardner, 1989, 309). A respect for tradition teaches the Chinese that they must look in two directions, backwards towards their ancestors, and upwards towards authority. Following the Soviet system, the Chinese employ gifted teachers, often artists themselves, who hnction as the repositoly of the wisdom and technique of the past, "who will transmit that knowledge faithfully"(1989, 275). Their method is to take the most complex activity and to break it down into the simplest of parts, gradually building the components until completion. Aspiring child artists begin serious study at an early age, learning how to hold their brushes, how to apply their ink, how to move their brushes "dancelike across the papern(1989, 179).These strict procedures are prescribed rituals. just as the tea ceremony, and calligraphy must be, for the arts are about performance, and teaching the hows of proper behaviour. Over and over again, the child, the adolescent, the adult will practice and copy until the hand of her forefathers has become her own. More than repetitive mastery of media, the concepts taught model the aesthetic life whose essence is a moral life: [Beauty) enriches and elevates man's spiritual life and helps him to have a beautiful ideal and a goal for his endeavors and helps also to cany on with his labor, work and studies and to derive beautihl results from them ...being involved in the arts is part of being a good, orderly, harmonious person. (Gardner, 1989, 267) Becoming the outsider, Gardner, himself, is detached, able to look with new eyes and consider other cultures ways of educating children. The desire to create an ethical human is laudable, but

11 9 Gardner comments, "In the past, the very recent past, the arts in China had been intertwined with regnant political social and moral goals of the culture"(1989, 193). We need not add that the goals of many of those governments, as in Hitler's day, have been, to say the least, repressive and inglorious to the human spirit. If the reason for the Chinese arts is the formulation of moral character through the re-

creation of traditional forms, the purpose of Western creativity presented from Gardner's point of view, is best described as the human capacity used "to solve problems or fashion products in a domain, in a way that is initially novel, but ultimately acceptable in a culture"(1989, 14). Although Gardner is aware of the American interest in cognitive activity, a desire to explore, and an attitude that champions "Art for Art's sake", he nonetheless is able to combine aspects of the Chinese system with the American one to suggest a fruitful assimilation of both approaches to education and perception of our world. This model would look like this: From ages zero to seven, children would freely and unstructuredly investigate ma;erials, and media. Opportunities would be given to discover what "crystallizing" experiences might result.[Gardner refers to "crystallizing experiences" as "an initial affective attraction to a domain of experience...[where] proclivity of achievement [is discemible]"(l989,20). During these early years, behaviour of politeness, sharing and listening would be expected. Journal entries made by Gardner concerning Project Zero, a trial school under the auspices of Harvard that developed from the seeds of The Underwood School in Massachusetts, reported he observed that children ages two to seven were small sized artists, fluent in their use of symbols, quite capable of composing drawings and of accompanying themselves on instruments, free of preconceived ways to doing things.

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Gardner's proposal of combining the educational systems of the East and West would have children fiom ages seven to fourteen learning rules, inculcated with basic skills and cultural tradition. Chinese children are taught to look back (to tradition) and up (to authority and rules) In Gardner's research in A -tr

(1982) he discovered that children at approximately

seven years of age want very specific skills to make their art look real. They delight in the discipline and enjoy applying rules. From observation in Project Zero, Gardner reported that eight year olds spumed experimentation, preferring rhyming poems, literal stories and desiring "fidelity to reylations"(Gardner, 1982, 59). Gardner strongly feels, "The skills inculcated in young

Chinese allow them, paradoxically, the freedom to create powefil new messages. In the absence of such skills, Americans are often forced as adults to revert to tricks; to acquire new skills at a time when it is far harder to do so; or to remain unable to communicate their (deeply valued) conceptions to others"(1989, 305). On third of the Gardner's proposed school day would take place in the form of apprenticeships in at least three areas: art forms or crafts, bodily discipline (dance or sport), and academic discipline (1989, 300). By working with an established master as an apprentice, the student is introduced to actual first hand knowledge of the expertise required and used in the field, but she also develops a human bond and relationship with a person whose personal insights can enrich her life and sustain a link and meaning with her community and past, preventing a generation gap. This idea of apprenticeships has become a mainstay in Gardner's practicuums. Combining theory and practice, apprenticeships permit and encourage the development of competence in a tield. From fourteen to twenty-one or college age, students would challenge rules and

experiment, seeking alternative "modes of knowing".

Theory in Practice The Schools Hoping to create a balance, Gardner has taken into consideration different kinds and ways of knowing, providing access to general and specific modes, fieedom and discipline. Just as he, himselt has taken the point of view of another, Gardner recommends that schools incorporate multicultural views to aid in broadening student perspective. His schools are living laboratories where he has watched the success of his ideas in practice. As well, Gardner reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of his project schools in the 1980s to inform his research: Spectrum: Undertaken by Gardner along with David Feldman at Tufts University,

this "child-centred" structure hoped to identify "potential intelligences",embedded in the culture that are meaningfid to the child. Students were supplied with a plethora of rich and inviting materials, their progress of interaction recorded over the course of a year (Gardner, 1989. 20 1-203). At present, there are 15 activities which "tap a particular intelligence or set of intelligences." Teachers informally observe, "but more formal assessment of intelligences is possible". Teachers in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and Boston "report heightened motivation on the part of students,...and even individuals who had previously considered unexceptional or even at risk for school failure" have benefitted, reflecting on their own growth and development (Gardner and Hatch, 1989, 7). This school explores the concept of "resonance" by reinforcing the concept of a child's experience in the setting of school, home and museum (Kornhaber et al., 1990, 193). Gardner concluded that he hoped this kind of nourishing environment might be made available for all preschoolers; however, he reflected that no actual "interference" by staff encouraged children who were unresponsive to available materials; neither were children with obvious gifts or

122 strengths facilitated (Gardner, 1989, 290). Gardner suggests beginning where the child is, motivating her to take control over her own learning, and continue to explore what is interesting and stimulating in a supportive environment.

The Key School: An entire intercity school in Indianapolis was taken over by a group

of teachers in September, 1987, after Gardner's return fiom China. Intent on exposing the student population to the all kinds of "intelligences", in addition to the regular academic ones, The Key School provided musical and bodily-kinaesthetic activities. Schoolwide themes of harmony, patterns. connections changed every nine weeks. "Through a variety of special classes (e.g. computing, bodily-kinesthetic activities) and enrichment activities (flow centre and apprentice like p d ) , all children in the Key School were given the opportunity to discover their strengths and to develop the full range of intelligences"(Gardner and Hatch, 1989, 7). Portfolios for work collection and videotape assessment based on specific criteria for documentation of children's growth were instituted as means to record an evolving portrait of the student (Gardner, 1989, 203-205). Gardner was attracted to the use of portfolio and videotape.

Personally, I have a problem with the process of videotape since the video taper may be looking for some specific aspect of endeavour, and neglect to record objectively. There is a point of view, a reduction of means built into this method. In contrast, the portfolio is wholly produced

by the student. Her point of view fashions her output. What is seen is not fashioned by the observer which reflects a bias. When To Open Min& was published, Gardner stated he had not decided on the effectiveness of procedures at The Key School. Whether Gardner was unsure or not, both Harvard and Yale do permit their applicants to follow up their formal applications with portfolios. In reviewing The Key School, Gardner seems disturbed that "core" cultural ideas and children with special learning needs were not given proper attention (1989, 290).

ArtsPROPEL: Spurred on by the interest of the J. Paul Getty Trust in Discipline-Based Art Education, Gardner and his colleagues at Harvard Project Zero, the Educational

Testing Service and the Pittsburgh public school system investigated the use of syrnbolusing skills in normal and giRed children. They shifted from a philosophical and psychological approach to actually applying theory in a practical way in practical situations of classroom. They felt central to artistic learning was Production. Perception and Reflection (Gardner, 1989, 205). Gardner relates the differences between his approach and

DBAE:the child's art production as the main source of generating connections and inquiry and reflection as opposed to a laid on or shared foci of art history, art criticism and aesthetics. As well, in Gardner's approach, he has developed "domain projects" in an enriched environment that feature sets of exercises and curriculum activities organised around a concept central to a specific artistic domain "each possessing criteria of assessment, for example, musical notation or preparatory sketches "(Gardner and Hatch, 1989, 7). Because Gardner and his colleagues are very concerned with assessment. they

locate in the activity geared to the particular intelligence an appropriate means to assess it. So, for example, multiple choice test would not be used to reflect program development in bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence. Gardner says he and his colleagues worked diligently on assessment being "intelligence fair", assessing directly a student's ability to work with a medium or symbol system (Gardner, 1989, 208). Portfolios are again employed as a "cognitive map, a process record", filled with notations, drawings, random thoughts, early drafts, sketches, reactions, completed passages, etc. that document the growth of the student. Rather than the emphasis on the polished and perfected end product, the ultimate performance, as the Chinese demand, Gardner delves into the processes that must be ongoing if the student is to continue as a lifelong learner, fascinated by her world and herself Discussion Gardner views ArtsPROPELts enriching environment and means of assessment as successes, reiterating his belief that there is no "pure potential" apart from some experience in

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working with a domain or symbol system (Kornhaber, 1990, 195). He does, however, comment on the difficulty of changing teacher attitudes to accommodate this new approach towards education, although he involves teachers directly with the selection of materials in the domain projects as well as their attempting the same projects they set for the students. Teacher expertise is utilised in setting criteria for program assessment so that their input is extremely valuable to the success of Gardner's theories in practice. He says, "A most important event in a child's education is the discovery of a domain of strength and interestm(Gardner,1989, 29 1). What surprises me, however, is his dismissal of the Getty system of DBAE. In Gardner's own criticism of The Key School, he womes about "core" cultural ideas being overlooked. As well, in concluding his comments in C r e u Min& he admonishes the Post-Modernists for their refusal to go back before 1900 and their dismissal of the cultural past. Gardner, by locating the child's art production as the main focus for her learning also ignores the rich tradition of the past. although he would say he desires art criticism and history to grow out of the student's own production. The teaching of these disciplines is not formal but incidental, arising when they are pertinent. 1 prefer, however, that the child is knowledgeable and is able to bring some of these past ideas tci bear on her work. The Getty approach does investigate the history, the criticism, the aesthetics that encircle and engender the child's production which is part, not all of the process. Gardner's model of learning is not the cumulative-block one, but the spiral that moves and entwines upwards and downwards continuously into the child's art work. I do not find the Getty "unit" one to be at odds with the spiral conception since the implementation of ideas and principles in a n production reuses and recycles ideas so that adding new units or blocks to a child's knowledge allows that spiral to widen and grow.

TDOpen Min& concludes with Gardner's suggestionsfor a "individual-centred"schoo1: 1. A profile of the child's intelligences would be recorded and monitored on a regular

basis in order to detect strengths and weaknesses in the various intelligences. 2.Cunicula assessment procedures, and educational options would be offered that best suit the individual child's special intelligences. 3. "Cognitive Prosthetics" in the form of visual software would be available to

discourage frustration in certain areas for certain learners. 4.Matching students to "educational opportunities" in the world outside the school walls would allow for the use of apprenticeships, mentorships and access to greater resources than are situated within the school, itself (for fbrther discussion, see To Open Minds, Chapter 13:"Reflections in a Professional Key").

Reasons To Develop New Tests To Identify Giftedness In Diverse Population

In "Giftedness. Diversity, and Problem-Solving" (Maker et al., 1994), June Maker. Aleene

Nielson and Judith Rogers. three professors from the University of Arizona, Tucson, discuss Multiple Intelligence (MI) Theory. They understand that with a new cultural and linguistic population in the U.S. since 1900, new perceptions of "giftedness and beliefs about what abilities should be recognised and developed in U.S. schools"(Maker et al., 1994) must be put into place. Since schools had primarily relied on linguistic and logical-mathematical questions to track intelligence, Gardner proposed that introducing other ways of assessing learning might afford a new and different picture of human intelligence. Gardner, in his own research looked for studies

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that included both normal and special populations of idiot savants, learning disabled, prodigies, autistic individuals, and representatives from many cultures to create a sample in which if, "candidate capacities ...turned up repeatedly in these disparate literatures", he could develop a provisional list of human intelligences (Gardner and Hatch, 1989, 5). Aware that many populations have been under represented in programs for The Gifted, many educators have looked to Howard Gardner's definition of creativity residing in "domain" specific areas for help in identifying the Gifted student who does not perform well on the traditional tests: ...culture, language, and environment do not determine whether or not an individual will be gifted; instead, they influence the specific ways in which giftedness is expressed...For example, using language where nouns come first may contribute to a holistic style of thinking, while using languages in which adjectives come first may contribute to a more linear, analytical style of thinking. (Gardner and Hatch, 1989. 6)

Determining where a child comes from, what skills and role models are valued, and what her culture values in general allow the educator to begin to paint a picture of what is considered special or outstanding in light of her society. Most importantly, language is a key to thinking in a particular society because ideas are given shape and expression in language that reflect underlying concepts. Due to disproportionate numbers of the dominant society's children in American GiAed Programs and the lack of minorities, researchers realised their methods of identification must be skewered. Gardner felt that the content of the testing must be practical or applicable in real settings to actually record intelligence, and the record of that intelligence should not be a one shot affair, but recorded over time. As well, Gardner felt that the actual setting where the student took the tests must also be improved. He suggested the child's usual classroom where the student felt comfortable and could

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interact or work by herself, just as she had everyday in accruing and displaying her knowledge. Supportive networks of parents and teachers must validate the child's intelligences. even if those intelligences differ from the dominant culture's. With increasing numbers of peoples from many places, researchers must do more than accommodate; they must honour diverse societal values and different ways of knowing, implementing them into school programs: We need a deeper understanding of how social systems motivate individuals to delve

into these kinds of problems, of the policies that have spumed people from engaging their intelligences, of the effect of parents and peer groups, and how this effect might be enhanced and of the effect of school organization and curriculum on a variety of students. (Kornhaber et a]., 1990, 195) The results of this investigation are far reaching and much needed in a world where students use graffiti to assert their voices because they feel they must express themselves publicly. Without acceptance, students turn to cynicism, destruction, and nihilism, seek a place and peers to which to belong with. Joseph Campbell, (1988) in his many works on myth, agrees that the dissolution of the family has caused adolescence to form gangs in which rituals of passage make them a "family." If society does not all provide for a student's identity and make place for her, she will look elsewhere, rejecting and seeking to destroy a society that is alienating her.

Teacher Stories of Implementation Howard Gardner's theories on Multiple Intelligences (MI) have been taken very seriously. so seriously in fact, that the fabric of many schools has been altered and changed in the past ten years to accommodate a new way of looking at how intelligence is initiated and understood. Thomas Hatch, a research associate at Harvard's Project Zero writes in dcational HORIZONS, Summer 1993, that the "theory of Multiple Intelligences encouraged many people to rethink how

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schools value and support the abilities of children "(Hatch, 1993, 198). Finally relinquishing emphasis on linguistic and logical-mathematical testing, educators are accepting the "idea that both curricula and assessments need to reflect... 'authentic' activities-that students are likely to experience outside of schoo17'(Hatch, 1993, 198). Some evaluation and assessment procedures are being considered in d m , not detached fiom "real life" classroom situations in "intelligence-fair" ways, "without the need to rely on linguistic or logical means or abilities as an intermediary7' (Kornhaber et al., 1990, 192). Kornhaber and Krechevsky refer to nine schools that have interpreted and applied MI in

various ways: using learning centres; assigning projects that draw upon a number of different intelligences; employing new systems of assessment that reflect strengths and needs of their students; instituting portfolios; revamping the structure and organization of schools: team teaching and grouping teachers who possess similar specialties. Although teachers proclaim a sense of ownership and commitment to ideas, they also maintain the process of change to be long and exhausting. Constant meetings with students, peers and parents drain their energy away from actual classroom and student interaction. In an 1992 issue of Educdnal Lead-,

two teachers from two different schools

write about their successes and failures in implementing Gardner's M1 into their programs. Laura Ellison, a teacher fiom the Clara Barton School in Minneapolis is enthusiastic about her forays into the process. She involves parents and students by conferencing with her students, and their parents in September to set goals, and later in February refocuses, reaffirms, and celebrates student work. She begins initially by asking the student, "Have you thought about your goals for this year?'WWith the parents, she enquires, "What is your child really good at? What is hard for

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your child? What are you concerned or hstrated with?'By listening, she uncovers the child's history. Ellison uses a "goal-setting" form that focuses on the seven Multiple Intelligences. For example, in the Intrapersonal section, students might reveal feelings, and fears about responsibility, confidence and self-management, and decide to set goals to relax and smile more. As well, journals are used by students to write or draw about "imagined successes relating to their goals "(Ellison, 1992, 72). Portfolios, collection of significant student work, comments, threedimensional creations, etc. are all used to document progress at Ellison's public school from K-8. Special Achievement Days are set aside for parents to come and see all collected information. Ellison states that throughout the year she refers to the concept of MI, using "a variety of intelligent behaviours that world cultures value " (Ellison, 1992, 7 1). She continues. "As students internalize the many forms of intelligent behaviour, they broaden their respect for the diversity of abilities in the classroom" (1992, 71). Ellison and her students give proof to Dewey's statements of learning from multiple points of view from many cultures. For Ellison and her students, MI is a positive experience where student differences are honoured: "all areas of growth become the domain for school learning and all kinds of excellence are celebrated" (1 992, 72). Gardner's identification of MI as reflective of intelligences, his outreach to the involvement of the community, the introduction of portfolios and the encouragement of student reflection would surely benefit any school program. Thomas Hoerr, (1992) the director at The New City School in St. Louis, Missouri also evaluates the Ml program introduced at his school. At the inception, his teachers met to discuss Gardner's book. They formed a Talent Committee that consisted of twelve of the 32 faculty members on staff. Fearing that the curriculum in their pre-K to Grade 6 would be disjointed, the

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Talent Committee introduced school-wide themes: Life Along the River; Inventions, etc. They soon realised that enormous amounts of time spent on planning themes could better be spent on focusing on MI ; so, grade-wide themes replaced school-wide ones: Keepers of the Earth; Travel Back to the Future, etc. Although implementation varied in individual classroom, activities were organized by teachers to reflect MI. Hoerr described one classroom in which children were reading, counting beans, drawing, writing in their journals, inventing dances and practising songs: all ways to develop and extend students' MI. Learning by doing, putting theory into practice underline John Dewey's educational philosophy. Hoerr's comments reflect some nervousness albeit a commitment to Gardner's approach. This commitment is seen in his words: Because we know that how you measure determines what you measure and what you measure determines what you value, we must design ways of capturing student progress in all of the intelligences. (Hoerr, 1992, 68) Hoerr concludes by pointing out that his staff has been made stronger through reflection, dialogue and discussion, the process touted by Gardner in ArtsPROPEL. As teachers, we know that

change is difficult and often slow, for breaking known patterns is always uncomfortable and we fear the unknown. What if this new method doesn't work? Will we be worse off than before? . Having begun the process is, however, the hardest part because it reflects a desire to see practice differently and put into effect a new variety of perspectives that may awaken some child to excitement in learning for perhaps the first time!

DISCOVER, an Assessment that Grew Out of Multiple Intelligence Theory. The authors of DISCOVER, Laker, Neilson and Rogers evaluated ways of looking at

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accomplishments in MI. Maker and colleagues developed a continuum of problems that allowed learners to use convergent or divergent thinking to find solutions to problems. In this continuum, Problems I and II are similar to those found on standardized achievement and intelligence tests, requiring predetermined or "correct" content matter or skills so interpersonal intelligence or creativity cannot be measured in this section. In Type I, an example of Linguistic Intelligence might be tested by asking a child to provide a label for a specific toy. In Type 11, the child is asked to make groups of toys and tell how items in the group are alike (some are obvious). Proceeding along the continuum in the matrix of testing, are Type I11 problems that require a combination of convergent and divergent thinking, and there is a range of acceptable answers. For a Linguistic Type 111 problem, the child is again asked to group the toys, telling how they are alike, but this time, she is encouraged to go beyond what is obvious. Type IV and V require more open-ended responses. and necessitate more divergent thinking than in Type 111. The child selects a method and develops her own criteria for coming to terms with possible solutions to the question. TYPE V, often "real world problems"(Maker et al., 1994, 7), the most unstructured problems, require the learner to explore , identify and determine

how the criteria comes together in order to formulate first, the question, and second, the answer. For TYPE IV, a child is asked to tell a story that include all of her toys. And for Type V, she would have to write a story about a personal experience, something made up or, anything she wishes. Only the format is given, but the content and organization will be her own. In these problems, the child can draw on her personal experiences, her social setting and her culture to develop her answers in her own way. There are criteria to assess the child's performance. Unlike testing that is used to substantiate the existence of programs, this method is based on the child,

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herself The authors, Maker, Nielson and Rogers have designed this process of assessing MI by developing this problem matrix and have named it DISCOVER. Tested in the familiar environment of their classes with fun, enriching and versatile materials, students interact with peers to problem solve in a variety of ways. Although the math sheet and writing task do not require observers, the other activities do. When the children have completed the tasks, the observers study and collate information to produce a profile that identifies strengths across the five intelligences: spatial, logical-mathematical, linguistic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. The authors look forward to adding bodily-kinesthetics and music to their problem-solving activities in the future. The results based on case studies are gratifLing since students who would not have been identified as gifted are now eligible for enrichment classes, and the distribution of minorities in gifted programs now appears to be more equitable. In fact, the authors feel they have created a new category of intelligence that reflects these children as "gifted in general problem solving" (Maker at al., 1994, 13), a "problem-solving" intelligence that reflects these children are gifted in general problem solving Sternberg (I 98 I ; 1994) has also developed other "intelligences", extending the meaning of the term "intelligence" even further. When we begin to think differently about intelligences, new doors are opened in our understanding of how to define ,apply and measure intelligence. The authors of DISCOVER stipulate, One of the most important goals of these programs is to increase the individual learner's control of the learning process and opportunities for decision making in situations involving both learning and other aspects of living. To us, this is true empowerment-an essential but often neglected part of education. (Maker et al., 1994, 18)

I couldn't agree more.

Conclusion In these chapters, 1used three theoreticians who set out the basis for my discussion. John Dewey's ideas on learning by doing, consulting multiple points of view, using current technology and understanding the indivisibility between art and life are followed by Elliot Eisner's views on making schools enriching environments for students. Eisner's development of the program of

DBAE focuses on the integration of art making, art history, art criticism and aesthetics. He maintains that school is the place for opportunities, and a healthy relationship between home, school and community will ensure the kind of milieu that enables students to filfill their potentials in society. Eisner has considered the qualitative alternatives to quantitative testing, and concluded that portfolios, observation over time, open-ended tests like his "expressive objective" ( 1 972, 580) provide more insightful information on student achievement than traditional methods. Using

art as the paradigm, Eisner has pointed out the kinds of decisions necessary for "real life" in the "real world" are those practised in making and thinking about art: changing direction, considering relationships, connoisseurship and criticism. Howard Gardner believes, like Eisner, that art production is key. Gardner's research on creativity has yielded new ways of thinking and assessing intelligence. Gardner's research into individuals who have made a difference in the 20th century, his investigation into China and his many studies have prompted him to turn theory into practice in his "laboratory schools": Project Zero, AnsPROPEL, Spectrum, Key School, and others. All three theoreticians have gone beyond theory to see their ideas implemented into practice. Barbara Hepworth was included in Dewey's chapter because her meditations on

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experience closely resemble Dewey's. Dewey thought the artist was the model people should emulate to make their lives more meaningful. Hepworth's life exemplifies theory and practice through word and image. From Dewey's work, guidance, and consultationship, Dr. Albert Barnes created his Foundation. Eisner, with the support of the Getty Institute, has seen the cumulative, sequential DBAE program implemented in schools across America. Through his many books and articles and experimental schools, Gardner's concept of Multiple Intelligences has influenced the way subjects are taught and tested in schools. These three theoreticians, Dewey, Eisner and Gardner, and one artist, Barbara Hepwonh, are unwavering in their belief in the importance of art in life. My thesis is grounded in these people because of the strength and continuing endurance of their visions. The relationship of art and life in and out of school is the recurrent theme in this thesis. Students, consciously or not, are influenced by the presence of art in every aspect of their lives.

IV.

ART INTHE OUTSIDE WORLD

ART ISSUES One of art's importantf ~ n c t i o ~is~tos critique socie5 Goya, Kolfwitz,Picasso , are all artists who have used their art to comment on the mistreatment of htrmanity at the ha&s of cuflolrsa d iCldi#feret~tgovernments. The artists described in this chapfer use their talents fo point out many aspects of The Human Condition. For students, it is important ta have ways to be empowered. Artists as role models are positive examples of deafing with outrage and give hope to cynical young students. Art as Social Protest

A work of art must not be something that leaves a man unmoved,

something he passes with a casual glance...It has to make him react. feel strongly, start creating, too, if only in his imagination...he must be jerked out of his torpor. -Picasso The Artists Throughout the ages, artists have used their talents to document and comment on their lives and those of others. They have represented what they have observed, often for the purpose of reporting, exhorting and even embarrassing those who have perpetrated evils on their societies. Visual criticisms are not well regarded in some societies, so it is usually the case that the artist must be subversive in her desire to point out the inequalities visited on the people. Hitler decreed what an could be seen so that people would have the correct notion about the ideals of his government: women were robust, blond ,wives and mothers, content to stay at home; Greek ideals of beauty were applauded; picaresque scenes of mountains, fields and streams were praised. Artists who challenged Hitler's concept of an were banned, their art along with bad books confiscated and burnt.

But the spirit of resistance cannot be destroyed and even in German and Austrian concentration camps, inmates secreted drawings into caches as testimony to the horrors of the camps. At Therein Concentration Camp in 1942-1944 , the children of the holocaust wrote and drew. Their fragile lives represented in the poems and drawings poignantly describe the destruction, along with the dreams of their short lives:

I was once a little child, Three years ago, That child who longed for other worlds. But now I am no more a child For 1 have learned to hate. I am a grown-up person now, I have known fear. Bloody words and a dead day then, That's something different than bogeymen! Hanus Hachenburg (1 944) In spite of the consequences, t h e artist's human spirit determines that she must express her thoughts, her outrage. The artwork serves two purposes: as an outlet for protest, but also as a document that remains after the event. Likewise, our students can deal with their anger and displeasure by putting those emotions into visual statements.

In fact, the use of graffiti and tagging to-day gives voice to young people who proclaim publicly that they have opinions on life, and want to beautify public places. At the CNE this summer, Toronto held its first ever "Flexpo", or graRti-art festival: In from the 'burbs and on the run, they are young and restless committed to an anfonn they claim speaks for their generation. Their canvas is the city itself and their language that Torouo Star,August 24, 1995, E3) of commercials, cartoons and comics. (B Dzine, one participant from Chicago, says that this art has s a w d him:

I've been doing this since I was 13. 1started writing on trains, on buses, on walls...It was a form of expression. I've been making a living at it four years. (The Toronto &, August 24, 1995, E3) But societies change over time and what is acceptable -or perhaps tolerated now, was once punishable by violent means at the hands of intolerant governments that maintained hierarchies at all costs. As early as 1467, artists were the barometers of human affairs, Master E.S. in his The Letter Q [Fig.I] presented evidence of the life of the peasant. War, pestilence, hunger, drudgery, all the facets of the feudal peasant's life were encapsulated in one solitary letter, "Q". Not only was the serf beneath the feet of his lord, he was also shown to be beneath the hooves of the horse. The political hierarchy that shaped the servant's life was depicted by his revealing position in the drawing. At this time in the 15th century, the technology of the printing press facilitated the distribution of prints. Without background information. we can only surmise whether this print was circulated as a protest, a joke perhaps at the worthless lives of serfs or merely the first page of a text, like those drawn by talented monks in monasteries in their work as illustrators and illuminators of Bibles arid manuscripts. Although Goya's misogynic life was pampered, he still used his vitriolic art to make biting political statements. He seems to have been held in favour in spite of the many changes of government in Spain in the middle and late 18th century. How else could his satirical accounts and visual puns have been tolerated? He must have, however, been aware of the dangerous path he had chosen because several of his closest friends, Lhorente, who suggested reforms and Valdes, a poet, were denounced to the Inquisition. Goya had reason to fear since his political and social

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attacks hidden in his fantastic depictions were nonetheless obvious to his contemporaries. Brashly, he underlined his meanings in terse captions or commentaries. Although attached to the Court, and living a comfortable life in direct contrast to the majority of his countrymen, Goya criticised the immorality of the various governments, hoping to change the archaic institutions and the Spanish Inquisition's hold on society: over sixty percent of the people were peasants or landless day labourers in a country of three thousand monasteries and convents and only one in nine children had any education at all, and 20,000 Madrilenos starved of famine in 18 1 1- 12 ! (Shikes, 1969, 97). In one of Goya's etchings, De Oue Mal Morira?, [Fig21 the doctor whose profession it is to heal the patient is shown as an ass. "The ass" was believed to be "the incompetent and grasping " 24 year old prime minister, Manuel Godoy, a favourite of the queen Maria Luisa (Shikes, 1969.98). The patient is likely the dim-witted and corrupt King Charles IV ( 1 788- 1808) or perhaps Spain (Shikes, 1969, 106). In the final sequence of this series, Los Caprichos, two asses, both Godoy and the king ride on the backs of staggering citizens. Not subtle at all, Re Oue Mal Morira? points out that thoughtless ministers of government will kill, not cure their patients. In this and other etchings, Goya bravely observed, and satirized monarchs, clergy and political figures, often not well disguised in his works. In Los Caprichos, but violence , and cruelty are the byproducts of a society primarily in 1 constantly at war. People are carelessly bounced between governments that toy with their fates. In

..

IS IS worse

pig.31, a helpless naked man, his arms amputated, has been abandoned and left

perched in a tree. In the background, a French soldier continues to raise his bayonet. Although nothing is left to be cut down, the soldier's hry does not cease. In m

s of War Fig.41, raped

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girls are cast through the air onto heaps of other women, and children. And in still another work , Galiloe is shown imprisoned and debased. Goya's etching caustically queries Galiloe's punishment, "For discovering the motion of the earth." [Figs] Strangely, these prints & stop time as they refbse to allow subsequent generations to forget the disasterous moments now documented in history by these prints. Goya's titles alone, even without the drawings form the indictment of his world where war and destruction are the accepted norm of society. The captions beneath the prints ponder the tales of a cruel society: "You should not have written for idiots... "For being a liberal". .. "So are usefbl men likely to end" ... "For being born in other parts." Horror, panic, disregard of human life is presented over and over again in the panoply of Goya's prints. The overwhelming number of prints, whose meaning is obvious, is recalled by this line from Macbeth which mourns the madness of the government's savage scourges : ".. . and good men's lives/ Expire before the flowers in their

caps..."(Macbeth, IV. iii, 1.171-2). We cannot help but be amazed at Goya's audacity at documenting the government's wrath, yet, at the same time, ponder what was his role that allowed him such free rein in his art work. Although we would like to think that governments no longer act so barbarically, we have only to consider the numerous dossiers accumulated by Amnesty International and the recent slaughter in Nigeria. In an attempt to connect real life events with school curricula, my grade 12 AdvancedEnriched English students who are studying post-colonial literature are encouraged to write letters to express their outrage at human right's violations instead of handing in one assignment. However, there are other ways to show disapproval. Vincent Van Gogh did not attack the players in the government directly, or "the big issues" of war, instead he concentrated his

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observations on the peasants the victims he identified with: the poor, the disenfranchised of the earth. Selecting prostitutes as well as ordinary folk who struggled for their survival provokes an immediate emotional response fiom his viewers. Van Gogh's painting of The Potato Eaters (1 885) pig.61 is a visual essay on poverty. Drowned in tones of brown and green, these people do not complain or moan. They accept their fate. They will eat the potatoes that they dig from the ground.Van Gogh's brush bestows dignity and solemnity to these humans enclosed and tethered like animals to their subterranean dwelling. Not idealised as in Millet's paintings of The Sowers ,nor manipulated to play an almost theatrical role as in Goya's productions of nightmare fascination, the Potato Eaters' bodies are bent, their knuckles gnarled by labor. They will eat, sleep and pass their hours in their small, crowded room which has been visually extended into the viewer's space so that we might know their hunger and empathize with their difficult lives. Van Gogh conveys a depressing scene from which the viewer would rather turn away, but cannot. This is the power of art -to introduce and deepen the significance of The Human Condition to students through portraying scenes of daily life. Students can learn by studying various artists and the different approaches that have been used to protest or observe people, like themselves, who feel victimised by society. For example, Georges Seurat reveals his respect for human work in a less sombre way than Van Gogh's. Seurat believed the purpose of a n was to serve humanity in order to express the equal rights that the worker deserved and which he. himselt supported . His fblfilment as an anist and a human being was expressed by presenting compassion for the poor in vocal protest in the outside world, and in quiet contemplation in his studio. His expectations and observations contrast with Van Gogh's sense of the inevitable, unavoidable doom of the workers. He envisages a world where his

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paintings act as a visible manifesto to be read and practiced by employee and employer. However, like Van Gogh, Seurat did not sentimentalize or trivialize the worker. In Seurat's paintings, his people are not objects to be shown only for the sake of his ideas; they are individuals identified by human qualities. His scenes present the life of the worker. bathing in the waters polluted by industry on Sunday on their day off in B m a t Asnieres (1 883-5) A day at work as glimpsed in his painting of women paid to model,. - J

We see their ordinary

possessions scattered around the studio: a hat, an umbrella, shoes, thick stockings- objects. the viewer ,herself, owns and can recognise. With shoulders hunched, stomachs slack, their demeanour introspective, these "poseuses" are the equals to any person who must suppon herself for her livelihood. Linda Nochlin says the depiction of the women's bodies is not meant for titillation, but that they are, "...slyly subversive, calling into question both the epistemological and social status of the subject"(Nochlin. 1994, 7 1). For Seurat to have rendered these women so democratically, not voyeuristically, but as workers who happen to be women, and the equivalent of any working person employed in any job may seem to be quite remarkable for the times, 18869, yet. we must remember that he did not paint "genre subjects to amuse the middle class"(Shikes, 1969, 204) and that his sympathies were with the poor's desire for equality. Therefore, his painting was not inconsistent with his values of human dignity for all. Like a 19th Century Saul Alinsky, Seurat politically advanced his interests in the form and format of his paintings through his commitment to social equality. Seurat's use of the tiny dots in Pointillism was to present an all over, dispassionate, equal presentation of life. He thought this scientific technique of painting mirrored his beliefs in equality Seurat womed for the threat of the machine's domination over people and the

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achievement of democratic rights for all workers. His insights were visual protests that drew attention to his values. He believed his depiction of morality apt, and one that the community should address so that every person could live more filly and participate in a better life. Kathe Kollwitz is another artist who focused on the problems of humanity. In her famous lithograph, Never

W a (1924), [Fig71 Kollwitz voices the same human concerns as Goya,

Van Gogh and Seurat. The subject of her many works is war, and the people who are depicted are the ordinary people, but in particular, the mothers and the fathers of the children who are killed in war. She wants to prevent other loved ones from being slaughtered. Kollwitz's favoured technique is the woodcut and it is an appropriate medium because it employs the primal, rough, clawed finish that suggests the elemental fight to keep children out of harm's way. In a sense, Kollwitz's prints are feminist art because she calls on her own experience as the mother of a youth sacrificed

in war, and her maternal, nurturing essence as a woman who has created life to make her pleas in an. Like Van Gogh who lived and worked with the poor, she, personally, knows the life that she is portraying and her personal involvement prejudices her way of seeing and conveys that insight to her viewers. For our students, too, theirperso~~al practical krrowleJgr can he starting point for their expression. Never &WI

W K combines the words and the overt emotions of the strident woman

whose raised arm proclaims her protest. Background and detail are unnecessary. The viewer's eye reads the words , and then focuses on the women's eye, then her hand held over her heart, and then her defiant arm that rises like a flag, a vertical that contrasts to the horizontal of the words. The power envelops the viewer who must repeat her words, for the artist demands a reaction : "Never again." The strong lines and action read like a poster that is simple and direct and

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proclaim to a student that using art overcomes feelings of helplessness against forces that are unjust. When most people think of Picasso, no doubt, they think of Guernica, [Fig.€!] and it is true that this work has focused the sympathies of the world on the horrors of war as no other painting ever has. Interestingly, there is a strong connection between Picasso's complicated relationships with his women and his family, his internal wars, and the external battles of his countrymen against Fascism (again personal practical knowledge). In 1937.Franco's German bombers wiped out the small market town of Guernica in the Basque region of Spain. Previously, Picasso had been commissioned to prepare a mural for the Spanish Loyalists, but, after the destruction of Guernica, the town's loss would be his subject. In memica, the ordinary citizens of the town are brutalized in every possible way by a bull that represents Fascism. The voices of deranged humans seem to pierce the air as the artist distorts, elongates and tears apart Guemica's victims in a cacophony of assaults and attacks. Art conveys the vision of chaos as it might appear to an innocent child- for the simplicity of design and image suggest a child's vision. This is a view made more horror-filled because of the age, the neutrality and the lack of comprehension of a child, like Anne Frank, who believed that humanity is good. And, like Edvard Munch's The Scream, Guenica is a silent scream that roars. Painted in only tones of black and white, the message of Guernica is simple: WAR IS TERRIBLE.PEOPLE ARE PAWNS IN THIS TERRIBLE ACT

OF AGGRESSION. Although the size and emotion of Gue&

is truly overwhelming, when I think of

Picasso's sympathetic depictions of those whom society has disenfranchised ,I think, as well, of

The Ascetic, Poor People in the Seashore. The LaundreSsFig.91and The Absinthe Drinkers. His

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dispossessed, although suggesting "types" are like Seurat's people rendered distinct and individual. Maybe, it is "the absinthe drinkers"' long, sensitive fingers that thump the table , or their lean, bony, blue bodies, or most likely their hopeless stares that connote the world of silence and despair of Picasso's Blue Period. Like the circus people and the acrobats, these individuals are caught between worlds, unable to fit anywhere, and society would be happy to forget their emaciated bodies and hungry stares. Described as "sterile sadness" and "the beauty of the horribleT'(Gardner,1993, 172- 179 ), Picasso's outcasts' loneliness in a society full of people is haunting and disturbing. Picasso's range of styles and subject matter informs the student that artistic protest can take many forms, and each individual must respond to oppression, whether attacking war outright, documenting unjustice or reflecting on society's forgotten and lost souls. There have always been artists who have used their art and their words to decry social states. Master E.S., Goya, Van Gogh, Kathe Kollwitz, Seurat, Picasso and artists of the Holocaust are but a few who speak from the conscience of the concerned. In some cases, they speak from an experience that they have lived and want to share so that others might have knowledge of sad, terrible situations and events. Most live vicariously, having an innate sense of what is Right and Just, and use their talents in word or visuzl image to protest the injustices of society. But, all people compelled to speak and share through their an their protest. Noticeable is the use of the print by many of these artists. In an attempt to communicate to as many people as possible, they choose a medium that is cheap, accessible and has the power to reproduce the message as many times as possible. Whether employing exaggerated nightmare scenes as in Goya's art or large elemental shapes as in Kollwitz's, artists want viewers to care and respond : to participate and act. The prints are invocations and calls to duty, moral duty that

cannot be ignored. Picasso said,

Z made paintings that bite. Violence, clanging cymbals...explosions. A good painting-any painting! ought to bristle with razor blades.(Huffington, 1988, 290)

The power of the visual is immediate. For this reason, Hitler destroyed art, and repressive governments curtail any art and literature that disagrees with accepted policy. The silenced voice will not be silenced, for the eye sees- but even if the eye is blinded, the person still knows and will eventually make others aware of her insights. What better role models are there for students than these artists who rehsed to be deterred from their social criticism? [Fig.10- 171

Artists' Role in Social Change

111 this chapter, I examir~ehow society plays a role in the artist Z lije. This chapter d@fersfrom the former because of the artist's motivation. In the former. the artist uses art for protest; in this o ~ ~the e ,artist deepens sign~ficanceof societal eveftts,atldpoints oui what is oflen neglecrrd or ignored by the populace at large. Fixed in time and space, artists are. nonefheless, able to connect with other times and places by examining their own reactions to past events irr society. hly dismssion of Gericault's Medusa underlines how artists-and stz~de~ttscan actively participate in the genesis of their artwork through the ethnologist's meam of investigation. / present Paolo Freire because of his democrat~cattitude of people empowering ihemselves.

CECILY:. ..but we live in an age when the social order is seen to be the work of material forces, and we have been given an entirely new responsibility, the responsibility of changing society. CARR: No, no, no, no, no-my dear girl!-art doesn't change society, it is merely changed by it. CECUY: Art is society! It is one part of many parts all touching each other, everything from poetry to politics. (Tom Stoppard, Travesties, 1975, 74)

The Dictates Of The Patron As Voiced By The Artist Travestia is a play that brings together James Joyce, Lenin and Tistan Tzara in Zurich during the First World War. That these illustrious people and their associates might be gathered in the same place at the same time seems unlikely, and yet they did meet, interacting in that neutral city in March 19 18. Joyce was there, developing his novel and acting as the business manager of The English Players for the first production of The -e

of .-B

When the war

began, Vladirnir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) and his wife were in Austro-Hungary, but eventually decided on exile in Zurich, not only for its fine library, but because "Zurich during the war was a magnet for refugees, exiles, anarchists, artists and radicals of all kinds" (Stoppard, 1975, 69). As well, "the Dadaists performed nightly at Cabaret Voltaire" (Stoppard, 1975, 70). It seems perhaps

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a happy coincidence that many great minds found themselves alive and well in the same place at the same time, creating often parallel artworks. So, it is not only in plays, but in real life that the famous touch each other's lives-for Stoppard's play is based on true life accounts. Howard Gardner in his book, Cre-ink

relates that Picasso and Stravinsky knew

one another, and Freud and Einstein had a casual acquaintance, and corresponded with one another (Gardner, 1993, 1 5). Gardner comments on their appearance at the same time:

I have no commitment to the view that there exists some kind of Zeitgeist, some spirit of the time that expresses itself through particular individuals who happen to be present in its wake and who thereby serve (perhaps unwittingly) as its vehicles. I see history as contingent...it is often accidents-such as a stray bullet or erupting volcano-that cause the most dramatic historical upheavals . (Gardner, 1993, 14) Gombrich, also, does not believe in a collective spirit of an age, but rather people reacting to what has preceded them. For example, thefltrff of the rococo period was to banish the heovinrss of the baroque years. We might link art and science by paraphrasing Sir Isaac Newton's statements that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The question arises. however, whether the brilliant minds that appeared in small European communities at approximately the same time actually changed history, or did they reflect and deepen the significance of the events occumng around them: were they just h c k y to have been born in times of fomenting change when their influences could build on the accomplishments of those who had come before? I think that, like our students, the greats reflected on their lives at a particular time, and hoped to extract significance and meaning for their appearance on earth, for these are the questions that have always consumed all people: Who am I? Why am I here? Searching for answers, people engage in dialogue, pondering and reflecting, seeking connections with others, often looking to their forbearers or friends as guides on their quests of

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self-discovery. Discussions ,conversations, views and ideas help in finding direction. Einstein and Freud, Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky, Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot, formed friendships in which ideas percolated that would change forever the way people thought about art and science. However, global matters of war, peace, industrialization, and progress were the indissoluble background that had to have left imprints on the sensibilities of these creative personalities ,caught in this particular period in history. Art was a means - the plays, the performances, the collagesthat allowed for the expression and working out of fears and quandaries for these early 20th Century personalities who were responsive to the times in which they lived. Has not the artist's response to history always been to capture the age, the pulse of her society and world in order to comment on or extol it in a particular media of music. paint, word or dance? The cave paintings at Lascaux, the small goddesses figurines at Catal Huyuk, the Egyptian death masks, the passion cycles at Assisi all serve as statements about past ways of life. Not only in an therapy, but in art classes teachers start where their students are, making them the basis of discussion. From the context of her life, the artist draws significance, as a voice that makes meaning for her society. In medieval and Renaissance times, an artist provided a window on the world, voicing others' views. The artist was a vehicle, a kind of visual reporter or describer of the events the church or the nobility wanted painted. The artist was paid or commissioned- as Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto and others were- to do a job, and express or report the views of others, most often official dogma of church or crown. Only in the late 18th Century did the concept of genius or individual creative talent emerge (Staniszewski, 1995). However, whether dictated by others or self-directed, the message is inexorably linked to the artist's society.

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However, I believe "the great onesy7were great because their own voices intervened in their commissions, emerging as unique, evocative, and recognisable, deepening the significance of events. When a Greek artist was commissioned by his patron to celebrate Alexander's victory over Darius in mosaic in 100 B.C., the artist balanced the triumph and despair of the two men. Like an eyewitness, the viewer is compelled "to look at the scene of the slaughter not only through the eyes of the victors but also through those of the man in flightn(Gombrich, 1960, 136). And like a healer, the artist revealed the human range of joy and suffering that resulted from the events that he had been paid to document. Providing a human construct, a frame to the history of the day, the artist shaped the viewer's reaction from one of gleefbl exultation at the goriness of war to a measured look at the winners and loser in bloody battles. No doubt, the brilliance of the presentation caused the patron to miss the artist's real message: all the patron saw was the triumph of war.

4

An implicit morality in A1 xander's victory is presented by the reasonable, empathetic artist who conjures in painting a sense of a past event re-shaped in the artist's present with an eye to the fbture to changing how men might battle in the future. The artist uses the events of her age, but speaks with her own voice. For the early artist, it was a marriage of compromise since the artist's ideas were not of interest to the patrons. In any case, the artist had to wait for a commission or a workshop oppomnity in order to be allowed to paint. The political structure affected and controlled the life of every person in society since no one was free to follow individuai desires except the rich. That artist was merely a tool to say what the patron wanted him to. Obviously, the same societal structures still restrict some people to-day.

How People Can Take Charge of Their Own Voices

agrarian reform in present day South America, but his paradigms have far reaching implications. Although Freire is refemng to the techniques of the agronomist in this passage, he might have had the artist who presented Alexander and Darius in mind when he (Freire) stated, For techniques do not exist without men and women, and men and women do not exist apart from history, apart from reality they have to transform. (Freire, 1973, 121)

He continues,

There exists a solid link between the present and the past, within which the present points towards the future, all within the framework of historical continuity. (Gardner, 1973, 132)

Freire's discussion purports that the people of South America must become s7rbjecfu.or participants in their own lives. Similarly, our students must become empowered rather than allow themselves to be objects of others "who would fill them up" with knowledge: they must think for themselves. not allowing past oppressive events to shape the events of their presents, and futures. They must face life's challenges in the present and make decisions for themselves. In media to-day, advertisers see their clients, in particular their adolescent buyers, as vessels to be stuffed with images that will motivate them to be consumers of commodities, most of which are unnecessary and emravagant. This is only one aspect of life to which our students must react. For the South American peasant, Freire maintains people cannot be viewed as separate from their past, their empirical understanding of their world, life, and most importantly for the South American that their soils that have been worked for centuries by their ancestors.

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Gombrich concurs there are never "innocent eyes" since everyone is conditioned by what they see in life from their earliest days, caving with them the "burden of civilization." Freire's way of awakening people to their powers of change, powers to resist traditions of oppression draw upon a method of co-creation of educator (artist) and educatee (viewer) in which hierarchies are removed, and an interpenetrating circle of stake owners is created so that a new reality can emerge that is satisfying to all involved participants.

In education, this paradigm is interactive learning between teacher and student. Realising that teachers, too, are questing for answers and are as interested as students in new solutions that arise from their daily lives invites co-participation between equals. Knowledge is sought and shared because teachers, too, are learning in this circle. As well, people from the community can extend and augment the circle. In a sense, this is Dewey's model of democratic interaction that sparks continuous learning in self and others. Making learning sites less hierarchial can be seen in Gardner's system of apprenticeship, and to a lesser degree co-op education that puts in practice a situation where knowledge is shared so that the student learns how to become the master of her craft, and by example, control her fate. Working closely, the student observes, asks questions, develops a bond of trust and experience with her contact fiom the outside world which facilitates communication in order for the student to learn and participate in her "practical" world outside of school. Using the technology of the day, the student is able to carefully transform and make meaning through media. Gardner says that not only trades or crafts, but insights are gleaned in the process because of the close relationship that must develop among participants in order for the acquisition of knowledge to be successful. Intergenerational bonds result as sharing occurs and the student gains the teacher's expertise and

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moves on to an equal footing or surpasses the teacher. In medieval and Renaissance times. apprentices like Leonardo da Vinci often emerged as new and respected masters in workshops, far surpassing his teachers. In everyday life, one often sees the close relationships between grandchildren and grandparents whose entertaining stories of their youth fascinate their children's children. Without the need to impose their views or extract certain behaviours, grandparents can reveal their knowledge in loving and non-threatening ways. Whether in grandparent or apprenticeship situations, the student can choose whether or not she will absorb stories of past knowledge and experience that will aid in her decisions. Removing an atmosphere of hierarchy and replacing it with one of acceptance and co-partnership teaches a student or teacher the importance of listening and participating in order to gain control of one's life or make a craft. Art augments the process of learning how to react and respond to life's everyday situations. The artist's artwork becomes dialogue that can investigate, and recall past experiences, ,yet it is capable of triggering imaginations to think and act differently in the present or hrture: in this way, a n forms a bridge. People, events, or suggestions of human connections (as might be experienced in the works of The Abstract Expressionists) are a midway point, a neutral ground framed by a human and offered to other humans as a way of understanding or reflecting and translating an experience into media-perhaps as a means of personal or public transformation: "Human beings constantly create and re-create knowledgel'(Freire, 1973, 1 19). In his investigations at Project Zero, Gardner discovered that the competence of pre-

school students' an work will improve, whether or not they are given instmction or not (Gardner, 1989, 74). One might ask if school actually impedes progress artistic progress since by Grade 3 or

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so, the child's development becomes "U-shaped": at this stage, the child insists on photographic realism and rules that replace her creativity. Is meaning being made at school if a child can advance by herself without the teacher? However, Freire's idea of student participation in her own education makes sense because the student becomes the author of her education. Using the ethnologist or anthropologist's tools of investigation, the student can search first-hand for the reasons or the hows of her life that are important to her art making. This process can be, 1 believe, intellectual or practical. Learning how to investigate, how to solve problems frees students from the structures imposed at school so they can take control of their own learning.

An Example of an Artist's Voice

The author, Julian Barnes, when considering how a historical event was transformed into a painting in A Historv of The World in 10 % Cbpters reflected on the true story behind Gericault's painting "The Raft of Medusan[Fig.181. On June 1 7,18 16, a frigate set out for Senegal from Saint Croix. By misfortune, the boat struck a reef at high tide. A raft made for one hundred and

fifty occupants somehow came untethered and was abandoned at sea. Storms, little food, delirium, discord among mutineers and soldiers on board led to death and cannibalism. On the thirteenth day of their ordeal only fifteen men remained when finally the Argus appeared to tow the raft. On the forty-second day, only twelve crawled onto the Saharan coast. Before beginning his painting, Gericault met with and interrogated two survivors, Savigny and Correard, relying on their narratives to provide truth to his understanding of the event. He found the boat's carpenter, also a survivor from the "Medusa" and had him build a scale model of

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the raft. Julian Bames,in the chapter in his novel that describes the "Medusa" voyage, used the

. .

narratives as well as Lorenz Eitner's biography Geriwlt: HISLlfe and Wort to recreate what might have been the conditions under which the famous painting evolved. So, Barnes, himself reinvented the history of the painting for his own art. His re-focusing and retelling freshened past events, deepening their significance. The reader, reading the tragedy, considers and reflects on the events, juxtaposing them to modern day wrecks. She perceives the human connections between past and present through the writer's art. Gardner's ArtsPROPEL program presents production, perception and reflection as a means to a better understanding of one's own life. Barnes explored the past through several points of views, attempting to come to terms with the "Medusa's" tragic events. Bames involved himself in the past that would impact on his fashioning of his art, the novel, in the present. He not only looked at the records of the past, but considered how they affected his role as an artist. The dialogue between history and artist spirals intertwining past, present and future. Interestingly, these events fiom the past are brought forward into the present and given new life. Ironically, Barnes queries, "How do you turn catastrophe into art?"-which, he, himself does for the purposes of his story. Bames tells the reader what was not selected to be included in the painting (i.e. the self-protective mass murder, the actual moment of rescue, etc.) and comments on how the artist's selection of a scene had to be prevented fiom looking cheap, like "one of those saloon-bar fights in 8-Westerns" (Barnes, 1989, 127). Barnes' voice becomes one

of many, interpreting the scene, rounding it out for the audience. He has cast himself as a player in past events, making new history of the old events.

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In creating visual art, some parts of a painting are left in and some are removed so that the overall effect will be in accord to the story that the artist wants to present. The artist is a force, who moves in and out of the picture, weaving the outside world into the media. The artist is like the quilter's needle, concocting a certain order by combining the parts into a whole fabric. Students, too, select, omit, rely on their own judgement in order to make sense of the histoty in the context of their lives which is the basis of their lives. Here, too, the decision-making process involved in creating art models behaviour in later life when a person must select what is important in a job or a profession.

In spite of the fact that Gericault took artistic license with the actual scene and did not provide total verisimilitude, Those who saw Gericault's painting on the walls of the 1819 Salon knew, almost without exception, that they were looking at the survivors of the Medusa's raft, knew that the ship on the horizon did pick them up ... and knew that what had happened on the expedition to Senegal was a major political scandal...its representation still magnetizes. (Barnes, 1989, 132-3) Without words, the story was told and understood-VISUALLY. Gericault's The Raft of the Medw, like Picasso's Guemica. recreates, selects and manipulates moments of terror through colour, emotion and structure, in order for the historical event to impact on generations, provoking attacks on governments, and raising a cry to a global community to never forget such atrocities of spirit perpetrated on the innocent. Sadly, the voices of the artists are often cries in the dark, but nonetheless, they break the

silence and stand as visual documents that decry the horrors of civilization. What is important for the artist is the document that expounds the artist's views, deepening life's significance. The endurance of the human expression is one of the outstanding features that makes an an effective

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tool because it assumes a life of its own once the artist has administered her final stroke.

The Voices of Propaganda And yet if the artists' talents can be used to meet the needs of ,for example, a government, the artist is allowed to develop ideas, for, ironically "propaganda, slogans, and myths are the instruments employed by the invader to achieve his objectives" (Freire, 1973, 1 14). Tyrants of the order of Hitler employed the talents of Leni Refeinstahl to produce m p h of the Will, and his foremost architect, Albert Speer was captivated by the dance theories of Mary Wigman. As well, Stalin had a love-hate relationship with the filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein ( Gardner, 1993, 397398). Perhaps it was felt that oppression could be re-presented and hidden by disposing the arts to transform the ugly face of dictatorship into the illusory countenance of patriotism. Even General Bonaparte's "insatiable urge to conquer and explore" (Clark, 1972, 300) was tempered in the paintings created by Jacques Louis David (1 748- 1825) in the 1800s. In Naooleon Cross@ the -[Fig.

191, a serious and wise-looking Bonaparte keeps his balance on

a rearing horse as he points the way to successfbl military manoeuvres. David also painted an apparently fearless Bonaparte amid the sick and lepers. It is said that Beethoven admired Napoleon because "he seemed to be the apostle of revolutionary ideals" (Clark, 1972, 305) and dedicated his Third Symphony to him. These examples reveal an interpenetration of talented artists and events that were more than documents provided by the artist. David was able to help improve and enlarge Napoleon's acclaim and populace favour by revealing him as almost saintlike and worthy of being Alexander the Great's successor. These artists were commissioned to present events of their day; they did not choose to voice their government's opinions. They worked with

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the events as directed by their patrons to depict or celebrate the wishes of another. As in modern day advertisements, a hero's image is good propaganda, and a method used by advertising moguls to employ talented artists.

How Significant Voices Shape Our Times Whether by scientists, artists, or writers, the ordering by great minds influences how people perceive and understand their own experiences as they are occumng, "reflecting-in-action" (Schon, 1987). Think of McLuhan's "The medium is the message" and "The Global Village" and how those expressions have influenced our thinking about our lives. When in later days in France, Baudelaire, mindhl of the Parisian milieu, wrote about the painter, Constantin Guy, he foresaw , wodemity as] the experience of life lived in fragments, the swift pace of change in our time, fragmenting experience. (Gardner, 1993, 396)

One has only to reflect on T.S. Eliot's fragmented lines in The Wasteland ,torn from works of the ftrIfrr times of Dante and Shakespeare to realize Eliot's empathy for the "hollow men" of the mid 1920s who cannot feel or even act. Eliot presents them poised at the comers of life, unable to

cross the streets of life, harried and hurried this way and that by cars and mobs of people like themselves. The "greats" present the model that influences how people begin to see themselves in society. Ryan Francis has explained that modern day people do not understand their place in nature, but discover meaning only in the moment wherein they grab for that connection. John Turner's works looked towards the separation of the human from his ordered place in the universe. Interested primarily in the effects of weather on a person, he, himself was lashed to boat

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masts in order to record his sensations. I n h Stem.

w,the rendering of atmospheric

effects are only important as far as they affect the individual, so sensual reactions and experiences are paramount. The resultant artwork tends towards abstraction, rather than landscape-portraits Gainsborough or Constable once produced. Turner's abstractions caused other artists to think differently , to turn their use of paint to showing internal reactions to external events.

The Rise Of The Artist's Own Voice As the artist moves towards a more introverted stance and endeavours to paint what occurs within rather than outside of herself as directed by another, it appears the artist makes a "determined effort to capture ...everyday experience through snapshots, fragments, pulsing rhythms, and sharp accents...Modern art arises in a context of constant change7'(Gardner, 1993, 397). The Dadaists reacted to the notion of the creative genius of the artist, who makes images

like God. Dwelling only within, and attempting to ignore the events of her life, The Dadaist concept envisioned the artist as a small island in the sea of life- but one, nonetheless, whose shores were washed by the waters. Although the Dadaists in Zurich were anarchists, attempting to destroy the hierarchies of traditional institutions, they were nonetheless reacting to their own days of wartime turmoil and fear. With a view to this upheaval, the concept of the collage of many separate, unrelated pieces is an apt one because disparate pieces can be arranged by the artist together for the sake of the unity of the whole piece that speaks to the frenetic experience. No matter how hard the artist may try, it is impossible to divorce oneself completely form the context of society. At the turn of the twentieth century, rather than using the arts to impose a structure

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around which to organize pictures of life or employing significant events as touchstones for the work of the artist, Marcel Duchamp presented the an objet dart. The Dadaist, Tzara, in -,

and raised the status of a urinal to

drew words fiom a hat to create poetry and

proclaimed that "The idea of the artist as a special kind of human being is art's greatest achievement, and it's a fake!"(Stoppard, 1975, 47). Like Dewey, Duchamp reacted to the separation of life and a n and parodied the artist's behaviour by displacing the urinal from its natural location, placing it on a pedestal and naming it, " A Readymade". Duchamp was mocking the art museum that decides what is art and is worthy of placement in an art museum. However, early museums were collections ofthings that all belonged to the same period, and fiom the same context, like a collection of fiends and freaks from the same family. Instead of a rambling, eclectic arrangement of selected pieces of art from different times and places, the museum revealed a connection among all the curiosities placed therein so the visitor could understand the resonances among pieces. Braque and Picasso employed the real materials of life, newspaper, bits of wood and wallpaper in their paintings. They proclaimed that the materials of everyday life were worthy media to adorn canvases. Jasper Johns' assemblages of two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials could be construed as paintings or sculptures at the same time, again breaking through the barriers of what was acceptable for painting or sculpture. In Souvenir 2.1964, Fig.201 a flashlight, a commemorative plate of King George IV, a car mirror and a backwards facing canvas are attached to a larger painted canvas (Francis, 1984,61). In Johns' Fool's House, 1962 [Fig.21], a canvas stretcher, a towel and an actual broom are labelled and glued to a painterly canvas. Johns' works "continue to investigate the problems of incorporating real objects within the

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painted object" (Francis, 1984, 59), actually combining art and material from real life. Creating bridges between life and art, incorporating real objects into art fhrther blurs the boundaries established by Duchamp's Readymades. When art students study art history, they begin to see the artist's desire to link art objects with real life. At first, the impetus is somewhat artificial ,as in Ducharnp's example, but once attention is drawn to the idea, through habit, one begins to really look at and see everyday objects as unique. The Bauhaus presented beautiful functional objects whose aesthetics were bound up with the practicality of use. And the Abstract Expressionists wanted to reveal that there was no magic to painting. No longer a painted window through which the viewer glimpsed an illusory world of people, the canvas and the paint were exposed for what they were-fabric, viscous pigment, water or oil applied with real or synthetic animal hairs. Jules Olitiski purposefhlly revealed canvas edges so that the game of illusion was apparent. Not only the materials themselves, but the institutions that defined, ranked and acknowledged what

an was was lambasted by this new group of Modernist artists (Johns,

Warhol, etc.) whose origins were derived from Marcel Duchamp's irreverent stance towards the world of art making many years before. Andy Warhol's silkscreens of movie stars and Campbell Soup Cans also heralded an era that was fascinated and influenced daily by mass merchandising and consumerism. In an attempt to be objective, and unbiased so that the public would not be burdened with the emotional qualities of paint, artists employed silkscreen, photocopy and photograph because of the technologically neutral, and dispassionate air of producing the same flat image without variation. These mass produced pictures, framed in people's homes simply extended their television and

shopping habits so that life and art did mimic one another, echoing and resonating between kitchen and living room. Joseph Kosuth framed the word "chair" so that every person could be her own artist and create the chair of choice, unhindered by another's or the artist's dictating ideas on what a chair must resemble as represented in the fiame.(Yet, Gombrich would say previous exposure to chairs would dictate particular responses.) The doctrines of the Post-Modernists continued to battle distinctions between life and art, hoping to collapse hierarchies that separated theoly fiom practice, high art fiom craft ,fact fiom fiction, inside fiom out. In Milan, 1973, the Post-modemist Michael Asher sandblasted a wall of an

art gallery. This "work of art" called into question the very hallowed walls where an was permitted to be hung. Exposing the real structure beneath the wall , he showed there was only plaster as in all shops and edifices. Asher implies , "What is so special about this place that calls itself an art gallery that categorizes what is good enough to be shown as art?" Asher visually comments on hierarchies that label and draw divisions between acceptable, non-acceptable, life and art. Linda Hutcheon queries,

Think of Jasper John's parodic flags and targets: do they refer to real flags and targets or to the standard representations of them-or both? When Magritte's painting of a pipe asserts 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' [Fig.22], it points toward what was to become a paradox of linguistic and visual postmodern reference, with both its ontological and its epistemological contradictions. (Hutcheon, 1990, 142) Tradition was resurrected not for nostalgia, but for analysis and re-examination in order to examine it and derive new meaning. Just as Johns, Rauschenberg and Wesselman had extended the limits of what might be considered sculpture and what painting, so writers interwove their works with journal entries, weather reports, fictious situations , real places. Hybrid novels presented truths of a special order because of the intertextual play among the various modes of

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writing. Artists had foreseen this interpenetration much earlier by blending real articles into paintings as Picasso had when he used scraps of newspaper in his collages.

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The artist, Robert Smithson in wi-lnfin~tl-d

the Wan-

[Fig.23]combined

picture, word and text to create "an essay on biological forms in art, yet also an essay on time, a carefully crafted literary production, a cosmological fantasy, and an an manifestation as well"

(Prinz, 1991, 83). The viewer may read the work fiom left to right, clockwise, counterclockwise or however she decides: "Smithson's 'act of unresolved dialectics' resists mastery. unity and closure" (Prinz, 1991, 82).

Germane to the examination of art is the viewer's dialectic involvement, for without it, the painting or photocopied reproduction is mere scrap. The artist's voice speaks to or through her piece. It draws on the past: an event, an incident, a moment in time reconstructed in the artist's own context to make a point or draw attention to it. Once the art is perceived, the viewer transforms the art, making it her own,filling it with her own personal meanings, connecting it to a past , present or future.( This was what Kosuth hoped for in his "word" pictures.) Art, no matter how the critic would like to disparage it, belongs and is part of a social fabric that calls into question, accepts or rejects the modes and means that distinguish its time of making from all others. Students can learn by examining past civilizations that the boundaries of art and life need not be distinct and separate, much as Dewey and early peoples believed. By realising the contexts and cultures of various civilizations, the student comes to understand the meaning of her and other's days that spiral fiom the past into the present so she can plan to change, continue, or reconstruct her path into the fbture. Whether brought together as Trave*

or randomly

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arranged by coincidence, the student makes meaning of her days through dialogue and dialectic.

Women's Art

i n this chapter on womejl artists, 1focris primarily o t ~ Judy Chicago because she is all exampk of how one wornafi attempted toforge new imagery and become a role model for other women whose accomplishments have not been accepted or acknowledged in society. Giving voice, zisitigpersonal imagery shows people that art is a wayfor their unique response to he vimulized ART should "...be the closest to the life flow...inside of the seed, growth, mysteries...art must be like a miracle." "Diary", Anais Nin

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Mainly Judy Chicago Linda Nochlin in her book, Women. An and Power. and Other Essavs has discussed why there have been no great women artists. She concludes that 19th Century society made it impossible for women to excel or even enter "academies", art schools or institutions where artistic prowess could possibly be developed. Tending to accept whatever & as natural (Nochlin, 1988, 145), Victorian society's attitudes towards women were mirrored by a perception that women

should be passive, ladylike and self-sacrificing, secure at home with kith and kin. Without access to painting the nude, "art-making, the very creation of beauty ... equated with the representation of the female nude," (Nochlin, 1988, 170), women intent on becoming artists selected still life, portraiture, landscape or genre themes. Ironically, the unclothed body of the female, the object upon which this hierarchy of art was built, was forbidden to the female artist! Jean-Leon Gerome's

Slave M

e [Fig.Z4]reveals a vision of the European

male's structured society. In this painting, an Arab examines a naked female slave girl. Gerome reveals both the subjugated female and the unseemly behaviour of the foreigner who would

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participate in the practice of purchasing human flesh. Yet, this strange choice of "exotic" subject matter provides a vicarious thrill to the artist and the male viewers who could afford to collect pictures of this prurient subject matter. There is hypocrisy in the superiority of the artist who sets himself above the morality of the scene, for the subject matter merely indulges the fantasies of those who wish to "purchase and own" these kinds of paintings. For young females, this display of hierarchial attitudes in which the female is at the very bottom of a societal structure, a "thing" to be physically explored before purchase, has disastrous effects. Whether sanctioned in the marketplace or in institutions, young people look to their society for reflections of themselves, their worth, their expectations for thernselves in order to learn what their roles can be in their world. Role models for women as sexually willing and available objects, incapable and prevented fiom being the creators, only the passive models for art, teaches them that art is symbolic of their role in society, their lives controlled and governed by others. However, this stultifying, oppressive and discouraging attitude of "the natural order" where women behave subserviently, manifested through society's signs and symbols, "has been attacked by those no longer willing to be the objects of another's audience" (Nochlin, 1988, 150).

In fact, Christopher Pratt says he nc longer paints female nudes for this reason. A few women have challenged this passive presentation of women. In the early 19th

century, Emily Mary Osborn painted a filly clothed woman actually selling her paintings [Fig.25].

In the early 20th Century, Kathe Kollwitz in The Ge-'

W u presented Black Anna, a

concrete, real person leading the peasant rebellion. And in the 20th Century, more women are challenging the "natural" order maintained and bequeathed by institutions.

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Art for Judy Chicago (nee Gerowitz) played a prominent role in her development as an

artist, a teacher and as a female human being. Through her personal struggles, she attempted to forge new role models and cultural changes in order to facilitate the paths of societal understanding for women artists.

To be an artist is a difficult career choice, but the young Judy Chicago was undaunted. Through dint of hard work, often mocked or alienated by her male colleagues, she rose in the university and college structures , but she quickly learned that she was competing in a man's world. She realised that women artists were often different in their focus in art, more concerned with content rather than craft, perhaps an attitude left over from the days when art was not considered a serious pastime for ladies- merely a diversion, a dabbling. Chicago surmised that men seemed more interested in the technology or construction of art so Chicago set out to learn how to manipulate rather than fear the tools that could express her ideas, even learning how to spray paint on plastic, a technique that had not been accomplished by any man or woman on the West Coast in the late 60s:

In going to auto body school, learning to use tools and machines, facing and overcoming rejection and difficulties in the world, working on large-scale pieces, I was moving out of the limits of female role ...my own desire to grow and to be a whole and fbnctioning artist also motivated me. (Chicago, 1975, 44) Between 1965-67, she explored both her mental and physical strengths and her ability to conceptualize. Chicago called these traits, along with her assertiveness, her musctiiitte aspects. It is as if she had to stand toe to toe with men and proclaim herself man's equal before she could venture out as an artist in her own right. Part of this need of self-proclamation was due to her feeling that women artists were not taken seriously, for even as an instructor at college she knew

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the male world did not approve of her as a woman. Years of conditioning are difficult to erase. Exactly for these reasons, women have often chosen all girl schools because girls have not had to play the coquette or second fiddle to the males in the class. Always a confident person, Chicago decided to use her values, instincts, and judgements instilled and supported by her family as her guides. Chicago resolved that the visual content of her art work must come from within and that her content was of a particular female nature. Her interest in the cthtonian, vaginas, wombs, ovaries and breasts, formed the content and

form of her work. Moving from her paintings of abstractions of domes that suggest wombs, and softly undulating colours, Chicago attempted to project a voice that echoed Helen Reddy's "1 am woman/ Hear me Roar". Chicago felt that she could no longer pretend in her art that being a woman had no meaning in her life; her experience was being shaped by it. Chicago reflects that these early "female" symbols "were a first step in my struggle to bring together my point of view as a woman with a visual form language that allow[ed] for transformation and multiple connotations "(Chicago, 1975, 57). Through the catalyst of paint, she released her personal fmstrations against a society that had no vocabulary of female experience, hence female images to draw upon. Chicago created her own visual language of holes, rims of tone, vibrating colours to explain a female response to sexual intimacy [Fig.26]. Not only did she expose the female side of sexuality, but, she did it through her art. Chicago proclaimed that a female experience was an acceptable topic for painting, impossible for society to continue to ignore. Art by omission was no longer acceptable to women artists . The content of Georgia OXeefels paintings of the same time are similar to Chicago's. O'Keefe lived alone in New Mexico, prefemng the solitude of the desert to teeming, busy city life.

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She developed a mystical representation, devoid of humans. Her "evocative realism" is based on precise, not abstract qualities of the female organs, themselves. She " severs the minutely depicted object-shell, flower, skull, seed, pelvis from its surroundings, magnifies it to become a hallucinatingly accurate image of plant form at the same time that it constitutes a strikingly natural symbol of female genitalia or reproductive organs" (Nochlin, 1988, 9 1). O'Keefe established her motifs as new artistic language based on "morphological similarity between the physical structure of the flower and that of the woman's sexual organs" (Nochlin, 1988.93). Once the viewer perceives and sees the organic connections, she will always read O'Keefe's imagery as both flower and female organ. But, Chicago actually goes through the flower to convey the female response of orgasm, not merely describing, but projecting female sensations that appear to contract and expand. By using repetitive undulating and overlapping rivers of paint, Chicago is successfid in presenting female climax. Interestingly, both O'Keefe and Chicago use "synecdoche7'.only pans of women to stand for the entire female, focusing on the difference they locate in the female's genitalia. And art is the vehicle for their deeper exploration of themselves as a distinct and different from men. Art for Chicago and O'Keefe was the catalyst for deeper exploration of the self In this

way, an is an invaluable tool for student discovery of the world. Once inculcated into a social world by learning its symbols, and absorbing its meanings, the student, too, can evaluate the depictions. and search for her own reflection- where does she fit? Do society's images reflect the person she is? Knowing what has been culturally accepted and understood in the past permits a student to regarrange or re-create a world as Judy Chicago and Georgia O'Keefe did. It is to understand past societal messages that I encourage teaching "Civilizations" and the artworks that

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societies exhibited in order to understand the evolution of self-determination of women and minorities (Godfiey, 1992). Dewey hoped that every person would emulate artists' creative processes so that they might see "deeply" into the heart of things (1934). Chicago's achievement at rendering sexual response in paint freed her to move from her personal imagery to work with a community of other women to help them find their own motifs and voices to express themselves. Chicago's art is trar~sformativebecause she, herself, is changed by her artwork. She can move on in her development, having achieved success by dealing with her demons of male dominance in the art field. She is able to go beyond her own personal motifs into the lives of other women in the community, engaging their minds and hands into collectives of an making where they, too can combine mind and body in a search that will benefit themselves as well as the community at large. Jack Miller sees transformative learning as the most effective educative tool

-

exceeding by far the benefits of transaction and transmission because the "whole" person is involved and elevated to a new awareness of her role in the universe. Many people remember the name of Judy Chicago because of "The Dinner Party"Fig.271. Displayed to record breaking crowds, the exhibit which featured tapestries (again of vaginas), plates and goblets honouring famous women in history, drew on collectives of women working together. Chicago continued to learn through her an, wanting to associate with and teach other women the lessons she had learned. Relying on a traditional quilting-bee atmosphere, Chicago recreated a woman's gathering whose craft content of female role models as portrayed by their genitalia makes it new. Chicago's incorporation of 20th Century gender issues revitalised a traditional art form. Interestingly, she reached back into history to celebrate women

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who have made a difference in all women's lives. Chicago's resurrection of these forgotten women makes their achievements relevant to her work as a feminist, and to young women today, as she becomes another in the line of female heroes to upset societal values. The Dinner Party was followed by another collective work that involves experience pertinent to women, The Birth Projm At Fresno College and later at Cal Arts, Chicago set out to help other women become artists. She created a Deweyan atmosphere because "her community provide[d] a form of associative living, and a sharing of common language, ideas and interests" (Diamond and Bordho)

in which "different voices using collective intelligence [would] solve problems." Hoping to share what she has learned, Chicago took the role of a teacher; however, Chicago's initial classes were unfocused and in spite of her initial shared reflections with her classes on her "own isolation, rejection, putdowns and distortions" (Chicago, 1975, 60) the class awaited her direction in the sessions. Chicago wanted the group to chart their own course with events from their own lives; Chicago hoped the classes would realize that their own lives were important and should drive the course. For Chicago, the role of teacherktudent was a difficult bridge to cross, particularly because the women felt their struggles and ideas were

worthy

topics for curriculum. Chicago had hoped that the women would negotiate a direction, and develop into a community that would be relevant to other women artist. She said, "I wanted to move out, to go beyond female identity into a identity that embraced my humanness" (Chicago, 1975, 68). To share, to be part of a sustaining community was her desire as a teacher.

Often unhappy with the beginnings of her classes, Chicago reached out to other women artists for her own mentors who would accept her as an equal, and not expect her to direct or

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teach by instruction. Chicago had felt that she could be a role model by being herself and entering into discussions as an equal with her students, but her classes had fallen into the traditional pupiwteacher hierarchy of thinking that the teacher had the answers and would "fill up" the students with her knowledge (Freire, 1973). Chicago rejected this system. Working with Miriam Shapiro and Arlene Raven, Chicago collected information and established the first archive that dealt with women artists on the West Coast. As well, she encouraged women in her classes to read books written by women, such as the Brontees, Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Simoine de Beauvoire, so that they would know their "righthl heritage." She pointed out that societal images of women as seen in magazines and, newspaper, on television and- most dificult for female artists-,in the art museums were exploitive, distorted and most often pornographic. Eventually her classes moved from a consciousness raising to using the medium of art to give voice to their experiences. Paintings, sculptures, poetry and small theatre productions resulted when the women felt secure enough to use and rely upon themselves as the basis of their art. Chicago reflected that she was better at starting up programs than actually running them, but her persistence at maintaining these classes paid off.for the women eventually entered into dialogue among themselves and Chicago came to understand her own strengths and weaknesses better. Through Chicago's interactions and subsequent reflections. she learned that she must clarify her artwork if it was to be understood by both male and females. In an attempt to educate, she realised that she must help people read her work "not only [for] an content, but also [forlthe meaning of human behaviour" (Chicago, 1975, 179). For this purpose, she combined words and images, hoping to demystify the art process. Understanding that the images were not often

unintelligible, in particular, her "core images" of female sexuality, she worked to clariffy the hidden content of her paintings. However, Chicago primarily desired a female audience, wanting to create women's work for women. Still aware that women would not be given support in a male society, she wanted an actual place where women could be unconditionally accepted. She encouraged women to read and study female authors and artists as role models. In 1971, she instituted a Feminist Art Program at California Institute of Arts in Valencia, and in 1972 set up a conference for Women Artists. And in 1973 Chicago was, in fact, successfil in opening Women's Building, a space

renovated, and maintained by women artists. Here Faith Wilding, Sandra Orgel and others developed their own images of feminism. Faith Wilding's poem and performance art, "Waiting", vividly evoked a female voice that dramatises a life that always wants to be, to experience, to live but never achieving or feels satisfaction-much like Eliot's Prufrock. Wilding moves from one state to another, Waiting to crawl ... Waiting to read forbidden books... Waiting for the perfect man... Waiting for my breasts to fill with milk ... Waiting for the children to marry... Waiting for my flesh to sag... Waiting for release... (Wilding in Chicago, 1975, 2 13)

..

Like the lonely men in Samuel Beckett's Waltlllg for Godof the women waiting in Wilding's poem are incomplete pieces of the puzzle whose hlfilrnent may only come ironically in death because only then the waiting to be accepted in society can finally cease. Chicago needed her art in order to fulfil her personal quest . Although she viewed her

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experience as one that was uniquely female, male artists have also come to terms with themselves through their art. David Hockney. for example, dealt frankly with his homosexuality by using various approaches in his art work. Like Chicago, he at first employed stylizations and abstractions , returning to ancient, Egyptian and childlike an even visually punning to perhaps hide the "core imagery" of his work. Eventually, he decided to reveal himself openly, establishing his an directly with the audience. In both Hockney and Chicago's cases, they felt that they must acknowledge the sexuality in their art works for it was pivotal to their experiences as artists and humans. However, other artists arrived at other conclusions, concerning the content of their art. Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Kathe Kollwitz... all explored issues of importance to their lives. No matter what these and other women artists chose to paint, there can be no dispute that a caring society that approves of the activities of its members and that suppons, and nurtures women who sculpt, paint, draw or perform can only foster a feeling of acceptance and appreciation. Believing that women's an is important and women who do an are important was Judy Chicago's contribution to the history of art. Personally and professionally, Chicago realised, "Once I could actually be myself and express my point of view, I recognised that aroysh mv

m...I could affect society." Art's direct language of symbols can visually confirm or denigrate a student's perceptions about life. Varied role models who have found their voices teach our students that there are many outlets for individual difference and many ways to express what is the essence of a person.

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Art in Advertising

In this chapter, I examine and arralyse many adiertisements, explori~~g their reliance OW art history and art pririciples. I point otrf that in order to be manipu!ated by the v i d and underlyijg emotiord appeals, our students must be taught the techniqtm used by advertisers. The Advertisements The concept of advertising derives its origins fiom the tradition of oil painting. Before the invention of the camera, patrons tiom royalty, clergy, government and business hired craftsmen to document and no doubt, enhance, their faces and societal positions in media. Mere mortals could be transformed, their lives extended, their roles and possessions maintained and admired endlessly-their portraits outliving their days on earth. The artist manufactured the illusions; first, as he metamorphosized paint and canvas into the appearance of flesh and bone; second, as he stopped time, fixing the patron forever, never aged beyond the moment of being encapsulated by the artist. From Durer's self-portraits to Renoir's depictions of bourgeois opulence to the photographs of Alfred Steiglitz's, both patron and artist have been involved in presenting an image

of society that reflects the desires, hopes and dreams of people. John Dewey was profoundly aware that technology and media shaped and changed ideas, for the method of saying something can alter the intent of the message. When my children were young, I remember viewing with consternation a television ad of two gyrating codgers, who once inhabiting Grant Wood's Americw G o m , were now animated and brought to life to sell cornflakes . The painting was now a joke, really, an insult to the idea that Wyeth had wanted to convey of the steadfast, solid farmfolk whose lives were entwined with their labour.

In a microcosm, the ad symbolised the problem with art in advertising: art is manipulative

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so advertisers can sell goods. Whether sacred or profane, all images are fodder for sales, many stolen or quoted from the world of art, their compositions framed by artistic principles. 1 rediscovered my wrath with the appearance, years later of Benetton ads. Jan Hunter in her probing essay on Benetton's triumvirate of power examines the exploitation of the art image for the acquisition of empires and money. She compares the Benetton empire to European colonisers of the 19th century whose interest in "the primitive", and Victorian attitude towards female sexuality cast both species as having inferior distinguishing mental and physical traits: ...in the female Hottentot one can see the monkey more "

clearly"(Grifin, 1978, 3 in Hunter). Hunter also compares Benetton 's imagery to Gauy i n ' s depiction of Tahitian women because he lived and worked during an era of colonial expansion fuelled by religious zeal and commercial convictions when the European white male believed in his own superiority and felt it was his moral obligation to impose both religious ideas and products on the continents of Africa and China (Hunter, 1990, 7). Hunter concludes that instead of using force as France did in subduing African colonies, Benetton has conquered continents with its so-called social concerns. bell hooks,(she refuses lo capitalisr because she says it reveals hierarchy), a black feminist says, "The world of fashion has come to understand that selling products is heightened by the exploitation of Otherness"(1990,90). And it is true that even Avon has found markets and sold wrinkle creams to women so poor in South America that their children often go hungry (60 Minutes, 1993). Such is the morality of a Benetton world whose ads market impossible dreams to people who can barely afford to eat, let alone aspire to the consumerism in North America. However, political lessons can be taught through Benetton's ad campaigns by pointing out

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to students the fiction of capitalism: that all consumers are free to purchase and do what they like; that all are equal before the law; that all may vote for the government of their choice (Hunter, 1990, 14). But no lesson is, I fear, a match for the powerfbl imagery well photographed for

Benetton's audience. Students must learn to stop and decode the cultural signs and symbols. Displaced from their original contexts, pieces of history, parts of stories are told. Just as Gauguin omitted the diseases, poverty. kidnap, rape and toss of home and identity in his exotic paintings of beautifid women, so Benetton presents pictures divorced form true reality. "Language is one of the most complex forms of subjugation, being at the same time the locus of power and unconscious servility. With each sign which gives language its shape lies a stereotypem(Minh-Ha,1989, 52 in Hunter). It is for this reason -to undo stereotypes- that we teach our students the dangers of identifying groups by various traits, and buying into a campaign whose real purpose is financial. Oliviero Toscani, the man responsible for the Benetton ads says outright that he wants to shock: A message which doesn't stir controversy is bland, mediocre. Perhaps it's calculated precisely not to give trouble. (The Toronto Sw, 1995, E l )

Having studied design and graphics at the Zurich School of Applied Art, Toscani's art training comes through his ads. Although Toscani says he is not interested in aesthetic effects, he has recently established for Benetton , Fabrica, a school of applied arts that teaches photography, cinema, design, video and graphics. Toscani maintains that he is interested in the social issues of his days. Benetton's new social pitch of "racial harmony and global understanding" only commenced when their profits in 1990 went down to 95 million on sales of 1.2 billion! ( Business

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We&

1990,42). In short, the approach came not fiom real concern, but a desire to boost sales.

Yet, Toscani maintains: ...the real world grapples with terrible problems such as AIDS, racism, discrimination against those who are different, ecological disasters and wars. 1 introduce those problems into advertising. (The Toronto S M , 1995, E 1)

Although responding to critics of that advertising program that he has a social commitment as does Benetton, his words, I am afraid, ring false. Examining the composition of David Kirby, the young man dying of AIDS in his father's arms while his mother looks on, any art student will know the positioning, face and demeanour of Kirby is drawn fiom dying Christ scenes painted during the Renaissance [Fig.28]. Jan Hunter assigns her students iconographical comparisons of this Benetton ad with Andrea Mantegna's The Lamentation and Giovanni Bellini's Pieta (Note the similarity of the faces). A modem day Kirby assumes the Christlike pose and all the viewer's emotions become a tangle of past and present icons and issues. There is a dishonesty in the presentation because of the hovering allusions that compound the present day tragedy. The emotions felt by the viewer are complex, scrambled by the ad. To what does the viewer respond? A sense of loss of religion in modem day life? Pangs of remorse for a lost saviour? The pain a mother feels for her sick child? Sympathy for an AIDS patient? Outrage at a society that discriminates against those with AIDS? And what does this all have to do with Benetton? Perhaps the viewer feels she is showing compassion by purchasing goods that support societal criticism. Little does she know that 80% of Benetton's clothing is made in small non-union factories in Italy (Forbes, 1988, 122). This advertising is hypocritical since the money fiom sales does not go to better the situations used in

the ads- unlike Patagonia or The Body Shop who do not exploit world situations to sell their

products, but do, in deed, support through action and fund social assistance to numerous local and foreign groups. Jan Hunter makes her case of Benetton's imperialism by citing an ad that features a downcast albino girl, nibbling her nails as her black African peers look on. Hunter maintains that not just exploitation of human issues, but women and minorities are subtexts in the Benetton promotion. John Berger says, Any work of art 'quoted' by publicity serves two purposes: art is a sign of affluence, something one is desirous of possessing. But a work of art also suggests a cultural authority...even of wisdom...it denotes wealth and spirituality: it implies that the purchase being proposed is both a luxury and a cultural value. (1970, 135)

So. it would seem that Benetton's messages are skewered, conhsing and confounding the viewer with images that should be affluent and of cultural value. Just using the different coloured skin girl who is well aware of her predicament points to a patronising morality towards those unfortunates who have no place in society, and who must rely on the generosity of others for subsistence. But Benetton offers nothing material, only the nod that these misfits exist to be exploited by those superior and smart enough to make money from their misery. Maybe, it is global guilt that makes a viewer want to support a business that exploits the horrors of the world to sell clothes. Students can become critical consumers by being art literate, by becoming aware of the game in which they are the pawns who do not understand the slick appeals.

Quoting Fine Art It seems paradoxical that fine art should be proffered to the masses since the veq concept

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of "high art" art is exclusionary, rarefied, 'too good' for the masses. Dewey said that there should be no separation between "high" and "low" art, and he disliked art museums that defined and selected what was art and what was not (1934). Yet, this is exactly the reason advertisers promote images that are replete with tradition: if you purchase my item, you, too, will be part of that upper class, superior, different from the hoi polloi. Encouraging the consumer to dream, to be part of another world, the advertiser creates a realm, where the purchaser's life could be transformed if only she buys the product. The snob appeal of Ralph Lauren's campaign is so blatant that even the paper his ads are printed on is often thicker, richer to the touch [Fig.29]. A group of young people, clad in a variety of rich fabrics, pause, interrupting their drinking of red wine in crystal goblets, to turn and stare as if an interloper has penetrated their private party, uninvited. This reaction is evident by the cool and unwelcoming looks they cast. Ofien accompanied by fizzy. playfbl dogs in these ads, the aristocrats depicted occasionally lounge on overstuffed sofas, reposing after the fox hunt.

Luxurious fbmishings, finely chiselled faces and the pursuits of the rich are the insidious lifestyle offered in this ad. Rather than the appeal of the "elite" themselves are clothes, covered by drawings of famous artists, as in this ad by Hermes pig.30], as if wearing "great art" suggests a familiarity with theflrter things in life. Ironically, only the rich can actually afford Ralph Lauren and Hermes' goods so the ads, although providing dreams to the lower class, actually excludes them. They can gaze, admire and drool, merely touching the paper upon which the enticements are printed. As Berger says, "...the purchase is. ..a luxury."

In The Museum of Jewellery ad, both a fragment of an oil painting of a queen and a diagram of a Greek temple hint at a world of refined sensibilities pig.3 11. Like many of the

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Lauren ads, the advertisers have spurned regular paper for the look of creamy, ruffled parchment paper. Whether the image of the woman has been newly created or an old painting merely retouched with crown and jewels, the pitch is of wealth, and position. It says, "If you buy these jewels, you will be worthy of the museum crowd." The arrangement of the painting in the advertisement utilizes the artist's knowledge of tradition. The Golden Mean, a way of effectively dividing up space in a painting, is used to sequester the woman's pose. She is naked, but for her jewels, and she is aware that she is being watched. Yet, she tuns her glare at her viewer. As in traditional oil paintings, there is titillation because the viewer has the sense that the woman is hiding, just opening the door a fraction to peer out. One might even make the erotic association that by purchasing the earrings she wears, one might be able to purchase the naked woman as well, and own the art, the domain of the naked body. Paintings are considered valuable possessions, and extend the power and control of the owner.

In Beefeater, Fig321 the word, "tastefbl" is playfidly punned above the Greek statue of a naked woman. (Ironically, art is often determined and defined by "taste"!) The gin of choice, of course, tastes good, but the naked woman has been tastefully covered. The art director brings into play the many rich textures of clothing and the presence of a leaf), lush nature highlighrs which contrast the stone sculpture. Again, in art history, the nakedness of sculpture is made more alluring by juxtaposing clothes or fabrics. Donatello's Bavid's naked youth [Fig331 is made more naked by the addition of a feathered hat and leather boots, much as garter belts and crotchless panties point to the difference between the clothed and unclothed parts of the body. Drawing on traditional sculpture and manipulating it for the purposes of sales, people knowledgeable in art

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have an upper hand in a realm where the visual persuades, cajoles and cons money from the unwitting consumer. Some ads quote or lift paintings in their entirety. not even disguising the fact that the content of the ad has been directly taken from an oil painting. Chinet dishes uses Manet's

-cud,&&

and Burghel's genre pieces to promote "little family get to-gethers" [Fig.34].

To sell Boursin cheese, Renoir's The w

o

n of the R o e ( l 8 8 1) has been cropped

almost in half [Fig.35]. In spite of intervening years, the messages from the past appear applicable to dining today, perhaps made so, because of the reliance on a "richer" fbller past. Fendi's ads cleverly use classical statuary, contrasting again textures of flesh and stone. Underlined with the words, "la passion di Roma," a human woman embraces a stone. Dionysus, the god of wine and debauchery is identifiable by the grapes and leaves in his hair iFig.361. Will the procurement of the perfume sustain the fantasy of the gods (the manipulating advertisers?) Or will the woman's sculpture become real and filfil her fantasies? Carol Moog advises, "Stick with statues and cosy up to a healthy hunk of alabaster and you won't get hurt"(1990, 163). In this way, a woman can perpetuate her dreams by avoiding real contact that might result in pain. Looking closely at the ads reveals more and more of their artistic composition. The viewer must take time and learn to really look to unravel the images that are being used to make the pitch. In a second Fendi ad, [Fig371 the art director frames the reclining model with allusions to Greek an: on one side a wall plaque or perhaps a grave stele of an athletic man, and on the other, an antique bust that looks benevolently on the scene. The woman draped in luxurious furs recalls Manet's -Fig381

a painting that was said to shock his society because the model was

identifiable as a well known courtesan of the day. Combining lost days of Greek passion and

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fhlfilment in the arms of prostitutes, Fendi's copy reads, "temptations start softly...culminating in a devastating shiver of excitement." The purpose of the ad is meant to arouse, to stoke a sexual passion by referring to earlier times of naked women depicted through an who yield sexual pleasure to their owners. The fir draped on the woman's naked body is poised to slip away ao the viewer can partake in "The passion of Rome."The empty life of the everyday viewer can be resurrected, made passionate by purchasing the magic elixir. In a rather strange reversal from passion to coldness, Calvin Klein turns his people into

detached Greek sculptures [Fig.39]. Not only are these bodies perfectly proportioned, worthy of adulation, they are aloof, rigid and unfeeling. To alienate these bodies in space hrther, the artist has positioned them against icy. angled, jutting pillars that reinforces an untouchability. Each is in her own world, separate. unconnected to the rest. each participating in an "obsession", the name of the perfume. Like stone sculptures, each person has been strangely transformed into a state that perhaps suggests that whoever purchases the perfbme becomes the sculptor creating herself into an untouchable Narcissus, in love with her own reflection. Stereotypes die hard. Nonh Americans who are focused on maintaining their perfect bodies at almost any cost, are reinforced by seeing the "perfect" bodies in these ads. Respect for wisdom and aging have been replaced by an "obsession", a childish wish to stay young forever. Ignoring the mind, the soul, the inner workings of a person, and focusing only on the outer wrapper of skin extends the fruitless dreams and desires of a youth cult that foolishly believes they can stop the inevitable dirge of death from playing their song by purchasing a perfume.

An irreverent ad by Barney's of New York uses the logic of surprise to shock by placing a

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mannikin at the side of a man who has a lobster on his head Fig.401.The copy reads, "Thoughts should be lofty, thoughts should be deep." Obviously, the mannikin will have no thoughts perhaps even a suggestion that women are dolls and are incapable of possessing ''lofty thoughts" or that the lobster might represent what the man would like for his supper. The bizarre juxtaposition of man and crustacean points to a Duchamp or Dadaist mocking attitude which does not take itself seriously, yet, the association with Art history is inescapable to those who know the "in-joke." Once again, the artist has juxtaposed a real human with a statue or mannikin, as if to point out the lack of community that this human shares with other flesh and blood humans. Props or illusions are necessary in a world where people have ceased to participate in a community of pegple. Another kind of reversal can be seen in the humanization of Michelangelo's statue in David [Fig4 11. Recognised worldwide, this statue usually connotes days of High Renaissance perfection. However, as he is used in the ad, "David's mind is separated from h i s body in order to control his flesh and blood smoking addiction. His hrrowed brow, which usually alludes to his problems with the Philistines, is now ironically intent on triumphing over his Philistine pleasures.

The Use of Artistic Principles In the same David ad, the emphasis on complementary colours

,ubehind the stony

David. and yellow behind the words in the copy "YOUR MIND" and "YOUR BODY" unite to pull the viewer's eye into the advertisement. The same emphasis on the same complementary coloun is used in another ad to sell flamboyant clothes, except hete the statue is a real human posed in connqpos~opig.421 position created by the ancient Greeks to make statues appear

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more lifelike by twisting the shoulders and hips in opposing directions to suggest movement. Yet here, the human is much like a statue fixed on the page as a model of a human. This crossover from human to sculpture becomes quite clear when the subject, often a woman is set on a pedestal, as in the Sharif advertisementFig.431.Here the body assumes the twist of cot~trapposfo again, and so the viewer does not miss the transformation from human to statue, the body is shaded to look as if it is grey stone. 1 would surmise the author of this piece was male since this woman, unlike the first models of the Maidenform Bra ads who boldly took possession of their dreams as surgeons or lawyers (watrthors were women, Bea Coleman and her mother, Ida Rosenthal),is downcast and embarrassed, her head bowed. Even the copy reinforces the image of a subdued, depressed woman, for she is "Woman by G o d -Eve, the temptress who caused havoc and shame to Mankind. Traditional Christian associations with nakedness and sin are evident here. I cannot imagine any woman wanting to partake in the shame or guilt of this ad. In fact. the loped strap of the purse in her hand could even double as a whip. And why is this image on a pedestal? To be worshipped? I think not. She looks so miserable and uncomfortable. What dream or promise is being offered in this ad? Like Bennetton, Sharif confounds the viewer's emotions for at once the woman is a goddess and traitor. Many messages towards women as object or transgressor are present although the viewer may only realize them subconsciously. The positioning of the model's hand is consistent with Aphrodite statues in which the goddess' hand covers herself in modesty Fig.441. However, many ads use the straight forward "Eve" as a seductrice image, surrounded by lush paradisical vegetation [Fig.45]. Iconography employed in pictures is extremely powerful. Just as the Sharif s woman's hand doubles as a leaf (how could anyone miss the Biblical associations?), many symbols have been

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used to connote or allude to certain states or times. For example, in Jan Van Eyck's The Arnolfini a r r u e Port& pig.461, the dog at the couple's feet stands for fidelity and the candelabra above their heads represents the all-seeing Christ. The Sharif handlfigleaf returns the viewer to The Fall and exclusion from the Garden of Eden. Garden imagery Fig.471 which serves as a backdrop to alluring-looking women in some ads serves the same purpose, to remind the viewer of seduction and temptations we desire, must have, and of course, eventually pay for! A mere glimpse at this ad will not reveal all the elements described; however, the viewer must be impacted by the overwhelming amount of interlocking imagery that shows the woman as transgressor even if she only sees one element in the pitch.

More Artistic Principles and Art Tools Besides references to famous paintings, the use of complementary colours. cor~u.appo.sto,

The Golden Mean, and iconography, advertisers make their point by actually presenting the tools used in art. Kitchenaid [Fig481 prepares the palette upon which "great kitchens designs" are mixed. In a pefime ad, a woman paints a huge exclamation mark on a giant canvas to advertise the name of the product Fig.491. A container of Clinique's City Block [FigSol is dispensed from what looks like a paint tube. And in another ad, a woman's body has become a canvas upon which to smear paint (actually globs of coloured mud) Fig3 I]. Ultima 11's new eye shadows look like ground paint [Fig.52]. The meaning is clear: to live an a n h l life, you must buy these products, because art helps you create images of how you would like to be. From these analogies with an, the viewer understands that art is a good metaphor for what is desirable. Indeed, the body does become the canvas to the designer, Gaultier [Fig.53 & 541. The

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face, the belly and the shoulders of his models are all tattooed, as well as the fabric of their clothes. One might ask, "Where does the body end and the clothes begin?Body decoration performed by some Afiican tribes signifies wealth. But in North America, the connotations differ. The trend of body tattoo and piercing grows stronger, and numerous students display rings and pictures in strange places. Previously done by subcultures, body decoration has become part of the main culture, as shown in fashion ads like Gaultier's. The body is art! Drawing attention to body parts is a way to draw attention to oneself Similarly, Bruno Magli's ads frame his shoes, worthy of being hung in an art gallery [FigSS]. In deed, the an director at Magli knows her Renaissance painting since she has arranged

her goods (shoes) not in The Golden Mean like the earrings described above, but in The Golden Triangle, a technique used by 14- 15th Century artists to catch and direct the viewer's eye.

. .

Leonardo da Vinci in the famous painting .V~rgnof the Rocks [Fig.S6], leads the eye in a triangular movement from one fiy r e to another. In Magli's ad, the viewer's eye moves down the diagonal of the laced shoe up the vertical ofthe purse to where the loafer and purse strap meet. The eye pauses momentarily before descending to the loafer's toe where the triangle repeats. The eye drawn into the space demarcated by the frame, is then caught in the motion that uses the underpinnings of the leather goods to explore the fine textures of the anfilly crafted goods cunningly set out as in a picture frame-again, worthy of an art gallery because someone has chosen them to be framed. In deed many ads frame goods that suggest they are wonhy of display in a museum. No longer utilitarian, these items are works of art. However, many ads feature the thing itself, pushed into closeup view, unadorned, but lovingly photographed to reveal texture and design. Centred, and detailed, the product is fiamed

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by the edges of the page. Calvin Klein's shoes and glasses are shown in this manner. But even "blood sausage, fiankfbrter and beef-and-horsemeat sausages" [Fig.57] take on an eery, but commanding authority in some ads. As if pushed into "close-up" shots, the objects for sale demand attention from the viewer's gaze. The larger-than-life portrayal is reminiscent of Philip Pearlstein's paintings in which every pore, every hair and fieckle is magnified in his Magic Realism paintings. Composition is how the artist composes her message in media. As seen above, there are techniques that can be utilised to direct the eye to where the artist wants the viewer's eye to look.

In "Why Should Your Lips Have All The Fun?"[Fig.58], the artist uses a random arrangement of lips. The lips not uniformly disposed or balanced on the page make the eye wander from lips to lips and cause the viewer to feel a bit confused as if she being bounced from one mouth to another. Note the lips at the top right hand comer which are only partly revealed, to suggest they

go beyond the edge of the ad. This too is a compositional technique first seen in Japanese prints by the French Impressionists the 1860's. Instead of confining the object to the paper, this composition causes the eye to go beyond the edge of the page into the viewer's space, extending the illusion into the viewer's space and creating an effect- like a holographic image that the viewer thirrks she can grab. The illusion of running, bouncing action is created by the alternating random and regular arrangement of black people-like creatures against a yellow background. The upward and downward jagged strokes of the "people's'' limbs and the colour oppositions make the viewer's eye see a running movement of these figures across the page [Fig.59]. Likewise, OpArt successfblly incorporates these principles in their painting of targets or "Bullseyes" so that the eye

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bounces from one colour to another, never really focusing because of the colour opposites and intensities. Simpler arrangements use strong lines in the guise of people. In "Stripes.. .a bright idea," the model is shown horizontally, her legs covered in striped pants [Fig.60]. Horizontal positions have long been associated with calm horizons, seas, and landscapes because the eye moves calmly from left to right as if reading a text [Fig6 I]. Similarly, the positioning of regular cacti on the horizontal shelving on the blue walls (think seas, skies) imparts a feeling of calm and serenity. These are principles the interior designer and the ad maker utilise depending on how they want to show their ad and the effect they desire in their customers.

In the organization of space in a painting, there are foregrounds, and backgrounds, positive and negative spaces to be placed and manipulated. Usually the foreground will contain the product; all colours or lack of colour is background so that the object usually stands out and is the centre of attention. No other objects or sensations compete for the viewer's attention and the foreground is considered the positive space. However, in this very clever ad by Lee's [Fig.62], the eye goes directly to the white space, the negative space, the missing person who has been literally cut out of the picture. The human in the ad interacts with a silhouette. Form follows function .The picture works with the meaning: wear our jeans or you, too, will be cut out of the picture. Tension can be created by manipulating objects in space. Think of Adam's finger as he reaches to God's in Michelangelo'sn-

of &in The Sistine Chapel. The eye jumps from

finger to finger over the negative space behind the hands. That negative space functions as background. But in this fashion ad of a naked faunlike man and a clothed woman Fig.631 the space seems foreground, pan of the compositional arrangement. The empty grey space between

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them seems charged by the diagonal lines of the bodies that pulls them apart yet pushes them together visually by the "empty" space. This push and pull effect creates the tension and resultant drama of the scene. Like the couple in the ad, the viewer is caught. Textures, too, can reinforce an advertiser's ideas. As seen in juxtaposing nude bodies with pieces of clothing, texture is a way to provide contrast. In fashion shoots, textures can impart ethnicity because the variety of fabrics represent costumes [Fig641 from many nations that are being deployed as parts of the fashion scene. Embroidered fabrics are composed of design on design, and impart richness , wealth, and variety to the viewer. As more diverse nations enter the society, their traditional clothing finds a place in the goods to be sold in the marketplace. In this ad, the arrangement of heads in the Golden Triangle, is rather cloying as the relationship is arranged for the camera. Brought together for the sake of the ad, the three models touch, but look towards the viewer, accosting with their glance the person who is watching them. They suggest self-conscious poses from oil paintings, arranged for the viewer. This is not a moment of intimacy of three friends from different cultures: this is an artfully artificially arranged scene. Much like the Benetton ads, diverse worlds are brought together for the sake of the camera and sales, not the promotion of world peace.

In these advertisements that range fiom selling shoes to curing smoking, art is the force of transformation on many levels. From ordinary body coverings, clothes become exalted works of art capable of building bridges into other cultures, presented with all the expertise devoted to creating a masterpiece. Framed, mounted on pedestals, arranged to control and catch the eye, surrounded by colour tricks and sumptuous textures, quoted fiom famous pieces of art which are often Fragments detached fiom original contexts, the products are illusions whose purchase will

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catapult the possessor into the world of the ad. Their purpose is to make a person uncomfortable with who they are while offering dreams, promises or guidance that will help them become something more (Moog, 1990, 1 16).Thebuyer will leave her mundane world and will be airbrushed into a new existence, transformed as the ordinary objects for sale have been. In Nobilia Citizen ads [Fig.65], hands have convincingly become flamingoes. Anything is possible. In creating art, the artist takes into consideration many factors. She must decide what she will show, how she will show it: composition, line, direction, space, texture, colour are the elements with which she will work to make her art. In creating an advertisement, she must fulfil the objectives of her employer and manipulate her artistic tools to say what she is paid to say. If our students are taught the principles and the history of an, they will not be duped into buying because they, too. will know the tricks, and that knowing will make them aware of the game.

The Use Of The Body In Advertising Early artists considered the human bod11, the forked radish, that defence1ess starfish , a poor vehicle for the expression of energy, compared to the muscle-rippling bull and the streamlined antelope. (Clark, 1970, 173) Advertising is indebted to art history, for it has appropriated the use of the body to perpetuate ideas and attitudes originally seen in oil paintings. The Greek personification of energy found its apotheosis in the form of the male athlete or hero. In order to understand his world, the Greek controlled and defined the human form in stone. The body in Biskobolos by Myron Fig.661 was objectified to represent an idea of perfection. Faces and features were generalised, body positions standardized. In contrast to the Greeks, the body revealed by the Christians of The Middle Ages was subdued, a shamefhl, humiliated thing aware of its nakedness because of sin: "

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and they knew they were nakedV(Genesis3:7).Bodies during Romanesque times were barely differentiated: both male and female were heavy, crudely, roughly and stiffly hewn fiorn wood [Fig.67]. But, at the end of the 15th Century, Eve became associated with VanifasfFig.681,as shown by her awareness of her sensuous nature. She is depicted as in seductive Indian paintings of the 8th Century, unabashed, irresistible, possessing sexual charms (Clark, 1970, 32 1). Women's naked bodies have been the subject, possessed if not in the flesh, in the dreams and paintings of rich men who could afford to procure their fantasies. Raphael, the great lover of women, displayed women in this fashion [Fig.69]. Throughout centuries, paintings of women were collected by wealthy men as objects of titillation: the poses revealed seductive attitudes, tile beckoning or veiled glances, the bodies served up on diaphanous fabrics as delicious sweetmeats: all created for an implicitly male gaze ( V o w , 1994, 152; Berger, 1970). Hypocrisy is seen by the use of nude bodies in religion scenes. OAen disguised as religious parables, the body became a sermon on morality where the woman was most often the transgressor. In Tintoretto's Suzannethe Elders (1 550) [Fig.70], the elders, like the viewers of the painting, are voyeurs to Suzanne's lush naked body: "the very degradation the body has suffered as a result of Christian morality serve[d] to sharpen its erotic impact" (Clark, 1970, 23 1).

When Polly Dick in 1914, took an axe to Velasque's The Rokebv Venus pig.7 11 in The National Galley of London, this militant sutfiagette, was protesting the imprisonment of her leader, Mrs. Pankhurst ( Nochlin, 1988, 26). Dick's act of political protest brings to a head the view sociery nas held and maintained through its imagery of women. It is the languid presentation

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of Vanitas as seen in Velasque's Venus that provokes such acts. In the painting that Dick destroyed, Venus views her physical loveliness in a mirror, the object of her own desires. Ironically, the purpose of h i f a spictures was to cause the viewer to consider her own mortality, the fleeting decorations of fleshy beauty. However, "the moral'' is only an excuse to contemplate the body of the beautifid woman, as is m

e Among the Elders for the eye and mind of the

viewer become entangled and caught by the sensual presentation of Suzanne's snowy white body , not the idea behind it. Like the Benetton ads, the subtle subtext is quite different from the proclaimed one. The fact that Velasque's Venus is associated with Vanitas underlines the body represents an allegory, a generalised message, so the woman is not real, specific, or human. But. again, we

& perceive her as a real woman, capable of arousing emotions. Present day companies to sell cosmetics, select a particular face that is to stand for all faces that can be created by the use of the product. Isabella Rosellini is "The Lancome Face", Elizabeth Hurley "The Estee Lauder Face." These companies want their consumers to associate their product with a particular, real woman. But similarly, it is the guise of the tantalizing face or body that is used to enchant and to sell the product. In contrast, painters today, not the advertisers, use the female body as a "tool" to expose and examine "the repressions and prejudices, the fear and the loathing, directed at women"

(m, 1994, 52)- and usually the artists are women themselves. Often the depictions lampoon masculine myths and male domination in the art world. It is interesting to consider the art historical aberrations in the trend to express ideas of sin,

lust, vanitas in the form of woman. Seurat, in L e s pose us^, showed naked women accompanied

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by their personal items, umbrellas, bags, even knitting. These articles were used to humanize the women. Even Seurat's "democratic" technique of even application of small dots all over the painting, Pointillism, made a visual statement that he treated all forms equally. The naked women in the painting were to Seurat's mind, working women, models, "poseuses." That was their job, not objects of men's desires! Berthe Morisot must also have contemplated the role of the working woman, for she chose to portray the wet nurse in her paintings of those women. The subject matter, no doubt, made her conscious of her connections to this group of women and "the conditions of her own life" (Nochlin, 1988, 54) as a painter. For women in society, it seems she has two roles: to identify and perhaps emulate the passive, seductive body by assuming the attitude, the pose seen in paintings , or to become like the male artist creating the images. To circumvent the former attitude, young women must be taught that they can be the creators of new subject matter and break with past traditions. The task of deconstructing stereotypes in the form of lauded paintings and considering changes can motivate students to gain self-esteem and propose changes to past practices: The very notion of beauty, especially in a culture for which the human body is the supreme object of art, is wrapped up with the imaginary and sexual desire; it is founded on fiction. (Malraux, 1953, 87)

Women do not have to accept old ways and views, and they can identify with the "aberrations" and the advancements by examining art history to locate positive images of women. Recently Christopher Pratt, interviewed on CBC, related that he has stopped painting the female nude because he had become aware of The Feminists' discussion of the exploitation of the female form (November 10, 1995).

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In the 19301s,Roosevelt's New deal allowed for equal numbers of males and females to be hired as artists in public works commissions. Lucienne Bloch's mural (now destroyed) in the New York Women's House of Detention in 1936, portrayed black and white children in a city playground in a working class district. Women prisoners could connect with the themes and depictions shown in the murals (Nochlin, 1988, 89). But even earlier, Michelangelo had "changed [the nude] from a means of embodying ideas to a means of expressing emotion; he transformed it from the world of becoming" (Clark, 1970,

2 10) in the Sistine Chapel. By exaggerating the twists of the body, he revealed the body as vigorous and powerful. The visual image causes the viewer to react to the body presented and identi@ it as forcehl. It is complete in itself, not drawn from other contexts and associations. Just as words affect thoughts, so visual language can silently speak volumes. What Michelangelo shows is that it is not necessary to play to the prurient interests of the rich. The forces within the body, rather than the body as a means for other purposes, is the subject, not the object.

Sylvia Mangold in fashioning new ways to look at women's lives uses the technique of "synecdoche"- a part of something to stand for a larger whole. In Floor U [Fig.72], three articles of clothing dropped or scattered on a hard wood floor evokes a women's world of laundry. The world beyond the floors is actually the topic , the narrative meant to engage the viewer's thoughts.

Kiki Smith's sculpture also approaches the human body in a unique way. She has exhibited replicas of body parts (the hands, womb, heart) and large mirror-glass bottles etched with the names of bodily fluids: blood, pus, vomit, diarrhea, semen, phlegm. The work is not pretty; it deals with body functions and dysfunctions (Vonue.1994.208). Like Mangold's syndoche. the subject is not the body surfacz, but what happens inside the body, the guts of the matter.

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Just as Mangold shows pieces of a world, so artists "chop and crop"; however, their purpose has often been to reveal a complete perfect image. In classical Greek days, Zeuxis had attempted to sculpt the perfect Aphrodite by using 5 beautifil maidens fiom Kroton (Clark, 1970, 173). Durer, too, "believed the ideal nude to be constructed by taking the face of one, the body of

another the legs of a third, the shoulders of a fourth, the hands of a filth-and so on" (Berger, 1970, 62). Rubens, in painting his beloved Helene, in m e n e F o r n e t in a Fur Coat [Fig. 731

combi~ledseveral views of her anatomy to twist her into the position he desired (Berger, 1970, 6 1). Her thighs which are at least 9 inches too far left to meet her hips turned to expose her sexual

parts (diaphanously covered) to the viewer. Interestingly, although this technique of re-arranging "ideal" parts has been used for centuries, one fashion magazine was recently widely criticised for a cover that selected various facial features from several models and combining them into one cover girl. Photographers, too, like Edward Weston, employed the technique of faceless nudes in natural settings. Seeking an anonymity or universal quality to his pictures, he reflected, Details of these pans have their own integrity, and through them the whole is indicated, so that a pebble becomes a mountain, a twig is seen as a tree. (Allure, 1994, 84) And to sell Cannon towels, Edward Steichen in 1935 used the back of a female nude. Although there is a suggestion of modesty that only reveals the model's back, it is nonetheless enticing, as are the backs of beautiful Odulisqws in harem scenes painted by Ingres pig.741, Delacroix and others to hint at the hidden pleasures, imagined but not shown. Because a famous photographer shoots the ad, an additional dimension of talent or elitism is added to the work and people react differently: now it is Art. Perhaps for this reason, Benetton had purchased several photographs to use in their ads fiom image banks: Yves Gellie (the

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Africans in ceremonial costume), Patrick Robert (black man holding a bone), J.P.Laffont (Guatemalan children) , Steve McCurry (Indian couple wading through water). Signing a piece or associating it with a particular artist lends credibility to the message, as if authority is given because of "the name." Consider the rise of designer clothes that are desirable because Calvin Klein, Gucci, Doona Karan has "signed" them. Perhaps fearful of feminist backlash in the 1990ts,advertisers are using body parts that at times appear genderless, although "headless" body have been attacked because of criticisms that women are cut up like bits of truncated meat. Christopher Hume cynically points out, "Large breasts mean sexual objectification. Small breasts, anorexia. No breasts, kiddie p o r n n ( m Toronto Star, Aug 25, 1995, D12) . "Shot by Denis Piel, one late-80's ad for Donna Karan

hosiery devoted eight pages to the study of a leg, including abstract images of the backs of the knees and the undersides of feet"(Allure, 1994, 85). Calvin Klein in his Obsession advertisements for the body has, likewise, devoted entire layouts to the leg rFig.751. Abstract images of a muscular leg , gender-free "buns" or childlike models like Kate Moss in Calvin Klein ads seem the trend towards a conhsion or melding of male and female. Even Calvin Klein's new cologne offered in a nondescript bottle is targeted to both sexes. Carol

Moog, a Philadelphia psychologist and advertising consultant, says that the viewer is being shown "macho feminism"(-,

1994, 86). Interestingly, Barbara Lippert suggests the influence of the

gay community has caused the reversal of traditional male and female stereotypes in ads- with male nipples even replacing female decolletage! If we consider the context of our lives as shaping

an forms, we might be aware of the rise of gay rights and the increasing exposure in films and plays like "Philadelphia", "Jeffrey", "Poor Superman" and many others that are affecting the way

artists portray the world. The body is ourselves and it "arouses memories of all the things we wish to do to ourselves; and first of all we wish to perpetuate ourselves" (Clark, 1970, 8) by seeing reflections

of our bodies. It is partly for this reason that anorexia and bulimia is so troubling since the depiction of emaciated girls speaks to death and not to the "perpetuation" of life in young women. The ads of starvingly slim young women reveal women as less than human, only bones on which clothes are hung, wide eyed underdeveloped children or small animals. Strangely, at this time in histoty when women have finally been acknowledged to possess brains and intelligence, many grasp for a image that is a mere cipher that remakes them into shadowy figures whose images are derived from ads in fashion magazines. A n embedded in our ideas about civilization is given voice through these ads. In some

ways, we have come full circle using the male nude as the Greeks did to express body perfection; however, the meaning has changed because the perfection has been depicted for the sake of enslaving, taming, colonising, and selling it -just as women's bodies have been exploited for centuries. Perhaps a once appropriate symbol for our societal order,

civilization to-day might

be the one used in early civilizations: "an imaginary animal eating its own tail!"(Clark, 1970, 8).

The Use of Art in Children's Books

A hook, like a magic carpet, is a vehicle that canjly a person into Iiew realms. A children 's book is signijkanf because it may be one of the first experiences a child has of the orr!side world as described in picttrre on paper. A good ilhstration will extend an azrthor 's story. stirring the child's imagination to contemplate or create new stories or images on her own. Because the power of picture book resides it1 its artwork, it is not swrprisit~gthat art a~tdartists are fmourite topicspreserited to chil&e'n in order to teach them abotrr the 6etief1t.s and wonders of art. Anhl Illustrations that Complement Stories Goethe once wrote that supreme imagining is the effort to grasp truth through imagination. (Hearne and Kaye, 198 1, 24) Jill Paton Walsh in "The Art of Realism" has described the act of writing books as "an important act of friendship"(Heame, and Kaye, I98 1,41). How else but by accessible , nonthreatening and beautiful drawings and simple words could one approach the world of a child who can barely read? How else could one slip almost unnoticed into another's life? A gift means something special: someone is offering something to another. And if that something is decorated with wondrous colours or shiny curfaces or familiar designs, that gift will be that much more enticing. What begins as a tantalizing pretty package hides pages of meaning that are the true gift. Books hold vicarious experiences. And the art or illustrations in books are "another way to communicate and learn about the world"(Short, 1993, 506). Dewey said experience was the continual interaction between a person and her environment (1934). When a child opens her book, it becomes her environment and indeed, Dewey identifies the reading of a book as an experience (1934). Through cultural signs and symbols, stories that reflect, or are possible in a child's own

life can be the basis of connections and the belief in the authenticity of the tale she is reading

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(Friedman, 1983 ). For the young child, the addition of illustrations makes the experience more "realistic" because she can recognize symbols, cartoons, depictions and real objects from her own lived life. The reader can actively participate in the stories through reading, but also through intuiting "the rhythms of human experience"(I3arone 1992, 20) that she identifies in word and image. Authors. in trying to engage their readers, offer a verisimilitude of warm and familiar worlds. Sometimes it is language, the echo of a remembered lullaby, a smell or an expression caught on a child's face that catapults an author to write a story. A story possesses an inner life for the author because it is something that the author has to say, to communicate to someone. Jerome Bruner has said that we remember incidents that have caused us pain or given us pleasure, and that we write about them to give meaning in order to understand them better (Bruner, 1990).The writer and reader are joined in an experience that has given meaning to one, and offers

meaning to the other. Virginia Hami It on, the author of many children's stories asserts, My subject matter is derived from the intimate and shared place of the hometown and the hometown's people and all that is known and remembered and imagined through time over time therefrom. (Hearne and Kaye, 1981, 54-55) The author often emphasizes the external environmental conditions through word or picture to encourage the reader to feel at home in the world provided by a book. This creation of a "possible world" allows for "a willing suspension of disbelief "(Coleridge) in which new ideas and situations can be played out in safety. There is tacit agreement in the existence of a fictional world that in reality is only a "parasite" of the actual one (Eco, 1994, 85) the reader truly knows. Susan Engel states,

the stories we tell and listen to shape our own experience and take us beyond the confines of everyday life- into the past, the future, the might be. (1995, vii) Creating an accessible form-t or situation helps facilitate an initial engagement that will propel the child into the book because she is familiar with so many of the same landmarks from her own life. Peppering the presentation with recognizable emotions , situations or relationships allows for easy access into another's world. Acknowledging the existence of the world created and maintained by the author's rules, the reader believes in the credibility of the story (Eco, 1994, 77) ."And it has always been the paramount function of myth: to find a shape, a form, in the turmoil of human experienceW(Eco,1994, 87)- one with which the reader can identify. Many authors, like Eric Carle (The Very H u w Caterpillar, l969), Donald Crews t Train, 1978). Bruce Degen ( C o m m d e r Toad-ce,

1980) and Trina Schart Hyman

(Hershel and the Hannukah Gobblins, 1989) along with many others, report that their stories are based on their own childhoods. The intent of these stories is not to reproduce exactly the lives of the writers, but to create, rather, a "parallel world" that is generalised enough so that the reader

can understand the story from her own point of view and embrace the circumstances as her own. "The nature of a work of art is to be not a pan, nor yet a copy of the real world, but a world in itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully [we] must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and padcular conditions which belong to [us] in the other world of reality"(Bradley, 1901). Rosenblatt says that different readers can have different experiences from the same text. As in examining a piece of art, each individual brings her own experiences to bear, understanding and interpreting it in her own way: "a new experience develops to become a pan of the ongoing

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stream of life experience" (Rosenblatt, 1988, 12). Commonplace images of dogs and food open up places like Appalachia, to any reader. The words, corn husks, fiied bacon, corn bread, buttermilk, gravy bring with them textures, and connotations of everyday experiences of a homemade, basic, and even lumpy familiarity. These building blocks of person, place and ordinary life are important in creating a world where "universal dimensions of characters interacting within the conditions imposed by specific times and places [are] transferred most ofien to theirithe child's] rethinking of their own every day experiences" (Wolf and Heath, 1992, 8). m h i a : The Voices of Sleeoin~Bir& by Cynthia Rylant presents a quiet world of sleeping beagles and deep-eyed miners. More than a rambling output of impressions, hpalachia focuses on the dogs. Mamie, Boyd and Oley Fig.761, and their owners. Many children have pets and would know personally about relationships between dogs and their owners. Children's books should in word and picture be meaningfbl and well written, bestowing dignity and respect to people and situations (Purves and Mason, 1984).The hardworking people of Appalachia are portrayed with dignity and respect: The owners of these dogs grew up more used to trees than sky and inside them had this feeling of mystery about the rest of the world they couldn't see because mountains came up so close to them like a person standing in a doorway (p.3). By explaining their reasons for staying in the hard life of the mountains, the book extends the child's knowledge of a foreign place, different from her own. Using simple and direct diction (like the people themselves in Appalachia) and similes from the child's world (mountains, people), the child can see from the Appalachian's point of view Rylant also anticipates the criticism of the Appalachian's chosen life: Those who don't live in Appalachia and don't understand it and sometimes make the

mistake of calling these people 'hillbillies'. It isn't a good word for them...Like anyone else, they're sensitive about words (p.7). Through simple words, children who read this story stand at the their own doorway and look in on a new place and understand how words can label and stereotype, and those words have powel to hurt. The power of Rylant's words is enhanced by watercolours of ladies fanning themselves outside the white wood slat church, lolling dogs sunning themselves beneath front porches, bottles and teapots quietly resting in a sunny kitchen. These images extend the feeling of Appalachia's world, complementing clear. direct words in the presentation of a life that is often misunderstood. Words and images work together to impart a new world. "Picture books offer a unique opportunity for children to develop visual literacy": children can explore, reflect and critique those images, pondering their meaning and considering the situations in relationship to their own lives. With or without words, as progressions or individuai moments in the text, the pictures provide a different entrance into the story, a different way to understand experience. However, through vicarious explorations in books, children learn that not all situations are welcoming and secure. They learn to experience empathy through identification with other small protagonists who are caught in worlds that the reader often fears. "Literature stands ready to manipulate, and to be manipulated by the rules within its own text" (Rosenblatt, 1988, 18). There is safety for the young reader to know the context is set within the pages of a book by a particular author. "Since [the reader] cannot wander outsides its boundaries, [she is] led to explore it in depth (Eco, 1994, 85). But, the thrill of venturing into new places can also be fraught with terror.

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In contrast to Rylant's world of warmth and security, Toshi Maruki, and the combined grandmother-granddaughter team of Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland present the effects that war has on children: how it changes and disrupts their lives. And sadly, their small lives adjust to this hideous intrusion. Maruki begins her story, Hiroshima No Pikk with the simple rituals that frame Mii's daily life: people on their way to work, bus rides, morning breakfasts. Suddenly, "It happened", Maruki writes, "A sudden terrible light flashed all around ...bright orange-then whites, like thousands of lightening bolts all striking at once." Invoking myriad colours, Maruki appeals to the pictures one holds in her head. In an instant, a child's life is changed irretrievably forever. Similarly, when the reader first encounters Sami in Sami and The Times of the Troubles, he is all ready living underground in his uncle's basement. The situation is heightened by a claustrophobic feeling conveyed through the artist's use of greys and blacks, for no light pierces the gloomy bunker beneath Sami's street. In spite of the dreary close living conditions, Sami's mother insists on bringing her bright carpets and a brass vase so there will be something beautiful, a memoly of how life used to be. For the child who is suddenly immersed in a new and frightening world, there is one unshakable mainstay in both books: the enduring love of the family [Fig.77]. In a state of flux and mutability, Mii and Sami can always depend on that tenderness and caring [Fig.78]. And familiar objects from a happier time rekindle the rememberances a of secure past, and provide hope that better days will come again. Both stories do not flinch from the ugly realities that war brings to children's lives, intrusive wars that destroy what should be times of brightness and innocence. Mii and her family must flee flames and Mii sees "children with their clothes burned away...they were like ghosts."

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The watercolour paintings in this story do not soften the words although the gowns of the dead drifling heavenwards do suggest an other-worldly, almost magic touch to the dread on the earth, reinforced by recurrent tones of brown and green. Maruki creates an eery sight of multicolored gowns that fly up to heaven. Like souls loosened from their earthly bodies, the gown glide upwards to heaven. When Sami briefly ascends to the rubble laden street to play , he reflects , "We run, we hide, we pretend to shoot, we pretend to die. I see my mother at a stall buying flowers and she frowns at me. She does not like for me to play this game." The reader sees the mother's disapproving look. surprised, sympathetic, and filled with sadness at this game. She is the constant, like mothers everywhere, sensitive to her child's plight. Ironically this "game" that Sami describes is the scenario of life and death played out on the streets of Beirut day after day. The authors do not want their readers to think that the harsh disasters and deaths can be avoided when there is war. Children must see in order to know. Yet, the presence of family, game playing, the foundations of a child's world are omnipresent, shielding and cushioning even the harshest blows rendering the unbearable bearable. These books are not platforms for despair, bitterness or vengeance. Life goes on in war shattered Beirut: old men sit and drink coffee; horns honk; wedding parties dance down the street. Sami sees balconies of people who come to cheer a children's march. There are hundreds of children, carrying placards that read: " Stop. Stop the fighting ." These books present a hope for a better world as they attempt to deal with the difficult questions that children, particularly children of survivors ask. Sami can now understand the amazement of his grandfather, who cradling a delicate, fiagrant peach in his hand, murmurs, "Where would anyone find such a peach at a time

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like this?'Anything seems possible. Even the end of fighting. Mii's world is far bleaker than Sami's inspite of the fact that some of the pictures are filled with swirling light and colour. Maruki's illustrations repeatedly focus on heaps of green bodies and red flames in Hiroshima, creating a sea of destruction of naked suffering humanity. There is constant movement and action in every page. The effect is dizzying, imparting a feeling of chaos and confusion that people like Mii and her family must have felt as their world was tom apart and turned upside down. Maruki's prose, as well, reinforces the horrors, " Soldiers came and took the dead away...SometimesMii complains her head itches, and her mother parts her hair, sees something shiny, and pulls it out of her scalp with a pair of tweezers. It's a sliver of glass, imbedded when the bomb went off years ago." Years later, people are still suffering the effects of the explosion. Even the tinal picture in the story which purports to show a rrormal, peacefbl scene of children surrounded by lanterns has overtones of sadness, for these red lanterns are inscribed with the names of the dead that will be set adrift on seven seas to commemorate their souls. The accompanying words are, "It can't happen again...if no one drops the bomb." The message is clear. Children must not allow another Hiroshima; they must remember. These war stories are evocations made by the authors to the young, simply, without lies that extol bravery, glory or honour in war. Indeed, "the book is not coy about who caused the

suffering7'(Krauthammer.1994, 80). The books put a human face to the individuals, small boys and girls who suffer in war. However, a recent article entitled "Hiroshima, Mon Petit" by Charles Krauthammer criticizes books like H i r o s h k No P h for beitlg too graphic and disturbing for children, for it is understandable that children would find these issues painful, and haunting. He

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suggests that these books were meant for adults, not children because they "rob children of their innocence", but leave too many actual facts left unsaid and unexplained. Paradoxically a book takes the reader out of a secure world to journey into another to find new meanings and explanations. However, a child has only to turn on the television to be barraged with unending scenes of war, starvation, mutilation and death. But, a book can stop time, frame it, and allow the child to peruse, examine or shut the covers if the intensity is too great. In a reflective moment, the child knows she is not Sami of Mii, although they could be (and have become) her friends. In dramatic play, discussions with her parents or teachers, the child might collaborate (Smith, 1986, 8), planning strategies in risk-free scenarios, talking about war and death. The pictures in these books aid in that they reveal another world, not hers. She can visit, but she does not have to stay or live there forever. A well-crafted story should provide hope after a difficult journey. The Lotus Seed by

Sherry Garland is an optimistic story that deals with remembering. Unlike Mii's story which is told about, but

by her, the narrator in The Lotus Seed, like Sami, is personally involved in the

story: the protagonist is her grandmother. Through the young granddaughter's eyes, the reader is introduced to the narrator's grandmother who "saw the emperor cry the day he lost his golden Wonderful, gauzy pictures introduce the reader to a world far away in dragon throneW[Fig.79]. Viet Nam where lotuses bloom. In spite of the brown ciouds of war that necessitate her grandmother, Ba, to flee her home, the grandmother cradles in her shaking fingers a lotus seed plucked from the Imperial garden. An overwhelming impression of Ba's new home, New York, is given by an impersonal

picture that looks down on people the size of ants. Numerous brown boxes of blinding yellow

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lights create patterns of alienation not coziness, as the reader experiences Ba's arrival in a world far from "the silent palace near the River of Pefimes." When the narrator's brother steals the lotus seed, the grandmother does not eat, or sleep: she is disheartened. It is as if that small seed holds all her memories, her dreams of her life in a secure and treasured past. However, when "a beautifid lotus unfbrl[s] its petals so creamy and soft" in a spot of earth, Ba exclaims, It is the flower of life and hope. No matter how ugly the mud or how long the seed lays dormant, the bloom will be beautiful.

The metaphor of hope provides a simple, but compelling moral, offered like a seed to the reader. The narrator tells the reader she will emulate her grandmother, wrapping her lotus seed in silk, "and hide it in a secret place so "someday I will plant it and give the seeds to my own children." The continuation of a family history, a special amulet, the presence and possibility of happiness in the saddest of situations is enhanced through the artist's gentle illustrations of people in relationships. Books provide opportunities for interactions among persons, things and processes (Connelly and Clandinin, 1988) and those books endow respect for the developing child whose thoughts and actions can affect change: " the past shapes the fbture through medium of situation and the fbture shapes the past through stories we tell to account for and explain our situations" (Connelly and Clandinin, 1988.9; Diamond, 1991). Indeed, Dewey states, "I believe education

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must be conceived as a continuing reconstructure of experience: that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing"(1897, 14). And books are means to experience, and change. Perhaps this theory of reconstruction was foremost in The Lotus Seed author, Sherry Garland's mind. Rather than just a tale of horror, she offered the story as a sacred trust: the mud from which a flower of peace might bloom! Children continually compare and contrast their experiences. Howard Gardener, afler noticing that his son was constantly drawing the same cartoon character, realised that the boy was not reproducing the same image (1982). He was manipulating the recognizable, "safe" character, by placing him in new positions and relationships, each time testing what was old in new ways. So children in reading books and seeing associative imagery, try on new situations and personas to see how they might feel in new and different contexts, always knowing they can retreat by closing the book: the story exists only within the borders of the page. Connelly and Clandinin say that moments of greatest emotional intensity lodge in our consciousness (1988; Bruner, 1990).Dr. Robert Coles teaches stories of others to educate and inform the lives of his medical students. Tolstoy, William Carlos Williams, Flannery O'Connor write about many medical predicaments a doctor might encounter. Coles uses those stories in his classes to provoke discussion (Coles, 1989). The thoughtful, considered responses of his students prepare them for their profession. Not a matter of facts and figures, the subject is humans, the real stuff of the pxfession: those complicated, inscrutable beings whose emotions cannot always be analysed objectively and neatly assessed. The focus must be qualitative, for emotions cannot be assigned numbers. Coles presents the "what if ..?'situations in human, personal terms. Like Mii , Sami, and

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Ba's granddaughter these are human faces and feelings at stake here, people who have experienced varied lives in many places in other times. Because they are human, readers can share

in the joys and sorrows, borrowing stories and living vicariously through the characters in books. Children's books are touchstones to many issues. Authors' personal stories are often the reason that books are written. The issue of home and prejudices are explored in bpalachia: The mes of Trouble and The Lotus Seed focus on the destructiveness of war. Adults, too, can benefit fiom the stories of others, so Dr. Robert Coles believes. Living vicariously teaches the reader empathy for others. Stories make readers connect, transferring narratives, enhancing lives, and affecting transformations. We are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know. (Hearne and Kaye, 198 1, 29)

Art and Artists as The Topics in Children's Books

Just as there are storybooks on animals, cars, families, doctor and dentists, and myriad other stories, there are artist stories. These stories explain the lives of artists, but often contain certain elements that make them particularly interesting to children. A curious child might be the narrator whose friendship with an adult initiates the inquiry or search by the child into an artist's life. The child discovers that the artist, not strange or antisocial characters as sometimes stereotyped in life, is a person whose unique way of seeing allows for special insights into her world. In spite of derision, the artist has followed her heart, holding fast to her dreams. Most children can empathise with artists because they, too, have drawn or painted. An important element in the stories is, of course, the an work which may exist on several levels: one being the story line illustration in watercolour, or paint; the second being the artist's interpretation of the

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story. Through the stories, children learn how art has the power of transformation.

..

In Linnea in Monet's Garden and U'l Sis a d Uncle Wlll~g , the narrators are young girls whose minds are piqued by an older male who plays a teacher- like role in their lives. For Linnea, it is her friendly neighbour, Mr. Bloom [Fig.80], a retired gardener who "knows just about everything there is to know about plants" and "has lots of time to spend with [her]." Mr. Bloom has a book on Claude Monet who "loved flowers, too, ...and painted lots of pictures of them." Similarly, Uncle Willie is the narrator's adored uncle who has "wavy hair and skin the colour of light brown sugar." Li'l Sis tells the reader she "had never seen anyone so tall", and is delighted when "he [sweeps her] up in a big bear hug." A trusting relationship fosters an openness that precipitates exploration into new venues as

well as into self, The more worldly adult facilitates and guides the innocent girls' experiences into new realms. Linnea and Mr. Bloom ( a great name for a gardener) board a train for Paris, their final destination, Giverny, where Monet's famous garden exists. En route, Linnea learns about Paris' real and fictional histories. For example, their hotel is named, "Esmeralda" after the beautifid gypsy in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Linnea rides the Metro, Paris' underground train, and she samples a baguette, "a long thin loaf of bread", and goat's cheese. She and Mr. Bloom photograph "foxgloves, hydrangeas, hibiscus, poppies and roses" in preparation for viewing Monet's painted counterparts. They visit Monet's house, and Linnea pretends she is pan of Monet's family [Fig.81]. She even stands on the "Japanese BridgeWoverthe lily garden in Monet's garden and unites the real bridge with the painted version:

'Oh look, Mr.Bloom!,' I cried. 'There's the Japanese bridge.' And when at last we were standing

On the bridge, it was so thrilling that There were tears in my eyes. (And in Mr. Bloom's. I'm sure I saw a few.)

Like Eisner's comoisseurs, Linnea and Mr. Bloom look closely at Monet's "masterpieces" noting that "the lilies [ in fhe Water Lilies] were nothing but blobs and blotches of paint But when [they] stepped away again. they (the blobs of paint) tuned into real water lilies floating in a pondmagic." Through photographs of flowers and Monet's family, the reproductions of Monet 's paintings and the artist's whimsical watercolours of Linnea, Mr. Bloom and the cat who follows her, the reader is introduced to a French artist's world in the late 19th century. Linnea takes a trip away from her life to-day to places that existed and still exist and she understands how places can unite people over the linearity of time. She learns about picture making and how an artist transforms real flowers into his "impressions" in paint. The variety of visual depictions in the story aids in creating a multiplicity of points of views and impressions: from blackened silhouettes to charcoal sketches to closeup dabs of viscous paint to watercolour drawings, the use of art extends the words and textures of Linnea's experiences which are caught in the words and pictures of the story. Linnea also learns about friendship through an apprenticeship to a friendly and helpfkl grownup. Linnea mulls and reflects on each new part of a puzzle that entwines the real world with that of art. It is a world of colcur and beauty, and she treasures "postcards and tickets, a pigeon feather and a photo of Jean-Marie (Monet's son) [and]...a wooden box found in a trash can." Linnea, when asked if she liked the Eiffel Tower answers, "Listen, we had far more important

things to see than that ..." She has not been a meandering, aimless tourist: she has had a

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determining reason for her trip. Like the quester on a journey, Linnea, along with her guide, Mr. Bloom, has ventured away from home, encountered new challenges and returned to the safety and security of her home, refreshed with new information and knowledge. By actually seeing what the artist has described and visiting the real places where Monet painted makes a huge difference in understanding (Dewey, 1934). In contrast to the light filled world that Linnea discovers, Li'l Sis journeys via Uncle Willie's mesrnerising tales and Aunt Della's realistic ones to a dark and troubled place that prevents and prohibits black people from attaining their dreams, Uncle Willie first went to Europe to study art, but he liked living there because people were friendlier to black people.

Uncle Willie teaches Li'l Sis to jitterbug; he recognises her doll, Lillian [Fig.82], and acknowledges her existence as a real person, and when Li'l Sis fears that his paintings of "the old rickety Jacobi Hotel [is haunted]...Uncle Willie tells us stories so we wouldn't be afraid." The paintings he shares with Li'l Sis are filled with simple bold shapes and colours. He illustrates her world, even turning the spiritual, "Swing low sweet chariot" into scenes of ladies with feathered wings standing at the water's edge, watching a white horse leap beyond its shores. When Li'l Sis wants to follow Uncle Willie to New York, Aunt Della laughs. Willie didn't tell you about how crowded it is in the city. Sometimes it seems like too many people living in one space cause them to become angry enough to fight. Just last summer, a crowd broke windows. turning over cars, started fires and looted stores when they thought a white policeman had shot and killed a black soldier.

The picture facing the words makes visual the scene and imparts meaning: police men have turned

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a woman upside down, her breasts casually exposed, her pocketbook scattered among the disguarded beer bottles. The picture expresses what the words cannot (Eisner, 1978). There are layers of meaning in gesture, expression, clothes and conflict. Li'l Sis' Uncle Willie Johnson's paintings of the policemen do not reveal them as mean or malevolent looking characters. but the image of the tousled woman in her bright yellow dress evokes the pain of the situation. Alter Della's words, Li'l Sis says,"Liilian and I didn't feel quite so bad about not going to New York." Li'l Sis's world expands through Uncle Willie who sends her snapshots of his

paintings. They include reproductions of Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner, "who led one of the first rebellions in Virginia, and was hanged for it." Johnson portrays Turner as a gentle monumental figure who might be sleeping at the end of the rope from which he swings. From Uncle Willie's paintings, Li'l Sis gradually awakens to her people's history, and she can finally proclaim, "They (the paintings) made me feel proud to be an Afiican American." As in Linnea's story, the variety of photographs. paintings and actual reproductions of the artist's works lends the stories dimensions of reality that add authenticity (Friedman. 1983).

In Li'l Sis' story, the unhappy faces of Uncle Willie's people shown "Going to ChurchV,to market, down the road, or in "Chain gangs used to work on the roads around our house" say more than the literal words. The conflict of the black artist as given form in paintings is a symbol for every black child whose struggles for self-determination have been thwarted and misunderstood by a white society. Broudy. Lowenthal, Dewey and other educators have understood the value of multicultural art in the curriculum. Knowing their history and heroes have a place in the school curriculum and are therefore valued imbues a child with self-esteem and a sense of pride in self. Through Gwen Everett's book, Li'l Sis and Uncle Willie, the reader along

with Li'l Sis is privy to a world that constantly expands realms of new experience. atthew's Dream presents a metaphor for both Linnea and Li'l Sis. The small mouse, who lives in a "dusty attic draped in cobwebs' with "piles of newspapers, books ,magazines, an old broken lamp and the sad remains of a doll", discovers after a tour of an art museum that he wants to be an artist. The museum's paintings suggest unlimited possibilities to Matthew, There were winged mice that flowed through the air with mice with horns and bushy tails, And mountains and rushing streams, and branches bowing in the wind. The world is here, thought Matthew.

Afler the visit, the poverty of Matthew's world is altered, " the crumpled newspapers now looked soft and smooth." d e even hears music [Fig.83]. Pictures transform how people see. The drab and mundane gain in significance and can be coloured by hopes and dreams as in Matthew's dreams. A slab of life is curtained off from the rest and made special and permanent by the artist's brush. These are moments fixed in time forever by the powers of an artist who can reach out to others and suggest changes. In fact, Matthew meets Nicoletta at the museum, marries her and continues to pursue his dreams with her. Although Matthew's decision to be an artist is not impeded by derision or stumbling blocks, women have historically been faced with those obstacles. Rosa Bonheur's story, told in a straight forward manner, is presented in a series called "Portraits of Women Artists For Children". Intended for an audience older than the one targeted for picture books, the reproductions of Bonheur's paintings feature endearing rabbits, rearing horses and lifelike bovines [Fig84 & 851. The biographical details include the fact that Rosa , an independent and strong willed young woman had to "obtain a police permit so she could wear trousers while she drew in the

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everyone liked Emily's paintings or Emily's crow or even Emily."And Hattie, after many long years of watching the lives of her brother and sister be fblfilled by their dreams, decides she will also follow her heart. In the last picture in the book, Hattie turns her back to us, the members of society, and proceeds up the stairs of the Art Academy. Much like Le Petite Prince who stated, it is only with the heart that one sees correctly, Emily and Hattie at last pursue their dreams. In spite of Emily's unseemly ways and Hattie's "French knots [that] were disgracefully grimy", both girls excel in their special way of seeing, their special intefiigence, heir arl, that makes sense for them in their restrictive times and places. Their stories provide models for students to pursue their dreams even when families and fiiends would prefer they conform to societal notions of correctness. As in Thoreau's civil disobedience, they must march to the beat of their own drummer so that "the sunbeam [can] dance on the wings [of the crow] as it dances on the leaves and the trees and the earth" so poetry can be made with paint. Instead of the artist as the narrator, Michael Garland has used another method to make the magic of Rene Magritte come alive for a reader. A rather bored Pierre must pass the weekend with his stodgy heavy-bosomed mother and bespeckled newspaper reading father at the cottage because Paris is "too hot and noisy in the summertime." However, next door lives the artist, Rene Magritte and his wife, Georgette. Pierre is beckoned by smoke in the shape of a question mark that rises from the artist's chimney. Using the imagery found in Magritte's paintings, Garland creates an incredible world, familiar to those who have experienced the artist's work. The look on Pierre's face as he is about to sip the flying Fish Soup and cut into Partridge Pie Pig.871 captures exactly the surprise and amazement of any child or adult who watches fish jump tiom her soup,

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and partridges fly fiom her pie: "Pierre was too surprised to speak." Although the adult may have become blase to the strange events in Magritte's paintings, Pierre is overwhelmed when his everyday world is magically transformed before his eyes. When Salvador Dali, another Surrealistic painter , is 5 minutes late in arriving at Magritte's house, Magritte queries,"Did you dilly, Dali?" This one joke informs the mood of the entire visit when Pierre is with the joking, punning, friendly and astonishing group of people. Instead of strange and sombre, these artists are fun because they see life in such an amusing and unconventional way- perhaps as children do. Although the cliched words say, "It started to rain cats and dogs", Pierre is faced with escaping the impact of real cats and dogs that pelt fiom the sky in heavy profusion. Pierre accepts the intrusion of these events into his life: he does not stand

back, his elbows akimbo, proclaiming, "This is impossible." Rather, Pierre has become a willing member in a world "put out ofjoint" (Eco, 1994, 127). Pierre, like the reader, enjoys the irreverent transformations that are possible within the boundaries of the story. Earlier in the story, Magritte had shared his secrets when Pierre watched the painter paint. Standing before his canvas. Magritte contemplated an egg, yet on the canvas, he had painted a grey bird in full flight. As if expecting for the egg to change into a bird so the reader could see what the painter saw. our eyes dart back and fonh from egg to bird and back again, waiting for the mystery to be solved. Pierre speaks for the reader when he says, "1 don't see any bird ...there's only an egg." Magritte responds,

Anyone can try to paint what they see. I like to paint what I think. 1 paint what 1 dream. So, when people look at my paintings, they can see what's on my mind.

Back and fonh fiom egg to bird, the reader can posit what she imagines the egg could hatch into,

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considering her own magical engagement in the scene. When Pierre returns home after a most unusual but wonder-filled day, he sees his stodgy parents still sitting quietly in the parlour. He says, they were "the same as ever. as still as stone." The simile is made real when the reader looks at the illustration, ?or the parents have indeed turned to stone. From Magritte, Pierre has learned how his imagination can alter reality. A final painting assures the reader that Pierre has comprehended the artist's lesson well,

for the reader is left to ponder if what she is seeing is Pierre asleep, Pierre's dreams. Pierre's thoughts on being asleep, Magritte's dream of Pierre, or perhaps Magritte's painting of Pierre asleep. We are caught in the magic of Pierre and Magritte's minds. The recognizable people and places encountered in the story along with the reader's collective knowledge of the world (skies, grass, clouds, little boys, artists) are entangled, and we are offered an opportunity to entertain limitless possibilities to construct our own perceptions. or play our own games of transforming reality. This incredible book teaches the child that an artist's way of seeing is a reminder of the wonderfbl gift of imagination that every person possesses. On a more serious note, in M m d the Painte~Claudio ponders the life of his friend, an artist, after the man is said to have committed suicide. "Claudio has to rely on himself and his memories of what his fiend taught him about seeing the world through colours to come to accept his friend's death(Short, 1993, 508). The narrator ruminates in his mind, searching for fragments of meaning to explain his relationship with the artist and why his fiiend has taken his own life: For me, red is the colour of something I'd like to understand...People, houses, books-it's all the same. The first thing I look at is the colour of their eyes, the doors, and the cover of the books; only then do I begin to see what the rest is like. Each chapter begins with a scrap of a sketchbook in grey and white Fig.881, but Claudio's

insights eventually takes shape with the help of his own insights into colour, an unbelievable blue coming through [my] window. And...the nicest sunshine, so yellow that when [I] try to look straight at it, it begun to turn orange. This onslaught of bright colours causes Claudio to resurrect the artist's album which helps him to understand his fiiend the artist:

I opened the album to compare the blue that he had painted with the blue I was seeing... 1 looked so much that I ended up knowing that there was no need to separate FRIEND here and WHY there. What I had to do was what he did with the pages and the blue of the sky- join them up. Close together. Claudia's understanding makes him realise that life and death are a continuum united by colours. and lessens his pain so he can begin "to enjoy thinking like this", connecting the artist's way of looking at life and the wholeness of experience. Claudio has crossed a bridge, relating life and art

in order to experience and see into life as an artist (Dewey, 1934). But not all visitors to the world of an and artists are willing participants. Tiberius, in Rembrandt's Beret, flees a terrible rainstorm and seeks shelter in the URzi museum, and Lulu, in Lulu

the F

b Babies in spite of her loud protestations ("Don't WANT to see the pictures!")

has no choice but to follow her father into the daunting an institution. Where Tiberius is entranced, "I paused at the top of the stairs. I was the only living soul about", Lulu is recalcitrant, rehsing adamantly, "Naowh. Not corning in

m." Her father deposits her on a banquette

outside the museum shop, and leaves her to sulk. However, both Tiberius and Lulu hear voices: for Tiberius, those of the old Masters; for Lulu, of flying babies, who make art in the museum magically come alive. Rembrandt's voice booms at a fleeing Tiberius, "Why do you run away from your imagination?'In a whirl of colours, the old Masters escape their frames [Fig891 and

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"they all laughed and the hall was filled with conversation." Rembrandt introduces Tiberius to Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raffaello and Tiziano, all of whom had been hanging ,just moments before on the walls. Tiberius notices "their extravagant clothes", so different from his own. He is drawn into conversation with them and listens to each's particular views on art. Not surprisingly, the artists gossip about other artists. The reader feels drawn into their chatter like an insider to history. Rembrandt suggests that Picasso's models couldn't sit still and that accounts for the sense of movement in his pictures. But Carravaggio counters that, "This Picasso has invented a bold, new way to do what we do-show things inside out." Tiberius participates in the artists' debates, hearing their individual voices that have moulded and contributed to art history. The message is clear: look in; look out; look up; look down, for there are more ways to looking than just straight ahead. In the end, Rembrandt paints Tiberius' portrait in the image of his own famous one. Rembrandt even bestows his famous beret on the boy. It is a treasured amulet of their time spent together, one that Tiberius will wear himself as an artist. In contrast to the painters being released from their frames. Lulu becomes part of the paintings on the museum's walls. Led on by the cherubs, Lulu is able to jump in and become a participant in the paintings in the museum: she rolls in the snow; she splashes in the sea; she growls at a tiger; she gives crisps to a horse; and even steals cherries fiorn one picture and spits the pits 60m the top of a mountain in another: "P-tooo"Fig.901. Drawn like a comic book, the format is perfect for the antics of the intrepid little girl. Lulu's adventures lead her into a painting of a dark forest where she finally bellows, "Oouch ...I want my Daddy! I want MY Dad!" And so. little Lulu returns to where the story began, her journey come full circle. Like any child who has

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been involved in new and fantastic experiences, Lulu cannot still her excited chatter to her father. The reader imagines she will, as Tiberius did, take up her brushes and paint, wanting to communicate her travels to others. For both Tiberius and Lulu, the initiation into the world of art has yielded many incidents. The journeys have been fun, not at all boring. The children have visited foreign places in other times and glimpsed the world through new eyes, and they have found places that store art to be "ordinary", "fi-iendly", "approachable", much like the paintings and painters, themselves. Tiberius and Lulu have been included in the artists' worlds of painting. Art has been given a human face of individuals and experiences-even snowy ones Lulu knows from her own life. Picture books lead to literacy. Desiring to understand pictures makes a child want to read to participate hrther in the life of a book. She wants to know more. She wants to elaborate on the story, and she wants to write her own stories, perhaps even act them out and improvise on their themes. Conversely, contemplating pictures makes children attend to details in order to unravel the visual mysteries of the artist's vision: she becomes a connoissew and a critic(Eisner, 1991). Through visits, stories or actual travels, the child journeys to new places. Like a puzzle, the drawings in a book can enthral and entwine a child to understand and create her own words and stories. Through reading others' stories, the world expands with the viewpoints of others. There are lessons in form, colour, shape, perspective that await her discovery (Perkins, 1994). There are messages interwoven between picture and word because the picture begins where the words leave off There are trails to follow, adventures to pursue, moods and nuance awaiting the eye that will release the clues. Books that use art or artists as their story lines teach that artists are not necessarily

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strange or weird, just unconventional in their thinking because they see in different ways from established and acknowledged patterns. For children who pit themselves against the usual ways of doing things. artists provide an emotional backup, a role model to emulate. They learn in all times of history, there have been stumbling blocks and ridicule from veering from the well trodden path. But, they learn, there are rewards to pursuing a dream, and many brave individuals have not only succeeded, but transformed the lives of others. Most importantly, books on a n explain through story, the connections between life and art. Life is the starting point for art, and artists connect in many ways to the real world: often their

choice of subject as in Monet's water lilies; their emotions as Claudio discovers; their conversations as in Rembrandt's re re^; their childhoods as Li'l Sis finds out; their audience as a delighted Lulu experiences; their imaginations as taught by Magritte. In all these ways and many more, art is indivisible from life.

Conclusion

These chapters have focused on art in the world outside of the school walls. What has been presented is a chorus of voices- from the past, the hture and the present in everyday life. The artists who criticised their societies, those who anticipated new breakthroughs, those who demanded attention, those who used media for their message. and those who gently spun their tales of art and artists to children- are the people who affect and impact on the generations of students who may not be aware of artistry in the streets. Being aware of the use of an makes us realise how much is being taught by the world outside of traditional classrooms. Ours is a visual

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world, a fact well known by those who would exploit it for profit. But conversely, images well placed, discussed and understood in context extend imaginations and open up new worlds for the student who seeks more knowledge in venues outside of the classroom.

V.

ART IN SCHOOL THEORY AND PRACTICE

Three Case Studies of Art

Ruth Dawson's thesis seems to verify the usejttlness of using art i r ~the ctrrictdum. BBNI, ill fuct. art becomes nothing more than a handmaiden to other subjects. Her work does ,lot ameliorate the positiot~of art in the ctwricttium at ail. Less than a skdf, certainly not invofvedin making meaning or accessing expression, art merely performs tricks.

A Controversial Case of Art

People who believe that an has an important place in the school are always eager to hear that other professionals have published ways and means of promoting and integrating art into the cuniculum. In Professor Joyce Wilkinson's class at OISE,one of my classmates had spoken disparagingly about pieces of art work hung in a school hall that seemed to her to be merely coloured wallpaper, and 1 responded that I was happy to have students' art work- even as subliminal messages-displayed in the hallways of schools. Without rejecting my or my colleague's statements, Joyce said I might like to read Ruth Dawson's thesis. After contemplating Ms. Dawson's thesis, I presented the following response. It is extremely difficlilt for an "art person" like myself to read Dawson's thesis. She begins her topic by suggesting the use of two dimensional slides in order to explain a three-dimensional idea: topclogy. This method immediately seems wrong to me, but Dawson justifies it by saying, "topology deals with the continuous transformation of whole objects" (p.2). Logic would dictate 224

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that, if Dawson sought an analogy in art to topology, it should be clay or some other substance that can be stretched, shaped twisted, braided, etc. Watching clay change shape on a potter's wheel would explain exactly what topology is to a child. When Dawson discusses why she selected two dimensional objects rather than three dimensional ones to teach her lessons, she uses the example of "a lion"which would be difficult to bring into class. Are we to compare a wild animal to an easily obtained commodity like clay or even three dimensional facsimiles that might be substituted for the real thing? When Dawson begins her discussion of art history, she reveals many prejudices and misunderstandings as well as her lack of scholarship in the area. She refers to Seurat's "rather stiff people...(who) do not have discernible facial expressionsm(p.17) and the Bauhaus' aim at 16). She takes the works out of "stripping away recognizable living form from the visual artsW(p.

context, dismissing and misinterpreting each example's theoretical background. In Seurat's case, she ignores the scientific concepts of colour experimentation known as PointiNism behind the physical presentation. More importantly, however, she does not mention

Seurat's compassion for social justice, and his desire to objectively convey equality among all people: his stifiess suggests a monumental timeless and universal quality; like sculptures, his overall technique of dots is applied equally to all people and places. Seurat's values behind the surface's 'stiffness' of the painting are what is really important in this painting whose aim is to present a democracy in life. Seurat was greatly respected because his work mirrored his ideals, which he would not compromise in his work. Critics consider his technique and his talent for showing the humanity of his subjects as a major feat in art history. The solemnity and serenity projected by this piece reflects the calm of the people. To see La G r d e Jattg or Lesas

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ignominious little figures is to totally ignore the plight of people in 1850's France and to render the painting to be no more than lines and shapes on the canvas, and in Dawson's view-bad ones, at that. In other words, Seurat created rather stiff people for a specific purpose. In the case of The Bauhaus, Gropius and his group wanted to transform the world, ridding it of unnecessary and useless ornamentation: form should follow hnction. Even kitchenware

should be finctional but beautitid in its structure. In a desire for purity of form, the Bauhaus Group wanted to mesh life and art so that everyone could share in thoughtfilly but well designed products. Simple, eloquent lamps are still available today because their design is not only hnctional, but aesthetically pleasing. The Bauhaus Group envisioned themselves creatively "transform[ing] the modem world" (Staniszewski, 1995, 236).These artists stripped away inessential ornamentation, not "recognizable living form" from their artwork. Here, Dawson could relate The Bauhaus' paring down to what is essential to factoring or reducing an equation to its barest components. Dawson's lack of understanding regarding non-representational art is seen in her indictment of Picasso. In this case, she states that ''artists desire the legitimacy of physics and mathematics and imitate the objectivity of those sciences by eliminating humans and human concerns from their work"(p.36). Had she reviewed Picasso's reasons for his analytical cubistic work, she would have discovered Picasso's desire to represent as much of the human form as possible in order to convey back, front, and the sides of humans simultaneously. By considering the arrangement of objects and people in planes, and by defining them by straight lines, both Braque and Picasso sought a truer and more complete picture of people in reality. Even in Synthetic Cubism, these artists organised their pictures around a central real object, repeating the

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rhythms of that shape throughout the surface of the canvas. The concerns of these artists were very human as they strove to communicate information about humans in as many ways as possible in order to make meaning for their human audience

Unsatisfied with presenting her own lack of insight into the background of artists, Dawson takes on the well known authorities and critics. She criticises Bernard Berenson for his "little appreciation of the role colour plays in three-dimensional scenes" because he preferred black and white reproductions of paintings in his books. Dawson arrogantly condemns Berenson because of "his little concern for 1 .the effect of colour in evaluating living and non-living forms

2.the importance of colour perspective in viewing paintings which present an illusion of reality 3.the positive, symbolic and metaphorical effects that artists intend certain

colours"(p. 144). Her mistake here concerns the reproduction. Berenson does not dismiss colour qualities in the painting. His point has to do with the reproduction of the two dimensional painting. He does not suggest that an artist should paint in black in white. Albert Barnes, also, vehemently rejected the use of slide and even colour reproductions because neither was capable of conveying the truth of the painting. Malraux, too, felt size and proportion were distorted in reproductions (1953). Interestingly, however, the black and white reproduction , like the black and white photographic print or photograph, does allow the serious viewer an intellectual examination of all the painting's elements freed from the passionate use of colour. The reproduction does not pretend to be reality or even the painting. It is what it is - a reproduction of a painting, no more, no less.

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As well, Dawson has problems with Ernest Gombrich's goals of visual arts as I .representation 2 .illusion 3 .decoration

4.demonstration She finds fault with Gombrich because he does not include "illusion of reality" in his goals

(p. 167).The problem for Dawson revolves around the meaning of reality, for her sense of visual metaphor varies fkom page to page. She says realistic paintings present an illusion of reality that adds through many examples to the child's "tacit knowledge." I believe that Michael Polyani's meaning of the phrase to be something very different from Ms. Dawson's since Polyani's "knowledge" tends to be subconsciously accrued, rather than explicitly taught in slides. She ponders, "Children need to learn how to look at pictures consciously and ask whether they reflect reality- or if they create those terrible and false illusions that everyme does it and that human life has little value"(p. 124). This confusing statement is. I believe, made clearer by Dawson's belief that learning to read facial and body expression will help one "judge what is admirable and what is not, and apply that knowledge when one judges real life situations7'(p.127). This knowledge should apparently come from depictions of reality as faithfully displayed in paintings because there is "the need of children to lean to separate true fiom false information and remember it exactly"(p. 144). Suggestions of rote memory learning and stereotyping come to mind and I wonder what Dawson thinks of the magic of childhood. Would she destroy all childhood fantasies for the sake of reaiify? And reality according to whose definition? She continues, "Many children in school have learned that abstract thinking, in the form

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of symbols, numbers, words or geometric objects, rather than realistic pictures of people in the content of real life scene , is the accepted and applauded form of thinking7'(p.171). Is a picture not a symbol of an object? Is a depicted realistic picture real? Dawson's rationale is based on her idea that only "visual metaphors communicate immediately through one's vision in contrast to concepttral art which cannot be understood at all without the interface of written and spoken

Ianguage"(p. 175). I wonder how she would comprehend the work of Joseph Kosuth's technologically produced paintings that state exactly what the objet d'arl portrayed is. Would she agree that Andy Warhol's silkscreens are worthy an because the words, CampbrN Soup, are printed on the can? I think not. Realistic depiction, so it seems for Dawson, is the only valid topic in paintings: for Dawson, modern art does not appear to include human or social concerns (p. 169). She rejects the notion that there is a universal language that speaks through pictures without realistic symbols. Again, I must wonder if Dawson has ever sat before a Mark Rotho painting and shared his depression and angst in the face of his advancing disease by his use of shades of black and grey that expand and contract like a breath difficultly taken. Has she ever felt the edge of a precipice before a Clifford Styl or looked at the tension represented in Hans Hoffmann's juxtaposition of coloun? And does she understand that Piet Mondrian has used the same underpinnings of intersecting lines as da Vinci did. without concealing them beneath beautiful Madonnas and glorious Christ children? Has she ever really looked at art? The integrity of the abstract anist is impugned when she says. "...when progressing from realism to abstract art... realistic techniques are not hlly mastered and gradually lost"(p.37). 1 doubt that Yale and Harvard educated Frank Stella and Jules Olitski would be pleased to hear that

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their years of arduous study have been so cursorily dismissed. Many artists recognised for their draftmanship, for example, Pablo Picasso and David Hockney did, in fact, refbe to paint in academically accepted and touted ways o~rpzcrpose,having been acknowledged as first, having conquered traditional forms of representation; however, they chose to employ stylised and childlike fonns in an attempt to recapture the wonder and innocence of the child's eye in order to see without the prejudices of society obstructing and biasing their view Howard Gardner in Creating Minds examines those great thinkers, like Einstein, whose ideas conceived in childhood -his riding along side a beam of light- directed the thought and discoveries of their adult life. Indeed, Gardner concludes that childhood imagery was important for the formation of concepts in many of the thinkers who changed 20th century thought. So precious are those orrginal ideas that researchers attempt to teach grown people how to recapture

a childhood eye. Children's art is thought to be immature in Dawson's thesis. She says, "Very few children (or adults) can draw or paint well and to expect them to communicate their ideas or opinions of what they see in their mind's eye by drawing is absurd"(p.36). This criticism is easily disputed by the many examples of adults who have in a space of several short weeks become good artists as shown in Betty Edwards' book. Drawiw on the W t Side of the Brain. Many art teachers know that good drawing comes from good observation of angles, shadows and lines: learning to see. As in most cases, the more an activity is practised, the more talented a person becomes in doing that

activity, and without occasion to actually do and see, the personkhild cannot progress in her ability to convey a desired image (Gardner, 1993). Dawson has accepted the dictum that artists

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are born, not made, and therefore, cannot be educated to draw success~lly. Again, Dawson's lack of knowledge of Picasso and Klee's attempts to see with the eye of a child prevents her insight into the revelations of a child's first drawings , which are often thought to be the most honest, and revealing about their relationships to the world. Kindergarten teachers usually ask their students to draw self portraits in order to understand how a child perceives herself, her family, her world. If she presents herself as a tiny speck compared to her looming brothers and sisters, it may be obvious to surmise how the child feels about her siblings. Brian Crawford, a kindergarten teacher, requires his students to do one portrait a month. The works become diagnostic and reveal development and changing perceptions over time. Dawson cannot understand psychologists who "develop theories based on those (childish) images." In this manner, she resists art therapy in which aberrant behaviour is diagnosed and healed through children's art work. Dr. Alex Fischer might have been terribly offended, for his institute bases its format on therapy through art.

In light of current philosophical thought in which the process, m t the product is the important curriculum outcome, Dawson appears to be too focused on the product that must represent a verisimilitude of external reality. Instead of viewing each drawing as a building block en route to new understandings about the self and the problems involved in producing that final product, she wants aJinished work that will "say it all." In this way, art is the end goal, not the process that continues and extends new visions and ideas through the doing of art works. In Dawson's world, Michelangelo's B

d Slaves would have been finished!

"Publishers of inexpensive, young chiidren's first picture books", Dawson expounds, "which usually fall apart from constant use do not ordinarily employ recognizable artists who do

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realistic work rich in detail. Thus, children (and adults) may becomes accustomed to mediocrity"(p. 171). These comments are without basis. On all counts, Dawson is incorrect. If she speaks of cheap little books, she might look at Robert Munch's books whose illustrator deals directly with realistic scenes of childhood. Chris Van Allsburg's drawings are so realistic that they could be hung on walls as examples of Magic Realism. Ranges of superb styles can be seen by picking up children's books in any book store. Competitions are held worldwide that ensure the quality of book illustration is of an exceedingly high quality. As well, there are soft cover books that are wondefilly illustrated. The fact that many of them fall apart suggests they have been well used and their illustrations have continued to fascinate over time. This speaks, 1 believe, to the intrinsic quality of the book, rather than to its cheapness. I suppose Dawson would also dismiss the Bible with its thin pages and flimsy bendable cover because of its inexpensive cost. Dawson differentiates between fine an and "scribbles, graffiti, Sunday painting"(p.87) which she feels are all unworthy to use in her teaching. She certainly would never have taken seriously Rousseau's Smday Pair~tCgAnd it is obvious that she would disagree with Dewey on differentiating between high and low art. Instead, she creates hierarchies, dismissing the art of the street, the sttrderds art altogether, oblivious to "starting where the child is." However, when she does select a slide for teaching topology, her choice is peculiar: Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali. In this work, watches appear to melt. Why use a manmade construct of a watch to represent a natural one-and might 1 add, a non-realistic one, all ready criticised by Dawson as being unf3 for instructing children into the realities of life. Yet this is her selected choice to expand her topic of topology.

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Let me point out the inconsistencies of Dawson's selection: first. Dali does not attempt to represent watches as real so they can hardly be expected to represent to students a two dimensional watch. (Does she feel a real watch would be cumbersome, like "the lion", to bring into class?) However, if Dawson wants to demonstrate the plane on which a real watch rests as compared to the other plane in the slide, she might have a interesting connection to her topology; still, Dali's most important plane is the unseen one, that is the memory of the watch, as indicated in the title. And again, Dawson's inadequacies in art history are evident since Dali is a member of "The Surrealist Group" not "The Realist Group". Dawson ignores the fact that Dali has used the form of the watch to follow his meaning in the way memory diminishes. changes, and can even stop time. To substitute a slide for a complicated concept might be laughable to Dali, himself, a hrther illusion behind the slide itself If a teacher wanted to use this slide. she could introduce the ticking of a clock. present a real watch and ask, "Why is it that of all the days of our lives, some moments remain while others vanish?' A discussion of these various planes and an accompanying model would be a fascinating look at the topography of the students' lives, one truly based in reality. A clump of earth, a hunk of clay would also serve topology better than a watch as it can be twisted, reformed and reshaped at different times when so desired.. Not only are abstract art, early childhood artists and publishers lambasted, so are teachers

of an who are rebuked because they "frequently reinforce conventional stereotypical thinking in 'paper and pencil'(p.45) using inferior materials. In contrast to educators in mathematics and science who select information from the past, visual arts educators seem to discard information tiom the past"(p.35). And yet, in her slides, Dawson isolates knotted lace collars in Rembrandt's

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work as examples for students's macrame lessons, ignoring Rembrandt's past and his complete oeuvre. Similarly, floating bread in Magritte's paintings- another example of Surrealist art- is noted for its correspondence to real bread. Selecting the visual metaphor of bread that looks like bread in a scene that could not possibly represent real life seems an oxymoron. And in light of Dawson's lack of understanding into the contexts of the examples she cites in art history. she is guilty of her own indictment- of neglecting the past -grievously so, in my eyes. When Dawson needs an example of good an, she selects Escher's visual metaphors. In Drawine Hand~[Fig.gl].what appears to be three-dimensional hands emerge from a two dimensional flat surface. Even Dawson admits, "...but, of course, it is not a match of ordinaly reality." And it would seem that Escher's prints create more ambiguities than correspondences to reality. Escher is an artist known and used by mathematics teachers because of his visual connections with the concept of infinity (see Godel, Escher and Bach by D. Hofstader). Again Escher is a curious choice for Dawson who is so concerned with the true appearance of reality. In Escher's drawings, pictures of lifelike representations are transformed: drawings of birds actually take flight before the viewer's eyes and become fish Fig.921; birds' shapes in the foreground become background shapes and dissolve into pattern as the 'world of space violates the world of physics' and makes Escher's points of the eternal circle that encloses all dimensions of life. In Escher's bird drawings Fig.931, two levels of reality, the one dimensional flat drawing of the bird and the two dimensional illusory representation of that same bird entwine the viewer so she becomes part of the art since her vision is what has transformed the entire process by her perceptions of the metamorphosis from one level of reality to a second; thus, a third reality is involved in Escher's work as it projects through one, two and three realities simultaneously as

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illustrated in the drawing. If Dawson is so interested in the picture of reality, why would she confuse her students with Escher's strange Ioops of reality, that present a conundrum of where art's reality leaves off and where the viewer's begins? I wonder why she did not select a detailed realistic drawing like Albrecht Durer's Praying Hands here. Truly, Dawson's use of fine art makes it a handmaiden, once again, to the arts. Exploited, disconnected, flashed on the screen larger and more distorted than life (Malraux, 1953), the slides of paintings of a realistic genre are not valued for their intrinsic values of artistic principles, aesthetics, composition or production. Worse yet, she completely severs them from historical or societal contexts. I cringe to think any student might leave school, thinking that Rembrandt's art is about tying knots on a pretty collar. Dawson's examples have been narrowly chosen to extend the likelihood of a mathematics theory, a craft class or her idea of a correspondence to reality. In Dawson's thesis, art is not used to problem solve; it is a means to an end. Observation,

assessment, accommodation and assimilation of new information and synthesis (p.20) are the so called benefits of using visual analysis. She might have looked to Elliot Eisner's concepts of connoisseurship and criticism to develop those usefbl skills. And what about expression and recognition of how artists have communicated their thoughts about real life? It is interesting to note that someone like Dawson feels qualified to speak about art when her information and research is so limited. The idea is that art need not be studied seriously or in context or indeed, that anyone can do it. It is for this very reason that Eisner insists on a cumulative, sequential study of art from kindergarten to Grade 12 and Howard Gardner says that

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all study of art should proceed from production. A way to proceed, an approach to learning about

art is required by people knowledgeable about art to prevent those who would dabble in art to comprehend that art is more than just a few knots and slides. I now know why Joyce Wilkinson directed me to this thesis. It made me furious. My

classmate was correct: art must be more than coloufil wallpaper hung to decorate the walls of schools. That is not enough. An must be in the classroom, taught with respect, fully explained for its ideas, concepts, given its rightfbl place in the curriculum, not exploited for the sake of other disciplines by those who have little understanding of its many benefits.

The Mabin School

In contrast to the case presented above, I disctrss how The Mabill School effectively uses art in all aspects of its program.

On February 17.1995,I approached the double doors of the Mabin School on Poplar Plains Road. Before even entering, 1 had the feeling that in front of me was a house. not dissimilar to the many others framed by trees and yards on the meandering street. Once inside the hallway. the smell of oranges and baking cookies invited me to proceed hrther in my investigations. A flash of metallic colours like many shiny, glittering mosaics met my gaze, and my senses immediately felt welcome in a place that I had heard about, but never visited. Paola Cohen guided me to the kitchen where I sat for several minutes while she completed her work in the artroom. While I waited, I noted again the relaxed. informal homey environment: tiles and bricks, novels at the window. mugs on the wall, geranium leaves twirling out of their wooden basket. teacher chitchat, mixed with laughter. Large windows made me aware of the world outside. and 1 reflected on the "naturalness" of this school, so unlike many schools I have visited. Their brochure states, "A basic objective is the acquisition of a solid foundation in a warm, secure and enriched environment" [Fig.94], and that is what the atmosphere suggests even before visiting the school. I thought , too, of an assignment 1 had once written for Michael Connelly on the perfect school. I had reflected my school would have large windows so the children would be aware of the outside world, the changing seasons and the effects of light on their days. They would be constantly aware of the connections between their outside and inside worlds. Several years ago, Paola had given me an article by Elliot Eisner that explained clearly and

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succinctly what a child learns when she paints. This afternoon at the Mabin, Paola was describing how she used clay with kindergarten classes. She said that the children explore all the expressive qualities of clay. They begin, she said, by tearing a hunk of clay away from her hands. They learn to work the material with not just fingertips or hands, but their entire bodies, and it takes strength and muscle to pull at and grasp that mound of resistant matter. They can take more clay, not as they want it, but, she emphasized, as they need it in the development of their work. Since there are no kilns at the school, the emphasis is on process, not product so that clay is recycled or transformed continually into another experiment. Paola poses open-ended questions to the children, "Can that clay be as tall as you are?" The children problem solve, forming patches or strips of clay and then discover that stretching clay to their own height needs supports or it will flop over. Through doing, (Dewey, 1934) the children are learning about the properties of clay and that they must find a way to prop it up. Someone remembers ever- so- tall churches, and Paola tells them some Gothic Churches have "flying buttresses" in order to hold up the very high exterior walls. Some children are measuring amounts of clay; others are comparing who is taller or shorter in their group. Peripheral learning is going on, resultant from the interaction of the children and their environment. They are learning from their experiences, stimulated by the experiences of others and remembering past bits of information seen in magazines or discussed at the dinner table. The children discover that in arriving at solutions, they have had to transform not only their knowledge about clay but the material as well. Depending on each child's experience, her solutions to the problems will be solved uniquely. Paola says that giving the children limitations increases their creativity because they must

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limit themselves to one medium. Rather than employing sticks or rolled paper, they will experiment with clay alone, often collaborating or borrowing one another's ideas (Dewey, 1934). Sometimes, the group project is suspension bridges and every person must collaborate and contribute for its success. The Grade two class' theme dealt with reptiles, and in particular, scales. With an eye to promote visual literacy in as many ways as possible, the teachers presented as many materials as possible. On the walls, Gaudi's architecture is displayed, attention being given to the numerous materials and the many ways he juxtaposed them in his buildings. On another wall, a close up examination of the textures of a lizard's skin rippled across the wall's surface. Paola showed me the teacher's drawing of scales used to teach multiplication, and her students' beautifidly decorated envelopes that contained tangrams. The children used clay to create a reptile and later were given trays f i l l of textured materials to apply to their work. Again, they were not given unlimited access to both clay and decoration because the teacher wanted the students to concentrate on form, first, then ornamentation. Many children given both parts of the project would be overwhelmed with the colour, shape, texture of the decoration and become fixed on the textures, neglecting the structure, Paola states. As well, I noticed stories accompanied by colourfbl drawings on the walls. At the Mabin, they want each child to feel success in her endeavours individually ,as well as members in a co-operative group . Lynn Seligman, who has been a teacher at the school for ten years, commented on her students' attempts to create three dimensional zoo habitats. She said that after spending many years at the school, the students know about textures, their properties , possibilities and real life uses. She remarked on the students' independence in doing research and

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combining materials that would do the job. "They look at the projects from many angles", she said.Will the animals need shade? Will the materials absorb water?" The practical applications have a meaningfbl role in these students' research. As they gather information, the children attempt to see from a human's as well as an animal's point of view. Because of the use of art materials in every aspect of their learning, students feel comfortable appropriating them in their work. There is nothing "special" about working or creating in various media because it is a familiar language used and reused everyday at the Mabin School. Art is part of these children's regular experiences. As well, newspaper reports, stories and drawings are all linked to the formation of zoos, In working with a colonial theme, Grade 4's do not perceive any disjointedness among subjects. The students think globally, I am told, for arts do not stand out separately from everyday experience. The teachers express the necessity of meaningful, rather than mindless art. The children made cloth dolls because pioneer children not only created their own toys, they invented their own games. The project is not only appropriate for the study and recreation of a particular social world, it shows the children how they, too, can be inventive and problem solve as other children might have many years ago. Later, a child from another class, Stephanie, proudly shows me the car she has sawed from wood, and how she has painted and fixed the wheels so it can really move. Dahlia Besesparis' class was so taken by their visit to Enoch Turner School that they had asked to put their desks in rows, and stand beside their desks when they answered questions. Children, some not even in this class, had appeared the rest of the week, dressed in period clothes, and role-played the part of children of a former era. Outside the class, letters penned in careful

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calligraphy described their lives. This group had erected a log cabin, a space that could be entered and used. By trial and error, the children had measured and planned so that they could actually transform their living space. Paola told me that last year she had brought branches from her cottage and the children had made the most beautifid long house for their study of aboriginal peoples. She had enthused not only about the physical concrete aspects of the work, but the ethical ones the students had ascertained in their consideration of the spiritual significance for the uses of a religious building. Physical. emotional and spiritual considerations come into play when discussing many aspects of people's lives, and by stepping into their methods and reasons, the students can better understand the reasons behind a culture's social structures. I am reminded again of Dewey's interest in traditions of many cultures and how prejudices can be broken down by looking at an (1934). 1 am also thinking about the word "social" repeated over and over again in Dewey's Credo because this school is such a social place, informal, welcoming, conducive to social intercourse and exchange, giving the children the materials of the world to "experience" uniquely and then return changed to their social environment for the delight, enjoyment and satisfaction of themselves and others. The teachers here are truly facilitators, challenging and supporting their children to problem solve and see the connections beyond the school's large windows into their lives. The brochure states, Teachers at The Mabin School are committed to developing confident, independent learners through a child-centred approach to education in which children's developmental needs, interests and learning styles are taken into account. Parental involvement is encouraged and valued at The Mabin. A four page newsletter to parents written in a friendly tone seems more like a letter to friends rather than official notification of

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events: W.A.D. (Winter Appreciation Day), lost and found, phone numbers, doodles, info about

ROM courses, book donations, news of The Mabin's 15th birthday, as well as tear off forms to join CPR classes in The Mabin gym are included. This little newsletter makes me mindfbl of Eisner and Gardner's emphasis on the home being a necessary partner in a child's successfhl education. Whether the task is a medieval banner, a concrete poem, or a drawing of Stravinsky's "The Firebird", an is a way of thinking and approaching the task with joy at the Mabin.

Avenue Road Arts School

L this brief chapter, I discuss the role theme plays as fhe basis ofthe art sttrdies at Lola :s school. Begrgrrrrrirg with stories, the children irlterpret the themes through vimal art, h a & movrmem, rnmtlsic a t d song. Lola 's emphasis is ahvays or1 the magic that childwn po.sses.s and how its releasefort/$u.s the child 's growth into a confidew~,imaginative person. Good witches and bad witches, water witches and sandwitches; all shapes and sizes and they all do something different and they ail do it in different ways. - "The Weather Witch

.

On the outside of the house, there are strange looking, colourfLl creatures and one wonders what kinds of strange birds reside inside. Although the front door opens onto a cosy waiting room, much like your favourite aunt's leather den, one has the feeling that magic is afoot. And that is exactly what Lola Rasminsky would like you to feel in her school. In her video, she says she feels almost "missionary", for "nothing is more important than imagination. for ultimately, the imaginative is critical to the life of society"(Video by Ann West for Avenue Road Arts School). The Avenue Road Arts Kindergarten, which serves as a training ground for graduate students at the University of Toronto's Institute of Child Study, integrates the arts so the young child learns to value and trust her inner self in creating a painting, singing a fbnny song, banging out an irreverent tune, or enacting a story fragment. Hopefidly, this self-valuing will cause the child "to grow up confident, creative, and less vulnerable to external judgements" (Brochure, 19953). In 1982, my son, and in 1985, my daughter attended Lola's classes which were held in the basement of her Heath Street house. Even to this very day, my son recalls the stories by Allen

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Morgan that initiated his searches in parks for lost trolls, and his class's creation of the insurmountable dinosaur doughnut. Kept safe in a place of honor is his binder of well-thumbed and well-loved "Lola Stories" which included such titles as '.Magic Pennies", "The Windman", "The Four Seasons Come to Torontom-andOne Magic Spell. His experiences, I reflect, were holistic, and interdisciplinary, feeding his cognitive skills: his love of stories encouraged him to learn to read by himself so he could reread "Lola's Stories" at home. In contrast to his public school kindergarten mornings, Lola's classes seemed to be bounding movement, stimulating activities, fun and magic. My daughter's experiences were different, more focused on the reverie of music and song,

and transformations into fantastic art work that remained for days and weeks on the easels at the school. Helpfbl teachers discussed and explored those paintings. I remember liking this thoughtful approach that treated the child as an artist, and the an not as disposable goods, but the outcome of considered thought and effort. Lola's students incorporate frames on their paintings, setting them off as special and deserving of focus. discussion and respect. The change in Lola's venue must have been somewhat difficult, but exciting for Lola. From the friendly, welcoming woodpanelled, fireplaced security of her own home, she has relocated to a building that also possesses its own special "child" history. The previous tenants were the Royal Conservatory of Music and Dr. Blott's School for the Gifted- so memories and music cling to the slanted walls and stairwells. Like the birds in flight outside the house, Lola's programs, Lola's school, Lola's ideas have taken flight. The possibilities of art is now offered not only to kindergarten children, but to school age and even curious adults at many times during the day. And the programs include, "Mixed Media", "Dinosaurs", "Sculpture7',"Theatresports",

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"Drawing and Sketching", "Pottery", "Art and Archeology". "Origami", "Cartooning", "Jewelry Making". "illustration", "Children's Choir", and "Magic"! Lola tells me she has about 400 students.

Pre-School Program The preschool children begin classes by listening to stories whose themes generate art work, creative movement, drama, and music. When I first visited the school in late October, the classrooms were filled with artwork that suggested the fall season. The children had begun their "studies' with The Chestnut Pie Story. Gathering chestnuts, grass, straw, pinecones. leaves, and small stones, the children had concocted an enormous pie on the front lawn , which they set out for the white squirrel. The following day, their efforts were rewarded by the discovery of a golden chestnut left by the white squirrel in thanks for the magnificent pie. Maybe, it was the song that called to the squirrel so he would know where to locate that delicious treat. Since it was close to Halloween. 1 was not surprised by the bats seriously pursued by the children in drawings and sculpture. S-t

a story about bats, is being read by the teacher. But

all ready, I see framed collages of bats, each different from another. Soon the children will work with brown fabric to produce their own bat replicas to be hung in a bat cave in the corner. Through the stories and artwork, one senses an underlying theme of transformation- for at Lola's all things change form and shape. I have observed shoes become rocket ships and magic carpets that whisk their designers to fantasy lands: some have even landed at The Bata Shoe Museum. Today I encounter convincing boulders that are really(?) lumps of painted papier mache on which snakes sprawl. The children have dyed the fabric in multi-patterned colours, stuffing the

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snake creatures' bodies into sinuous shapes. Some have even added scales. A large class project of a communal snake effort is entwined in a branch in the class. 1 consider how snakes shed their skins, and their close associations with the earth goddess. The teacher tells me that children love snakes. They write snake stories and sing snake songs. Lola and I grimace, and I wonder if perhaps we are grownups, believing the lies told by grownups that snakes are slimy, and we are too out of touch with the closeness of the earth beneath our toes .

In considering "things that change". the children have built a huge cocoon that sits in a tree in their class. In the spring, a butterfly will emerge. I can imagine mammoth gauzy wings that will enfold the class and transport them somewhere wondefil. The art projects deal with considerations and contemplations of time, development and change, similar to the processes of maturation these little people are experiencing in mind and body during the short time spent here at Lola's. Concepts of change and continuity are played out in a n through work with varied

materials and subject matter, like animals and objects in nature that link the children to the many cycles in life. Seasonal themes that can be observed, felt. experienced, recognised by young children seem an excellent familiar way to begin where the children are: the feathery birds. the

furry caterpillar, the fluttering butterfly all are available to the real sights, sounds, smells and touches in the child's world. "The stories generate excitement, emotional content that carries over and makes their an vibrant",reports a teacher.

It is as Lola says, a world within of magic, a world awaiting discovery of" the enormous richness of what they have inside themselves". At Lola's , it is a world of arts, to be shared and treasured for a lifetime.

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Kiddiggers : An Innovative Program Kiddiggers is a unique program offered at the Avenue Road Arts School. Much like the school boys marooned on the island in Lord of the Flies, these kids must decide how they would survive in a culture they have created. Their teacher and creator of the program, Jocelyn Chu. reviews their progress each day, returning them fiom their real life after school to another time and place . She begins by holding up the map that has charted their course. She asks, "Which way did the prevailing winds blow?' and, "What's the name of a bunch of ships-rhymes with 'peat'." Gradually, the children become engrossed and she takes them back in history by showing them "mystery objects." Again she queries, "What do you think this was used for?" A child proffers, ". . .an ancient palette?"

What I am hearing is excellent vocabulary from children ages, 7-9. Words like "utopia... artifact...anthropologist...ritual...technology.dictatorship chemical warfare...excavate... rotation..." emerge effortlessly from the mouths of these children as they thoughthlly discuss their theories. Jocelyn not only develops the children's vocabulary. but their critical thinking abilities through play and games. To discover the purpose of the "mystery object", she reminds them to rule out "Baloney Theories". She tells them to look carefully and consider various aspects of the object, questioning themselves as to "How was it functional?" and "Look at the decoration." She challenges them, "How can you be sure your theory is correct?' A child's hand shoots up immediately to answer, "You could do chemical tests." Another child yells out, "Maybe someone wrote the reason down in a book." And a third jumps up to add, "Look for a mural because maybe someone showed how it was used."

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In this action-filled class, kids learn through doing, even positing and considering how people might have communicated, and transported themselves in other times and places. They combine notions of art and science to arrive at possible solutions. The kids divide up into two groups to create their own unique cultuies which will be buried and excavated by the other group. Beginning with the ideas they bring into class, it is not surprising that their societies are part Jurassic Park and part Star Trek. Within their fictional worlds are sad remnants of our own world's destruction or devastation. One girl tells me that in her "culture" the trees are dying and it rains every day except one because "the chemicals struck the earth." Yet even in this gloomy prognosis, there is the child's imagination that sees magic in the worst situations: "Although rain always comes in the same colour-it comes in different shapes," says one child. Another delights in describing the festivities that occur on the one day when rain ceases. It sounds much like a Maypole dance, Although these are not religious children per se, both groups have instituted an organised religion, and interestingly, both have selected animal gods. For one group, it is a dog. (Jocelyn and I chuckle that dog spelt backwards is god)! For the other group, the lion and the monkey are the benevolent deities who designate "safe" areas where animals can be hunted for only food. I am reminded of Jung's Collective Unconscious, and also Rianne Eisler's discussion of the cycles of dominator and partnership cycles when the children tell me that the first person who settled their culture was the mayor, but afler that the next person will be the one with "least fights."

The children work together drawing a mural about their cultures. Children share ideas, overlapping each other's work space: each one charts her own course, but must be responsible to the group. The "rain group" has combined various perspectives to show their underground world

from multiple views. Jocelyn is always saying, "Details....details... you will be like a camera...remember those details." What I find so intriguing are the numerous levels the children perform on. They play dual roles, considering the culture from the point of view of the inhabitants, building it from scratch, playing God, reflecting on making their artifacts credible to their worlds; then, they are archaeologists who piece together a culture from the clues and evidence left by artifacts. For this pan, the kids have fashioned and glued together clay artifacts. unperturbed should a part detach as it might in the "real" world. Jocelyn reminds them of the fiction and reality of the situation, for the artifacts must be consistent and connected to the thought and the life generated by the imaginary culture. Many kinds of thinking are required in this program: reasoning, sequencing, spatial, temporal, imaginative, linear, non-linear, jigsaw, lateral...all relate to the many problems humans encounter on a personal and group level of survival. Many kinds of an making are the keys to unlocking doors on culture: they create artifacts; they draw murals; they role play. They enter into a democracy of shared ideas and conceptions in attempt to sustain their cultures. As archeologists, the children step outside the culture and objectively sifi through the debris of another's life to weigh, balance, notice, dissect what can be determined by the artifacts. For this process, there are the diggers, the recorders, research reporters, and catalogue/conservers. As always, the children don the various hats of the people who do these jobs. Interestingly Jocelyn, like Paola Cohen at the Mabin School, sets parameters. Otherwise Jocelyn says, "Process and product degenerate." The result is gesturing. "I want them to think in depth, to value something." Indeed sifting through layers of dirt unearths more than just objects.

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The act of digging is a metaphor for what the children can discover about themselves, and it depends how deeply they are willing to dig within themselves. This program at Lola's combines history, geography, science, art, drama, English, investigative skills, and more. I like the sweep of thinking encountered through art: through the building up and the dissembling of a culture; the outward and inward foci afforded by participants and observers. All the while, new information that comes from teacher, books, personal research, trial and error, peer discussion and critique combines with what the child has brought to class. The best part is that the children are having fin, learning through play while ascertaining important, difficult concepts.

Madame Munn's Class

Although The Mabin School and the Aventre Road Fine Arts Kindergarten are private schoofs,Mndamr M z m ~'s class is at, example of art being taught weN 111 the pcthlic srctur. Madame Sandra Munn, a teacher at Allenby public School in the City of Toronto, employs art in all of her programs. She says that she uses art because "it works. When the children have actually transformed the programs' concepts into objects, they know their lessons," she continues. Her method of teaching is "to talk, talk, talk." Because Madame Munn teaches in French, (she is a French Immersion teacher), she says that the technical vocabulary that she must often use is very complex, for example, in teaching the life cycle of the butterfly. For this project, the children worked with mobiles, showing each stage of the insect's development in drawings and correspondins labels. Madame Munn says that after her "talking" and the subsequent transformation of idea into an, the children write factual reports based on the information gleaned from their a n work. The

next step is a fantasy or creative story where the jumping off point has been the particular theme studied. Often a theme will be reinterpreted to teach math. With the buttertly, lessons in measuring and proportion are devices used in the creation of colourfbl butterflies. A specific lesson in pointillism and a brief history of its origins, is followed by a look at an original French prints with which the students compare and contrast their own work. A theme continues as long as the children want to pursue it.

252 A project on the savannah is an excellent way to learn about eco systems. Through the use

of diorama, the children simulate not only wet and dry areas but the animals that reside in these environs. Having to select one of the two kinds of giraffes that inhabit these lands, the children move from outside the dioramas to create milk carton giraffes. Here the environment has spawned an animal who has literally escaped the confines of tis diorama habitat, to be examined at a closer range: size and space transformations have occurred. Earlier hippos had been made to correct scale and colour in order to learn about the resourcehlness of these creatures. When the children had completed making their giraffes, Madame Munn said they could differentiate the various giraffes from 400 feet away. In art there is a constant consideration of parts to the whole, whether animal bodies to their limbs, or animals to their habitat. She explains how these animals are dropped from their mothers during the process of birth , and in great laughter and excitement, the children enact birthing scenes.

To create tangrams, the children are given seven pieces of paper. It might have been easy to concoct the usual spaceships, but the instructions were to continue playing until the shapes looked like something. Through play, children learn (Dewey, 1934). Madame Munn's favourite project this year evolves from dance. The theme of a place in the United States where French is spoken was the "laid on" topic. Having decided on New Orleans, the children work with the idea of the Mardi Gras- the children learned that in the Mardi Gras' dance, only three colours are used, and that men wear full face masks, and women half masks. All the children decide to create half masks, and plan to perform an original dance based on the traditional ones in New Orleans. From the dance, they begin to think about where the people do their dance and ponder the

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city, and the streets of New Orleans, so they move to the creation of a mural of Bourbon Street. Working with actual photographs taken by a parent, they reproduce the buildings, while examining the eclectic architecture of the French Quarter. The children are amazed at the variation of the decoration within just one street block. A lesson on multiples showed the children how math might be employed in the making of the wrought iron railings that are located in front of the landmark structures on Bourbon Street. This activity involves measuring and developing their own railings in proportion and design to the buildings carehlly placed on the street scape. Another lesson on mixing oil pastels forms the basis of the background for the buildings and the railings that are cut out and pasted on that background. A friend of Madame Munn's has been in New Orleans to purchase beads worn during the

Mardi Gras dance. She bought the beads for the children at Allenby so they could have a keepsake oftheir vicarious excursion to New Orleans. Some children decide to use the beads in collages and integrate that work into the Bourbon Street mural. Some wear the beads during their dance. Even culinary arts were examined by this grade I and 2 class. A special "Big Daddy" cake was ordered by

a parent from New Orleans, and the children all shared in taste-testing it. Madame

Munn says that from the dance. she has been able to teach history, geography, religion, math ,cuisine, culture and race relations. The dance is the stimulus to integrate all these areas of study. Madame Munn's split grades one and two class want continual positive reinforcement so

she found that she has to keep the class moving fairly quickly to maintain a high level of interest and desire to succeed in class activities. She ascertains that besides a vehicle to discover and problem solve en route to learning, art built self-confidence. She refers to a "particularly troublesome young man" who did wonderful scientific diagrams during a trip to the Humber

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Arboretum. She related how she told him how good those drawings were, and the incident conveyed to the child that he possessed special mastery and skills. He was proud of what he had done, and liked himself better because of that work and reinforcement.

The class does not linger for days and days on a particular aspect of any theme. Those themes are dictated by the children's particular interest, and amazing twists and turns result from their inquiries. She is sensitive to the pace at which her students work and sustain interest in the themes. She explains her technique. First. she works with them in a large group, explaining and "talking and talking". Then, in their centres, she would draw each child out into discussions about his or her ideas and the ensuing work. Madame Munn sees herself as a facilitator and resource person. She adds that she never touches their work. Whether examining space or soup, Madame Munn translates her own ideas and those of the children into tactile an objects. Once the children understand through art the basic concepts of the theme, the lesson may proceed into another area. Sometimes children respond dramatically,

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visually, or contemplatively. They write reflections in a journal develop a story, compose a play, create a poem , or imagine a game. In all cases, the fine arts are an essential key ,and this remarkable teacher has discovered the secret of learning through an integrated, concrete approach that makes learning fun."I do it because it works".

* APPENDIX for examples of children's art fiom the Mabin, Avenue Road Arts, and Madame Munn's classes: CHILDREN'S ART.

Bow Art Can Aid In Teaching Multicultural Studies

This chapter wiN review the origirr of the concept of multicultural educatiori , some of the problems and the approaches that have been used it? classroom^ tofacilitate its feachi~igFrom this discussion, I will si~ggestreasons why art is a suitable a d eflective way to deal with mt~ltictrltziralstudies. What is Multicultural Education? Civil Rights movements in the late 60's and early 70's "spawned several related movements to make education more equitable for various groups"(S1eeter and Grant, i987,42 1). In 1954, in Brown w. the Board of Education. the United States Supreme Court mandated racial integration in the public school. Significantly, one submission now known as a Brandeis Brief argued for the

first time the importance of psychological and cultural evidence along with strict legal cases. Metaphorically, this case reflected the need for social facts to be considered as part of the legal framework, inseparable in a society whose values, beliefs, and traditions are represented and considered in couns of law. The awareness of difference in class. race, gender and disability as potentially limiting factors forced schools to consider the need to change content and practices in their institutions as the result of diverse enrollment. However, while awareness is a necessary preliminary to change, implementation is a process fraught with experimentation and unforseen problems. As early as 1949, Tyler stated that learning experience should "be appropriate to the student's present attainment, his predisposition, and the like" (Wasson et a], 1990, 237). Even earlier in 1916, Dewey had written of the benefits of cultural pluralism. But Carl Grant reflected that not until Corporate America felt an economic reason for the introduction of multicultural programs would these programs be taken seriously. In 1983, America passed a demographic

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watershed. when for the first time. the number of Americans over 65 was greater than the number of American teens and the so-called

"

'browning of America' [would] increase as the Latino and

Asian-American population increase[d]" (Grant, 1992. 24). In deed, 14% of the American school population did not speak English at home (Maker et all 1994. 6). Integrating many diverse people and their various lifestyles into a Global Economy required knowing the habits and traditions of peoples previously ignored or disregarded. But, how to understand and come to terms with them?

The definitions of "multicultural education" abound. Sought as a way to acculturate rather than assimilate all students into a melting pot, multiculturalism has been defined as "education which prepares people to fitnction effectively in a culturally pluralistic society"(Dilger. 1994. 50) or as an attempt "to make school and curriculum opportunities more accessible to various groups of students, especially students of colour, female students, students with disabilities, students living below the poverty linen(Grant. 1992. 18). Stuhr says the aim of this program is "an equitable distribution of power and resources among all individuals of all levels of society: local, national and international"(Stuhr et al, 1992, 16). Sleeter and Grant add an educational aim to these ideas of equity and equality by anticipating that the recipients of multicultural education will now apparently "become more analytical and critical thinkers" (In Stuhr, 1994, 171 ). In fact, it is even suggested that those of the dominant group who have "enjoyed the social and financial rewards of this country (America) will... become reflective of their previous unshared bounty." While the political, social, economic and moral overtones may make multiculturalism seem to be a utopian ideal, it is, nonetheless a difficult one to implement fairly. Sleeter and Grant have identified five approaches that have been used in schools to introduce multicultural education. As a common starting point, all students must be treated

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equally, particularly if their cultures and rights have been ignored, or disparaged in the curriculum. These "victims of repression" and oppression must finally be given positive reinforcement and a place in society through having their cultures acknowledged in the school system. The first approach, used in schools is Teaching the Culturally Different in which teachers attempt to build transitional bridges between the child's culture and the existing school program, using "instructional practices more compatible with students' learning and communication styles" (Sleeter and Grant, 1987,124). The cumculum remains the same but the child is helped to adapt to the mainstream education. Through this approach, however, the child sees her school separated from her culture, her home, her fiends. "Discontinuity" and alienation occur because the school environment differs so greatly from the child's (see Wasson et al, 1990, 239; McFee). lnconsistent values cause the child to wonder to which world she belongs, usually opting for the security of home or peers because she feels identification with her culture away from school. Asante has countered that children should be placed in the centre of the context of the familiar (1992, 28) and says, in fact, that ethnic groups have benefitted from segregated schools because children naturally develop a sense of place and self-worth in schools that base curriculum on familiar traditions, events, and heroes that are re-enforced in an educational situation. The transmission of culture is seamless from home to school. All cultural and social references are derived from a child's own historical setting, with no need to be fitted in or juxtaposed to the dominant culture.

A second identified approach is focused on The Human Relations. Here, teachers avoid stereotyping and attempt to create a tolerant, harmonious and secure environment. OAen "holidays and heroes", and ethnic foods are pan of the curriculum that seeks to identify universal

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qualities. Cross-cultural exhibitions and multiple perspectives are suggested so students can become empathetic and responsive to cultural pluralism. A third approach identified by Sleeter and Grant is termed "Single Studies". Like Human

relations, teachers are sensitive to victimization as weH as the accomplishments of individuals and their races. Conceptual conflicts and the single perspective of the disenfranchised are promoted. Marginalised groups are the subject of single lessons; however, the perpetrator of the unjust society is ironically the mainstream white society that is orchestrating these classes. This creates a paradox: is the school encouraging its own demise through race-bashing itself? Or is this approach a new way to confbse and subjugate the minorities? Imagine the confbsion in not knowing who to trust. A fourth approach is called "The Multicultural Approach" which postulates a reformed school program: "strength and value of cultural diversity.. .human rights and respect...alternative life choices...social justice and equal opportunity...equity distribution of power among members of all ethnic groups"(S1eeter and Grant, 1987, 429). Diverse faculty, a variety of teaching strategies and discussions that deal with the complexity of power and knowledge through investigations of

.

gender, race, ethnicity religion and exceptionalness are the championed tenets of this approach. Sleeter and Grant have gathered data that demonstrates that anthropological methods are employed (1987,432) in many schools using The Multicultural approach in order to help students reach their potential. Students are actively involved and in control of the research techniques, and uses of information they have personally gathered. Stuhr is most in favour of the fifth approach identified by Sleeter and Grant :Education That Is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist. The aim here is to prepare and empower

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students to take social action in order to challenge social structures that have caused oppression and inequality. Stuhr's students would look to their own experiences outside of school and collaborate with peers and teachers, negotiating and sharing knowledge, skills and values. The group analyses and becomes self-critical of its own lives and social divisions. James Banks suggests three stages necessary for cultural consciousness: awareness of self and others; critical awareness of inequalities and omissions; and a focus in change. In his model, students are asked to inspect their own baggage. exploring their biases and prejudices in order to create "a multicultural prism" (Dilger, 1994, 50). Taking action to eliminate and create a more just society, perhaps commencing by making their classroom more democratic and responsive to all voices models hture behaviour. "Students are taught to coalesce and work together across the lines of race, gender, class, disability in order to strengthen and energize their fight against oppressionm(Stuhr, 1994, 176). Within these five approaches, Collins and Sandell have identified four methods used: the dominant culture is attacked; escape is presented by viewing various cultures romantically and nostalgically, and by avoiding any conceptual conflict; students' self-esteem and contidence are repaired; and multicultural studies are transformed into common culture in which "the best elements [of cultures]are selected and gathered together to form a new and more humane culture" (Smith. 1994, 12). Not surprisingly these different ways of addressing multicultural societies can aggravate rather than ameliorate already tense situations. Judith Hanna identifies five more problem areas within this complexity of instructional models. Teachers cannot treat all African students together as one multicultural group because, there is diversity within diversity. She reports there is lack of

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evidence these programs work since many students continue to cling to hostile beliefs and stereotypes. Diversity, socioeconomic mobility and the Arts represents another problem area as reflected in Montgomery County, Maryland, where an African American community voted for a science- magnet school over a performing arts-magnet school. In a smorgasbord of values, are both equally acceptable? Dances, and songs are not only "boundary markers", but are also cultural property of various groups whose art, for example, is ritual based, inseparable from the values and traditions of their specific group. Lastly unintended offense may result when teachers are out of their depth in presenting a culture they do not understand or have not adequately researched (Hanna, 1994, 69-75). Perhaps most problematic is the term "multicultural studies" since it is a white mainstream middle class notion which is detined by some as intellectual imperialism (Collins & Sandell, 1992 ;Smith, 1992) where the dominant culture stands outside the experience of the minorities, seeking to know another's. Rather than integrating and dissolving hierarchies, new divisions of "us" and

"others" are formed. Another important issue is the need to recognize the potential for cultural self-esteem as exemplified in the case of 5 '/2 year old Jan Kindler, an American Polish boy who moved to British Columbia. Fascinated by banners of killer whales displayed on the street, Jan "claimed a sense of ownership" (Kindler, 1994, 57) of these motifs by drawing and reinterpreting them. He met Clarence Mills. a sculptor of Haida totem poles and after talking with him. Jan integrated Haida imagery into his cultural heritage. When asked at school to bring artifacts of his personal cultural heritage, Jan proudly exhibited his killer whale drawings and was quickly rebuked by his teacher. His mother reflects, "I am greatly concerned it[multicultural studies] brands children as

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members of distinct and closed societies"( 1994, 59). We must question whose definition of cultural heritage will be accepted and how is it defined: Do we not accumulate and choose from a pluralistic society what we decide is best? And what has Jan's experience in school taught him about his identity?

Why Art and How Art?

.. . a n gives value a perceptive shape and makes it a a candidate for imaginative appropriation. (Broudy, 1967, 1 16) McFee has said that arts are essential to perpetuate, change and enhance culture, and the arts are situated in contexts that can reveal work& to students. Considered artifacts by many, these objects are not as threatening to other students as an angry or challenging misunderstood child of a minority might be. Students involved in art can go at their own pace actively discovering what it is that endows an artifact with the identity that represents a particular culture. Incapable of actually speaking human words, the artifact does speak volumes when the student considers what role, what material, what purpose it held in society. Dewey understood this dialectic relationship between medium and perceiver whose curiosity and imagination is engaged. The power of creative process works "meeting the world as an objective 'it' to engaging with the world in such an intense and caring manner so as to raise 'it' to the level of 'Thou"'(London, 1992, 92). For the child, her own self becomes the medium of transformation as she engages with art, and as she examines its social context, and begins to perceive its cultural significance,

aesthetics and connections to its maker and community, for "visual symbols convey ideas and express (meaningfhl) emotions, qualities and feelingsl'(Chalmers, 198O/ 1, 6).

2 62

By assuming the role of the anthropologist and the ethnologist, students develop skills as action researchers and participant-observers. Just as professionals doing field work, students learn that art is a socially constructed way to impart meaning and a sense of the reality of a society, for all societies have some form of an embedded into their structures. This was a lesson previously discovered in Kiddiggers. a class at The Avenue Road Arts School where children became archaeologists and sifted through various media to unearth layers of meaning about societies.

In assuming the role of an ethnologist. students seek out artists and artisans of particular cultures and interview them. They can view the artist working in situ, and make notes , and record their responses in journals. Students can audio or videotape. Talking, listening, observing. recording and interacting (Wasson et al, 1990, 237), allows students to see the function of art in culture- whether religious (or supernatural). socially, prestigious. playhl. aesthetic, linguistic ( or communicative), political or technological (Gerbrandts, 1 957). And I would like to add an additional way of accomplishing the effective learning of any

culture: students should actually be involved in the making of a cultural artifact, entering into and going beneath the surface of a particular culture to experience for herself the dilemmas, restraints, and decisions necessary in the actual creation of a piece of art. I would suggest she make an artifact, representative of her own culture, and then compare and contrast it with one from another culture. Through the doing (Dewey, 1934), she will begin to understand how ideas are given shape and impart meaning in media. London in his article, "Art As transfonnation"(l992) criticizes Picasso's " adopted Primitive style" in his painting, Ces Demoiselles dIAvlpgpll . . London accuses Picasso of tokenism because he used "formal, decorative elements residing on the surface of another culture's artifact ,

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excluding the meaningm(1992). However, if the student can empathize and re-enact the process, she can begin to understand another's perspective, perhaps, to create a kind of hybrid that uses one culture's vocabulary to comment on another. Comparative studies and cross-cultural art exhibitions are ways to look, reflect and gain insights into how others envisage their world. An examination of the Tharu community in Pharsatikal near Katmandu reveals that art is integrated into every aspect of their daily life. Symbolic murals produced for ritual purposes decorate the walls of mud houses. Snakes, horses, and elephants symbolize the transcendental power of nature for the Tharu. Natural dyes made from flowers, bird droppings and the like are applied with twig brushes on baskets, mats, dolls. etc. Nature is integral to human existence. The entire community is involved in the production of an: a concept that differs from the Western notions of imaginative, original artists (Kaneda,

1994). Noting the different roles a n and artists play in differing societies sheds light on the ways

diverse cultures approach and integrate art into their lives. Many cultures do not even have a separate word for art, although all societies do have art in one form or another. With a desire to institute a co-operative democratic classroom, a teacher could introduce crafts or quilts as an excellent way to understand the role an plays in culture. Although motifs used in crafts have been handed down over generations, they re- appear in the craft work in new patterns, shaped by the advent of new experiences and contacts with other cultures. Think of The

AIDS Quilt- an old form, actually one that is meant for physical warmth and beauty, modified into a work of emotional comfort, reshaped as a monument to those who have succumbed to a 20th Century disease. Like a living epitaph, the quilt binds individuals, both dead and alive, united by a co-operative effort. In the United States today, there is an estimated 15 !h million people,

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overwhelmingly women who are involved in patchwork quilting (Boston Globe, August, 1995, 6 1). Because the quilt has travelled widely and has had television-exposure, the quilt is a natural

bridge between the worlds of school and community tradition, even linked to far parts of the world through the media. Students perceive relevance in what is occurring at school because they see a reflection or extension of school curriculum beyond the school's walls. Judy Chicago's The Birth Project also utilised the same format of the quilt. Women worked together to impart an experience unique to women in a form traditionally stitched by women (quilts). Both the AIDS QUILT and The Birth Project were examples of social action, and responses to an exclusionary mainstream culture to proclaim and assert that the lives of homosexuals and women have meaning and merit attention. Through the creation of their own artifact, students can better see and understand the multiplicity of problems and ways to affect social action: Education That Is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist. Here art serves as a "form of collective memory,individual expression, social criticism, political struggle as well as offering visual pleasure" (Cahan & Kocur, 1994, 26). Rather than a "fossilized culture"(Bullivant, 1989), crafts can been interpreted as carriers as well as receivers of culture and understood as "dynamic experiences" (Burke Feldman, 1980, 8) relevant to students who can locate in their daily lives examples of crafts , like pots, rugs, and

quilts, that are constantly undergoing transformation. Bullivant has pointed out that '"culture' is not a set of artifacts, or tangible objects, but how the members of a particular group interpret, use and perceive themW(Cahan& Kocur, 1996, xxi). Students can use themselves as a sources of information to consider their relationship to

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preceding generations. Says Joanne Caulfield, director of museum quilt services in Lowell. Massachusetts, "A quilt represents a link to the past that people can make and use. It's practical. It's beautifuln(Boston Globe. August, 1995, 66). As artists, they query what is the role and responsibility of the craftsperson in the community- a shaman? a merchant? a designer?

do

aesthetics firnction in their craft, and are they intrinsic it? Students begin to realize that art must relate to the socia] order in "a causal-hnctional manner" (Chaimers. 1980/1, 7). The student while assuming the role of the craftsperson ponders what and how his pot will communicate, to whom will it speak, and how society has fashioned her answers to these and many other questions.

Appreciating the connections between the craft's visual form and its social connections helps explain to a student why a particular culture uses its artifacts in certain ways. As well, the quilt today is an example of the adaptability of a form that bridges generations. Speed quilting methods, rotary cutters were responses by technolom to update a

traditional craft, making its continuation less difficult in hurried 20th Century times, making i t j i r an altered social context. Gardner would approve of the transmission of skills in this situation of "apprenticeship" in which meaningfil projects are learned and shared. Becoming that crafisperson permits the student to stand in the shoes of another to see with another's eyes, and live a total experience that serves to truly educate mind and body. MaV-Michael Billings also underlines the transformative value of a student

a

culture" through the actual making ofan artifact or participating in an a n activity. She suggests teaching multicultural studies through art by either a theme or issues approach. Although content as it always must be1 ~flderstoodin a social Context, as well as from a personal viewpoint, the thematic approach locates motifs that are formal, mythic or symbolic in a variety of traditions,

culling examples from many cultures: Although diverse culture may have unique and meaningful ways of expression,, engagement with diversity reveals universal themes of creation, birth, death, rites of passage, healing rituals, giving thanks and worship. (Hanna, 1994, 67) Perhaps dismissed as the Humans Relations approach or the Transfonnative Method Towards a Common Culture, this idea is, nonetheless, important so that students can recognize themes of value that should be perpetuated and used as doors of understanding to enter other cultures. In this way, art is also Reconstructionist because it forms the basis for creating a new shared culture. Rina Reddy Singha, a classical dancer from India living in Canada, has used themes from folkdances and games in her program, Cultural Clues Approach to Learning to aid immigrants and the hearing-impaired (Hanna, 1994,79). One has only to listen to modern music in order to identi@streams of Blues, Jazz, African drumming, etc., and note that cultures borrow from one another to create wonderfbl hybrid and syncretic forms and mutations. Being aware of the similarities and differences among cultures and the cross-cultural influences is one result of the themes approach. Many years ago , Broudy wrote, ...to live in society at all is to live off the common store of nature's gifts and human labour, and to draw on this store while rejecting it is a selfishness which issues from a kind of social stupidity. (1967, 1 16)

If the themes approach is conciliatory and non-antagonistic, the issues-oriented approach appears to be aggressive and confrontational. A class determines matters of general concern and students' own responses are presented. By identifymg social issues, analysing and reflecting on them, students suggest and attempt to affect change. Multicultural an works can provide stimulating beginnings for students Fig.95- 1051.

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The teacher is involved in the process equally by searching out and facing her own biases and prejudices. She may invite people from various communities into the class to explain matters that she herself does not understand. Howard Gardner's suggestion of apprenticeships or Eisner7s partnerships with the community are similar situations where students can learn first hand about traditions in a one to one relationship. The teacher becomes a facilitator and a co-creator (Freire, 1973), learning and problem-solving with her students : "teaching" becomes cultural and social

intervention (Stuhr et al., 1992, 16) because students attempt to take action and change what they fee! are inequalities, omissions and biases against various groups in society. Speaking out or raising consciousness for those who are afraid or cannot themselves is a way to enter into a global partnership (Amnesty International, Art Exhibitions). At Northern Secondary School every year, students put together an art show- of their own and donated pieces from galleries- to raise money for Street Kids International. Northern's students went to Ottawa to plead the case of Columbian youths who are mistreated and even killed in the streets. Our students wanted Canada's trade approach to Columbia to reflect outrage at the loss of Human Rights. The students felt art was an appropriate way to bring people together and used the sale of art pieces to hnd their activities and donations. Using anthropological tools is an active step into research that spurs an active involvement into issues of importance. Examining contexts, artists, audiences, communities first hand makes clear the values of a society to its inhabitants. Students do a situational analysis and research history, geography, environment, local values and beliefs, diversity, artistic production and resources en rorifrto dislodging stereotypes about a particular culture (Susan Drake's "Story Approach" is similar). Students collaborate to gather data, clarify and challenge values, reflect and

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take action (Stuhr et al., 1992. 16-20). The art object is been the catalyst to students' discoveries of economic. political, religious or social roles. However, not every art object need be the basis for such an intensive and full-scale mobilization of students. Although this anthropological means of attack empowers the students, there are often issues of culture represented in art and artifact that cannot easily benefit the class. For example, the role icons play in religion seems to be a topic better examined by theme rather than by issue. Consider, too, the lsiamic student who has been taught by his family and church that God's revealed word (scripture) cannot err: "Art's historical associations with religion can make it vulnerable to religious intolerance and opposition" (Smith, 1994, 14). Are all cultures to be presented equally? Are the Chinese ways of dealing with overpopulation acceptable? Were the early Greeks right to leave deformed babies out in the elements to die? Is Indian "bride price" a subject for debate? Are radical treatments for deafness valuable? Do we discuss genital mutilation without judging? Is Christian mercy a desired goal in our society? Who chooses? These are difficult issues that must be thoughtfblly considered and planned out before all voices become a torrent of rage and hatred. The classroom atmosphere must be secure and safe, just and reasonable. Reason, rather than just emotion, must promote frank discussion. Schwab's POLYFOCAL focus is one way to open thoughtful discussion ( 1 97 1). Vincent Lanier proposes new models ( 1968, 3 14) in the form of photography and film to formulate discussion. Using what is familiar to the student in her every day life, Lanier draws on modem day (1968!) technology @ewey, 1934) to enable students to develop alternative models of human behaviour. He suggests films and various media (newspapers, radio, tilm) to deal with complex and difficult social issues that impinge on the students' lived lives and present

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controversial and important social issues: m e s of Wrath stressed the economic impact of the Depression on the Joad family. The Bicvcle Thief dramatized the effects of poverty on an individual. NaturalBorn Killers looked at how the media makes heroes of society's criminals. Platoon criticised American involvement in the Vietnam War. Timeless issues are projected larger than life, caught in repetitive frames for the student. More than just a glance, films inundate students' sensibilities with visual imagery that- if they are well constructed- leave lasting impressions, Lanier's method of "canalization" focuses one issue at the students' appropriate interest and understanding level because he believes that educators must start where the student is or the lessons will be meaningless (Broudy, 1967). Paintings by Goya, Ribera, Orozco,Kollwitz, Groscz, O'Keefe, Chicago, Daumier, Picasso, Dali can also contribute as strong statements on issues either alone or in combination with film or photo because they all address matters of continuing concern in student life. The fact that multiple ways of presenting the same problems are juxtaposed provides for interesting comparisons and lively discussion. The visual method is direct and the emotional effect is immediate. I believe that these visual arts are an objectifjring method that allows for a "cooler" means of focusing on important issues. Using the art object, the media helps to eliminate prejudiced personal insults and attacks. This is not to say that student reactions and experiences are devalued but instead of a student saying, "All those Germans were killers...", she might point to George Groscz's holocaust work, Homo Eccp, and say, "1 think that Groscz has drawn Hitler in this way to condemn ...." The media provides a "heightened reality", a midpoint between student emotion and an issue, and a "safe" way to explore feelings. Dewey in Art as Exberience points out that a

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direct outburst of emotion is not art, that it must be "framed, thought out and presented (1934). Adolescents whose emotions are volatile might jot down ideas and reactions, reflect, and pause before blurting out thoughtless, hurtfit1 comments that might insult or hurt classmates who happen to belong to a group whose members are involved in a particular issue. Although the discussions that use art as a touchstone to multicultural studies are studentinquiry based, if the goal is reconstruction and enhanced self-knowledge that benefits all members of the class equally, bad feelings caused by racial slurs or sarcastic comments can destroy the integrity of any discussion. Democracy will have been destroyed for students who feel that they have been made victims, yet again. The atmosphere in the class must be non-judgemental and respecthl of all students and ideas: a safe and secure environment where ideas can be shared and discussed. Cindy Sherman's photographs of herself playing the role of a typical 50's housewife/mother/woman while at the same time the author and creator of her work establish an interesting paradox that stands as a model students can emulate in their work. She explores how artists construct their work, moving literally inside and outside of her frame and role as detined by time and society to pose questions about female stereotypes. Similarly, Stokrocki presents a fictionalised story of the daily life of a Navajo girl in the 1930's and her involvement in art at school and at home (1 994, 63). Inconsistencies between the child's native education and her school life are good topics for discussion, particularly in light of the relevance of providing a continuum of learning for children in and out of school (Dewey, 1934).

Narratives are excellent ways to address sensitive areas of discrimination. The

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overwhelming influence of Western culture's canons is one strong reason that multicultural studies have entered the schoolroom. Story or art allows for student transformation, one that encompasses and encourages comparisons. If the student presents her response in a visual manner, she negotiates her work somewhere between the ideal and the real because abstract ideas are given form and shape in any media, for media must use symbol to transmit ideas. In my grade 12 Advanced-Enriched post-colonial class, I asked my students to write about how they are similar or different from their ancestors. One girl considered herself a "modern day nomad", much like her relatives of the diaspora. Another pondered finding himself in Chile one Christmas eve, with a peach in one hand and goat brains in the other. Elliot Eisner's methods of cc)~~t~oi.s~se~~t~.shiy is certainly applicable as the students compare and contrast their life today with those of their families. Outside of the classroom. many contemporary artists have worked towards using their art to make their statements "to challenge monolithic and homogeneous views of history" in what they call "politics of difference" (Cahan & Kocur, 1994, 26). Many artists demonstrate how an can combine issues From many cultures to attack the consciousness of the viewer. Houston Conwell, a sculptor, Joseph Depace, an architect, and Estella Conwell Majozo, a poet, together create an installations that are site-specific because they recognize the sacredness of home, and place: a concept central to the immigrant, and dispossessed because of the issue of "Where do I belong in this world?" The group's installation is inspired by African -Americans, Spirituals and Blues, in the oral tradition of the griot, West African Storyteller, Shaman, musician and dancer. Considered by the creators as a "collage of hope", they combine music from Spirituals, Blues, Gospel, Soul, Jaw, Funk, Samba, Merengue, Reggae, Rock and Roll, Rap and Freedom to

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address issues of world peace, social injustice, civil rights, fieedom, democracy, colonialism, AIDS, greed, ageism, equality, loss, homelessness. One central element of Conwelll Depace

/Houston's constructed art installation is the sacred texts of the spirituals which doubled as prayers to God, and coded songs for escape in the Underground Railway (Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Steal Away to Jesus). Their work encompasses many "maps of language that present culturai pilgrimages and metaphorical journeys of transformations that can be experienced [by the viewer] as rites of passagen(Cahan & Kocur, 1994, 27). These artists challenge the viewer to become involved. They believe that their model of breaking down barriers will be an incentive for the spectator who becomes involved in the music of their piece so that she will penetrate at a deeper level to encounter social themes. Conwell, Depace and Houston are only one group of contemporary artists whose an is not what has been traditionally considered beautiful; however, the themes they present are ones of meaning and concern to adolescents to-day, themes that confront students in their everyday life. and are a means to "Social Reconstruction". Their art is "beautifbl" in the sense that it brings beauty, a voice, a way of coping, and understanding to people's lives. Elyse Rivin , a teacher of immigrant students who have been in the United States for four years, discovered that art was a "loosening" tool because it expressed what her students' language could not. Also because art is more "immediate" than that of written texts, "the image represented a potentially common language to which everyone could respond(Cahan & Kocur, 1996, 25-29). Her students worked on a 40 foot paper image of the planet broken down into individual continents with each continent representing a theme: friendship, racism, family, the past, language, music, combining two worlds, love (Cahan & Kocur, 1996, 29). Besides personal writing, and

collaborative work on the mural's format[Fig. 1063, each continent was created by a collage of images, photos, drawings and pastings that connotated a life experience for the students. Rivin comments, The physicality of working with their hands. using and refining their visual skills, combined with the fact that the work reflects their own concerns and interests, serves to engrave this experience in their memories. Whatever level of language skills they began with, they improve, and whatever their capacity to understand or express themselves in English, they remember their art project for its relevance to their own expeience. and for its dynamic quality. (Cahan & Kocur, 1996, 29) As well, the actual doing of the project is a positive, sustaining metaphor for people coming

together, retaining their identity, and yet contributing to the culture at large with other people in a new land. What better way to become part of a culture while celebrating what is unique about each individual?

Bow Howard Gardner's Concept o f Multiple Intelligences Aids Multicultural Education

In 1994, Callahan and McIntire stated, the challenge for public schools is to recognize alternative culturally relevant indicators of outstanding talent that [will be] translate[d] into effective assessment strategies and programming models for not children from the dominant culture. (Maker et al, 1994, 6) Realising that Hispanic, Native Americans. AsiadPacific and African Americans were being under represented in Gifted Programs across the United States, Gardner sought reasons and ways to make the distribution of diverse races into these specialised programs more equitable. Intelligence was usually determined by the Stanford-Binet test which measured only one facet of intelligence

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in a very specific way shaped by time and place. What Gardner desired was a comprehensive assessment that revealed a student's giftedness in terms of her original cultural environment, learned language and cultural content. For example, a Navajo child's language which has few nouns but many rich descriptive words contrasts strongly with a Spanish child's whose language and subsequent thinking is shaped by it many adjectives. As well, different cultures value and stress different aspects of culture. And the environment of the offspring of a musical family will likely be nourished and enriched by exposure to music, which predisposes a child to think "musically." Gardner is always aware of the need to spend time practising a particular skill so the child learns to think, and perhaps excel in an a particular area. How else do people advance in their competencies, except through extended exposure and time? The concept of getlr,d~is a romantic notion, applying to a rare few; however, gijkii individuals reveal precocious talent. that is honed and developed in situations that are sensitive to the gifr. Gardner's theory of "Intelligence" underlines the "dynamic process of individual competencies and the values and opportunities afforded by society"(Komhaber at al, 1990, 177). By providing a continuum of tests, progress and giftedness can be discovered and a profile of student strengths across their "multiple intelligences" can be mapped. DlSCOVER ( as discussed in the chapter on Howard Gardner) "identifies the characteristics of students...[which] closely resembles the characteristics of the communities from which they come and the process is equally effective with boys and girls...this process results in identification of equitable percentages of students from various ethnic. linguistic and economic groups"(Maker et al, 1994, 8). Using combinations of tests that measure convergent thinking skills ( that require only one specific answer or one specific method ) and divergent ones (that require students to select

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methods that will demonstrate what they believe are creative, insightfil answers), the test makers offer a matrix in which the most difficult problems are "real life" situations. "Unless assessment is placed in context of authentic domains and social environments , we doubt it can adequately represent human intelligent performance"(Kornhaber et a]., 1990, 189). This new view of testing validates multicultural populations by considering the social, historical, and political contexts in which behaviour has been learned. This new view of testing honours diversity by proclaiming that other cultures' ways of thinking can produce gifted individuals. Gardner states that assessment must be "intelligence-fair" which means that tests are "capable of engaging specific competencies without the need to rely on linguistic or logical means

or abilities as intermediaries7'(Komhaber et al, 1990, 192). In fact, many children have been identified as gifted and brought into Gifted Programs because of Gardner's ideas and definition of creativity. Without interpersonal support in interactions in her school, a child may fear or refuse to perform, believing her "intelligence" will be ridiculed, unaccepted and devalued. Educators must build on a child's background: what is natural, recognizable, valued and of interest in her culture. Educators should begin "where the child is". Role models are often clues in this process because children emulate heroes or popular figures in their particular cultures. Believing that what she does matters motivates a child to carry on in her area of expertise. "Co-operative , supportive environments in homes, in school communities have been shown to have a positive effect on students' social and psychological well-being, which eventually leads to higher academic achievement"(Kornhaber, 1990, 190 cites Cochran, 1987;Comer, 1980, 1988; Damon, 1990; Henderson, 1987;Leler, 1983; Zeider and Weiss, 1985). Gardner's Key

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School in Indianapolis uses apprenticeship pods for the child to develop in her interests. Here the community, school and individuals a11 work towards developing Gardner's concept of intelligence. They see the interplay of school and home as a partnership that will benefit their children. Conversely, rather than benefiting from being an accepted pan of the majority in society ,

T.S. Eliot, one of Gardner's unique personalities who made a difference in the 20th Century actually relished and decided to make himself "the outsider" in order to develop new perspectives (Gardner, 1 993). Instead of "the melting pot" theory, what is proposed here is "the mosaic" in which students are encouraged to retain their distinct way of culture, but share their views with their peers to create a kaleidoscope of empathy and perceptions. Gardner's use of apprenticeships, along with his belief in working with communities (Eisner, 1991) makes meaning relationships for "continuous" education so that students can see in action that their values, their grandparents and parents, their traditions are respected and encouraged in schools because those ways of life are valued by the dominant society. Several other means of assessment developed by Howard Gardner are also effective in implementing multicultura1 programs. ArtsPROPEL, a program based on student art production, perception and reflection over a significant period of time fosters individual growth and introspection. A student learns that her art work and her own thoughts on her work are the basis of her education. The student realises that she is central, integral to her own growth. Viktor Lowenfeld's work with African American was similarly supportive of this student-inquiry learning (Smith, 1988). Using portfolios that include draft, proposals, sketches, critiques, self-evaluation and

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teacher feedback- is a regular and essential feature in Gardner's techniques. Students have visual proof, a kind of "biography" of their development over time. Gardner's teachers assess the portfolio for evidence of implementing ideas into art projects, connections with art historical or critical matter, maturity of thought and process, skills that convey persona1 ideas into media, and use of art as a universal language. Gardner's Project Spectrum, too, is interested in "'resonances' that reinforce a child's experiences with materials in settings of school, home and museum" (Kornhaber et al, 1990, 193). Wider ranges of competencies are observable in numerous contexts. This is the desired outcome of student work that fosters an attitude that benefits evaluation of work and personal self-esteem since each piece of the student portfolio is a record of the learning in the child's development. Gardner's theories are dynamic. They consider the social settings that children come from, and the best educational settings that will encourage and motivate the growth of a child's multiple intelligences. Gardner believes that the engagement of parents and communities will foster an improved learning environment where the child is at the heart of Gifted Programs that celebrate diversity. As outlined at the beginning of this chapter, multiculturalism is an issue that must be addressed in school - classes, races, genders, the disabled- demand equality so that the classroom reflects society's understanding, and appreciation and contribution of their differences. My examples move from the classroom out into society, into crafts and social action, film, paintings and paintings and into real classroom where Howard Gardner's ideas have been implemented. In the "real world" contemporary artists as promoters of popular culture most importantly embrace student experience on many levels of experience. In all situations, art is the key. I have presented

-7 7 8 art as a vehicle to aid in the implementation of the goal of multicultural education because, art education as self-expression promotes creativity and empathy art education encompasses total experience of combined mind and body art education permits important issues to be addressed in a non-threatening way because of the use of the art object art education allows for critical and considered analysis of a students' and artists' work (Eisner, 1982) art education promotes cultural pluralism by accepting artistic output from numerous sources art education endorses active investigation through the anthropological methods to discover the relevance and context of the art object/artifact art education promotes group collaboration as well as individual effort art education values and recognises student response as well as traditions and people who have contributed to artistic developments in society art education recognises technology as a means to aid student development an education understands the relationship of student ,community and society as a partnership for student support in her investigations an education is democratic since every voice has a right to make statements-no matter, colour, gender, age, disability, race, religion, etc. art education does not disregard the aesthetic nature of beauty, but wishes to explain its important role in society art education is an important way to understand and affect social change

art education relies on the past and contemporary culture art education is not a handmaiden to the disciplines, although it is a valuable aid

because it is important to start where the student is.

Conclusion After exploring the numerous sources of art in the outside world, 1 move into the classroom since this is our domain as teachers. I have presented several ways art can be taught in the class, although both the Eisner and Gardner sections have highlighted excellent ways that art is being used in schools. First, I examined Ruth Dawson's thesis where art is returned to the place of handmaiden for the rest of the curriculum. Contrasted to Dawson's theory are the actual practices of art at the Mabin School, Avenue Road Fine Arts School and Nlenby Public School. My observations reveal the positive integration among subjects that result in bright. stimulated children whose experience in schools makes them aware of the strong connections between life in and out of the classroom. Art is the stimulus that draws on life as the constant source of inspiration for all activities. My section on multicultural art is presented here because of the role art can play in introducing this widely discussed and theorised area of curriculum study. Education impinges on the outside world and must be conversant with the issues, problems and realities of our changing

planet. This model provides a paradigm for our students who realise that education is not static and responds to new events that are important in their lives.

W.

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

THE COURSES I reflect on the validity that vis7raI imagery possesses for me,at~dwonder at the rejection of fhe vi.wd resporlse at OISE. 1 cite reasons giveti by some professors for the exclzrsiot, of arts it, the crrrric~rlirmsirrce 1994. Garlic and sapphires in the mud. (T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton,"Four Ouartets).

My original motivation in obtaining my Masters of Art History at University of Toronto was my desire to improve the teaching of Art in Toronto public schools. I thought that if I approached The Toronto Board of Education, M.A. in hand, they would more readily accept my suggestions than if I presented myself as a parent who had worked as a volunteer in the public schools. After successfUlly completing my courses, I trundled off to College Street. My interview with the official representative of "Special Education" curriculum took three minutes as 1 was informed that there was no money for art programs. Disappointed, but not totally dismayed , I applied to OISE because I thought I would continue my work to promote the use of the Arts in the school, while exploring and researching more possibilities and inroads in the implementation of arts education. In my first class at OISE, Foundations in Curriculum taught by Michael Connelly, we were asked to find definitions of the word "curriculum" or examples of how "cumcula" were employed in the classroom. I remember someone saying it meant to run the course, and I envisaged myself as the runner in the movie, "Chariots of Fire", moving in slow motion as I proceeded along the charted course in the race. However, attempting to follow an art's route at

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OISE is not much easier than the actor's struggles in "Chariot's of Fire" and his attempt to remain true to his established goals. When I commenced my studies, I discovered that there was not exactly a plethora of choice in the arts' programs offered. David Booth, Richard Courtney and Joyce Wilkinson were the few oficial professors to instruct in the discussion of the arts. And in 1994, horrified arts students learned that arts would be cut fiom the OlSE curriculum due to lack of funding. Those

of us who had begun our studies previous to this edict would be grand fathered until the completion of our degrees. As I write this, I still cannot believe that arts have been abolished from teacher education.

I just cannot imagine a school or a university that focuses on improving and ameliorating classroom studies without the many connections that are provided by music, drama, dance, and, art.

What will become of the visual or spatial learner, her "intelligence" finally acknowledged by Howard Gardner and others? Has the university lost sight of the individual differences that each child possesses as she follows her course of learning? In my own case at OISE, I have not been permitted to respond only in visual means to assignments. The attitude has been that a visual interpretation was idiosyncratic, maybe a bit cute with g the or quaint. If I wanted to respond visually, I could, if l liked, submit my drawings a l o ~ ~ real assignment written in essay or journal form. One professor told me that, for the sake of the reputation of the university we must follow the tried and true ways of verifying what we had learned fiom the course, or the university might be thought of as less educationally and professionally rigorous among universities. Another

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teacher confided that in a thesis, it is asking for trouble to change form d content, and visuals were not a good idea. Several professors did acknowledge that drawings had been successfully incorporated into some theses. When I examined Montgomery's "What is Mask for Sculpture: What is Mask for Sculptor?', I felt her photographs of her drawings certainly documented her inner search to discover which masks she herself wore. Those artworks were outstanding, but her thesis would have stood quite well without them. Similarly, another thesis pointed out to me written by Mary June Simonton, that dealt with repetitive cycles in her and her mother's life, also employed pictures: the professor who recommended this thesis said the images were integral to the thesis. These pictures revealed how Mary June looked at various points in her life, but again, I found these attempts to make the images part of the paper to be "window dressing", interesting, attractive, but without which, the thesis would not have fallen apart. In fairness, 1 have no doubt that the author felt that the photos were integral to her paper and provided an added dimension. My hope is to make my drawings necessary to my thesis, in that my search will not make complete sense without the inclusion of my visual examples from reproductions, the media and my own drawings. They made visual meaning for me as a way to understand and interpret the assignments. As well as a visual means that conveys my understanding of the concepts taught. 1 hope to imply that there are other ways to reveal that the student has grasped the content of a course. A person who watches the ballet of Swan Lake understands who the villains are without reading an analysis of characters; the person who listens to a symphony knows which sections are romantic or discordant without reading textual notes; the person who visits "The Barnes Collection" can comprehend early 20th Century France mores without reading the guidebook.

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There are so many ways of knowing and expressing knowledge. In my English classes on Shakespeare, I encourage my students to express their ideas creatively. They can recreate Shakespeare's letters to his wife; they can draw the costumes for a play: they can design costumes or envisage a new theatre; they can rewrite a scene or provide a new ending; they can suggest their own way to comment and show me they understand the play. In one case, a student shows three witches as they chant over the cauldron in Macbetb ; in another, a new book cover has been designed by a student who enjoys working with computers. We see a castle, a blurb. and an attractive way of encouraging another classmate to read the play. And in a third visual representation, the student has used the symbols from the major soliloquies to illustrate her understanding of the importance of those images. Howard Gardner certainly understands that there are multiple intelligences, and many ways to indicate that a child has made meaning by transforming an abstract thought into a symbolic language, that is not always a word. I list below how I have used visual methods in my classes:

CLASS

VISUAL

CONCEPT EXPRESSED

INTERPRETATION Foundations in

narrative chart

my life story

Curriculum/Connelly Arts/Booth

Appendix 1

children's stow

point of viewhias

-

single drawings

-

- -

-- -

- -

-

-

visual depiction of protest artists' ideas as interpreted by me

children's story

DB AE with suggestions for improvements to the program

AWCourtney Appendix 4

children's story

used as a visual metaphor to make connections between my own creativity and Polly's, the character in the stow

Way of Life/History and

reference to Renoir and

painters whose work

Philosophy/Beck

Seurat in The Barnes

embodied their concepts of

Collection

"the good life."

children's story

as part of contemplate1

Transformational Learning /OtSullivan

Appendix 5

critique/create problem solving process

Women As Agents of

visual depictions

explanation of cycles

Change in the Curriculum Appendix 6

The following sections will describe in detail my thoughts, ideas and reflections during the

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creation of the above visual responses to assignments. I should add that I did not take lo Aitken's class (see Female Art), but was still provoked to do a set of drawings around the theme of women. Similarly. Jack Miller's assignment of meditation stimulated my first set of drawings for Richard Courtney's classes, the ones I call "the head" shots because all of this group focuses on Polly, my protagonist's head, where she is. like me, contemplating.

Seminar: Play, Drama and Arts

I have ir~trodt~cedpart of my jorrrrd writtenjbr this cowse. IIJ this section, / mspor~dto certair~ hooks that hove i~~flwrlced my rhinkir~gahorrt art. Whaf I dkzrss hir7ge.s or1 my owr~creative process so that the strar~dsof other writers and my owrr ideas intertwirre at times. Journal entries are immediate respomes wrifte~rto n r ~assignment. Reflections were written afrer the i ~ ~ i t i o l jo 14r1 er~tries. Background My first course An OISE, taught by Michael Connelly, exposed the student to many definitions and discussions about the nature of "curriculum". Clandinin, who shares Connelly's interest in narrative writing as a means of reflecting and understanding personal practical knowledge, was a prescribed author for Connelly's "Foundations" course. In Clandinin's introduction to Classroom Practices (1986). she explains her proposed work is a study of teachers' experiences. By repeating the key terms "personal practical knowledge" and differentiating the concept of "image" as formerly "phenomenon in imagination" to "phenomenon in memory linked to experience", she presents the notion that a teacher is shaped by her

repository of images derived from living in the real world. Just like Dewey's learner, Clandinin's teacher's own instincts and powers are the starting points for all educational experience. The link between experience and image unites inspirations, ideas, insights, and meanings that will shape what the teacher teaches. Personal practical knowledge is derived from the teacher's life experiences and establishes the starting point for all education. Another article presented in Connelly's class was Maurice Freidman's The Confirmation of Dtherness (1983) which discussed "seeming" and "being". I found this paper pertinent and related

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it to the arts because if an artist endeavours to "seem" to do something, I think the visual expression will reveal the gap between the authenticity of the experience and the "concocted for viewer experiencen-although this notion seems applicable to all the arts. The lived through experience is apparent in a way that the "seeming" one cannot be, The layers of living that crinkle our faces like sun dried tomatoes permeates our work with an eloquence of feeling that does inform our work. Georgia O'Keefe's face is a map of living indelibly etched. However. one can truly participate in life vicariously without leaving the comfort of her chair. and venture through books "to live" as another. The result, I believe, is "authentic". When I came to David Booth's class. 1 began to draw upon my own "personal practical knowledge". It is interesting what form those early responses took. In my first course with Michael Connelly (Foundations of Cumculum), I had only used symbols to do a required chart of my life that explained my growth in relationship to my narrative. I employed pictures and very simple drawings. but words had certainly taken priority over the tiny images. I did not consider for a moment to represent "my story" or my assignments in visual form. I imagine Michael Connelly. with his support of Elliot Eisner's ideas would have allowed a visual presentation, but I do not know for sure.

Journal Entry- For David's class October 28,1992-November30,1992.

In this course, you (David Booth), said we might make something like a mask. So. I created Rosalie and her story of frames. My little book will show the various frames or points of view a child sees from. Rosalie, playing with popsicle sticks, invents a frame that reminds her of

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the picture frame on her mantle. She considers her own frames as a daughter, a friend, an athlete, etc. She plays with the idea for a while, eventually deciding that she prefers not to be parts of many areas, but an integrated whole person and so, she takes her frame apart. The process of making this book gave me much joy. What was interesting was that I was responding to an assignment visually, rather than merely accepting that the format should be the written word. After all, you did give an example of an artifact: however, I was to discover that you also wanted journals describing the processes that were involved in creating the artwork. First, there was the excitement of figuring out exactly what you "wanted". I really felt that "the thing" should speak for itself. and I have continued to feel that way in spite of all the other professors who would not accept the work of an. itself. I must admit in retrospect that I am now glad to know what I was thinking at the time of the course. I do still, however, think that the process of interrupting "the making" to do "the writing" is disruptive in terms of right braid left brain thinking. Richard Courtney suggested Mary Coros' Thesis which used poetry to describe her dance analogies, and I suppose that method keeps her on the same creative side of the brain. That is an interesting way to dialogue with oneselt but "the writing" created is a new "art" thing , words that hop, and skip like a visual poem danced across the page. Courtney would call this process "The Double" because writing about the dance has become more than the dance, itself the dance has become imbued with more. But for me, Coros' dancing no longer stands or falls on its own merits. Writing or transcribing the dance into words is not her body used as the media. but the page! Coros' dance is now the sum of pans, disconnected from her body and given an alien life outside of its real home, her body.

I would like my art to be whole in

I

object

itself (like Rosalie's perceptions). Although I make it stand outside of me on paper, my ideas are given form and expression on paper: they need the media of paper and paint in order to communicate. I am reminded that Harvard University accepts art portfolios for admittance- without written explanation of the work, and even our Common Curriculum supports the use of portfolios! Gardner has said the portfolio becomes a "biography." Why must there be so much explaining in words? The silent communion of audience with art is so much louder! The making of my book overtook my existence this past weekend. The frames of student responding as an artist to interpret the problem of how to deal with the assignment was paramount in my consciousness. 1 was thinking about Michael Polyani's ideas because it seems my best thinking always occurs when I am just about to drift off to sleep. I have bought Howard Gardner's Art Educption and HUN Development (1990). Via

many studies, he explains children's development of their symbolic expression in drawing, and 1 am cognisant of that knowledge. He expounds on how children think, and what sense they make of their and other's work, and how they reflect upon and understand their artistic enterprise (Gardner, 1990, 15). As in the chart above, he presents the triangle of the art object, the artist and the viewer who are all intertwined when a person does art. I keep his ideas in mind and wonder what age group am I appealing to: Is it the seven year old because she will understand unusual

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forms, colour combinations, and compositional arrangements ? The ten year old will be more critical of objects that lack of true photographic realism (Gardner, 1990, IS).

1 believe that art should be used as a method of problem solving, and that is what 1 did when 1 began to tackle the assignment for class. I unconsciously role played, took the frame of the child, using symbolic language to do so. I problem solved as 1 might hope my students might, by using pictures to form the ideas. I also used language, words to convey and to tie up with the images. The language part of talking about what we do is important for the child in order to articulate the process and reflect in words.(Yes, I realise I am contradicting myself here.) Perhaps I want to make sure the audience "gets" the message because I am unsure of myself. When I briefly taught at Lola Rasminsky-Weistaub's Fine Arts Kindergarten, the children always discussed their art work with their teachers, considering the role and relationship of form and colour in their paintings. They were "talking" their images and engaging their teachers in a dialogue, expressing in word and visual image their excitement-as if extending their enthusiasm by naming and using another dimension to make sure the teacher understood so she could participate

in the creative act. Gardner sees constant feedback as a mainstay in art programs.

Reflection

I wrote my story for David's course, and did small pictures in my sketch book to illustrate my ideas. Two of my own children, Jordan and Erica, were not too enthralled with the story, but I thought that it was workable. When I took the final book to Kathy Lowinger at Lester Books several months later, she, in fact, repeated my children's words. She liked the drawings. but was

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not thrilled with the story. At the point of creating the story, 1 did ponder if the story was an adult's, rather than a children's story. Since, I was responding to an adult course, perhaps 1 was really set up to respond as a grownup because I was, after all, an adult taking a university course. Yet, the concept of frames that a child sees herself tiom did not appear to me too lofly for a child to understand. A frame in itself is an interesting concept. It is a paradox since it protects because of its

borders, and one can stand in or out of the frame for a completely new view of matters. John Carroll in "Framing Drama: Some Classroom Strategies" says, "Once you have the frame, you can keep swooping the pictures around until you have the one that suits your purposes." And that was exactly what 1 did, deciding which frame I would show Rosalie from, which met my needs, which would reveal my ideas to the best advantage in tackling my assignment for David's class. I suppose my "frames" used in the story are much 1ik.ethe concept of windows through

which a person can see. but cannot enter. I, the grownup, am able to revisit and create the world of a child, but as an adult, can no longer be a child. Do 1 care if this story rings true? Yes. 1 want verisimilitude, and I believe that from observing my own children at play when they were small that children put together and take apart simple blocks and sticks, arranging and rearranging them in various patterns as Rosalie did in my story. They do, however, get tired of their games and want to retreat back to the security of the whole .

Journal 2 My drawings began to take on a life of their own. I decided to use the technique of collage

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and combine it with pen and ink. Each page has a new version of Rosalie. My frames when Rosalie is in nature are frames of flowers because Rosalie loves nature. I wanted each page to be different in order to create a visual excitement so that my readers would want to see a new surprise on each page. I wanted my readers to be involved. Even my story words are surrounded by images that will be interactive and thought provoking. In my art work, I cut, reject, select, juxtapose in order to achieve what I think will be

visually pleasing. I have used in places a Pointillist technique to define dragon scales,( more fragmentation?) and have been deliberately ambiguous in designing the dragon tail which looks like a fish. I am selecting many viewpoints and I am influenced by cinematic shots of closeups, pans, middle shots in order to show Rosalie from as many angles as possible. 1 do this because we change our perceptions of people, places and things according to where we find them and how we perceive them. So if we see Rosalie in her dragon suit, we know that she is dressed for a costume party. We also know by looking at her outfit that someone has taken great pains to make such an intricate costume.(This might be the parent thinking) As well, we might speculate why this little girl has chosen such a large animal as her disguise as opposed to a witch or a hobo. 1 believe that my drawings reveal a panoply of states that are occurring in young Rosalie. 1

admit that 1 am with Rosalie because my a n is conveying what I had hoped. In spite of the fact that my drawings and expressions are so simple, I believe that a child or a grownup can figure out how Rosalie is feeling in each specific frame of the story. My own children have contributed their ideas to my production so that my "personal practical experience" has taken a new twist. Not only my research and ideas are incorporated but I am sensitive to and working with the ideas of real children. This is interesting since Jordan and

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Erica are my extended "personal" ways of knowing as well as representative of a broader universal group that belongs to all youngsters. Jordan says that my drawing of "a silly" should look a certain way: he draws what he means, and so I use his sketch as the basis of my work for this frame. When I am ready to do the dragon, Erica retrieves her sketches from the ROM where she has drawn dragons. I am surprised that we have saved these, for they are four years old. Jordan locates the children's book, Ching Chian? and the Draon's Dance, and I discover that the dragon's head is quite difficult to reproduce because Tim Wynne-Jones' painting is hard to follow. I often look at other children's books. Chris Van Allsburg is so successfit1 at creating moods. I have used his books, The Garden of Abdul Gazasi, and Jbmimji when I have gone into classes at my children's schools to do

enrichment classes. In our home, we have a huge collection of picture books because I love the illustrations, myself. I am pleased at how interested my children are in helping to create my art work and I

wonder if it is because the story does actually ring true. and they can participate because the ideas are recognisable to them. Erica is 10 and Jordan is 13 at the time of this project so they are older than the audience for which this story might be written; however, I feel that a good story should be ageless as in

by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Remember: "What is essential is

invisible to the eye." Good ideas can be understood by anyone. It is the simplicity that makes stories applicable to all. I like this collaboration, this dialogical approach to my a n work; this give and take that fashions and refashions my ideas and theirs. I think of Selma FraibergfsThe Magic Years in which, she says, "He (the child) enters this world through love of another person, for he discovers

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himself and he discovers the world outside himself through his mother" (Fraiberg, 1959, 45 ). I think as well of Freud and his ideas about the Oedipal and Electra Complexes and content myself with Fraiberg's positive thoughts on "mother-love." John Dewey had postulated the medieval church as a n as experience because of the combination of sights , sounds. smells and designs that had to come together in the creation of the building. I fantasize that our home is "art as experience" because of the collaboration of my children and their input into my project that is being realised as art based on all of our experiences. I am also mindful of John Dewey's discussion in Art as Experience. He speaks of an coming through our collected experiences, and through the interaction of our children. We are sharing our experiences in order to make new ones. I see this as the dialogic. an on going and a transformative process- actually a perfect analogy of the artistic process which begins as an idea, and undergoes many metamorphoses until it reaches its completion. But even in its "finished" state, it possesses the ability to continue to change the people who come into contact with it. The life of the drawing continues in a kind of dialogue with whomever views it. Actually we have discussed this idea in Booth's class. Douglas Hofstadter in a his book Godel. Escher. Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1980) maintains that J. S. Bach, the musician, Godel, a mathematician and Escher, an artist, were involved in creating loops that moved from imagination into reality and back. Escher's pictures emerge from an idea. of let us say- hands-, to the flat, one dimensional drawing of them, then to the two dimensional fully developed "realistic" representation of those hands and back into the flat schema of them. The viewer on seeing the art brings the drawings into three dimensions because of her involvement that truly realises the form. So there is a movement back and forward

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from an idea to various kinds of drawn reality (the object) in one-dimensional and twodimensional form into the reality of the viewer who becomes part of the dialogue. The artist stands at the matrix. She is the magician whose work has created the pulsating illusions that move between real and illusory worlds. In fact, the very act of producing the art illusion has stimulated the reality of the viewer to consider the various illusions of hands that are transformed before her. Mikhel Csikszentmihaly when he presents his ideas on creativity, stipulated that Individual Talent (the artist),the DisciplinelDomain where the artist produces along with the

accomplishments of the past so that she can create the thing (the object) and the Field in which the quality of worWobject is judged (the viewer-or more specifically for Csikszentmihaly's chart-as informed

f

Individual Talent

viewer) must be viewed as

Field Budges institutions, < !-

a "dialectic of interactive

\ Domain10iscipline

1

I

process". He finds the necessity of interaction in all three elements listed above.

Discussion and Reflection

Otten the artist will stand outside herself and take the persona of the domain or discipline. for all the collected works of other artists form her understanding and connection with what art is and can convey. In fact, the fine artists of the medieval and Renaissance studied with masters who slowly revealed their techniques and insights. So the small voice heard in the head of the artist is

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"the other" who criticises and comments on the self creating the object. The artist is herself the learner as she tries and fails and tries again, (Dewey. 1934) as she intertwines her past experiences in the present with those of her children, with those of her books, and with those of her teachers. And Clandinin adds to this idea of the artist as the interpreter or go-between idea and art. when she says, "Order is not imposed from without but is made out of the relations of harmonious interactions that energies bear to one another. Because it is active...order develops"(Connel1y & Clandinin, 1988. 66). The symbolic language of the arts provides order to an experience. In dance, for example, the expression is made more because of the language of the body. the body which becomes the medium that translates emotion into form. The nuance is greater than the word for the word is neutral, naked, only a cipher, markings on paper, a knock on the door. In painting, the medium carries with it a message, a thickness or thinness. a stroke or a poke, a sense of the brush or hand that formed it. A song that is sung has been interpreted (Dewey. 1934), stamped with the personality of the singer who has put something of herself into the music. The expression expressing an idea forms and orders it. Csikszentmihaly describes "the flow" experience as what occurs in the artist when she loses herself so completely in her art that she loses awareness of herself and becomes one with her art: she is the "dancer and the dance." However, there is another flow, the artist's experience that should speak, or connect to the viewer's experience so that one flows into the other, to make meaning. The power of a n resides in its expressive powers necessary to say something forceful or important. Words are evanescent. They vanish in the air without a trace. Paintings are a kind of document that remains. They can externalise what is internal and speak more loudly and lastingly

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than words often can. Howard Gardner says that the purpose of an education is "to promote selfexpression, imagination, creativity and knowledge of one's affective life" (Gardner, 1 990, 35). The experience expressed in a symbolic language has the power to speak volumes and make the connections with the experiences of the viewer. This what I hope my little story will do. The arts have seduction and allure because they possess and are possessed by what is special, that human element that gives them life. They resonate with something spiritual in the human existence (Dewey, 1934). But in this world of the university, I suppose one must always keep her messy emotions to herselt and what is desired is the cold, hard, neutral facts to be weighed and staid. The sexuality and sensibility of Georgia O'Keefe, for example, must be analysed and discussed from a distance, or from under a microscope. However, she imbues the canvas, the lifeless paper with the feeling of the organic so that we can know the connections between the worlds of the life and death, plant and human. And 1 suppose that news is scary, to understand the circle of life, for in the end we will all be dust. No one wants to face that. For, if we deal with the facts of a here and now, and carefbl projections in the not too distant future, we will not have to confront the prospect of a life in which we do not exist. The taboo of sexual union does not only deal with procreation, but a cycle of days that marks the beginning of the end. But what of Rosalie, my little book created for David Booth's class? What I have done is to relate my personal practical knowledge in dealing with the assignment. My story demonstrates that a child's points of view matters. Rosalie, a child, is the hero, the focus of my story. I have introduced the element of play which becomes for Rosalie serious work (Dewey, 1934). She even becomes reflective. I have presented two related charts and given my understanding of the

processes involved in the creation of a work of art. As well, I have looked at the symbolic language of the arts and why it is important. Beyond that. you must read my story. and decide yourself on the effectiveness or failure of my story.

Colloquium in Arts and Education in this section, I diSCz(s.sC ~ ~ ~ t - t t w'Uocrbie y ' s theory" as it pertaim to the &a1 permiality of the artist as creator ami critic. I comment on quotutiot?~ from various writers on imagination a d realise that words are i t ~ d e private d metaphorsfor perso~talexpriettce as revealed in my owt1 per.sonniIjormzey as Polly, the character irt my children's s t o p To reflect is to distort: our minds are not good mirrors. (Rugg, 1963, 1 85) Imagination is a miscarriage of reason. (Langer, 1953, 236.) Reflecting on Richard Courtney's classes is to revisit a cornucopia of shapes, sizes, images and books. From breast feeding to theatre, Courtney plants subtle ideas in the students' imaginations and awaits to see what blossoms forth. When 1 think about his classes, I am struck

by two images. The first is a chart presented in his book Re-comizing ( I 988,108), and discussed at length in class. Courtney says that we perceive (Perceptions=P) things (an image=[) through our senses. From these precepts, we create patterns of images (Images=[ ), or imaginings that result in our making art (Art=A). The creator of the art is as well the viewer of art since she is stimulated anew by her creation which functions as a new image which her senses perceives (for more discussion,

see Courtney's Re-co In Courtney's classes, we talked about inner and outer worlds, internal sensations and external perceptions, and how the artist brings the two together. By wearing "two hats", the artist stands outside herself as the maker of art, and at the same time as the viewer who scrutinizes what has been made. Courtney called this "The Double" and 1 must admit that it took me until the end

P=Perception [=Image IWmages that are created by association through imagination A=Art

of the class to actually understand how instead of being a split personality of two, the union of those two parts creates a stronger and more integrated and unified sum of parts that enhances, rather than fragments the art maker. The maker, or creator, who is personally involved with the production of a work of art and the twin who stands outside it to critique and objectively analyse the work can, in fact, work together to make the art better. Courtney required journals that focused on ideas as the critic/viewer along with drawings. Walking around in another's shoes is not a new idea. C.T. Patrick Diamond in his book, Teacher Education and Transformation (1 99 1) suggests teachers teach as someone they would like to be, sending their real selves off on a much needed vacation. In this way, teachers can role play, transforming themselves to someone else to assist in creating an ideal teacher they might choose to eventually become. The teacher I ant becomes the teacher I wotrld like to be as the new shoes begin to fit more comfortably and a new viewpoint is afforded the teacher. This strategy suggests the possibility of a transformation that could occur because of Courtney's "double", or Booth's "point of view": pretending and role playing aids in getting outside of our

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own thin skins to make us realize and reflect that there are many ways to see and think. This shedding of an old skin allows for a birth of fresh ideas in teaching, drawing. critiquing whether in art or life situations. Because I am an artist, and I tend to translate ideas into physical images, 1 wonder which I prefer: the body, growing larger and larger as it encompasses new ideas that add to its bulk ? Or the sleek, refined thin body that constantly sheds its old, worn-out skin? Since I am by nature a hoarder and cannot bear to throw out anything, I must go for the "fat" body that increases as it moves through life! Courtney's classes also lead me to explore new concepts of imagination. Perusing Sartre, Langer, Bahtkin, Warnock, and Rugg made me yearn for the concrete, "the thingness of the thing" itself, the paint, and paper that is and embodies for me the ideas. This is not to say 1 was not impressed by Warnock's statement that, "All pleasure in beauty is pleasure in order, satisfaction in our power to regulate chaos"(Warnock. 1978, 46) or Hurne's notion in his Treatise on Human Nature that, "There is no sharp line to be drawn between perceiving apparently in the

presence of an object and thinking about it in its absence" (Warnock, 1978. 14). For a messy, disorderly person such as myself, I was pleased to think that my selection of random images in my drawings, arranged in a way that pleases me, creates order through a selection from the varied and harried elements in our world, re-organized in my own special way (Dewey, 1934). And, if I consider Hume's statement, I could daydream in f i l l security of knowing that perception of reality, or perception of the illusion of reality extends my imagination and is a valid endeavour en route to the creation of my art. Van Gogh dreamed before nature, too. Harold Rugg touched me with his observations, verging on the mystical magical boundary

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between consciousness and unconsciousness: " this work (of imagination) comes to us from beyond and is offered to us by the gods" (Rugg, 1963, 18). In his chapter on "The Tao of the West" ,Rugg conjures Walt Whitman's fusion of "sensory perception and intuitive vision." Rugg, like Michael Polyani in Tacit Knowled=, might acknowledge that, "..our tacit powers (interpret) the world around us by converting the impacts between our body and the things that come our way into a comprehension of their meaning "(Polyani. 1967,49;Dewey, 1934). When we loosen the grip on the boundaries between our rigid controlling consciousness as we slip into sleep or begin to awake, our collected images and experiences of life are Free to mingle, and bubble up to the surface of our consciousness, making us joyfully aware of what we did not know we knew. William James and Dewey also spoke of "the booming conhsion" of tangled ideas that is suddenly background noise when the moment of insight emerges. Rugg's chapter on "The Tao of the East" reminded me of Howard Gardner's reflections in his book. To Open Minds. In this partially autobiographical text. Gardner explains why he was so fascinated with education in China. Chinese students practise and practise, copying the works of their Masters. Exact placement of paint strokes performed as their ancestors did thousands of years ago is dictated in a way that our North American students would certainly reject. Eventually the student is freed from worrying about techniques and tools because the means and the media involved in the performance of making the an has become part of the artist, incorporated into the essence of the artist herself like a breath. The artist knows the strokes, the marks so well, that she is free to allow the creativity to emerge, and she is but a vehicle for its passage. The rigorous repetition and endless patterning become for the artist only a structure that allows for freedom of expression. Rugg says, "The East creates conditions that will favour letting things happen"

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whereas , "The West creates conditions that will make things happen." During Courtney's class, I returned to my art history days to re-examine Art and Illusion by E.H. Gombrich, and re-discover a new meaning in his essays. In Gombrich's discussion concerning Titan's dabs of paint (1 969, 193- I%),

he speaks of "the power of illusion" to evoke

an image from a distance. Metaphorically, we must stand away from the art in order to see all of it, to gel a podpictiwe of the scene. By distancing ourselves, we become more objective, and

can judge what w r k s or Jves troi in a painting. We must detach ourselves to re-incorporate our understanding in a new way, just as "Diamond's teacher" who finds out that distance lends insights and knowledge. If my first important concept of Courtney's course was "the double",my second important concept and application dealt with my own personal metaphor.

I had taken Jack Miller's Holistic Education course in the summer of 1993. In that class, we had to meditate at least 20 minutes a day. I think that state of open and relaxed consciousness set the stage for a group set of drawings that culminated in Richard Courtney's classes. My early drawings begun before I started Courtney's classes were "head" drawings in that I drew the upper part of my protagonist, Polly. Rather than a body in action, I concentrated on the expression and whatever action was occurring in Polly's thoughts. She is not making things happen so much as being a passive receiver of inspiration: so, in one picture, a golden shower of insight rains down on her. 1 found these drawings quite satisfying. I felt a real "flow", as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would say, between myself and my work. I was to paraphrase W.B. Yeats, "the dancer and the dance." This set of drawings reveals a passive, receptive attitude, one that is open to experience. In Courtney's class, I worked on a second set of drawings where Polly is more actively

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involved in the various arts that I provide for her. The format is still horizontal, but I focused on Polly's body. as, for example, she runs to escape "the angels" of her imagination that want her to create something. At first, I had symbolically represented mind .and in the second set, body as two aspects of the same process in the formation of creating art. When I completed this second set 1 realized that my story of Polly was my personal metaphorjn an attempt to discover my own story of bringing together mind and body. My children's story was my metaphorical search. Why had it taken me so long to realize that Polly was indeed Patty? And that Polly's explorations had not only mirrored my own quest, but the dichotomy of the mindhody question as to which was more important in making art? I now think that I was also working on a way to respond to my assignments that might be

acceptable to my professors without journal or written response. However, Rosenblatt and Winner say, We believe that reflection about artistic abilities is a virtue, that it frees rather than hampers the artist, and that it can be shown to improve the artist's productive perceptive abilities. ( 1988, 1 1)

It is only much later, when 1 have stopped making art to write my thesis that I agree that journal writing is a good way to reflect. Sadly, without my art work, all that remains are these journal remembrances that connect m e with my artistic, cognitive processes. Ironically, the basis of the content of my thesis ,my an and my drawings, has now stopped. OISE had re-stimulated my an, but now to graduate I must write. I weep internally for the touch of paint, the idea that will grab my mind and body until the conception has been realised in a visual form. The writing ofwords must substitute until I finish my thesis, for I am only words now, my visual imagery has fled.

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When I drew, 1 did what Donald Schon calls "reflection-in-action"(1987)because the process of reflecting while working occurs while. not afler making the art. For people who write about art, they might not understand how "in-reflection" is superior to "on-reflection" (or later after the work is completed). The artist is always reflecting and considering throughout the entire artwork. She is always looking at pans of her drawing and asking herself if certain pieces fit well or if they could look better by rearranging them. Each new stroke necessitates a re-looking, a new assessment because the process is in constant flux. But later, as the artist stands back from her work, she is detached from the initial doing. Imagine how startled 1 was to realise, that "on-reflection", that my character. Polly was my metaphor. She needed no explanation because she represented the child/student grappling with her creativity. Sometimes revelations are so simple, and yet I wondered why the epiphany had not been obvious to me. My personal search was revealed in the story of my character, Polly, as she strove to escape and then come to terms with her imagination. In the end, she shares with a friend ( professor?) and they continue to create toget her. Perhaps, wishful thinking !

My final set of pictures was vertical, and incorporated both parts of myself, the creator and the observer: the double. Because I had been dealing with the conflict between creating and observing my art processes, perhaps 1 now understood that my metaphor attempted to reconcile both aspects of the creator and the critic, and the drawings were the "double" -perhaps a "triple" since I had done three sets of drawings of mind, body, and "whole" person. The final set of drawings which finally integrates mind and body were quick to do, and not nearly as satisfying as the other two in which I was constantly playing and working out ideas. The problem solving done through the two early sets of horizontal works had been the processes by which 1 had finally

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recognised my story's metaphor of PollyPatty. The words in my story seem superfluous to me because 1 feel the pictures say more. It is interesting that there are three sets of drawings that each works separately as a story in its own right, and yet each story can combine to be part of one larger story. They all work literally and symbolically. Further, 1, myself. am as well, the fourth and invisible, undrawn story, the founh dimension of reality because Polly's story is my story. T. S. Eliot asks, "Who is the fourth?",and we remember there are four directions, four winds... Perhaps, in my search, in Courtney's course, I was also mindful of Montgomery's Japanese garden ( 1 99 1 ) when she refers to the importance

of what is unseen. I have always used as a guide the words of Antoine do Saint-Exupery's "le petit prince" who stated, "What is essential is invisible to the eye. Only with the heart one sees correctly." Courtney's classes provided me with a turning point, and a revelation that I was the child

in my story. 1 can only sum up my thoughts by this quotation, again by Mary Warnock in referring to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, ...in order to answer questions about knowledge, belief, perception, or indeed about causation and substance, one had to turn one's alienation inwards, and examine the objects of one's consciousness. ( 1978, 13)

How do my revelations benefit education? For the teacher, she realises that she is the "child within", who grows into the teacher. She

is what she teaches; her personal practical knowledge. Metaphorical drawings and statements are extensions of the self. Remembering or seeing with the eye of a child aids the teacher in building

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bridges with the students because her empathy is authentic. Art as reflection helps teachers know themselves from the outside by examining their "inside" drawings. In this way, they become both inside and outside, creator and critic, "the double." David calls my lacuna of art, a tributary of my artistic river. But I am mindfbl of Tillie Olsen's words that if you dam a river, what was once a torrent will become a trickle and then ... disappear.

Introduction to Transformative Learning Studies 111this section, I examine the inflrrr~cesthat gave rise to my children's story. First, ipot~derthe poetic voices that were ill my head d u r i ~ g0'Szdlivad.s course, and ihwc I reflect oil prior cinslv~..s that played a sigwjicant rulr jir the writing of my story.

Are Poetic Images Appropriate? . . .That the fbture had come Dancing the frenzied dream Out of the murderous innocence of the sea A Praver for mv Dau-,W.B.

Yeats

...All things, counter, original, spare, strange:

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; Pied Beaw, Gerard Manley Hopkins As I began my description of what lead me to my children's book for my course on Transformative Learning, 1 was surprised to discover that I had introduced my discussion with two of my favourite poets, old time friends met in first year university in 1967. Although Yeats was a tortured soul. spending his life, agonizing over his rejection by Maude Gonne, he nonetheless saw a relationship among disparate things. His understanding of the pattern of life, and the cycles of nature to replenish again and again is evident in his poem, "The Windhover", and suggests a hopefulness in a sustaining world that "the windhover", who symbolises Christ, will come again to give people a second chance. Yeat's imagery imparts an impression of crash, slash, a curtain that falls only to rise again on a new world, pure and reborn; Hopkins, on the other hand, always struck me as a friendly friar who saw the beauty of God's creations as a manifestation of God. He marvels, as in "Pied Beauty", at the multiplicity of life: fickle, Freckled

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(who knows how?). We have two poets' visions: one dramatic, crashing; the other, adazzle at the wonder of variety in the world.

I comment on the use of poetic language because this course on global awareness, or rather the lack of it, is unrelentlessly depressing. Article after article reinforces the students' worst fears. The Multinationals are mercilessly destroying our planet. without any regard for a future generation; ecology is being sold off to the highest bidder for the best price. In the name of progress, we are absolutely drunk on our role as consumers, for the media has persuaded us that only through our purchases can we be truly happy, and all of our problems solved. Not only in

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the Western world, where the population in general, lives at a better standard of living, but in "the third world" as well, is this attitude touted: On the arid Deccan plateau of central India. tribal villagers who never before practiced the tradition of dowry prevalent among upper-caste Hindus are now demanding consumer goods from prospective spouses as the price of an arranged marriage. (Durning, 1 992, 3 5)

The lack of morality that implores an African mother to purchase Nestle baby formula because her own breast milk is not "as good" as the store bought formula, or the dumping of state forbidden pesticides on Mexico should not. 1 think, provoke the use of poetry to describe O'Sullivan's course. Germaine Greer in her book. Sex and Destiny (1 984) looks in depth at the politics of human fertility and the corruption of Western governments who play with the lives of the underdeveloped East. Ironically, the tinkering with "the others", affects us because the h i t s and vegetables fertilised by toxic chemicals amve at our stores and our tables. As well, exploding populations drain the Earth's resources for food, air and water. We are all connected, and belong to one earth. Rather than poetry to describe this course, an epitaph would be more fitting!

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And yet, the purpose of the course is to transform, to proselytise the students to change themselves and their students, and their communities so that there will be a future, a green one. How do I transform the ugliness of the prescribed texts to change it? I reflect that poetry is the language of transformation. Poetry takes ordinary words and makes them more: less is more, and usually more eloquently so. From many words to few, from images of destruction to those of creation I think the move must be simple and positive so that even a small child can understand. My small children's book drawn as a response to this course simplifies the longing for a better life and attempts to transform those ideas into images. Even O'Sullivan himself calls his future book, The Dream That Drives The Action (my hold of "Dream'7.

A glimmer of hope comes from the person of Thomas Berry who writes as a prophet of a new religion. In his book, The Dream of the Earth. and his numerous articles, Berry speaks of

the next age as The Ecozic one because he says "ecozic" is a more biological term than ecologic. He states there exists ". . integral functioning of life systems in their mutually enhancing relations" (Berry, 1988, 9). He proposes an interrelationship of humans and earth, a sensitivity and awareness that we resonate to and mirror all the complex systems that are embodied in the earth. Earth has even been personalised and given a name by James Lovelock, "Gaia", derived from Greek mythology as well as her own story: one in which we, the humans, are part of her narrative. Berry and Lovelock draw us into Earth's story. Berry includes in his discussion by questioning how language, and how our words and images are derived from what we see and experience in nature. We expand into our words. filling them with metaphors and images that represent similarities we share with nature. Who could not be moved by the motion of the sea or a bird in flight, he asks. Certainly Yeats and Hopkins were.

Berty says,

Everything has a multitude of aspects and meanings... Sunlight is not a single thing. It awakens poetry in the soul, it evokes a sense of the divine. It is mercy and healing. Miction and death. ( B e y , 1988)

To live. one must be connected, a pan of a transaction between self and Nature (Dewey, 1934).

I think of Walt Whitman in "Song of Myself',who praises "a glimpse of something greater than ourselves"(National Geographic, 1994, 12 l),when he reflects on his amazement at life,

1 believe a leaf of grass is no less than a journeywork of the stars.... . And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Through communion in nature, Wordsworth, too, perceived "intimation" of human immortality and discovered that the "child is father to man". I think of this as I draw the child in my work. She begins again, refreshing our souls by her questions and her discoveries. The story I have written is simple, but hopeful, 1 feel. The story I write and the drawings help me continue on. Without hope, the world is a wasteland. T.S. Eliot in speculating how we postpone and waste our time, avoiding imponant

decisions that will awaken and revitalise our dreary lives of non-commitment comes to the conclusion that, Only by the form, the pattern Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness. ("Burnt NortonnV, Four O w e t s )

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The poet knows, we have only to look and feel and respond to what surrounds u s so that we may participate and be part of the cycles of the Earth and Her story. All insights, all knowledge are derived from the connections between ourselves and the planetary expanse that we think we can fathom. Dewey understood the connection between the sentient human and her environment: they were entwined, one needed the constant communication of the other. Sculptors are always aware of how humans perceive their relationships in space (Hepworth, 1970), realizing their smallness, their "place" in Nature. The many archetypes found in literature begin with the Eanh herself which possesses the twin paradoxes of creation and destruction, and, in deed, the cycles of nature are explicit in all of Gaia's powers. We cannot help but approach them with awe, and amazement like children who marvel and cannot quite comprehend the majesty and complexity of a seed or a butterfly's wings. Rather than personal exploitation and prurient investigation, the Earth, Gaia, must be approached with religious respect and kind consideration. Her future is our own.

I wrote my @cia/ assignment, using the course I teach at Northern Secondary on PostColonial literature. 1 thought of the many examples of unemployment, poverty, human rights violations, discrimination, imperialist impositions, etc. in the countries whose literature 1 teach. I have attempted to ameliorate Northern's program by suggesting positive practical actions, even encouraging students to become involved in m e s t v Inter-

instead of writing one

assignment. Then I did my real work for O'Sullivan's course- because I did it for myself I created my children's story of hope. As I reflect now on the poets who were seers, and celebrated the Eanh, I think my visual response was appropriate because it contains "the dream" that eventually man will

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remember the story of "that old beauty" and a true re-formation will take place. My imagery, my sentiments, my presentations, to contemplate. critique and create are evident in my small book.

Reflection In Jack Miller's Holistic Education, different modes of teaching were introduced:

transmission, transaction and transformation. Through textbook trading, discussion, charts and diagrams (visual means), students ascertained that education by transformation is the best way to learn because of the numerous levels. directions and dimensions it can encompass: up and down.

in and out. back and forth, person and public to involve the total person. Miller, 1 recall, diagrammed the process as a spiral, even moving it through time and space.

A second course that followed Miller's was O'Sullivan's Introduction to Transformative

Learning. As in Miller's tripartite presentation, transaction, transmission and transformation, O'Sullivan's also had three components: contemplate. critique and create. In O'Sullivan's course, students are required to read an overwhelming number of articles and books that discuss the many ways our planet has been wasted and destroyed. From military expenditure to The Green House Effect to the mismanagement of carbon fuels, to our present role as consumers, a daily diet of doom faces the student. This depressing overload- outlook serves to proselytize the student who actually feels that her voice is insignificant and that she is helpless in the rampage of multinationals who will go to any lengths to monopolize and profit. Like Peanuts Pigpen, the O'Sullivan student carries about her head a cloud of dirty troubles that makes her an unwanted invitee to any social gathering since any pause in conversation will turn into a diatribe

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on the horrors of our demise as a planet. Fortunately for my class, Thomas Berry came to speak and what was fear and depression was turned into hope by a person with a vision who had a larger sense of the situation than doom and gloom. As a philosopher and poet, Berry knows the problems, but his presence was a comfort, a reassurance that people can triumph over the greedy in this world. He is a seer whose serenity and insights eclipse all the problems of implementing a better fiture. He made us believe that all things are possible if we listen to Nature and emulate Her healing ways. Writing down my impressions of O'Sullivan's course allows me to stand outside the class, two years later, in order to understand where my drawings came from. Primarily, the hope came from Berry. But importantly, the possibility of transformation that rises from self to family to community to global scene came from Miller's course and his simple diagrams and quiet, accepting presence. As well, I was greatly affected by a story told in Connelly's Foundations of Curriculum class. The mood of mixed nostalgia and pain, the awareness that memory changes "our stories" was brought home by a young Chinese woman in that class. She recalled a childhood memory of being pounded by stones by her father's students as he, (and the trailing family) was lead off to jail. Convulsed in tears, she shared her story with the class. The professor queried if she were remembering correctly. I was aghast at his question. Much later, I realised that a re-creation of a tale is

a lie, but a re-creation. The older, mature woman imagined how she had felt as a child,

the pain very real, but the actual thoughts lived during those moments long gone.

And 1 thought about stories as transformations, how they give shape and meaning to the content of our lives through beginnings, plot lines, endings, and drama that is often heart-rending

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and difficult to hear. Yet, the stories of others connect with our own lives to transform the listeners and impart something of the teller. Not only stories, but art transforms too, telling stories, giving expression and voice to multicultural and minority groups so that their messages of warning and celebration can finally extend into global realms of understanding.

I think about my drawings of children's storybooks and how they relate to these classes and ideas discovered about transformation, storytelling. For me visual language is direct; it works without words to make a statement. In my children's story, I try to see and present how a child might envisage hope: through a tiny seed. Just as Lisa in the story, I must find a way to make hope for myself in O'Sullivan's depressing world. 1 deal, as I did through my Polly story, with a way to work out the problems presented in the courses. Whether point of view (David Booth), imagination (Courtney) or world destruction (O'Sullivan), I must work my responses through my an. In my story, the path is simple-listen to Nature, plant your seed. 1 think of the children's story The Lupin Ladv by Barbara Cooney in which she is admonished as a little girl to make the world a better place. The Lupin Lady scatters seeds of lupins, and transforms barren places into beauty. And I think that sometimes the simplest deed are the most profound. 1 think of schools in The Projects in New York City where the first act of repair is to paint the walls. How do we create hope for our students in our world to-day? Our students must have a way to turn fear of the future into positive actions. Nihilism (Broudy, 1967) is an end in itself because there is no avenue for promise. As in O'Sullivan's class, our students must do more than contemplate and critique, they must create, for therein lies the hope.

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Art is the way to create and draw out the emotions of despair. The subways and

washrooms walls are full of the voices ignored by society: the voices roar out in graffiti demanding a place, a recognition. Transforming the emotions of terror and fear into art lessens the pain, shares it and puts it outside of a person's body so that transformation can occur towards doing (Dewey, 1934) and arriving at solutions.

Art and Education: Planning and Implementation

Joyce Wilhrtsort's course affected me in three irnporta~rtways that have itrflremed my thesis. She facilitated the readittg of Dawsort Y.' thesis that has foctcsrd my uniiersfanJingon the role of art in the classroom; she exposed me to DBAE: and her book was the reasott I wasptth/ished br Edzccntional Studies. I liked how Joyce Wilkinson facilitated my learning and resultant self-knowledge. She had pointed me in a direction and I had embarked upon the research that resulted in my confronting my own ideas: Ruth Dawson's thesis. I realised that my anger at Dawson's thesis was a sign that I could not accept the neutrality of "anything is art". Interestingly, I have never ever held that tenet, and so I wondered why was I ready to accept this attitude in the classroom or school corridor. Was I agreeing with my classmates to gamer approval? Was I saying art could be decoration? These problems of the defining art and establishing its role have perplexed me throughout my thesis writing, perhaps because of the nature of a n itself is it process or product? I believe it is both. The second important exposure I had in Joyce's class was DBAE or Discipline Based Education. This is a program established and promoted by The Getty Centre for Studies in Education in Los Angeles. There are four elements in this program: art production; art history; art criticism; and aesthetics. Many American states are involved in using this approach. Elliot Eisner's involvement and the DBAE as theory in action as well as the Getty Institute provide continuing insights and education focused on the importance of art in the schools. Although roundly criticized for possessing an elitist approach to art, creating hierarchies of high art and craft, and focusing only on visual art, the Getty keeps expanding its institute's boundaries to correct its early omissions. Carl Grant, a major black contributor to multiculturalism's implementation in schools was asked by the Getty for his critique of their art programs. 1 am impressed by their power to

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actually do what they believe is important- and for the Getty that "do" is "the artsw-exposingas many people in as many ways as possible to the benefits of arts education. DBAE is theory in action and the Getty Institute will provide any interested person with curricula sampler, a binder full of practical lesson plans for teaching in the DBAE method for students from kindergarten to grade 12. The foreword writes in bold print that this book is by

teachers writing for teachers, a method more and more accepted that believes and promotes the idea that teachers possess special knowledge (Elbaz, Diamond, Yonernura, Connelly). Each unit was organized around a theme, for example, for grade three, "Caring and Sharing". As well, learning activities, resource materials, and evaluation strategies are included. The emphasis is on cumulative learning, in a sequentiaily structured format, and the units serve as models for teachers. The contributors to this binder come from the east to the west coasts in the U.S.

In my thesis chapter on Elliot Eisner, I discussed hrther the DBAE program and its goals ; however, in this section, I merely want to point out how 1 was spurred on to create my

children's story because of the exposure to DBAE in Joyce's class. I was excited by the Getty way of teaching art. Instead of a Friday afternoon art class tacked on to the end of the week. art was presented in its rightful place in the cumculum. It was a centrepiece, around which were focused history. problem solving, philosophy and production. DBAE linked the many aspects of art. 1 thought of the DBAE almost like a "story" because of

the organization of theme, structure and content around which the program is built. Particularly, because of the contrast with Dawson's thesis, I was eager to explore DBAE further. Joyce said I could use DBAE as the basis of a presentation, so, along with journal reports on my discoveries of the various activities and pursuits of the Getty, I began my little book.

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As in my story for David Booth, I wanted to show that I was dealing with the concepts required in the assignment. I decided to base my story on how a child might experience the DBAE program in kindergarten. Since DBAE promotes the use of museums, I wanted to include one in my story. I thought that when real children go to the museum, they will want red Jell-0 with

whipped cream squiggles, so I included that detail in the story. I wentioned "Madonna" because she links the outside world of entertainment to the inside world of the museum where the child could see the religious symbols of mother and child. As well, since one of the children in the story has a new baby, it seemed natural that a child would want to bring the outside into the school thereby connecting family and school. Again, the disparity that the child perceives between the "bum wiggling" Madonna and the solemnity of Madonnas in a religious context would not be surprising, for I have seen classes where children at age six or so compare and contrast various stories based on The Three Bears, basing comparisons on real experiences with bears seen at the zoo or in books. In the section where children are allowed to bring things from home in preparation for

drawing or making of them, 1 thought of what might be special to a child: a blankie; a truck; a snake; a new baby. 1 even used a piece of a real blankie to make a stronger statement on the relationship between the reality and the illusion in my story. As well as dealing with examples from the sampler and the organization of lessons into art criticism, an history, an production and aesthetics. I wanted to point out where I thought the program could be improved. 1 suggested more integration of imaginative play when I proposed that the children move like angels and that they listen to music. 1 had rather liked how many of the

DBAE lessons had included visualization and story writing in their presentations; however, little

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or no music was mentioned in the curricula binder compiled September 1988- 1990, and there appears to be no "free time" when children can just explore the materials and media at will. 1 am aware that the book is just a sampler and that teachers are encouraged to develop their own programs so perhaps this criticism is unfair. I do believe that undirected play can also result in valuable artistic learning. My friend, Brian Crawford, a kindergarten teacher, reports that many fascinating things occur in free time play. Another approach to learning through art is presented in The Creative Spirit, where the authors list what inhibits creativity: surveillance; evaluation; rewards; competition; over-control; restricting choice; and pressure (Goleman et al, 1993,6 1-62). The book's authors give the example of Reggio Emilia, a community in Italy that has existed for the last forty years: it is a "play school" that borrows from the Montessori approach and Piaget studies in child development. Their slogan is "Niente Senza GioiaW(Nothing Without Joy) and the resultant artwork brims with that attitude. The authors of The Creative Spi& refer to Howard Gardner when they say, By immersing children in activities they naturally take to ...(schools) set the stage for 'crystallizing experiences': exposure to a person, idea, or activity that completely captures their (children's) imagination. From such a crystallizing experience can grow a life's work. (Goleman et al, 1993, 90) I do not think that the methods of the DBAE and Reggio Emilia are mutually exclusive, and I do trust that the DBAE art educators do allow for quiet and, or ncisy exploration, and freedom from pressured learning in situations in which each child challenges herselc and achieves her personal best. I would hope that the guidelines are just that, directions for personal growth for each and every individual to respond. 1 do not feel that there should not be expectations. Gardner

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discovered this, too, in his Key School. I think DBAE provides a coherent and unified structure to learn about visual art, and structures are important for children at various points in their life.

DBAE exposes children to many ways of thinking and doing art, and that is not to say that those 'crystallizing experiences' are "Senza Goia" However, one area that did concern me in DBAE was the emphasis on a ranking of art, differentiating, for example. fine art from folk art. As well, I would have liked to see more examples of non-traditional art in the form of Abstract Expressionism and art fiom many countries that do not subscribe to North American ways of representation. There were some pieces of Eastern At, and "folk art", but I think that the field could be widened to include a better view of art from many cultures. "The (DBAE) Global Approach" designated for high school students could be employed at an earlier stage, really, at the beginning of the program. for children are interested in many nontraditional representations. In fact, many of their early drawings might be closer to nonformalised artwork at this stage in their development. The objectives behind this section on Global Art are quoted from the South American poet, Octavio Paz, ...What sets the world in motion is the interplay of differences. ..life is plurality...every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life. ( 1987)

I hope my little story catches some of the joy. and curiosity of childhood delight in creating and looking. The third important element in Joyce's course was the book review that was published in emphis-Tennesee. Educational Journal. Mists must communicate ideas, using society's symbols. In Joyce's class, I did both.

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Joyce's class provided me with a clarification towards art, exposure to Discipline Based Art Education and a small publication in print of a book review 1 wrote on her book, &

Svmbolic Dramatic Plav-Literacv Connection: Whole Brain, Whole Bodv. Whole Learning: in the spring, 1994 issue of Educational Studies, Memphis, Tennessee.

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Conclusion Doing art at OlSE has evoked and amalgamated all of my life's experiences. These chapters explain in word and image my responses to my classes. I explain my resistance to writing about my creative processes because transforming image into word is not analogous to drawing. However, I have tried to explain how I think while 1 do my an work. Rather than bestowing the "how" of the process, I have been able to discuss techniques and reflect on how my imagination has been widened and piqued by ideas that I have used in my drawings. All of my classes provided me with new sources of interest and stimulation. Much like Polyani's "tacit information", I have fed my mind ideas that have coalesced into the stories and pictures I present here. I am glad I have kept journals, but artists, and writers do think differently. Some insight can be provided by words, but they are their own wonderfid world of imagery. drawing upon their own store of magic to put forth what the writer wants to convey. To hlly understand, a person must pick up a pencil and draw herself

My frustration at writing about art has reminded me of student difficulty in always doing what we, as teachers, tell them to do. Being reflexible, suggesting alternatives, providing alternative means to communicate ideas. facilitating sources of excitement, and talking about their difficulties are bonuses that my reflection yielded me. On a very personal level, I was delighted to discover that after many, many years of not drawing, that I still could respond in a visual manner, and the creativity we possess never dies. However, it is as Christopher Pratt says, "The artist's job is to deliver, not to interpret"(The Toronto Sw,Nov. 12,1995).

Bow The Study of Arts Benefits All Areas of Life and The Curriculum

In this chapter, I discass the numerotrs benefits of using art in the ctcrricaircm. BegirvNng ome agaitr with the edrrcatio~~ai researchers, Dewey, Eisisner a d Gardmr, I present documented studies and scenarios that swbstantiate the belief that art is not ordy helpfi, hut r~ecessaryto the crcrriclrf~cm.From impfernentationto eval~cationto teacher ervichment, art is the paradigm for obtail~itgmrani@d lifrlorrg education. The traditionai, metaphysical and hid&!, ctcrricula are reinjorced by ~.xamplesof specirfic application to reveal the entwining of art ard lI$e irr classroom edrccatiorr rhmtigh art. Art matters... artists speak to people in ways that politicians cannot...an has the power to define us, to challenge us and to make us explore the frontiers of human existence. Ron Silver in "A Tribute to Vaclav Havel"

How Dewey, Eisner and Gardner Envision the Benefits of Arts Education. In 1897, Dewey set out in "My Pedagogic Credo" his beliefs that "true education comes

through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situation"( 1897. 5). Learning by actively doing in an informal community of learners, respect for the individual and her increased freedom, social contact, communication and co-operation were at the heart of Dewey's utopian cumculum. To create a better world through education, Dewey focused on experience, the continual interactions between a person and her "environment", extended to mean memories, nature or society. and art as the way to transform experience. Dewey, in Art as Experience, said the artist's creative experiences were the ones to be emulated by all people, for the artist selects and organizes, "transfer[ring] from one field of experience to another, to attach them to the objects of our common life, and by his imaginative insight make these objects poignant and

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momentous"(1934, 1 18). Dewey was aware of the benefits of art as a learning tool that enhanced life, and yielded insights. Others in years to follow agreed: "The new view is of the birthright of Everychild to be educated as artist in order to have access to understandings that are exclusively extended through aesthetic symbols"(Darby and Catterall, 1994, 30 1 ). Many educators continue to believe that art benefits the life of the child and is essential to every school's curriculum. So valuable are the arts to education that The Arts Education Partnership Working Group

in the U.S. in their 9penda for Action entitled their proposal "The Power of the Ans to Transform Education"(January, 1993). As in all transformations, there is a ripple effect in the teaching of an where the effects radiate outwards to the learner, the school, the community and the nation. For learners, the arts provide engaging ways of knowing in various media through active intercourse that is intrinsically rewarding because the child enjoys the activity. For the school, the milieu becomes multidimensional in opportunity and technology. revealing broad connections across areas of knowledge that bind life within and outside the school walls: the school is valued and respected as a door that opens on to meaningfbl and useful endeavours. For the community, arts provide a partnership wherein the students are the elastic that stretches between the poles of home and school. The partnership proves to the students that their diverse life experiences are valued, and to the family that their heritages are important teaching resources and merit the support of the school. By acknowledging the community through interviews, apprenticeships and dialogues, the community feels it plays a vibrant and vital role in the formal education of the child. For the nation, the arts as a required facet of curriculum celebrates individual, but shared, identity, reaffirming a belief in democracy. Dewey's ideas were so valuable for educators because of the many benefits to education

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that flow from them. Dewey entwined the esthetics pewey's spelling] of art with the fabric of everyday life: his topic was always the curriculum of life, enhanced and ameliorated by art. His ideas were far reaching: from artistic experience to media deployment. In discussing the transformation of an artist's experience into media that answered and posed new questions, he explained that the benefits of artistic experience extend beyond the artist and media transformations to result in a new creation or a work of an. The perceiver of the art remembers her own experiences. and creates by reconstructing and altering her memories into new ideas. Even young children can draw upon memories of family and holidays that are emotional stores of expenence. Reflection skills appear to develop in adolescence, although they are "precociously [evident] in visually gifted children." However, "clearly, one needs to nourish not only reflective skills. but the ability to talk about themV(Rosenblattand Winner, 1988, 10- 1 1). The more a child talks about art, the more she reveals her "ability to break up an organized visual field"(Douglas,Schwartz and Taylor, 1981, 24-25), discovering connections among elements in her art work, and in the elements to the entire painting itself: the child sees not only the forest, but the trees, and their relationship to other trees. "Reflection" says Dewey, "shows, however, that what gives the just direction in one direction constitutes individuality of pans in the other direction."(l934, 202). In studies with five year olds, Douglas, Schwartz and Taylor found "significant positive correlation... between cognitive style and total Cue Attendance and two attributes, Sensory and Organizational"( 198 1, 28). Connie, a student engaged in discussion of her work, noticed for the first time that -she had a style, a characteristic signature (Wolf, 1988,28). At Howard Gardner's school projects, students are encouraged to assess, review and discuss their

work, considering past and present ramifications. For Connie, the talk triggered her reflections and insights into her work. In order "to build curricula in a way calculated to attain some kind of bridge between making and looking at the fine arts and the students' prior experience" (Broudy, 1967) Stephen Pepper (in Brigham 1989, 16) presented the concept of hsion, "the melting together, the integration and blending together of otherwise separate entities." From a person's huge reservoir of accumulated experience, disparate ideas will combine to, as Pepper says, ''fbnd" the present through a "hsion" of experiences (Brigham, 1989, 16). Perkins says this transfer makes meaning (1994 ;Hanna. 1992) because the student, herself. is making meaning and reflecting on how her life continually entwines with her present. Suddenly, she recognises the connections because "every occurrence is concurrence "(Dewey in Brigham, 1989, 16). Henry Moore used curves and spaces in his sculptures as visual metaphors of the hills and dales of his Yorkshire youth. By playing at and creating in art, new possibilities stretch the imagination which may be unlocked to reveal new avenues of experience as were Connie's. The Times Educational Supplement understood this process that bridges and " hugs" (Perkins and Salomon, 1988) that echoes and resonates, capturing experiences and transforming them : Lennon and McCanney's lyrics represent an important barometer to our societysentiments which are shared by pupils in every classroom in Britain. problems faced by many of them, hopes shared, worries grasped, and dreams dreamt... If the record's understanding were to be reflected in Britain's teachers, our schools might be more sympathetic institutions than some are now. It is all too easy to assume loftily that this type of trivia detracts from the essential nature of study. (Lanier, l968a, 35) The so-called "trivial" is made meaningful. The steady stuff of everyday life is seen to reveal

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messages of the human heart. And as in Moore and Hepworth's art, their personal memories made public become building blocks or experiences in other's lives. Helga Weissova Hoskova, a survivor of Terezin and Auschwitz recorded her childhood experiences in the camps. She observes today, "Now I see I saw more than 1 saw." Her comments attest to "a work of art "that can be both a source of knowledge for others and an expressive outlet for the artist who needs to convey knowledge"(Goldberg, 1992, 620). For Dewey, all art work, whether "low" or "high" art, should be accessible to the public, not purchased and hidden in museums. He felt strongly that art must permeate life. He encouraged, "Art as a more universal mode of language than ...is speech that exists in multitudes of mutually unintelligible forms" ( 1 934, 335). Children who make art understand the visible language of art that requires a literacy of expression in symbol, and skill to communicate thought or deed to others. Dewey's ideas are timeless, as relevant today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow. Dewey championed the art of "Negro and Polynesian" because "prejudices melt away" when we see from a new frame of reference, and "install [themselves] in modes of apprehending nature that at first are strange to [them]" (1934, 334). School children, through cross country exhibitions and art work of diverse civilizations, can learn empathy and experience alternative worlds and points of view. Dr. Hans GifThorn has stated that schools should teach children "to tolerate unrestrictedly differing aesthetic preferences in all pans of culture and civilization"(1WV8, 52). Dewey said ,"...we become artists ourselves as we undertake this integration...our own experience is reorientedv(1934, 334). School curriculum must expose children to new and varied experiences so that student talents, horizons and points of view will

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expand. Interestingly, DBAE learned this lesson when their models were criticized for being "elitist, misogynist and racist" (Delacruz &Dunn, 1995, 49). Through seminars, The Getty Institute identified a common aim they shared with multicultural groups: "no single voice defines, limits or speaks exclusively for either movement" (Delacruz &Dunn, 1995, 49). One study of 200 high schools found that the arts contributed to desegregation, positive self-esteem and academic achievement (Crain, Mahard &Narot in Hanna, 1992) . Encountering works of art, children ask questions, interested in discovering what is new and different (Eisner, 1982):"it is the continuous readjustment of self and the world in experiencefl(Dewey, 1934, 266). Doing art, children are faced with many problems: what do they express in media? How? Questions of content, organization and composition are posed by themselves, their media, their teachers . A dialogue with self and others is the process by which art eventually evolves into an art product. Sternberg has said that the best kinds of learning are those that involve novel kinds of concepts and thinking. In such tasks, "students not only solve problems, but [change directions, take risks and are confronted with] new kinds of problems require inventive ways to think that they have not thought before7'(Stemberg, 1981, 92 ;Paraday, 1990). This thinking is unique in art because of the number of transformations that occur during the artistic process: from problem to idea to execution, each step offers many choices that build ,eventually accumulating in an outward demonstration of inner thought and feeling in an art product. Process is just as important as product since it models flexibility and awareness of choice. Unlike math, the final solution is no mere cipher in art, but a descriptive, interpretative revelation that has employed media to enhance and document the process.

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Dewey understood the role of technology in life as it formed new experiences, and necessitated moving forward in thinking and adapting ideas to new skills. Today's artists use lasers, film, computers, videos, printouts: all culturally-based tools that influence thinking, and responding. A person who learns to use society's tools gains competency in the marketplace, "recogniz[ing] and neutraliz[ingJ manipulations and falsification of judgement through mass media"(Giffhorn, 1978/8, 52). The overwhelming visual appeals in mass media through computer or borrowing from art history and artistic principles substantiate that advertisers have seized the opportunity to exploit what artists have always known. Children. in Dewey's 'social situations', school, must be allowed opportunities (Eisner, 1982) to know the various 'languages' of communication. practising with new technology so that their messages will be powerful because they know the limitations. manipulations and advantages of society's tools. Art is a language (Dewey, 1934). Like any other, it has its own syntax ( arrangement of

pans that involves cognitive processing and symbols used to construct the whole). For language to be understood, a person must transform idea into symbol and learn how its parts combine to make meaning: the expression must communicate. For the expresser to be literate in language, she must be able to convey and inform in the symbolic system, perhaps utilising her own "personal signaturem(Darbyand Catterall, 1994. 3 10). so that will make her ideas decodable. As language is formed. so minds are oriented: 011- g o i ~ ~hga, ~ ~ d v aopewnded. n; These compound words reflect a meaning of incompleteness. a process that is continuing. So, the Getty Institute discovered when their awareness of multicultural and feminist issues forced them to consider and extend a program responsive to a changing world. Some believe the language of art of innate, having a special section in the brain. Betty

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Edwards says there might be a "deep structure of visual form underlying art that is wired into the human brain in a manner, similar. perhaps to the way Noam Chomsky has postulated such a structure for human verbal expression"(Edwards, 1986,76). She bases this hypothesis on the results of a study completed by 83 students who were asked to draw visual analogs to anger, joy, peacefblness, depression, human energy, feminity, and illness. The results were startling similar: students employed jagged lines for anger; curved lines for feminity; horizontal lines for peacefhlness, etc. There appears to be an "agreement or similar language shared by these people" (Edwards, 1986, 76). Since development of skill requires practice, and an examination of how other artists have employed their "language", Edwards feels it is important that schools provide for the teaching of an so students can see that they all ready possess rudiments of artistic language, much like words. She uses the analogy of reading, for if indeed, there is a deep structure in the brain. no one has ever suggested that studying English will spoil the creativity, spontaneity, or "talent" for understanding the written language! Other "on-going" considerations caused DBAE to interface with music, dance, and theatre. Changes in society should impact on schools to reflect the concerns of people. Stasis means death. All curricula need not be in a state of flux. However, new slants and approaches enliven past information , rearranging it for relevance to students' lives. Researchers have found, for example, the benefits of small group learning, integrating subject matter, storying and research projects. Instead of the teacher lecturing and the students just doing homework, improved techniques of communication aid in traditional methods of education. Positive findings in the arts also recommends itself to interdisciplinary cumcula because of the benefits. "Encouraging teams of art, music ,drama and dance specialists to use the tenets of DBAE to combine their unique,

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separate but mutually supportive art areas offered potential for improving the collective position of each of the arts in South Carolina schools"(Delacruz & Dunn, 1995, 50). Children's lives, like an, possess the "on-going" possibilities of being transformed and developed into new states: so art provides a paradigm of life- long learning. Perceiving an empirical connection between life and art is child's play, for what begins as play becomes life's work or "playfblness with seriousness"(Dewey, 1 934, 279). Translating Dewey's concepts into school curriculum mirrors Dewey's vision of a nonracist, problem-setting and -solving world of creative social equals where past experiences, present awakenings and hture dreams combine to extend artistic values, perceptions and possibiiities. Graerne Sullivan concurred that art-based education is "meaningfbl, authentic, critical and piuralistic"(l993, 5) a vehicle perfect for children whose forays in school should prepare them for life. To enjoin the worlds of art and life, the school must encourage a kind of cross-pollination between home and community. Competences can be encouraged using apprenticeships in a social framework. Transmitting art or craft to students fiom a master in a particular field provides "social glue"(Kornhaber, Krechevsky & Gardner, 1990, 189). A close working relationship bridges generations, and ir, sir14 learning profits the student. A student can move out into the community, and/or she can replicate in her school the

communities and civilizations of the past in order to understand their impact on the present: "instruction in the arts of life is something other than conveying information about them. It is a matter of communication and participation in values of life by means of the imagination and works of art"(Dewey, 1934, 336). At The Mabin School in Toronto, children's play is not separated from life. When studying pioneer days in Grade 4, children planned, measured and

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erected a log cabin. They used calligraphy to write in their journals about daily lives. Appearing

in period dress , they role played, made toys just as pioneer children did: by doing, they understood the connections between life and art. In Grade 6 at The Mabin, they created zoo environments with ease because they had been acquainted with the properties and textures of real materials. Their teacher said there is a naturalness about their working in various media because they have always done so. Like Dewey, Eisner identified "the potential of the arts as vehicles for revealing the social world" ( 1991 , 6). Eisner's cumulative, kindergarten-Grade 1 2 art-centred program, "Discipline Based Art Education". employs art production, art criticism. art history and aesthetics to teach important lessons: Wherr I puirrt. I discover I car1 chntrge the world, creating r~ewshapes or scenes rhat were rmt present before nie. I make them exist: I fed empowered I cat1 tra~rs/ateard tra113form my experietrces irrforrewforms or hymboiu,from inside my itnagirratior~to the outside worid T h t takes imugirratiorr arrd irrverrtiorr (Faraday, 1990, 77). / have cmmttrkuted ard re-yreserrtcd what has heerr ir~my head; evenf e r h g s cart he showrr irr yai~rt.My symbols otr my co~rvasare a special wordless language. My work i s m t right or wrorg arrd carrtmt be determit~edby a~iother!~ ntles. I have prohiem-solved by trsirrg my experiences m a spri~gbourdto create images, and positionitrg them or! my carwas. aid relating them to the other shapes in my pictrrtre. This process requiresjtrtdpmeni because

I, alme, must sef my owrr standards and must decide what is good and mxessaI y. Besides sorting and thinking befire I execute my work, l am engaged it?a dialogrte with myselj; my experiencesl and trnditiom that have preceded this special momer~ifir space a d

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time. Alfhozrghalom. I arn coti~~ected to past artisfs. I must consider a d kiow my

media arid my skills, aware that my abstract comeptions will meel resi.sfatice it, the media that awaits their ir~tyz~skvi. Yet the excifemenfof faking a risk and creatir~g something trniqlre propels the rhythms of my arm and body to erigage myself to make . images can transport me to a fantasy world or / c m repret?seritwhat / somefhirrgN ~ W My

see iti the real world so that my frie~idswill recogtrize it arid ask me qttcstiom. I can evert empathize or s h w in art that I irnderstand how theyfeel. When I f h M ahotrt my iijie, I thi~~ how k my garJr~rmy room a d my world are jirll of art :that 's called "u~.sfhetic.s " (Eisner, 1978). All this physical and mental exploration of self occurs when a child/person paints! Dewey fbnher explained "the pervasiveness of aesthetic experience",pointing out how art can encompass and enhance the seeing and doing in everyday life: The sources of art in human experience will be learned by him who sees how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the onlooking crowd; who notes the delight of the housewife in tending her plants, and the intent interest of her goodman in tending the patch of green in front of the house; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals. (1 934, 5)

From the routines of the everyday living to the workplace, individual perceptions are reflected in the creative ways people manage their lives.

And Chrisiopher Pratt quoted on November 12,1995, reiterates the same ideas; A boat out of season is a sculpture on the land; a Christmas ornament becomes a bauble; trout flies are abstractions when you're tying them. (The Toronto Star)

A study by Puccio and Treffinger revealed that there were "clear and consistent relationships

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between creativity style and aspects associated with work-related products"(1995, 157). Practice in art class offers many ways of thinking, and a recognition that individuals will deal with tasks in varied ways: "there is no best stylem(kckardand Puccio, 1995, 158). Since a person's learning style is often determined by the situation, or the task, working in various modes of behaviour in the classroom can only enhance eventual workplace problem-solving. Whether "adaptors or innovators", each person in the study responded to particular on job requirements by using an appropriate style to accomplish tasks. The innovator, found to be more fluent, more original and a risk taker whose thinking was mainly divergent, questioned assumptions and actually threatened the structure of the task's framework. In contrast, the adaptor's style was disciplined, methodical and predictable, using convergent organization within the structure of the task. "Since it is unlikely that individuals will always find tasks that match their creative preferences, individuais must learn to adaptV(1995,168). ln fact, Rickard and Puccio found that their subjects did apply a variety of strategies in the work place. To maximize a team effort, it would make sense to have a combination of adaptors and innovators. In art class, individuals and group projects allow students to practice problem-solving through a variety of creative strategies. Dewey would have applauded Gardner's concept of "Multiple Intelligences", for it extends the boundaries of intelligence to embrace visual, spatial. musical, kinaesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal ways of knowing along with linguistic and mathematical ones, in shon, different ways of thinking about intelligence. This new understanding is more democratic because it "provides a structure for our system to look at all children, not just gifted ones" (Maker et al., 1994, 7). Gardner's work on how children lean "adds new dimensions of educational equity" because the theory "emphasizes potentialies for human growth that may be ignored or

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neglected by the present systemn(Darbyand Catterall, 1994, 308). Gardner's concept of intelligence widens the definition of intelligence to include artists as well as athletes. Can anyone doubt that Picasso who always "want[ed] to treat numbers as if they were visual pattemsn(Gardner, 1993. 4 1) was not a brilliant innovator of the 20th century? It is unlikely that he would have scored well on the Stanford-Binet. Gardner has looked to the arts to broaden the traditional meaning of intelligence and creativity. Gardner ArtsPROPEL uses domain-projects and portfolios to focus his treatments and development of intelligences that involve production, perception and reflection. Domain-projects are rich sets of exercises designed to present an idea, a concept or a practice which is central within a domain (Kornhaber, Krechevsky, & Gardner, 1990, 192). "lt is interesting to note that the mathematical and musical domains have yielded robust research that indicate unique developmental patterns and educational needs and these same domains are identified as Intelligences in the Multiple Intelligences Theory" (Matthews, 1988, 10 I). Each domain is assessed in an "intelligence-fair7' manner which is "on-going, individualized and contextual" (Darby and Catterall, 1994, 305) and can be observed in a variety of ways. In a Minneapolis classroom, portfolios, dioramas. "biographies" of student work. annotated journals all visually serve to document the children's progress (Ellison, 1992, 72).

In another school, children explore aboriginal peoples by making and sorting clay coins; others write and illustrate a creation story; a third group performs a dance, using its actual movements : there is no hierarchy in these activities that all the children will try. The talented mathematician learns that the artist's skills are valued and may indeed be difficult to master. Each child's self-esteem is enhanced because each has visible ability in the areas represented in the

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classroom, and so feels brave enough to attempt a new activity. In this social situation where all intelligences are equal, children often become the teachers, eager to share their expertise in a friendly interchange. As well, their learning can be observed and assessed by their interaction with their various media. At Reggio Emilia. a "playschool" in Italy, children create murals, each piece integral to the whole design, and so each child recognises her place as contributing individually to a group effort. Art is the touchstones to nature, materials, laughter, problem-solving and success. From work in art, teachers can provide a visual record that is useful for assessment. A teacher might videotape what is occurring in the classroom. Process in art is instrumental in documenting developmental stages that signify student growth and change, witnessed through taping, sketches journals, discussions and the artwork, itself. The final a n product functions as a touchstone in two ways: firstly. it is a step in the on-going development of the artist whose "every closure is an awakeningfl(Dewey, 1934, 169); but secondly, the object is resplendent with ideas to be possessed and re-experienced by the viewing of the student or her peers. Will the student use that work as a stepping stone to another project? Have her techniques and ideas developed over time? How well has she employed a symbolic language to express her ideas? Teachers note if children are learning to be flexible and experiment : commencing with one purpose, the child may have to shift focus in order to exploit an unexpected opportunity to arrive at a desired outcome. These opportunities are absent from math or spelling where only one finite answer is acceptable. Rules, rote and memory dictated by others are replaced by first hand intervention into problems which have no righ or wrong answers- an excellent model for productive workplace behaviour. Interestingly, more and more researchers have begun to consider a profile of intelligences, rejecting a single I.Q. quotient as indicative of giftedness: The Multiple Intelligences framework,

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used intelligently can lead to identification and programming policies that assess each child's unique giftedness and offer appropriate educational modification. "As Keating ( 1984) argued, our notions of intelligence have been profoundly distorted by our continued failure to consider the social, historical and political contexts for which such ideas arise " (Matthews, 1988, 103). Awareness of the unfairness of certain cultural items for Blacks on I.Q. tests in the southern United States attests to the truth of this statement. Gardner rejects a K-I2 sequential curriculum because it flies in the face of the holistic, "

contextually -sensitive manner in which individual customarily gain mastery in crafts and discipline" (Gardner, 1989, 77). Gardner feels that all insights should be generated from student a n production. He maintains that curricula must be rooted in "a spiral" aspect of learning because,

"An involves a continuing exposure, at various developmental levels, to certain core concepts,

like style, composition, or genre; and to certain recurrent problems, like performing a passage with feeling or creating a powerful imase "(1989, 77). Gardner maintains that rather than imposing an outer structure determined by the school, the child herself should be the author of her investigations. However an insightfbl reflective teacher will be sensitive to her students, directing and facilitating her students' learning. In this scenario, skills, materials and concepts may be formally set out, but not offered until the teacher is asked for resources or, aware that a child needs or requires information, for there is in experience, two components. the individual and the environment (Dewey, 1934).The student exists in a context, a framework : school as a preparation for future events. Gifthorn concurs, "...by trying to form JIinstruction (my

wrderlining) in a way that the pupils themselves at every stage can realize how they are doing

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helps them to improve their actiraf present and future life situation" (Giflhorn, 1978/8, 60). Dewey states , "It is a matter of communication and participation in values of life to share in the arts of living "(1934, 336). To model fbture behaviour students must first look inward, but then outward to society, school, friends and workplace, and perceive the impacting roles of past civilizations, present restrictions and possibilities to consider and plan future endeavours. The teacher is the guide or midwife who aids in the birthing of the child's ideas. No one approach is the answer to instruction: the teacher must respond from her own sensitive observations how best to implement the curricula. Multiple Intelligences Theory has provoked many theorists to examine Gardner's ideas. Jackson and Butterfield ( 1 986) , Keating ( 1980)- Sternberg and Davidson ( 1985) recommend a "domain-specific" focus when educating children with exceptional ability, an approach that would tend to emerge from educational programming based on Multiple Intelligences theory (in Matthews, 1988. 10 1). Sternberg also proposed other kinds of intelligences, (mapmaking, key computer theories) not included in Gardner's approach. Sternberg believes in considering the psychology of the child, saying programs should be attuned to the child's patterns of strengths and weaknesses. The nature of the tasks and situations a child confionts will determine the intervention a child will take. Sternbeg focuses on learning styles. rather than " multiple intelligences." Sternberg's terminology divides learners into three types: the legisfafiveor independent, creative learner; the exectrtive type who works best within conventional structures; and thejz~dicidlearner who prefers to evaluate, and assess contrasting ideas, theories and principles (Sternberg, 1994, 565). Gardner responds to Sternberg's ideas by saying, "Readers will find that MI theory in fact constitutes a powerfbl entry point (Gardner's italics) to the ensemble of

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factors stressed by Stemberg (Gardner, 1994, 580). Rather than a verbal joust, both Yale and Harvard researchers blur previous definitions and grapple with putting art theory in educational practice. Gardner, too, saw the co-existence of several intelligences at work in children. (Indeed, Picasso possessed spatial and intrapersonal intelligences.) All of the people in Gardner's studies, who changed the 20th century demonstrated several multiple intelligences in breaking new ground. Perhaps because art is the perfect action research vehicle that reveals theory in action, it has been a helpfir1 focus for educational investigation. June Maker, too, in working on a program of assessment located what she considered a new Intelligence, the ability to be "gifted in general problem solvingm(Maker et al., 1994, 13). Gardner does not pretend to have all the answers or to have created the ultimate theory. Eisner questions Gardner's decision not to consider the artistic treatment of a symbol system as a form of human intelligence (Eisner, 1994, 559). It is clear Gardner's theory is not definitive. He has focused interest on a n education, opening up discussions of I.Q., creativity and giftedness. Moreover, Gardner's theories on Multiple Intelligences have encouraged many people to rethink how schools value and support the abilities of all children (Hatch, 1993, 198): using learning centres, implementing systems of assessment that reflect strengths and needs of students, assigning projects that draw upon many intelligences, team teaching and grouping teachers who possess similar specialties, revamping repon cards, portfolios, structure and organization of schools (Kornhaber, Krechevsky and Gardner, 1990). In order to create a better means of assessment, Maker and two other professors from Arizona developed a continuum of problems ,ranging from standardized, divergent, convergent answers to open-ended creative ones by which

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they sought to evaluate Gardnerts "Multiple Intelligences." They called it DISCOVER . "We must look at meaningfbl performance within a culture: we must take into account both individuals and societies" (Kornhaber, Krechevsky and Gardner, 1990, 1 88). Eisner, as far back, as 1972, sought improved methods of assessing student work. He designed his "expressive objective" as an "activity planned by the teacher or the student which is designed not to lead the student to a particular goal or form of behaviour but rather, to forms of thinking, feeling and acting that are his[her] own making" (Eisner, 1972, 580). Rather than prescriptive, the task is evocative: the student's imaginative resources...bear upon a highly specific problem, but one in which there is a wide variety of solutions, a system that sets out very specific problem criteria, but anticipates open-ended and creative answers.

Implementing Art Education Art educators who are always aware of the benetits of a n and seeing like artists, create

models that are applicable to school situations. Harry Broudy in 1967 promoted Lanier's communications theory of "canalization" or "beaming a signal or message compatible with the comprehension level of the audience it is aimed at7'(Lanier, 1968, 34). What is proposed in a "Canalized Program" is student analysis of many factors that influence seeing art in society. Step A requires examination of social attitudes in a specific work. Step B necessitates a view to the

culture in which the piece was created, and an overall view of arts in the world. In each case, the student talks about her reactions and experiences, entering into dialogues with her peers and teacher. In a "Canalized Program" perceptual skills, similar to Eisner's connoissetrrship and crfticism, along with recognition of formal qualities, heuristic and symbolic interpretations,

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personal associations, historical contexts lead up to a student making judgements. The work of art never stands by itselc it is connected to life in myriad ways, studied from numerous angles, prodded and poked into contextual relationships. The outcome is thoughtful knowledgable responses that propel the student to validate why she likes or does not like a particular piece. Much more than mere whim, there are real reasons for her statements: "To some extent

judgement may be considered as a product of the totality of one's responses" (Lanier, 1968, 42). The student feels value in her response because she can validate her pronouncement. Those of us who know the benefits of art education applaud Eisner's concept of "connoisseurship". for it promotes critical thinking and fine grained discrimination. Children learn

t meaning, and jrrdp them. By visually to describe aesthetic qualities in the work, i ~ r t e r ptheir investigating, not just labelling. what is familiar. students begin to see and understand relationships that form the basis of informed judgements. The student compares, consolidates, contrasts and makes connections, discerning forms or shapes that reappear in diverse work in order to identify trends, generalize and particularize, using accumulated knowledge as reference points from which to consider and make decisions. The arrangements of paintings and fimiture in the Barnes Foundation collection provoke students to think about artistic principles and trends, puzzling over and engaging their intellect by actively looking and thinking about artwork. Eisner had proposed an earlier method to connoisseurship and criticism. This earlier method required a student to critically evaluate 6 dimensions in a work of art: her experience, the artwork's formal, symbolic, thematic, and contextual "dimensions"(Hickman, 1994, 48). Broudy, too proposed his own educational method called "aesthetic scanning" in which sensory, formal, expressive and technical properties were all discussed before judgements about

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art objects were declared (Perkins. 1994. 77). "Broudy's guidelines for art criticism revolved around what he termed 'historical, recreative and judicial' considerations"(Hickman, 1994, 49). Both Eisner and Broudy's methods were primarily based on the artwork, although Eisner's "experiential" dimension referred to how the work affected the viewer, However, Hickman, in his discussion, favours Rod Taylor's approach because it seeks as essential the student's emotional response. Taylor's starting points are formulated by the questions of CONTENT-What is the work about?; FORM-How has the work been arranged?; PROCESS-what materials and techniques did the artist use? ; and finally MOOD-How does the work affect the viewer? (Hickman, 1994) To more h l l y involve the student at the heart of the art discussion, her own work can be the art to be investigated in this manner. Teaching ways to extend and model responses to specific artworks can be a paradigm for investigations into other disciplines or liferelated problems. Similar courses of "study". of thinking about, taking time to examine, isolating details, reflecting and relating are applicable to all areas of life (Perkins, 1994) . Even DBAE models have been modified into holistic. thematic, interdisciplinary units, The Florida institute for Art Education, sponsored by the Getty, has developed a CHAT model (comprehensive, holistic, assessment task) in which a central work of art draws on other schoolbased disciplines of social studies, language arts, history, music, science and math. Through discussion, description, reflection, critical writing and a n production in groups and individually, students make use of the four tents of DBAE: an production, an criticism, an history. aesthetics. The students explore personal, community, multicultural and global perspectives: "The focus on a rigidly prescribed hierarchial curricular program has been replaced by a series of teacher-designed grade appropriate units" (Delacnrz &Dun, 1995, 50). The DBAE considers the student needs

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more than in its inception. Not only intrinsic art values, but extrinsic ones that make for human awareness in a world where many kinds of art are formed by many kinds of cultures, and by many types of people move the program towards the place of art in a global community of understanding and enlightenment. A Third Generation of DBAE seems committed "to make art education an integral part of the school day, [but more importantly, one...]that truly contributes to the well-being of students and communities"(Delacruz & Dunn, 1995, 52). Howard Gardner's latest program, ATLAS, pays attention to "the specific needs and strengths of each child..wherestudents can exhibit their own best work in a format that is comfortable to them1'(Gardner, 1994, 58 1). Gardner says, "Intelligence is a biopsychological potential that is drawn on within a cultwe for a variety of purposesn(1994, 577) because both natzm and rncrfure play extremely important roles in a situation where intelligence is not a finite or unidirnensional quotient. These suggestions for maximizing art programs have been tho~~ghthlly developed by an teachers and educators who, sensitive to the evolving world and the world of the child, want to bridge experience and make it meaningfil. The child develops from "the inside out", like a sunflower towards a warming environment, but also from "the outside in". Stimulated by media, and a challenging curriculum, the child is sparked by what she can freely impart of herself on her canvas, carrying forth into daily life the posture and insights of herself as an artist. Unlike a blank slate, the child is unfolding her special qualities that will react and progress in response to her environment, past and present. Experiences are on-going, feeding her inner and outer growth so she can build on her nature and environment. The art educators' programs reveal awareness of heuristics, culture, religion, dress, etc.

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that plays an intrinsic role not only in the artist's message, but the society from which the art emerges. Students study values and beliefs that embody anistic messages, ones that appear in society's use of architecture and advertising. Students will know when Madonna images are used to tug at their heart strings in order to sell clothes, or when beliefs are authentically presented. Art presents a way of knowing. Students become literate by studying the derivation of imagery so that, they will be wary of business' manipulations of them.

Results of Art Studies Rosenblatt and Winner, in their studies with gifted and non-gifted children, discovered that, although gifted children appear to think and talk about art "in a qualitatively different way" than non-gifted children, non-gifted children can be helped to perceive and reflect at a higher rate where perception and reflection [are] included in ordinary art education ( 1988.14). As well, Douglas Schwartz and Taylor found there were tangible benefits to helping young children discuss artists' work: "observation and talk about works of individual artists and how these works were done not only stimulated their interest, delight and involvement in art, but improved the overall quality of their products and their language in terms of art content and vocabulary"(198 1, 22/31. Art can provide the kinds of serious encounter which develop understanding. Parson's 1987 study suggested that aesthetic experience occurs in the following sequence: artist, viewer, culture and student's own perception. Mary Erickson in her one year art historical study used themes (i.e. Where cultures meet; Art and technology, etc.) and questionnaires on the historical artist, the historical viewer and the historical culture as seen in a particular work of an. Her study consisted of thirty-one second graders and twenty-four sixth graders. She discovered

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greater increases in the insights and abilities of the sixth graders. For example, sixth graders referred to historical evidence more consistently than the second graders. However, the second graders were able to refer to sQme historical evidence, consistently: namely, the historical artists followed by the historical viewer, and least consistently, the historical culture. "There was significant difference among the three measures of historical artist, viewer and culture for [not only] second graders,[but also] for sixth graders (Erickson, 1995.24). Interestingly, "the interpretations scores for historical artist went up as the year progressed, but the historical viewer and culture scores did not" (Erickson. 1995, 24). What is suggested here is the child's ability to connect with the person who is the artist. Perhaps because most children have drawn, or acted in some ways as artists, they can empathise and identify with the artist by using their imaginations. There is a direct "low roadm(Perkinsand Salomon, 1988) of transfer. Also, the role of narrative in making a historical person come alive is effective in raising interest. Particular quirks, style or family situations make an abstraction come alive, and become memorable. For these reasons, Dr. Robert Coles uses a story or narrative approach to teach and involve his medical students in the lives of doctors. Putting oneself in the shoes of the historical viewer who might have looked at the historical artist's work [i.e. historical viewer] is a difficult exercise since abstraction for a person involved in an activity to a viewer outside of that activity requires too many variables for young students to consider, and demands empathy with another. Similarly, an historical culture is as well

an abstraction unless peopled with situations and events that are somehow relevant and meaninghl to the child's life in some way. Although some art educators recommend delaying art history instruction, "this study

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provides some evidence that sixth graders are capable of considerable art historical understanding and that even some second graders are able to consider artworks from the point of view of individual artists and viewers of the past"(Erickson, 1995, 27). Both Rosenblatt and Winner, and Erickson's studies reflect the development possible through art.

Expression and Learning in Art Paradoxically, what makes art curriculum special causes it derision: the hands-on manipulation of media that is derogatorily called "expression". However, art combines mind and body so that both parts of the human are engaged. People learn through doing and usually must do before they understand. Babies gesticulate with their bodies before they speak. Most children before they enter primary school depend on "play, movement, song, dramatic play. and artistic activity as their means of making sense of the world"(Go1dberg. 1992. 620). Dewey differentiated between an act of rage and an artist who stands outside of the action. dealing with the conflict or aggression by depicting it in media. Students learn to frame their feelings through media. Art provides experience to transform "impulsion" into art (Dewey, 1934)- a healthy outlet for coping with adolescent ennui and stress. Katherine Dunham, a dancer who introduced elements of African and Caribbean folk cultures into modem dance in the 1930s, commented that "physical expression...can free people from some of their oppressions"(Goldberg. 1992. 620). Art therapy is

a recognised mode of alleviating and healing certain mental and emotional disorders through artistic expression. Learning what media can express is an important role in learning artistic expression. By experimentation and empirical discovery, "students discover that their hands know a lot that their

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heads didn't know they knew"(Gral1ert. 1991, 268), what might be construed as tacit knowledge. At the Avenue Road Arts School, a five year old boy has crudely painted a brown box, but carefilly disposed dots within the structure. He writes, "These dots are my family." He has consciously decided to represent humans as abbreviated symbols, and has proudly expounded that transformation into words. In that one painting, the five year old has connected art and his life, created his own particular world of definable symbols, and offered them in media to his class: "Explicit separation of signifier from signified has been seen as a key concept in early reading and writing achievement"(Pellegrini, 1980, 534). Both Clay (1 975) and Chomsky ( 1979) supported conscious symbolization as important signals of cognitive development. This five year oid's cognitive processes dealt with perceptions outside himself-his family-. as well as perceptions inside himself He has made decisions on symbolic representation. spatial and colour arrangement and what necessary artistic skills are required to express his concepts. One apparently simple rendering of a five year old is a microcosm of how art can benefit the thinking processes and cognitive development of a child. Art possesses the potential to stimulate a child's private and public worlds. Art curriculum does aid a child in focusing and directing her ideas in a specific area. In art classes, students can become artists and critics, talking about their work, transforming it anew Unlike math that is finished when a problem has been solved, each into another media, la~rgr~age. artwork has a life of its own. open-ended, awaiting the child who may re-experience it in a story, a poem, a thought. At the Avenue Road Fine Arts Kindergarten, the "storying" or description of the children's art work is not demanded; rather, the children decide if they want to continue to transform and extend their experience in an into another media. If experience has been

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meaningfid, emotions of pleasure will cause it to be differentiated from all the memories of the child's life (Bruner, 1970 ;Connelly, 1989). So she will remember it, storing it for re-use at a later date. Awareness of social issues leads to social change, (Dixon & Chalmers, 1990, 14) and social consciousness. Whether as a touchstone to issues in the multicultural debate or as a protest piece, a n is a vehicle intrinsically connected with the foibles of society. "Dewey recognised that the highest forms and processes of mind and art have their bases in common lifem(Brigham.1989, 20). a common life in which all members share for the benefit of their society. Art binds people in

their attempts to comment on and correct what occurs in society. Many researchers have looked for ways to include a larger sample of our culturally diverse populations into the gifted programs maintained by schools. Gardner's definition of creativity has expanded the boundaries by which children may be identitied: to solve problems or fashion products in a domain. in an initially novel way, but ultimately acceptable in a culture (1993, 35). Many cultures have different indicators of talent. The inclusion of multicultural education will not only enliven and add to the curriculum, but it will allow children from diverse backgrounds to experience self-validation because their culture has been included in the curriculum. If the curriculum is to represent the multicultural world, these moves to integrate diverse cultures must be in place. Darby and Catterall underscore this sentiment: "These arts [are] ways to provide authentic multicultural voices, validate students' cultural heritage and promote cross-cultural understanding"@arby and Catterall, 1994, 299). Toni Morrison says, "We are subjects of our own narratives, witnesses to, and participants in our own experience...we are not, in fact, 'other"'(Momson, 1989,9).

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Judith Hama and Laura Loyacono discovered that arts provide a "notion of resilience for Afiican-American youth ...a kind of protective factor needed to help students fiom all backgrounds get through critical transition points in their livesn(Darby and Cattcrall, 1994, 3 13). Even in the Terezin concentration camp, children drew in order to survive the destructive nature of their environment, Some drawings recreated lives of stable happier days, concentrating on the beauty and simple pleasures of flowers, an established bedtime; others reduced their tormentors to the size of minuscule ants or hideous black bears. Ironically, Jewish artists forced to depict propagandistic images of the camps as vacation spots, secretly "depicted the reality of the camps and hid their paintings out of fear of their lives" (Goldberg, 1992, 620) as documents that would speak for their experiences. Sadly. Debbie Maha@ whose daughter was recently tortured and killed by Paul Barnardo. also says she goes to art galleries to find beauty in the world (The Toronto Star. October 29. 1995). Arts provide, then and now, a way to cope. For students in schools and at home, an provides expression and outlets in difficult days. The Canadian playwright, Thomson Highway, and the American playwright, Hany Geiogamah, employ their talents to highlight the aboriginal themes of their people "to lead them away from Brother Death." Focusing and presenting issues that are germane and pivotal in the natives' lives brings the concerns into the forefront of life, making them part of an inescapable curriculum of life. Through the establishment of voice, people can explore these problems, the very same ones shared by all people of suffering, acceptance, love, pain and be recognised as Brothers and Sisters, not as an inextricable strange and alien group.

The Traditional, Metaphysical and Hidden Curricula

Sautter presented the benefits that accrue to the traditional cllrriculum, translating and manipulating abstract concepts into concrete shapes and forms. In more than 150 schools in New York, students employ the arts while learning basic skills necessary for literacy. After reading a story, students diagram the plot with simple figures on storyboards. This activity is followed by sequencing events so students decide on which is the climactic event. Puppets are used to retell the story. In a third session, students mime and express the story characters' emotions. A vocabulary list is drawn up and they "solidify their understanding of the characterization" (Dean and Gross, 1992, 6 14- 15). A further creation of dialogue and scripts for the re-enactment of the story confirms that all elements have been dealt with. This program entitled "Promoting Success" encourages expression with, or without words. The skills of reading and writing develop from the initial story. President Kennedy created the National Endowment for the Arts in 1960. According to Jerrold Ross. director of the National A r t s Educational Research (NAERC), and others from private foundations since then, have targeted arts programs for low income children with poor academic skills because "shon term studies [in integrated arts] showed a quick improvement in academic skills." Ross is a fan of using an to teach basic math skills, "I don't see how you can teach mathematics ...without visual representation of what mathematical concepts are all about. It inevitably leads you to figures, shapes, forms, which are best illustrated through real art" (Sautter, 1994,43 5).

One of the "Promoting Success" programs enhances math skills through scissors, pencils,

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and squares of construction paper: "The physical experience of folding and cutting the paper and writing the fraction on each piece permanently ingrains the concepts of fractions" (Dean and Gross, 1992. 6 16). From paper to fabric, students appropriate the mathematical concept into quilts, each square a tiaction that contributes to the overall whole. At The Mabin School, children use photographs of their own faces, rearranging them into halves. quarters. eighths in order to construct entire heads. Teachers introduce Picasso's Cubist period and explain how he reduced shapes into cubes. Even James Pugliese, a world wide known percussionist will have "students count out five sets of two and two sets of three to create a line of 16 beats" (Dean and Gross, 1992, 6 18). Of the students participating in this art based program in New York, 93.4%

developed a better understanding of traditional subject matter, and 95% strengthened their problem solving skills (Dean and Gross, 1992, 6 18). The findings of the College Entrance Examination Board also discovered that "students who took more than four years of music scored 34 points higher on the verbal sections of the SAT, and 18 points higher on the math sections than

the students who took these subjects for less than a year "(Sautter, 1994, 435-6). Elm Elementary School in Milwaukee, at the bottom 10% in academic performance in 1979, was ranked first out of 103 schools after a comprehensive arts approach was added to the curriculum (Oddleifson in Community Arts & Education Partnership, 1994, 22). Compiled by the Business Committee for the Arts, studies claimed that students who took arts courses "perform 30% better in basic academic skills than those who do not study the arts" (Why Business Should Suppon the A r t s in Community Arts & Education Partnership, 1994, 22). The research from the Centre for Arts in the Cumculum also "indicates that when a school curriculum devotes 25% or more of the school day to arts, students perform with academically superior abilities" (Oddleifson in Community Arts

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& Education Partnership, 1994, 22).

There is, as well, the metaphysical curriculum evident in the arts : reflection, critical thinking , creativity and problem-solving necessary in the doing of art. At Wheelock College in Boston, teacher education programs for early childhood suggest teachers-in-training examine why their students think the way they do, and reflect on their findings. Goldberg and her students at Wheelock repon their excitement at watching their students' thinking evolve as the class is involved in debating, evaluating and testing their ideas (Goldberg, 1992, 620). Eisner has presented comoisst~rrshipand critici.,m skills necessary in making decisions and solving problems as an important way to practice for life outside of school. Gardner's studies and his school laboratories reinforce the importance of reflection. Project Zero promotes the child's artistic productions as central to a n education. From art work ,itself, all "peri-artistic" activities emerge so the child can initiate historical, cultural, critical explorations. Artistic learning should be organized around meaninpfbl projects that are carried out over a significant period of time, and allow ample opportunity for feedback, discussion and reflection (Gardner, 1989). Considering each step in a production of art work is a process of internal dialogue, in which the student reflects on past skills. decisions or experiences before preceding. This Reflection-in-Action (Schon, 1987) occurs throughout the entire doing of the an work. Rosenblatt and Winner say, ...reflection [is] a skill we believe essential to artistic learning and creation...The ability to

reflect about one's goals, decisions and solutions, as well as about the influences of the works of others on one's own work, seems crucial to cultivate in the service of any artistic endeavour. (1 988,lO)

In their studies of young children, Rosenblatt and Winner found "parallels between the

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development of reflections about art and more general conceptions of the world " (1 988, 10). Encouraging art reflection in school will augment a child's way of seeing all aspects of life. Reflective behaviour is important " in abstracting from one context and seeking connections with others "(Perkins and Salomon, 1988, 26). Perkins and Salomon in "Teaching for Transfer" maintain that "new contexts almost automatically activate the patterns of behaviour that suit the old", or when "deliberate mindful abstraction [ are suggested] from one context for application in another9'(1988,25). In the case of doing art, both "high" and "low" roads are available. The physical associations of the "low road" prompts the student to behave in similar manners, transferring appropriate behaviour to like situations, but she must be the initiator of the "high" road herself, stringing together the associations which will emerge, as Henry Moore's did. as the hsion of experiences. The student's metaphors or analogies are inwardly triggered. Her

"data bank" or reserve of memories are retrieved and abstracted to be used elsewhere. She sees the connections, the liaisons. the innuendoes that bridge experiences. Just as stories provided a better framework in which to resolve problems or learn theory (Coles, 19891, so art provides a visible touchstone in a student's mind, a concrete visual memory from which to pin present day encounters. Perhaps. however, the hidden curriculum, of building self-esteem, self-discipline and social interaction (Sautter. 1994. 346) is the most important, but least discussed benefit of arts programs. The so-called "naturalness" or familiarity of arts media found in homes and schoolyards makes arts programs less "school like" and more accessible to entwine with students' lives. An 1990 study by the Florida State University Centre for Music research documented the role of fine and performing arts in dropout prevention and improved student motivation (Sautter,

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1994, 436). And Judith Lynne Hanna's article , "Using Arts as a Dropout Prevention Tool", explains that the restructuring of St. Augustine School of the Arts. a K- 12 Catholic School in a violent and poor neighbourhood in the South Bronx school resulted in 98% of the students meeting New York State Academic Standards. Hanna also cites standardized test results in South Carolina's Sampson County where scores went up two years in a row (Hanna. 1992. 603). The 1987, 1988, and 1989 protiles of high school students compiled by The College Board confirm that students who take art courses tend to have higher scores on SAT (Darby and Catterall. 1994, 3 12). In its publication. Academic P r e p d o n for Colle~e,the College Entrance Examinations Board argues that the arts are an essential ingredient in high school education (College Entrance Board, 1 983. 1985;Wolf. 1988 ). Csikszentmihaly and Schiefele maintain that in a tive year longitudinal study of 205 adolescents who "exhibited talent in the areas of an, athletics, mathematics or science" received greater enjoyment from their involvement in art due to "emotional and motivational variables "(Darby and Catterall, 1994, 3 13). Ellen T. Harris, Associate Provost for the Arts and Professor of Music at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has stated that the most important lessons...[are] the acquisition of the learning skills-the "

discipline, concentration and repetiton that are essential to the mastery of any subject [which t]he arts can effectively instill" ( 1 992). For more than 1 0 years, The Folger Shakespeare Programs, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, have presented "interdisciplinary performing arts-based Shakespeare educational programs "(Darby and Catterall. 199, 30 1- 15). They have provided performances, master teachers, actors-in-residence, and visiting scholars to schools across the U S . Indeed, so powerfbl are the arts that Florida researchers discovered that at-risk students enrolled in arts

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programs accepted criticism, built confidence, budgeted time and stayed in school (Sautter, 1994, 436). The Galef institute is at present modelling curriculum design that helps integrate social studies with literature, math, science, and the arts to promote the active involvement of children in their learning in at-risk elementary school communities. This program has been implemented in

225 schools in 6 states in both urban and rural areas that include Los Angeles, California and the rural areas of Mississippi. Their model of social studies integration uses the arts to enhance cumculum to stimulate further investigation in other areas (Darby and Catterall, 1994, 306). Theatre groups extend opportunities for students to act out their frustrations. Agosto Boa1 and others have taken theatre to the streets to offer multiple trying-on of various roles and personae that require communication skills in body and word. Theatre programs in schools are safe outlets for adolescent fears and risk-taking to occur: for students involved in gangs, theatre is a safe vehicle that offers "rites of passage and peer validation "(McCray, 1993, 3 15 in Darby & Catterall). To be a player, a student must be socially involved, with a script, a peer. a teacher or an issue. Whether improvising, memorising, writing, directing, or offering suggestions, higher level thinking skills are required for the transformation of words into theatre productions or plays. As well, LEAP. a nonprofit educational organization in New York during the past 12 years, has enhanced the learning of more than 400,000 students' basic skills through the arts, producing impressive results on standardized evaluations. In fact, in New York, due to the failure of traditional methods in particularly "economically disadvantaged minority children and children with short attention spans, a program has been approved by the board of education which extends an art approach to all childrenW@eanand Gross, 1992, 6 13). More importantly, teachers reponed that children were excited and having fbn, (Dean and Gross, 1992, 6 1S), a sign they wanted to

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continue learning: "the arts seem to have the power to engage and empower other domains of knowledge" (Hanna, 1992, 602). Michael Brian Webb's research in his paper, "Disadvantaged Minorities and the Arts", seems to indicate that the arts can help "economically disadvantaged minority students develop perceptual skills, improve reading comprehension, increase enjoyment and motivation "(Darby & Catterall, 1994, 3 14). Dewey's focus on the school as an interactive social community that fosters productive citizens and lifelong learners is evidenced by these examples of enthusiasm and improved cognition. Dewey stated that esthetic experience is "a means of promoting a civilization's development"( 1934, 326) for the development of knowledgable and enthusiastic students can only reinforce and better society.

Implications and Conclusion Eisner today is still responding to critics who think the way to improve education is to spend more time in the same unproductive situations, and yet schools are resistant to move towards arts-based programs (Gardner, 198718, 33) that have been proven to have positive effects and keep kids in school. William Bennett might have been replying to on-going criticism when he wrote, "Why the Arts Are Essential". He said art documents our past, "the evolution of our society"; it forms a "common culture" that communicates beliefs and values in society; it provides examples of human complexity and as Dewey knew, it is democratic (Bemett, 1987/88, 4-5). According to An Agenda for Action, the following benefits are derived from arts education: .Intensified student motivation to lean; .Better attendance among students and teachers; .Increased graduation rates;

.Improved multicultural understanding; .Renewed and invigorated faculty; .More highly engaged students (which traditional approaches fail to inspire) .Enveloping of a higher order of thinking skills, creativity, and problem-solving ability; and .Greater community participation and support (The Power of the Arts to Transform Education, 1993) What I have described are some of the benefits of art in the curriculum. When will the bureaucrats realise that art is not a frill, but a necessity, and insist on art as a mainstay in education.

In my conclusion and throughout my paper, I have discussed how art can and has benefitted the curriculum: June Maker's new testing procedures, the use of apprenticeships, Eisner's techniques of connoisseurship and criticism, Gardner's concept of Multiple Intelligences ,raised SAT scores across the U.S. and many other examples. Art provides reasons to stay in school and improved learning once students decide they will stay. Most importantly, art means really looking-focusing in on, points of view, thoughtfbl deliberation, evaluation, and judgementsskills that are used in every part of life-even after school hours. Art is a way of living, as Dewey hoped more people would understand. Art makes the most of living.

VU.

TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF ART

What i s Art?

IN this chapter I come fo terms with my ow11de3nitiori of art. I begit7 by refrrting Mary Atir~e Sta~iiszewski's o'ejir~itimiwhich Jiffereritiates between what is art and what is twt. Ifi~tdthat a dejinitiotr does riot st~dderilymake a cortcepr magkally exist. Rather, I conterrd there has always heerr art, somethirig that expressed a d conlm~micateda nriiqw vision in a .specjul wuy. 'Blizer,'said Thomas Gradgrind,your definition of a horse.'

'Quadruped.Gramnivorous.Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders. four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in the mouth.'Thus (and much more) Blizer. 'Now girl number twenty,'said Mr.Grad~rind,'youknow what a horse is.' -CHARLES DICKENS, Hard Times Introduction Jon Ciardi in his essay,"How Does a Poem Mean?" presents the passage quoted above and then asks, "But what can it possibly say of the experience one has had of the living animal?" An is like poetry: it deals with lived experience, that is its subject and object, process and product, all of which do not have meaning without the experience of the human. From the artist who manipulates her media to say something of her experience, to the perceiverlreceiver who relates to the art in terms of her lived experience, art is the noun but also the verb of experience.

Drawing Lines

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Mary Anne Staniszewski draws an imaginary line between what is art, and what is not. She says that the word, "Art". only came into being in 1880 when the prefix " h m x " was removed (1995, 1 16). She identifies the concept of creative genius as making art distinct and separate from life. Many early societies had no word for "art" and even "the Greeks broadly applied the word 'Art' to all kinds of human endeavours "(1 995, 1 15). Staniszewski identifies the late 17th century as time when art became a matter of taste, decided by those in the hzow. And it is true that what we call arf today was once controlled by clergy and nobility. However, whether what was produced was called "art" or not- is, I believe. a matter of semantics, and I do not think any lines can demarcate the works that express human experience and offer them up to other humans. While systems like monastic and secular workshops, the Academia del Disegno and Medici Coun of the 16th century and to-day's dealer-critics and museums, may have controlled the production and distribution of an, a n itself has always existed. For example. the cave dweller's wall paintings at Lascaux communicate impressions, extracted from life, of what is seen or perceived about relationships to Nature to society. In that way they are much like the drawings

children make today to reproduce their sense of the world. For me, this is the essence of art. Art

is shaped through symbols, and expresses our sense of ourselves. Staniszewski says the cave paintings were not art and "the purpose of theses images...why they are appreciated is lost to us "(1 995, 56). However, if we are to follow her argument. an results From the creation by the artist distinct from the fabric of society. Lascaux I1 or facsimiles made in i 984, as well as simulacra made in 1980 must indeed be "art" because someone (the "artist") has chosen to reproduce those images. Ironically, the facsimile are in fact, closely related

and someone chose to create the original. How, therefore, can the original not be "art" as well? Staniszewski continues arguing that Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel ( 1508- 12) was not Art (1 995.2). Yet she concedes that mass media, the reproduction and naming

of cultural moments "shapes our expectations, our hopes and dreams." Did Michelangelo not give form to our dreams of creation? She underlines, These imagescin art] and our lives often mirror each other. These images reinforce our conventions about the way the world should be and the way things change and need to change some more. ( 1995,63-66)

Let us look at Michelangelo's Adam. We see how Michelangelo, a human, thought about human bodies. Adam's mortal body is passive, receptive and awaiting the dynamic touch of The Immortal so he can awake and become active. Michelangelo conceived of this idea visually, and transformed his conception into media. He was selected for this painting not because he could reproduce religious dogma in the usual way, but because of his special way of seeing that would make the church resplendent and resonating: people would look! Like ail people who live in society, Michelangelo did not possess "an innocent eye", for he was grounded in ways, means and ideas of his time and location. What Michelangelo conveys is experience. Whether fiamed and marketed, or viewed in context of the chapel walls, Michelangelo's art gives order: he selects and shapes (Dewey, 1933) giving form to religious mysticism. Through the artist's eye, we see and understand another world that a man has created in his own image.

The Artist's Integration

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Staniszewski says by creating the category of "art", art has been made separate from the rest of life's activities? However, art is, nonetheless, the product of human beings who draw on their environment, construct and organise visually what they perceive in Nature, and society , their lived experience. This shaping is a means to aid in one's understanding of the world and one's place in the order of things. Art is the medium to address and resolve problems, to respond and to react to life's challenges. The human voice, the human view is expressed in art, and through that expression, art communicates. That is its combined purpose: expression and communication: to speak from the mind through the body. Ironically an artist selected by a hierarchy in centuries past was chosen because his vision was somehow unique and different, distinguishable from the hacks who followed a prescribed way of depicting dogma. Therein lies the paradox: the exceptional artist or maker of pictures is chosen to direct the minds of the masses whom he transforms and enlightens through his own ideas and experiences about commonplace matters. He influences society rather than standing separate from it. His chosen vision becomes society's vision. Exceptional artists who possess a special way of seeing life and depicting their experience have always been pursued perhaps because their vision influences the perceptions of others. This unique quality, whether found in a 16th century Michelangelo or a 20th century Weegee, is respected and sought after by the public in order to enable them to understand life better. Weegee (Arthur Fellig) in focusing and taking photographs, reflects the cynicism he sees in life. For Weegee, there are no heroes.Jescued(1942) is a picture of a dog wrapped like a baby

in a fireman's leather jacket. There is a strangeness to the photo, similar to the other evocative

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images we are given of his New York City in the 20's and 30's. Tenement Penthouse ( 1 938) reveals a pussy in a child's hand. a naked breast, the face and wrist of a young boy and the tensed elbow of a small girl. Although we see only four people. the effect is of more people trapped within the tenement walls. To emphasize the claustrophobic nature of the scene, Weegee has quoted these lines from Naked City; But the other fire escape is somewhat overcrowded-it's not so bad sleeping that way...except when it starts to rain...then back to the stu@ tenement rooms.

Then there is Sardines ( 1940). a longshot of people packed like fish on Coney Island on a quiet afternoon. Weegee is interested in the relationships between subject and audience. "With Weegee, they are one and the same; the watcher becomes the watched "(The Toronto Star. July 27.1995). Perhaps contemplating a catharthic response, Weegee anticipates the viewer's aesthetic reactions of discharging painfit] and unpleasant affects that are transformed into their opposities (Vygotsky

in Ross, 1987, 522-23). Stirring intense emotions by perceiving contrast or conflict excites the imagination to make sense and deal with an unexpected situation. Even if the viewer feels relief that the life she sees is not-thankfblly- her own. she is coping , acknowledging the effect of her reaction to the art. Like Michelangelo, Weegee's view of the Human Condition is clear and his view is intended to influence the views of others. The impact of the art that recreates a moment of suffocation or grand beauty casts the same power - whether it is commissioned by others or the result of the artist's own initiative. whether self-created or promoted.

What Makes Art 'Exceptional'? Thomas Barone explores the special properties of the arts, which whether literary or

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visual. For Barone, a n creates a virtual reality, presenting both a reflection of the real world in which we live, and a means of escape from it. This does not separate a n from society, however, it provides art with a special place in society's fabric. Was it not always one of art's aims to provide rehge to a person from wearying work, to provide another world of quiet contemplation or reverie so the individual would know her place in the order of things, and also be refreshed and reassured, thereby able to continue work the next day? Perceiving the existence of another world, one of angels or dragons transcends belief in the so-called real world and allows a person to accept, momentarily, the possibility of another dimension. a "virtual" space and place. In Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, Adam and God present the possibilities of another world where we, made in God's image, can dream and speculate on the creator, given form by the artist's interpretation of the Biblical words.

By contrast, Weegee's world, composed and selected from real tenements. places and projects images which may be outside the viewer's personal experience, yet not unconnected to the viewer's life. The images are recognizable, pan of the viewer's own life and experience .The possibility of other slums existing beyond the viewer's personal place makes her understand she is not alone in her poverty or not unconnected in her wealth: "a new set of meanings and values suddenly adheres to objects and practices previously taken for granted "(Barone, 1995, 4). Art in creating visual "virtual realities" is both evocative and metaphorical, "designed to

call forth imaginative faculties"(Barone, 1995, 6) so that the viewer fills in gaps with personal meaning. Perkins calls this process of making connections "transfer": a n has this special hnction. From the artist's recreated experiences, the viewer particularizes and makes the imagery used in the artwork specific to her experience. The viewer seeing the artist's interpretation, perceives the

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themes and ideas of the work and then viewer then can personalize those themes and ideas, making them specific to her own world. The process is circular ,enclosing and encompassing both artist and viewer. The painting or sculpture becomes the means through which the metaphor is realized. Using symbols, the anist must use something that stands for something else: while a picture of a table stands for a table, a bright slash of paint might stand for a surge ofjoy or a dance of colour might reflect a mood unexplainable in words. The art work communicates through things that m rtot what they seem, for painting is about viscous paint, canvas fabric and sable hair brushes. It is the magic of illusion, and it speaks of virtual worlds concretely manifested not only through art's materials, but in the minds of people who make connections about their own lives through the signs and symbols drawn by the anist, achieving an intersubjectivity between artist and viewer.

Separation and Reintegration of Art and Life Staniszewski, like Dewey, deplores the separation of life and what she calls "art", by institutions and museums. She applauds modern day rap singer and performance artists like Kryszlof Wodiczko who projects images onto buildings and monuments, thus, literally bringing art back into the public space. Many of the artists that Staniszewski selects for her discussion are involved in "political unconscious" since their work, like Wodiczko's 1987 proposal for Union Square in New York City "would have projected images of homeless people onto the statues in the park "(Staniszewski, 1995, 292). However, how different are these works from Goya's or Kollwitz7spolitical comments done on canvas? Is not the difference only in the place of exhibition rather than in the art itselt?

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The impact of the work is certainly effected by the number of people who see it, but public demonstrations would not have been tolerated in earlier times so the artist's output was curtailed by societal restrictions, always a factor when considering art's role in society. Going to a church or to a park to view art does not alter the essence of art, only its exposure! Yet this is not to say that a n must be found in cloistered buildings and cannot exist in massive public exposures. Consider Christo. Although Christopher Hume identifies Christo's origins of "wrapping" to be Surrealistic, namely "The Gratuitous Act", we must remember the Surrealist's desire for anarchy in over toppling a senseless world that motivated the group's actions. Christo, a Bulgarian-born, U.S. based artist has "wrapped" 10 metre tall trees, coastlines. bridges and fountains. Ten years ago. he wrapped Point Neuf in Paris. In 1983, he wrapped a series of islands off Florida.He calls his works "temporary transformative actsm(TheToronto Star, July 15, 1995). These art works are, however, more than just gratuitous acts. Christo commands our attention. directing the public's eye in a new way. He places the viewer in a dialogue with what has been wrapped, and the viewer responds by asking herself, "What is inside this wrapped thing? Will 1 like it? " Suggestions of birthday presents. and gifts pervade the mind. as well as the titillation of the striptease, the excitement of removing the outer wrappings from the skin. Often those wrappings take on a life of their own, as special attention is taken to encase carehlly the contents within. Like Wodiczko, Christo uses easily accessed public areas. Hume considers Christo' s work "a success" because "even if visitors didn't know much about modem art, they knew what they liked" as evidenced by the 200,000 viewers who came to gaze at The Point Neuf project for three

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weeks (The Toronto Star, July 15, 1995). Christo waited 10 years for permission to wrap the 101 year old Reichstag in Germany: Covered top to bottom in 100,000 square metre of aluminum-coated polypropylene fabric held in place by 15,600 metres of rope, the structure becomes spectacle. (The Toronto Star. July 15, 1995) My friend writes from Berlin, describing the impact of the work:

Graf s description points out the metaphorical qualities of the piece in which content and

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structure work to-gether to reveal meaning; her emotions and mind are captivated by it. Like Christo, Robert Smithson's art is industrial scale, and uses "truckloads of molten asphalt as others might use glue and scissors". And like Christo's, Smithson's acts are not "gratuitous", for Smithson is concerned with the planet's systems that have lost their energy. Smithson's choice of materials and locations forces the viewer to rethink not just the landscape but her relationship to it " (The Toronto Star, August 3 1, 1 995). Like Hepworth, Weegee and others, the spaces that divide and connect the artwork to the viewer are integral to the subject matter of the art. These examples done on gigantic scale dramatically point out some artists' desire to rrttcrtr art

lo

life, while ironically making it bigger than life. Yet, my contention is that since art

has always been created and formed by people and media that are the embodiment of life, that art never left life and that the role of the exhibition does not define it as art.

Conclusion Hierarchies and social institutions may have made rules, divisions, designating "art" as a separate thing, but so are all aspects of life that are named: "cars". "potatoes", "schools7', "moccasins", "gates", "etc." It is true that some a n has been segregated into special places, like museums and galleries, yet. one has only to look at the arrangement of gardens, the making of crafts, the setup of fruit stands, the costumes of theatre performers to know that there has always been art in the fabric of human activity. Making people aware of how their lives can be more like the artist's (Dewey. 1934) is laudable. and must b e basic in our school systems. And frankly, I have no problem with museums as custodians of art: we as humans live and

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are protected by buildings, safe places that keep rain from our backs and sun tiom our skins. If someone has designated some works as precious, they have also chosen special places in which to house them. But these works are no more art than works that exist outside of these buildings. We, too, with "the museums in our minds" (Malraux, 1953) can keep safe and deem worthy what we choose to see as a There is the democracy of life. Because an art director or critic names something "art", it does not mean that we have to accept her proclamation; we can decide ourselves. Being educated and acquainted with as much art as possible from as many places as possible allows us to be our own critics and creators of our own museums with which we can fill our lives and homes and heads.

So, if Ydessa Hendeles wants to spend thousands on "Elliot", one of the world's rarest teddy bears, and enthuse, He has a nice face. He has personality. He's an archetype. I decided to take him seriously. (The Toronto Star, July 27. 1995)

L don't care. Ydessa Hendeles. in creating an icon of a teddy bear. has made it impossible for her to give him a squeeze. But it's her choice-not mine- to keep him under glass! The following pages are examples of art made by students. Whether considered "children's art" or mere image making by some, they express ideas, concerns, dreams ,a language that has always been called art. Indeed, it is ART. I reject Staniszewski's definition of "what art is". I refbse to draw lines and make frames when all people have always possessed a creative spirit, whether hired to paint pictures or not. I also reject her notion that the word "art" somehow makes art magically separate from life. It is

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just another word that connotes another area of life. Rather, I see art as a seamless fabric that connects art past, present and future, one that as it is unfurled encompasses rather than separates what has come before. It is a tapestry of life.

PX. PERSONAL INSIGHTS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THIS STUDY Personal Insights Go,go,go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time fbture What might have been Point to one end, which is always present. (TS.Eliot, "Burnt Norton I", Four OuartetQ I began this thesis with a metaphor of myself as an acrobat, flung out into space over an abyss, awaiting a hand to catch m e as 1 catapulted through air. Little did I know then that 1 ,myself. would be the catcher as well as the safety net belsw. Life, for me, has been full of metaphors, and my journey through this thesis has caused me to think about connections, examining their meaning. In difficult days, 1 have heard echoes and fragments of poets and authors , those treasured friends who express what I often feel, in eloquent words, full of resounding images. They are, if you will, my "Objective Correlative", a term coined by T.S. Eliot to project a situation that evokes and embodies an emotion. T.S. has appeared and disappeared in my life and provided a kind of musical refrain when I /?me been liv111ga d p a r r i y ~ ~ ~the e dlayers of ar~onion. 1 discovered these lines, in what was then livhg, my bruin t c t ~ s k i ~ Iike

Grade 13, when we studied Murder in the Cathedral. 1 made them my own, an 18 year old adolescent, who like my acrobat felt balanced precariously upon the tightrope of choices between art school and university. Not only the lulling rhythm of the lines, but the notion that others were caught between two worlds made me cognizant that I was not alone on life's journey. in university, we studied T.S. Eliot again, and with the metaphor of unwinding the onion,

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we moved on to The Emperor Jones who divested himself of all titles, and clothes to appear naked before his audience. Then, there was Thel from William Blake's Book of Thel who afraid of experience wrapped herself in veils of innocence, refusing to engage in life. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Martha and George tore their relationship apart, destroying the illusions that held them together. 1 saw Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton perform the battles, and was drawn into the emotional intensity of a search so authentic it took my breath away. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness also finally faced the truth of his existence when he murmured at the end of his life,"The horror, the horror. " Like small steps taken along a path, each segment, each dramatic vision helped me to pare away outward appearance to move closer to meaning. Even at OISE. I had snidely whispered to a friend in Foundations class, I feel like we're stripping for a johr by revealing so much of ourselves in our narratives! And so, this T.S.Eliot metaphor of stripping away, of unravelling the tissue-thin layers of skin has followed me into my thesis. Yet, I discovered paradoxically, that it is necessary to expand outwards in order to move inwards, and in fact the two movements & work together well to provide understandins and insight into our endeavours. Unless I had schooled myself in more classes, more books, more journals, more research into an, I could not have been sure of the truth of my journey. Accumulating more information made me burrow deeper into myselc testing and reviewing what I had thought was right. Much like Polyani's tacit kmwledge, (1967) it was necessary to prepare the stage by deep exploration. and then allow time for the unconscious mind to shift through and understand what had been gleaned.

My explorations led me to John Dewey, only a name before I met him in Art as Ex~eriencg.Then he became a person. If somewhat verbose and overstated, he was, nonetheless,

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for me ,a visionary who captured the importance of living an art-filled life. Many of his ideas were to be played out in the work of Elliot Eisner and Howard Gardner. Eisner and The Getty Institute showed me that some places and some institutions were in deed taking art seriously enough to develop sequential, cumulative programs. In " The Enlightened Eye" in one startling passage, Eisner speaks of Eli Wiesel's nightmare journey into Auschwitz, commenting on how listing the number of Polish concentration camps, or drawing a graph of how many 14 year old boys died in 1943 would not approach the intensity of meaning described through the words of the young narrator, Eli. The impact of a qualitative assessment makes meaning because it causes a reader to connect with another human. But, I have always known that and Eisner's assertion gave my feelings credibility. Eisner, in explaining what a child learns when she paints, was a keystone in my work because he so succinctly set out the processes that I knew through my own experiences with art to be true. When he went even hrther to suggest, art as the paradigm of learning in other areas of the curriculum, my heart almost burst with joy. Along with Eisner's insights into areas of my life that have always been so important came Howard Gardner who asserted that doing art was a kind of intelligence. It was important to structure art programs because "art people" actually had brains and needed skills, time , reinforcement and acknowledgement that they, like the "math and science" people were smart, too. More than a flukey talent or merely, "muckapucka", I deserved a piece of the curriculum as my own. Do you know how that feels to finally think you possess intelligence?

I was further delighted to know that Gardner's people had presented ways for all children to try on the various "Multiple intelligences" by working and developing in many areas

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that afforded chances to think about the same problems through a variety of inteiligences. Eisner's "Expressive Objectivem(1972) and the focus on open-ended intelligence problems revealed to me that some little girl, as I had been, might not have to grow up feeling that in some way she was inadequate because she did not excel at math. Self-esteem means so much- even if it comes later in life. My acrobat, stripped of excessive clothing must rely on her skills as she sets out on her dangerous journey alone. above the crowd beneath her. There are shrieks and gasps from the spectators below, some who hope she will falter and fall, others who cheer her on to safety and completion. But ultimately she is alone, up there by herself, stripped, sustained and supported by what

Dewey called "experience". The death-defying leaps, the somersaults are all part of the act that will prove to her that she can perform. She will have practiced the routines many, many times in her life, but the actual culmination of her work will be revealed if she arrives safely to her destination, and to be caught by outstretched hands, in the same way that her experience can be "caught" and written down in a thesis. However, for the acrobat, there is security in knowing that beneath her is a net, a net woven of threads of her own memories and a life lived, strong enough to suppon a fall. But she desperately wants to finish her walk across the highwire. As I tried to cross my chasm, and I was alone with my present and my past, another dimension of T.S. Eliot's explorations brought me to a narration told in my Foundations' class. I carried the incident with me as a talisman because the young woman, who shared her story, had navigated painful moments in her life through emotional and physical barriers to arrive at a kind of

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safety. The professor had tried to point out that her story was a reconstruction, a story from the past, retold in the present, one in which the gaps had been filled in. I considered that we, students and teachers, must remember that the spaces between our words can often be as charged as the words, themselves. The spaces are like artistic tensions between forms that dynamically hold them together. These are difficult insights to glean, and they had taken me almost a year to discover. Much like the birth of a human child, a thesis is a kind of birth of self. Recently, David Booth asked me how 1 was feeling about my thesis, as it was almost completed. I answered that I felt distant, and he looked at me quixotically. I had wished those words had not been uttered because I feared that he might think that I was detached or uncaring about this labour that had taken many months to conceive and give birth to. Then 1 remembered the birth of my first child, and my reaction to her. She might. I thought, have been an alien from outer space. Suddenly she appeared, wide eyed, fully formed and squirming. What connection had 1 to this person whom I had never seen before and had suddenly dropped into my life? Was I to be starstruck with love when I had just set eyes on her? Was there to be instant recognition that she belonged to me? A thesis is like that. A person prepares herself, ingesting the right nutriments, preparing

and learning about the impending arrival, and yet when it finally comes, it is a surprise of sorts because the whole is much more than a sum of the parts and sometimes we are not sure what to make of it? Do we think it is good? Was it the way we expected it to be? Do all the parts fit as we had hoped and dreamed of? What happens next? As an acrobat, one does not have time to stop: one must propel her body into the future,

for pausing will ensure failure. Wrapped in the skills and experiences of a lifetime, the love of fiends and family who believe in the success of the venture, the acrobat propels herself on,

376

trusting that she will succeed. She catches the eye of the child below and she knows in her heart that she is that child trying to make meaning of her life. When our acrobat looks into the eyes of her catcher, she is amazed to see her own eyes, smiling and shining. These are not Eli Wiesel's eyes at the end of his journey when he can barely meet the empty haunted eyes that return his own stare; these are eyes of recognition. And the strong hands that reach for hers are her own, and she realises that she is the acrobat who has made the journey, but also the catcher: the dual parts that set out, but also came home to themselves- Richard Courtney's double, united. In Courtney's ctass, I had suddenly realised my story of Polly and her imagination were me, questing through my drawings. So, it is still me in this thesis, using word and picture to explain who I am, what makes me passionate: ART. When the book closes, and the lights in the circus are turned off, it is me, the double, the catcher, the acrobat, the net, the reflector of life's interactions and experiences, the mind and the body: the paradox of the human clothed in numerous pages who stands before you naked.

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