Educational philosopher John Dewey believed that a work of art is “a refined and intensified form of experience. The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”
These ideas inspired Crane School’s eighth-grade capstone art unit titled i@pp- – Independent Art Project and Presentation.
A display of the project will be open 2-3 p.m. Wednesday, June 7, at the Crane campus, 1795 San Leandro Lane.
At the start of this nine-week unit, students are asked to choose an area in the arts that is of particular interest to them. They then research the selected area of art, propose a course of action, and write a grant proposal in English class for their project.
If approved, they create a body of work and record their experiences through a daily blog. Along the way, they learn from one another and discover their own artistic process. Finally, they present their project to the class and the public.
“The hardest part is picking their project. The Crane art program offers them so many opportunities to experiment with a variety of media and processes over their years,” said art teacher Gretel Huglin Ridge.
“This year, some students are even combing different subject areas, such as incorporating technology from the new Design and Engineering Center. It is so exciting,” she said.
“Some students began with one idea but through the process arrived at another. Sometimes students would celebrate serendipity; other times they would bemoan a perceived dead-end,” Huglin Ridge said.
“With time to reflect between art classes, mistakes often became an open road in a unexpected direction,” she said.
Students take their own art path, so each journey is different. Crane believes student choice in education is important. Recent educational literature is filled with academic articles and research studies confirming what many teachers know from experience:
Given some choice in what and how to learn, a student will work harder, delve deeper, and retain more knowledge.
Alyssa Somer, an eighth-grader at Crane, took her i@pp inspiration from Chinese mixed-media artist Ai Wei Wei. Using literally hundreds of legos, Somer built a portrait of Malala, an activist for girls’ education.
In addition to the construction, Somer had to enlarge, pixelate, and map out her color scheme. This long process was documented in her ongoing blog, a requirement for each student over the course of the semester.
Somer then added Malala’s speech as the background. This had particular interest to Somer who gave her Eighth-Grade Current Event Speech at Crane on the importance of education for all.
Continuing with this theme, she did a self-portrait and added her own speech to the background.
Upon completion of their projects, students learned about critique and reviewed each other’s work. A reflection essay describing their experience, their blog and photos documenting their progress accompanied the final project.
All of these examples were displayed for the Crane community.
Creating art, documenting the process, and critiquing the outcome is enlightening and rewarding, yet is often incomplete without the public’s experience of the art.
— Mary Lee Wren for Crane Country Day School.