Oliver Herring, “PATRICK,” 2004, Courtesy Meulensteen, New York

Hindsight is all about understanding something after it has happened. When I go back to my very first post for this column on May 7, 2008 I had only a vague idea about how I was going to write a weekly column that focused on teaching with contemporary art. I had plenty I wanted to share as a new member of Art21’s education team, but was a little doubtful regarding how deep the well was. I mean… every week?

But now I understand the rhythm became a teaching tool for me. It sort of forced reflection when I needed it and allowed for me to share things when it was exciting to do so. Five years and 284 posts later, here we are, in a new place on the Art21 blog, with thematic writing every eight weeks, and Teaching with Contemporary Art posting every other Wednesday afternoon instead of weekly. I can’t say a lightening of the load is unwelcome. It offers an opportunity for digging deeper into the thematic strands Art21 will offer readers and it also allows a little extra time to do the pausing and reflecting that lead to better-quality posts.

Thinking about the column recently, one thing I realized is how much I love interviews. I love preparing them, participating in them and even occasionally transcribing them (with two fingers, of course). During these past five years I have been lucky enough to share conversations on the blog with Eleanor Antin, Janine Antoni (twice… talk about doubling your pleasure), Tod Lippy of Esopus, and Jessica Hoffmann Davis, not to mention unique and inspiring teachers such as Maureen Hergott and Julia CopperSmith.  I’ve learned from talking with each of them that good questions and actual dialogue allow for moments of understanding that really can change practice. More specifically, I think about things like Janine Antoni’s comment on creativity and risk:

The thing that I’m interested in is that the creative process is never in a straight line, so if you teach in a straight line you won’t get the best results. To create you have to be out on a limb and to teach requires the same risk.

Looking backward I can’t help but look forward. Five years from now I hope to still be writing this column, perhaps in a different form. I look forward to more interviews with Art21 artists and contemporary art educators, especially those in our Art21 Educators program. But more than anything else, I look forward to a slow change in the tide, where American education becomes less obsessed with quantification and more obsessed with quality of experience. And I look forward to sharing the place that new visions of art education will have in the shift.

See you in two weeks.

"Five Years of Teaching with Contemporary Art" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Elizabeth Murray, “Worm’s Eye,” 2002. Courtesy The Pace Gallery, New York.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is turn out the lights.

Over the past few weeks my high school freshmen have been looking into why artists use abstraction as a way of making art. To start the unit we viewed the work of Art21-featured artist Elizabeth Murray, and thought about how artists bridge the perceived gap between painting and sculpture. As a result, students created their own works that joined drawing or painting with sculpture. After the first half of the unit we began thinking about how certain kinds of approaches such as exaggeration, simplification, and rearrangement of certain elements, can be ways of utilizing abstraction.

As we looked into a series of classic abstract works—including Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), Romare Bearden’s Out Chorus (1979-80), and Joseph Stella’s Brooklyn Bridge (1939)—I decided to go against my inclination to do all of the looking and talking first and sketch later. While the room was simply lit by the glow of the projector, I asked students to identify specific strategies used by each of the artists on the screen and then utilize them while making their own sketches and testing out ideas.

I was surprised by the fact that students did not try to copy the art on the screen but instead tried to incorporate different approaches and strategies in their own ways. When I asked students to utilize abstraction to show movement in some way, they used Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase as a starting point but I didn’t see anyone create their own version of a person on the stairs. While looking into Stella’s Brooklyn Bridge, I asked students to abstract a place they had seen or traveled to and was pleasantly surprised at the fact that there wasn’t another bridge in the bunch. Sketching in the (almost) dark was actually working!

For the longest time I had assumed, wrongly, that students should view a series of images before trying to make sketches inspired by those images. Instead of asking them to be inspired by what they saw it became even more effective in this instance to sketch inspired by what they were actually seeing.

PLEASE NOTE: Starting next month, the Teaching with Contemporary Art column will post every other week beginning May 8, which just happens to be the column’s fifth anniversary (yes, it’s been five years!). We will begin investigating our first thematic strand, “Hindsight,” over the months of May and June. More info on the exciting changes to Art21′s blog to come.

"Drawing with the Lights Out" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Aperture’s new Spring 2013 cover. Photo (detail) by Christopher Williams. Image: Aperture.org

Periodicals such as Esopus, BOMB and Aperture are some of my very favorite magazines to read and teach with. Between the fantastic artist-on-artist interviews in BOMB and the magazine-as-art quality of Esopus, there is plenty to work with. In the past, I have assigned readings for students to compare, interviews for students to build on, and even specific featured artists to use as a starting point when creating works of their own. But the recent spring edition of Aperture really makes me smile.

Aperture has re-envisioned what was already a high quality magazine and made some beautiful and exciting changes. Aside from the magazine looking even better (their new art directors, A2/SW/HK, have decided to make the magazine slightly larger, expand on the number of pages and use a different coated stock), each issue will, “cohere around an inquiry into a field or topic.”

Sound familiar?

The “relaunch” of Aperture is set up around “a broad set of concerns for photography today” and introduces “a range of vital questions with a view to animating—and reanimating—key ideas on photography.” Some of the questions and topics investigated this spring include What matters now in photography? and Are institutions ready for a new wave of photographic innovation?

As an educator who has a deep interest in the fact that so many students have access to photography and the ability to take pictures, Aperture’s decision to focus future issues on questions and specific thematic topics is a welcome change to a magazine that already had my vote as one of the best periodicals for art educators to teach with.

"Aperture Makes a Great Magazine Even Better" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Vija Celmins. “Night Sky #10,” 1994-1995. Oil on linen mounted on wood. 31 x 37 1/2 inches. Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York.

This week, it’s my pleasure to host a group of alumni coming back to the high school in order to help with our second annual Portfolio Day—an in-school trip to the art studio for the purpose of seven straight hours of art making. All students who participate in Portfolio Day are completing two separate portfolios for our advanced Studio Art class and this day is a chance to both add significantly to the portfolios and make art for an extended period of time—usually for a much longer stretch than any of my students have ever spent in one sitting (or standing).

Having a alumni join us in order to give feedback and help during the course of the day allows for students to interact with graduates who are either in college, in the field, or even still struggling to find their way after high school. All offer multiple opportunities to share how engaging with contemporary art—seeing shows, making art, writing about ideas and projects, etc.—broadens the possibilities for reflecting and responding to the world around us.

Maybe one of the best parts about inviting alumni to present workshops, attend Portfolio Days, and gather at special school events involves the process of seeing these young artists (not to mention personalities) develop. While it may be easier to “keep in touch” via social media after our students move on to other schools and places and phases in their lives, there is no substitute for the act of seeing and working with alumni face-to-face in order to bring back home some of the learning and street wisdom that accumulates.

Who are some of your standout students from previous years? Where are they today?

"Bringing Them Back Home" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Zarina Hashmi. “Dividing Line”, 2001. Image via hyperallergic.com

Zarina: Paper Like Skin, on view through April 21 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, is a must-see for those who haven’t experienced her work in person and/or those who have a love for paper that goes beyond its most popular application as ground for things like drawing, painting, and phone bills. Being someone who fits both categories I was thrilled last week to have the museum’s opening hour on a weekday to really sit with this artist’s work and let it sink in. Zarini Hashmi (the artist goes by her first name only) takes paper beyond being a surface for mark making and allows it to serve as a vehicle for sculpture, mapping, poetry, and even meditation.

One of the many works that caught my attention immediately upon entering the show was woodcut called Dividing Line (2001). While I cannot say why, the combination of title and line, cut at a jagged angle across the paper, was almost enough on its own to introduce the idea of borders, specifically in this case between India and Pakistan. So often we teach about gesture as art educators, but gestures that don’t use the human figure as a starting point aren’t valued nearly as much. This was a case where gesture, a line (in woodcut no less), told an entire story. Further into the exhibit  Zarina’s mixed-media works that mapped places she had lived and worked over time, also told stories through a specific way of making marks, guiding the viewer through the story behind the gesture.

Zarina’s pin drawings, created by piercing different sheets of paper hundreds of times with a variety of needles, invited me to sit and meditate on the rhythm of lines, shapes, textures, and the context for this series. Back and forth my eyes traveled across the twenty works and occasionally I had to remind myself that I was in fact looking at holes in the paper and not listening to the quiet rhythm of each work being made. Yet I was. I also contemplated the relationship to, perhaps, Oliver Herring’s knitted sculptures and homage to Ethyl Eichelberger.

If you love paper and are interested in an artist that gets plenty of MPG out of her medium, this is for you. If you teach about and with paper, don’t miss it.

"Zarina’s Paper Like Skin" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Nayland Blake, “Oh,” 2013. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.

If you are even remotely interested in how everyday materials can become bizarre and (sometimes) brilliant sculpture, there are three shows ready and waiting for you in New York’s Chelsea galleries: Nayland Blake’s What Wont Wreng at Matthew Marks; B. Wurtz’s Recent Works at Metro Pictures; and Mark Dion’s two-floor delight titled Drawings, Prints, Multiples and Sculptures at Tanya Bonakdar. In all three cases, viewers (especially contemporary art educators) are treated to new works by artists who are playful with their materials and simultaneously manage to teach us about the issues and concerns that drive their work.

Nayland Blake’s exhibit greets viewers with a vinyl poster of himself—donning a leather cap and harness, black sunglasses, and his signature beard—presented under the name of “The Spectre.” The handful of sculptures and installations on view actually have enough space in the tiny gallery for viewers to examine how Blake incorporates themes of gender, identity, and community in his work as “a modern-day flaneur.” And like any good sculptor, his work invites you to look into vs. at it. I found myself walking around and around works such as Buddy, Buddy, Buddy and Oh, both standouts because of simple layering that allows for a constant mind-game of associations.

B. Wurtz, “Untitled (shoe lace drawing)”, 2012. Courtesy Metro Pictures.

B. Wurtz’s Recent Works is certainly, as the press release states, “a delicate balancing act of configuration.” Ordinary materials come together in ways that don’t necessarily try to reimagine the objects, but rather emphasize them, the way they are joined, and how they exquisitely worm their way into space. The freestanding straw sculptures and  shoe lace drawings had me thinking a lot about how we might teach sculpture in ways that go beyond the traditional and the expected without getting into bad “projects” involving pipe cleaners.

Mark Dion, “Marine Invertebrates” (detail). Image: bloomberg.com

Finally, Mark Dion’s new exhibit is a treat for anyone familiar with his work. The installation holds surprises for those who examine the work carefully and actually want to linger instead of trying to see a dozen shows in two or three hours. Dion’s work is in many respects much different from that of Wurtz and Blake—especially when it comes to his driving investigation of “history, knowledge, and the natural world”—though his sculptures find ways to teach us about the world through the elements he assembles and the way he guides our viewing. Like Wurtz and Blake, Dion’s work is sometimes infused with humor, an entry point that get us to slow down. On the first floor of his exhibition, I laughed out loud at Marine Invertebrates, a vitrined sculpture of “everyday household objects” (although I must admit that describing sex toys as “everyday household objects” is a bit of a stretch). In the end, the work does exactly what it’s supposed to do, or one of the things it’s supposed to do—it gets us to reconsider the way we see relationships between forms and how we classify things. Upstairs viewers are treated to a huge selection of drawings, prints, and photos that build on the three-dimensional works, and also inform Dion’s large range of projects. Looking closely at his drawings, especially, allows for deeper understanding into how Dion plans and executes his ideas.

"Well Beyond Everyday" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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William Kentridge creating video animation for “Breathe” (2008) in his studio, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2008. “William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible,” production still, 2010. © Art21, Inc. 2010.

Some of the best field trips actually take place inside the school building.

For the past two years, I have organized a “portfolio day” each spring for my advanced juniors and seniors in order for them to, essentially, be locked in the studio for the day. We set aside one full school day for art making with the intention of adding to their portfolios already in progress. It doesn’t cost the school district anything, we get great gas mileage, and we even order pizza for lunch.

The benefits of having an in-school field trip of this nature are obvious at first: students get to spend an entire day focused on art making instead of one or two periods at a time. They get to work on one or more pieces vs. breaking up their process over many days. I cannot say enough about the progress we made during our first two portfolio days in 2011 and 2012, and am looking forward to a similarly successful day this year.

While many teachers have the ability to take great trips with their classes to museums, cultural institutions, and local art organizations, sometimes it is extremely beneficial to plan a trip to our own classroom studio where the sole focus for the day is an extended stretch shaping student work instead of chopping up the process into much shorter blocks of time. This can allow for not only art making but also important time for reflection, discussion, and stepping back from works in progress in order to really see them.

"Home and (or) Away" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Last week, I climbed to the top of Queens county’s tallest clock tower. It was a hard ascent up the rusty metal ladders of the 14-story building—I fear heights—but I was determined not to let that stop me from seeing Chris Jordan’s installation Locost Queue.

Part of No Longer Empty’s site-specific exhibition “How Much Do I Owe You?”, the installation, the artist writes, “projects silhouettes of people photographed in Queens, in a queue, moving across the four faces of the clock tower. The rate of movement correlates to the population growth for the city of New York. A light flashes in the tower at the approximate rate of species extinction on the planet.” The view of Locost Queue from outside was great in itself, but the inside was even more inspiring. A single 1800 watt bulb casts the silhouettes and a motorized hula hoop makes the whole thing go round.

Jordan was a great host—and he happens to have great taste in music. As I walked around the room, a heard a recording of Aaron “Taylor” Kuffner’s Gamelatron playing from Jordan’s laptop. It reminded me that I would have hated hearing this a year ago, back when I was working on my master’s thesis in New York University’s ITP program, completely immersed in my own interpretation of the Javanese Gamelan, and tired of hearing about Taylor’s work.

Chris Jordan. ”Locost Queue,” 2012. Site-specific installation. Photo: Enki Andrews.

A lot has changed in the year since I graduated. I would never have guessed that I’d become a regular guest critic at my alma mater, listening to students present and defend their thesis projects. Although the process is less stressful sitting on the other side, I still find myself anxious. It’s hard not to see connections between what current students are creating and what other people, including my own peers, have already created. I often feel compelled to say, “Have you seen so-and-so’s work?” But I don’t think that sort of comment is helpful for students whose projects have already reached the finish line. They may feel defeated when hearing that, despite their attempts to create something novel, I see it as something that has been done before.

I’ve become more sensitive to this since reading The Helsinki Bus Station Theory, a credo for creativity that I first heard about at a gallery opening last week, and later through Hyperallergic. The theory comes from a 2004 graduation speech by the Helsinki-born, U.S.-based photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen, who used Helsinki’s bus routes as a metaphor for pursuing a fulfilling career in the creative arts. His words hit close to home when he describes following a creative direction only to find disappointment when someone says it’s similar to the work of another. One’s first intuition, he says, is to get off the metaphorical bus, find a new route, and start again.

“You spend three years at it and three grand and produce a series of works that illicit the same comment: ‘Haven’t you seen the work of Richard Misrach?’ Or, if they are steamy black and white 8 x 10 camera views of palm trees swaying off a beachfront: ‘Haven’t you seen the work of Sally Mann?’ So once again, you get off the bus, grab the cab, race back and find a new platform. This goes on all of your creative life, always showing new work, always being compared to others.”

Minkkinen does offer hope: buses may go down the same roads but their paths diverge. Some go one way; some go another. And the persistent riders often find that if they stay on their bus, not only do they reach a destination farther than expected, but they can look back on an entire route. By now, Minkkinen has built such a successful career that his early photographs, brushed off by some as being “student work,” are now recognized for their unique vision. And so his advice to future artists? “Stay on the f**king bus.”

I understand exactly where he’s coming from. I almost changed my thesis project at the eleventh hour because I didn’t feel it was original enough, and now I’m glad that I stuck with it. As a guest critic at NYU ITP, I’ve kept my mouth shut about Minkkinen’s speech and focused on giving students constructive feedback. One of those students is Sean McIntyre who I met up with in the Queens clock tower; Sean’s thesis project involves connecting cameras to Locost Queue. I met other creative and talented folks up there, too, including Rafael and Ava of RAVA Films, a production boutique that has worked on some of Art21′s New York Close Up episodes. As all of us stood there watching Jordan’s silhouettes make their final rounds, I realized something major that’s missing from the Helsinki Bus Station Theory: It’s not just about taking a route that you can look back on, it’s also about enjoying the ride in good company.

Locost Queue closes this coming Sunday, March 17, 2013.

"Praxis Makes Perfect | Let the Kids Ride" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Liz Magic Laser. “The Digital Face,”2012. Digital c-print. 10 x 30 in.

If you haven’t checked out New York Close Up lately, you really should.

Two recent films, Liz Magic Laser Talks To The Hand and David Brooks Is In His Element, are just two more examples of how the series can make strong interdisciplinary connections. Both offer viewers the chance to see contemporary artists as researchers, analyzing information learned in order to inform their work. Liz Magic Laser examines hand gestures in contemporary presidential State of the Union addresses as she builds a multi-sensory performance piece. David Brooks, on the other hand, uses his experience as a volunteer with conservation biologists in the Amazon basin region of South America to allow for more opportunities to be “in the field” (literally) and for hands on experience with the wildly diverse ecosystems of the this region—to “witness evolution itself.”

Early in Liz Magic Laser’s piece, just shortly after you find yourself hypnotized by the rhythmic clicking of the camera shutter, the artist describes thinking about “the choreography that is being used to persuade the public.” This intense interest in and examination of gesture, particularly through presidential addresses, becomes a driving force in the collaboration with two Merce Cunningham-trained dancers for her work The Digital Face. Viewers find themselves winding through a systematic  and complex investigation into the kinds of things gesture can communicate, which certainly has implications for how students create arguments, art works and even public presentations.

The most recent David Brooks film is likewise a layered glimpse into the “front end” of his art. For Brooks, his work with conservation biologists utilizing a consistent multi-disciplinary approach serves as a model for his own artistic practice. An intriguing part of the film involves the fact that you don’t see one of the sculptures influenced by his volunteer work until the very end, and even then you are left wondering a bit more about what it looks like and what it would be like to walk among the fishes.

Teaching with Liz Magic Laser and David Brooks can include a comparison of how each artist approaches their research differently and how they interact with their collaborators in distinct ways. It can also include a frank discussion about the possibilities when it comes to how contemporary artists approach the creative process.

"Teaching with New York Close Up | Liz Magic Laser and David Brooks" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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El Anatsui, “Sacred Moon,” 2007. Image: 303magazine.com

This weekend I will be back with friends and colleagues at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) to facilitate a teacher workshop about working with Art21 education materials and teaching with El Anatsui’s gorgeous exhibition, When I Last Wrote To You About Africa. This being Art21’s second visit to UMMA, I am looking forward to once again working with Pam Reister, Jann Wesolek, and all of the participants joining us this weekend.

El Anastui, one of my favorite artists from Season 6, is in some ways an educator’s dream. His sculptures and installations reference history, culture and memory while simultaneously exploring the possibilities of found materials and different processes for making art. And while Anatsui is best known for his stunning, draped metal sculptures, there is more to the work with than meets the eye… and that’s quite a bit to begin with.

For example, if we step back four decades ago to Anatsui’s initial work in Ghana, the artist began using materials from his immediate surroundings—carving into wooden trays much like those sold in markets to display fruit and vegetables—and then creating works with adinkra-like symbols prominently featured. As Olu Oguibe describes in the magnificent catalogue that accompanies the show, Anastui has been guided by the following principles since this early work:

• Pay close attention to location and environment
• Learn whatever you can from local practitioners
• Use found objects and materials from your surroundings, especially your immediate surroundings
• Let the medium and materials suggest, even dictate, the form
• Acknowledge the potential for art to serve as a metaphor or visual allegory

Anatsui’s ceramic sculpture from 1978, Omen, explores how brokenness can somehow inspire new life and healing. From the small burst of an opening to the coating of manganese that speckles the surface formed from damaged ceramic pieces, Anatsui’s work can represent ideas about fragility and even political instability in Africa.

El Anatsui, “Omen,” 1978. Image: blantonmuseum.org

What I enjoy about Anatsui, especially up until this point in his work, is that he bridges a gap that lives between art and craft. He challenges the viewer to rethink craft as fine art because these kinds of works are more than simply being about process and form, even though the work relies on it.

If we fast-forward to Anatsui’s metal sculptures of the past decade we find him staying true to the aesthetic principles described in Oguibe’s essay. Utilizing the bottle caps from discarded liquor bottles Anatsui continues to create flexible, malleable works that almost fool the viewer into believing they are tapestries. The artist goes one step further with these works and allows curators and collectors to install the works as they see fit, which in some cases might lead to different interpretations of the work. The same work installed in a white cube vs. being installed on the façade of a building can inspire disparate ideas and conclusions, no doubt.

For these reasons and more, teaching about and with Anatsui’s art, I think, requires a slow digestion of what sets him apart. Maybe it’s through lingering with the work or perhaps reading about it beforehand, but context in the case of Anatsui can play a huge role in understanding, not to mention enjoyment. I also think being careful not to lump Anastui’s sculpture with “recycled art” is important, too. Talking with students about the difference between repurposing and recycling can lead to a more meaningful experience with the work. Anatsui doesn’t make bracelets out of bottle caps, he is creating unique sculpture with a bit more of a story.

Students are able to not only enjoy multi-layered entry points into Anatsui’s works, but they also have the opportunity to re-see some of the most common elements in their own lives through engagement with them. Challenging students to perhaps “see as Anatsui sees” can become the beginning of confronting a world often discarded. When I see Anatsui’s work and engage with it, I often ask myself how I can get students to reconsider what’s readily available in order to make something more than “cute”.

Finally, I think teaching with Anatsui allows for a real synthesis between working with traditional principles of design and postmodern principles such as layering. It’s an opportunity for students to begin with technique, storytelling, or both, and an opportunity to perhaps create something monumental.

"Teaching with El Anatsui" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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