September 22nd, 2016 Miami University Art Museum Paul Duncum visited Miami University to talk about his experience with becoming an art educator. He spoke about his family, how he grew up, his college and adult years. He was raised in Australia, in a lower middle class family. He said he would draw as a child and his parents dismissed his talent. Regardless, he realized his interest in art was important, so he pursued it. He came to the US in 1992 and was shocked by the amount of open-minded people. He then expanded visual culture in art education. There was a consistent theme of the importance of visual culture, and his passion about it within art education. I think I'm struggling with fully understanding visual culture and some of the comments he said about it put me off a little bit. His comments about contemporary art confused me. However, he is very well spoken and put together. I connected to the event by experiencing similar comments as a child. I don't think people ever understood my interest in art at a young age. But, I couldn't fully relate to his passion about visual culture. Taking all of that into account though, I could use visual culture and the content in his talk in the classroom, by using an example as an introduction. That can engage the kids by grabbing their attention and then I can lead them into a project or assignment. Overall, hearing Paul Duncum talk was a good experience. I think it's important to take all kinds of teaching techniques into account. This requires open-mindedness and will allow me to become a more well-rounded art teacher.
Charity White
September 29th, 2016 Charity White is an art educator who went to the University of Illinois. She majored in ceramics and art education. She is now a teacher in Chicago. When she lived in Gainesville, Florida she began her project that focused on homeless people. Moving to Florida, Charity was consumed by noticing how often land is left in disrepair. In Chicago, where she first lived, land is taken up and redone as soon as possible. In Florida, buildings sit there and go untouched. She noticed how this also related to the amount of homeless people-vast and untouched. Charity created three different figures that represented homeless people. She fired them and painted them, then placed them on three different benches in the city. She set up surveillance cameras to record people’s interactions to the sculptures. This project showed how people interact with sculptures as well as homeless people. Humans don’t even notice sometimes, but we disrespect and dehumanize homeless people just like the sculptures. The whole project and experiment Charity created is an example of art activism. Through her talk, I realized the importance of relating art to current social issues. Her talk also introduced to me the importance of social issues and how they are vital for teaching.