I have had the pleasure of being an art mentor and educator for over twenty years. I love everything about being able to have my hands in the muck, inspiring teenagers to express themselves through the process of art five days a week! I will say that, in that regard, I am blessed. There is nothing like the chatter and the business of the community that is my classroom, especially my Grade 11/12 classroom! Many of the students are repeats that have taken classes with me for three to four years and their foundation skills and process are intermediate to advanced. This makes for the best of all art worlds, a community of like minded individuals following their passions and creating together in a caring and supportive environment. My role becomes that of mentor, as opposed to teacher, and I often have the opportunity to work along with them on a semi-regular basis. It is quite beautiful.
This year we are living in unprecedented times, with the isolation and remote learning that has become a necessity due to Covid 19 and the safety protocols that are in place for schools. To say I miss my students and classroom is an understatement! Trying to keep them inspired and creating in the time of a worldwide pandemic has been beyond challenging. They are afraid, anxious, overwhelmed and feeling the pressure of trying to complete their graduation requirements and college applications online in this remote learning situation. I had the conversation about perfectionism and art with an “A” with several students this past week, which lead me to write a blog about this concept.
What do I mean by art with an “A”? This is the art of perfectionism, the art of product over process. It is stiff and static and leads the artist to get stuck in the mire of their own desire to be “there”, having learned everything, the master of their materials and what they can accomplish. Now…on the surface of things this might seem like a very desirable place to be! Who doesn’t want to be able to say that they have mastery of something and have reached the highest state of their being in a particular thing or other? That place where being great leads to acclaim and your talent is lauded by experts in the field seems like the end goal, doesn’t it? And then what?
My feeling is that without reach an artist becomes static. With nothing left to learn we fail to grow in our practice and eventually become bored, uninspired and the flow eventually dries up and stops all together. That is the danger of feeling that you are “there” and it is the danger of art with a capital A. That is not to say that there are works that are completed in a more “there” and finished way, but there is a place for play, for experimenting, for exploring and discovery that can be far more beneficial to an artist than that product oriented, goal oriented place where “A”rt belongs. Remember play? That place where you didn’t care what the outcome was, what you were doing just felt good and made you happy? This is an amazing place for learning and where I encourage my students to try to spend at least half their time. I love being in this place too! It informs me as an artist and I discover new ways to approach subject matter and handle materials. It keeps me fresh, happy and inspired.
I am an enormous fan of playing with collage as a drawing tool. For the first play activity I’m going to outline you will need some magazines. As an art teacher I admit to being a part time pack rat so I have plenty of supplies around at all times. I frequent my local thrift stores and they always have a healthy supply of magazines. I love Value Village, where you can get 10 for a dollar! National Geographic is my all time favorite, for obvious reasons but I enjoy the rich colours and textures found in fashion magazines as well. I love the colour in the pages of magazines and leafing through looking for images of places I’d love to visit. I tear out pages full of pattern and texture that appeals to me for no other reason than it’s beautiful and draws my eye. I am not overly fussy about my choices, preferring to just let my senses guide me. You don’t necessarily need scissors for this but if you want to trim away unnecessary text from a smaller image feel free to have some scissors too. Students always ask, “Ms. J, can’t we just look stuff up on the internet and bookmark them instead?” Of course, this is very possible, if you are searching for something in particular, but this exercise is about delving into what you gravitate toward intuitively, rather than intellectual gathering.
The Task: Image Bank
- Assemble a collection of approximately 6-10 magazines of various types on a large counter, table top or workspace. Set a timer for 20 minutes.
- Begin leafing through your magazines, tearing out and setting aside images that appeal to you for any reason at all. Do not be fussy here, let your eyes guide you to what they like to look at, what is it, colour, pattern, an image, the shape of something, the subject in the image, anything goes here!
- Do not stop tearing until the timer goes off and you have a substantial pile of torn pages beside you.
- Once your timer rings set aside the magazines and begin to really analyze the images you’ve chosen. What do they tell you? at this point you might want to start categorizing them…I prefer to sort my images based on subject matter, landscape, floral, vegetation and food occur most often for me, which makes absolute sense in terms of my lifestyle, the things I love and the type of subject matter in my art work. Your categories will be your own.
- Now, you need a place to put the images that you tear out. For the sake of ease and cost, I always tell my students that a large, legal sized envelope will do. However, you could create this bank out of anything! It is going to become a very important inspiration place for play and practice. I have a studio space and mine is a bit more organic, posted to my cork boards that are up on my walls. A file folder, ring binder or a big old shoe box will even do! I had a student that became so obsessed with her image bank that she had several file folders that were categorized and colour coded for easy reference…I’m not that guy, but if this speaks to you, go for it!
Creating the image bank is a great start to finding what draws your eye, what speaks to you visually, and it will inform what you create. It is a place for reference material or to pull items for a fun collage or the jumping off point for a mixed media work or maybe even the inspiration for a poem or a song. This isn’t a one time deal. Add to it regularly, especially if the images start to feel stale or you can’t find what you want. As well, much like spring cleaning your closet…when you get rid of things that you haven’t worn in years (yes, I’m this gal), if you find that you keep going past an image and it does nothing for you or you don’t really love it, get rid of it.
I use my image bank regularly. It is an important part of my process and something I encourage my students to create and work with. In future posts I will be referring back to the image bank and detailing various activities and creative uses for the images that you have collected. Enjoy the play!
