TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Gert Biesta describes in Letting Art Teach (2017) that the precursor to meaning-making is attunement to the world – and being affected by the world. He suggests that because we are “in dialogue with what is real, what is material, [and] physical, what has its own integrity” (p.79) that our job as teachers is to allow students to move through the frustration, resistance, surprise, and joy of encountering the materials and processes of art (2017).

One of my goals in my teaching is finding ways to "loosen" objects. Lauren Berlant refers to objects, our objects of desire, our passions and our attachments to ideals as a kind of optimism that hurts us (2022). Loosening objects dislodges their stronghold in our psyche. As a teacher, I focus on new experiences and open-ended time to help students pick at, dissect, dis-organize and encounter the material world (physical things) and also to approach their ethereal counterpart, the dialectical world of material, in the same manner. The practice of encountering and interrogating our physical and conceptual materials in the art studio helps us to do the same with our beliefs about life, society, ourselves, one another. Art education should prepare prepare and fortify students to continue making work in this particular time and scene, where we are encouraged to give up our passions for even the remote possibility of a more secure life.

What’s transformative about art education is the opportunity to help students to construct a life for themselves and each other––to make a different kind of a life happen through the process of their work and within the infrastructure they develop in their creative communities. I want my students to be able to sustain a practice of seeing clearly and engaging with the world, making and developing their work. We want our students to reformulate the infrastructure of the art world to suit their own needs and purposes, and this takes critical community, dialogue, curiosity and creativity. 

Above all, during divisive times and times of great loneliness and grief such as ours, the lessons and examples we show students while in school will be the lifeblood of the coming creative community. The challenges that we address now in our own practice, and support our students in addressing––the inventiveness we employ with our students––are critical to their continuation as artists.

References

Berlant, L. (2022). The Inconvenience of other people. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Biesta, G. (2017). Letting art teach: Art education ‘after’ Joseph Bueys. ArtEZ Press.