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An Action Research Study of Community Building with Elementary Students in a Title I School
“In what ways does teaching with folk arts inspired visual arts-based instruction enhance community building among elementary students in a Title I school?” was the primary research question in this study. Agreeing with past and present day research that the construct of community is vital to social and cultural capital, this research attempts to determine how the notion of community benefits both students and teachers in the elementary art classroom. Folk art was utilized because this genre was accessible in terms of locality and familiarity among students and teachers. The purpose of this investigation was to produce teaching strategies and methods that show how community can be formed in the art classroom. The participants were elementary students, Grades 2 and 3, in a Title I school located in Denton, Texas. This investigation was conducted under an action research methodology. This approach to research is intended to be transformational, emergent, and accommodating. I recorded observations, field notes, and conversations from the participants. Emergent themes were discovered through content analysis and conceptual maps. Results from this investigation concluded transformation is only possible if the person wants change to happen. Data also showed that community and art education are symbiotic. Transformation, growth, and cultivation are demands that must be met in order for this relationship to flourish. In addition, data suggested that the role of folk arts-based lessons played a significant role in building community among second and third graders.
Alignment of Middle School Core TEKS with Visual Arts TEKS
This descriptive study uses a qualitative, content analysis to examine the middle school visual arts and core Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) to determine the potential common learning activities that can be aligned between the two. By performing an alignment of the potential common learning activities present in the middle school visual art TEKS and the middle school core TEKS, I demonstrate that there is a foundation for curriculum integration in the Texas middle school visual arts classroom.
The Art Car Spectacle: a Cultural Display and Catalyst for Community
This auto-ethnographic study focuses on Houston’s art car community and the grassroots movement’s 25 year relationship with the city through an art form that has created a sense of community. Art cars transform ordinary vehicles into personally conceived visions through spectacle, disrupting status quo messages of dominant culture regarding automobiles and norms of ownership and operation. An annual parade is an egalitarian space for display and performance, including art cars created by individuals who drive their personally modified vehicles every day, occasional entries by internationally renowned artists, and entries created by youth groups. A locally proactive public has created a movement has co-opted the cultural spectacle, creating a community of practice. I studied the events of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art’s Art Car Weekend to give me insight into art and its value for people in this community. Sources of data included the creation of a participatory art car, journaling, field observation, and semi-structured interviews. The first part is my academic grounding, informed by critical pedagogy and socially reconstructive art practices. The second part narrates my experiences and understandings of the community along with the voices of others. Dominant themes of exploration include empowerment, community, and art. I examine the purposes for participation by artists, as well in the practices of audiences and organizations that provide support for this art form. My findings have significant implications community-based art education and k-12 classroom educators. Relational and dialogic approaches to making art, teaching, and researching are tied to problem-posing education as a recommendation for art education.
Artistic Learning in an MFA Community
The purpose of this phenomenographical case study is to explore the ways in which a group of MFA students conceive of their learning as they are enmeshed within an MFA community. The research follows along two guiding research questions: 1) What does artistic learning involve for graduate students in an MFA community? 2) How is one's artistic practice shaped by one's active participation in an MFA community? The findings of this study have been presented as lines of artistic learning and help to show the various conceptions that MFA students have of their learning as artists while in an MFA program of study. Ultimately, it is in better understanding one's lines of artistic learning that MFA students can be better supported in their journeying to become professional, practicing artists.
Biopedagogy of Rumination and Regurgitation
Regurgitating test answers, needing more time to digest a reading, or being spoon fed information are just a few of many digestive metaphors currently used in education. In taking seriously the use of these metaphors, I suggest that humans recognize a connection, on some level, between the mental act of taking in and processing knowledge and the physical act of digestion, yet in educational discourse, these processes are more often than not cast in a negative light. The following philosophical exploration begins with a close look at two digestive practices, rumination and regurgitation, in non-human animals such as ruminants, seed-eating birds, and honey bees. By looking to these animals, it becomes possible to rehabilitate an affirmative human version of rumination and regurgitation in which our physical and mental selves are intrinsically intertwined in and through bodily education. The works of Giorgio Agamben, Tyson E. Lewis, Nathan Snaza, and Vinciane Despret support a theoretical framework which moves beyond human-centered education towards the development of an inhuman biopedagogy that embraces digestion rather than discriminates against it. I offer practical applications of rumination and regurgitation, shedding light on moments when rumination and regurgitation are already present in education, and introduces slight adjustments to these practices to enhance their positive digestive dimensions. The multi-species practices of rumination and regurgitation invite students and educators alike to slow down, return to material that needs to be rechewed, and ultimately to embrace an embodied experience of education.
Breaking Outside: Narratives of Art and Hawaii
This research examines the personal narratives of two contemporary non-native artists living and working on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Issues related to narratives, power structures, artistic processes, insider/outsider dynamics, Hawaiian culture, island life, surfing, and the researcher's own experiences are woven together to formulate realizations surrounding alternative knowledge systems and the power of multiple or hidden narratives to the practice of art education.
Building a Collaborative Smartphone Application for Blind and Low Vision Visitors at the Dallas Museum of Art
The goal of my study is to develop a mobile application to enable all visitors, including blind and low-vision visitors, to autonomously gather and share information about interpretations of art and to have a fully independent museum-going experience. With an application, blind visitors have more access to opportunities and tools in the museum, which empowers their museum experience. My study used a qualitative, mixed-methods approach to research how blind and low vision museum visitors might increase their independence in the museum space and discover ways to equalize their access without relying on museum educators. In carrying out my study, I conducted interviews and collected data based on observations and transcribed and analyzed them using a grounded theory approach. I used Freire's theory of pedagogy of the oppressed and hooks' theory of education as the practice of freedom to frame my study.
A Collective Case Study of Veterans Inside an Arts and Crafts Room and Their Perceptions Regarding Empowerment
This dissertation is "A Collective Case Study of Veterans Inside an Arts and Crafts Room and Their Perceptions Regarding Empowerment." This research examined to what degree art making, and in what ways a community of learning contributed to veterans' self-worth and empowerment through their creative activities and interactions inside an arts and crafts room at the VA hospital in Dallas, Texas. Furthermore, an essential reason for this study is to examine veterans in the arts and crafts environment to explore whether their experiences were important, meaningful, and empowering, and especially important in this regard are the interactions among veterans. Empowerment in this context is defined as gaining self-esteem and motivation within oneself. This includes becoming more confident and positive, as well as gaining the ability to learn about one's own identity. It also described how the interactions between the participants are shaped by the social contexts within which they come together. Using post-modern feminist theory, narrative inquiry and care theory, this dissertation describes the ways that the processes and products of creative activity bring empowerment through dialogue and personal stories while using the component of caring during teaching and learning.
Creating a Heterotopic Space: Reflections on Pre-service Art Educators’ Narratives
My autobiographical research focuses on creating digital heterotopias through social media platforms, providing safe spaces which allow art teacher candidates the opportunity to reflect upon their practicum experiences and question the status quo of institutional myths and inherited discourses in teacher fieldwork. Functions of heterotopic space link together and reflect other pedagogical sites, including institutional spaces. Heterotopias are often designed to be temporal and hidden from public view but are necessary enclaves for exploring non-hierarchical paradigms. Such temporary communal spaces can lead one to a personal praxis in uncovering what sometimes is never fully explored, our own autobiographical narrative of teaching. By creating a digital space utilized by art education student teachers in the midst of their practicum, I recalled my forgotten autobiography of student teaching, where memories of inequities and suppression of difference emerged. Through the lenses of critical theory and resistance theory, this study examines possibilities of crafting digital spaces as forms of artistic resistance and identity reconstruction zones. As such, the goal of examining the student teaching practicum concerning; power inequities, evaluation methods, standardization of teaching, evolving teacher identities, and the social environment of teaching, is to illustrate hegemonic processes and visualize spaces of possibility to deconstruct self and (re) imagine alternative ways of being teachers. Weaving in multiple stories of fieldwork experience allowed for a collocation in visualizing a space of unfolding inquiry, recognizing multiple genres of knowing through the qualitative and emergent methodologies of narrative inquiry and arts-based research.
Creative Matter: Exploring the Co-Creative Nature of Things
This dissertation is about new materialism as it relates to art education. It is a speculative inquiry that seeks to illuminate the interconnectivity of things by considering the ways in which things participate in generative practices of perceiving and making. To do so, the dissertation pioneers an arts-based methodology that allows for broad considerations about who and what can be considered an agent in the process of art making. In this inquiry, the researcher is an artist-participant with other more-than-human and human participants to construct an (im)material autohistoria-teoría, a revisionist interdisciplinary artwork inspired by the work of Anzaldúa. The term w/e is developed and discussed as new language for expanding upon Braidotti's posthumanist subjectivity. New theories called thing(k)ing (including found poetry) and (im)materiality are discussed as movements towards better understanding the contributions of the more-than-human in artmaking practices.
Creative Networks: Toward Mapping Creativity in a Design Classroom
This study developed new mapping techniques and methodologies for understanding creativity in terms of connectivity and interaction between human and non-human actors in a design classroom. The researcher applied qualitative methods of data collection combining both observation of classroom activities and focus group interviews in order to map a creativity network. The findings indicate that creativity is a complex weather-like system (or what I call "creative climate") composed of many sub-networks and diffused networks. Four interactions emerged from the study: (a) the creative climate is composed of the circulation of bodies and objects forming networks and sub-networks, (b) centers and corners/edges are a measure of connectivity and interaction in classroom space design, (c) roundness is a measure of classroom style and the space of connectivity usage, and (d) plugs-in creativity is a measure of technology consolidation. This study attempted to fill the gap in the literature on creativity and classroom design by explaining the role of non-human actors in shaping the creative climate in the classroom, especially the role of the classroom space itself as an actor. The implication of this study in art education opens a new opportunity for research in designing innovative classrooms. Also, it will allow future investigation of the phenomenon of creativity as a climate system based on the interaction between human and non-human actors.
Disrupting the Discourse of the Other: a Transformative Learning Study of African Art
The primary question of this study is: How does the disruption of African art discourse influence a group of university students’ perceptions of African aesthetics? This inquiry developed from previous studies on the exclusion of modern and contemporary African art in Western art museums. Through the theoretical lens of Postcolonial Theory and Critical Multiculturalism, this research conceptualizes the dominance of traditional African art in art museums, art history, and art education as a Western hegemonic discourse that normalizes perceptions of Africa and African aesthetics as the fixed primitive Other. Thus, this research applied Action Research (AR) methodology coupled with Transformative Learning Theory (TL) to disrupt the discourse of African art; with the purpose of affecting positive changes in perceptions of African aesthetics. The participants for this study were 10 students in a course (Art 1301 Honors Art Appreciation) I instructed at the University of North Texas in the fall (September–December) 2013 semester. Data was collected, analyzed, and interpreted from participants’ assignments and my research journal. This study comprised a dual enquiry on: 1. Discourse and Meaning-making; and 2. Disruption and Transformation. First, the study analyzed students’ perceptions of African aesthetics from their learning experience of traditional African art in an art museum. The findings affirmed traditional African art at the museum as a discourse of Africa as the Other of the West. Secondly, the study analyzed how students’ perceptions were influenced from their experience (in my classroom) of learning histories of modern and contemporary African art that disrupt the authenticity of traditional African art. The findings revealed that 80% of participants developed positive transformations. This research demonstrates how art education grounded in critical theory and transformative learning subverted African art as the discourse of the Other, developed students’ understandings of the multiple realities of Africa and African aesthetics, and encouraged …
Eating from the Tree of Knowledge: The Impact of Visual Culture on the Perception and Construction of Ethnic, Sexual, and Gender Identity
This study explores the way that visual culture and identity creates understanding about how the women in my family interact and teach each other. In the study issues of identity, liminality, border culture, are explored. The study examines how underrepresented groups, such as those represented by Latinas, can enter into and add to the discourses of art education because the women who participated have learned to maneuver through the world, passing what they have learned to one another, from one generation to the next. Furthermore, the study investigates ways in which visual cues offer a way for the women in my family to negotiate their identity. In the study the women see themselves in signs, magazines, television, dolls, clothing patterns, advertisements, and use these to find ways in which to negotiate the borderlands of the places in which they live. Although the education that occurred was informal, its importance is in creating a portal through which to self reflect on the cultural work of educating.
The Enameling Arts in Kuwaiti Pre-service Art Teacher Education
The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to examine the knowledge, skills, and experiences in the enameling arts and the attitudes and perceptions of in-service (n = 12) and pre-service Kuwaiti art teachers (n = 170), art supervisors at the Ministry of Education (MOE) (n = 3) and art education faculty members at the College of Basic Education (CBE) and Kuwait University (KU) (n = 8) about what they believed pre-service art teachers should know and be able to do in order to teach the enameling arts, and (2) to use this information to inform and guide the development of a content outline for an enameling course for pre-service Kuwaiti art teachers that is educationally (how to perform enameling arts skills and how to teach what they know), practically (safety issues, workshop management, etc), and culturally (its relation to Islamic culture) suitable. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. Most of the respondents revealed limited knowledge and skills and modest experiences in the enameling arts. All interviewees in the study expressed positive perceptions and attitudes about the enameling arts. Most agreed that a revision to the current art education curriculum at the CBE was needed and made suggestions about how the curriculum should be revised. It was clear that there is a disconnection and miscommunication between the MOE and the CBE with regards to the information about enameling that should be covered and taught in the art education classes. All respondents expressed support for the inclusion of a course in enameling in the art education curriculum at the CBE. Because of the limited knowledge of the participants in the study, they were not able to provide guidance in shaping the content for a course in the enameling arts. The researcher had to rely on the literature review and his …
Engaging Lives: a Nomadic Inquiry Into the Spatial Assemblages and Ethico-aesthetic Practices of Three Makers
This research is a nomadic inquiry into the ethics and aesthetics of three makers’ social and material practices. Deleuze’s concept of the nomad operated in multiple ways throughout the process, which was embedded in performative engagements that produced narratives of becoming. Over four months, I built relationships with three people as I learned about the ethico-aesthetic significance of their daily practices. The process started by interviewing participants in their homes and expanded over time to formal and informal engagements in school, community, and agricultural settings. I used Guattari’s ecosophical approach to consider how subjectivity was produced through spatial assemblages by spending time with participants, discussing material structures and objects, listening to personal histories, and collaboratively developing ideas. Participants included a builder who repurposed a missile base into a private residence and community gathering space, an elementary art teacher who practiced urban homesteading, and a young artist who developed an educational farm. The research considers the affective force of normalized social values, the production of desire by designer capitalism, and the mutation of life from neoliberal policies. Our experiences illuminate the community-building potential of direct encounters and direct exchanges. The project generates ideas for becoming an inquirer in the everyday and reveals possibilities for producing pedagogical experiences through collective and dissensual action. Ultimately, the project produces hope for performative and anti-disciplinary approaches to education, rupturing false divisions that fragment the force of thought, to produce, instead, aesthetic experiences that privilege processes and are based in direct and collective engagements with life.
Evaluating the Cultural Plan of Austin, Texas
This is a concurrent, mixed methods study of the impacts of Austin, Texas’s cultural plan, CreateAustin. In the study, trend analysis and a t-test were used to examine variables before and after the cultural plan was in place. At the same time, interviews with cultural planners were used to uncover other effects. My research addresses a gap in the literature between understanding the desired and actual outcomes of a cultural plan. Cultural plans are being developed by many communities in an effort to attract creative workers but they are rarely evaluated. Evaluation using a mixed methods approach is necessary to capture all the outcomes of a cultural plan, rather than the limited scope of impacts that are captured by qualitative or quantitative analyses alone. My analysis of the quantitative variables showed some significant differences between when the plan was in place and the years prior to its creation. Interviews with key stakeholders revealed the formation of new networks as a powerful outcome of the planning process. The results allowed me to gauge the overall impact of CreateAustin and make some observations about the cultural planning process in general, as well as uncover new directions for future research.
Examining Visual Art Experiences for Relationship Building in Shared-site Locations
This study explored the perceptions of 74 activity directors responsible for the intergenerational programming that is currently taking place at shared-sites, facilities where older adults and young people receive services and programs simultaneously in a co-located space. Data for this study was collected through a national survey of 149 shared-sites collected from the Generations United data base. the questionnaire asked respondents about their facility’s intergenerational programming, demographic information, and perceived sense of community exhibited by participants in the intergenerational program. Descriptive data regarding the location, primary emphasis, ages and number served, and specific program characteristics, including visual art programming, at IGSS facilities were collected and analyzed. Results from the analysis were reported with limitations. There was a statistical significance suggested in the association of the frequency and duration of art activities with some of the sense of community variables. the study is valuable in determining the current demographics of IGSS facilities that offer visual art programs. Further research needs to be conducted to answer questions regarding the specific role that the visual arts play in creating a sense of community among intergenerational participants at shared-site facilities.
"image"/ "i" / "nation": A Theory and Practice of Becoming an A/r/tographer
One can argue that embracing technological models may produce students who are illiterate in the "proper" methods of communication. With rapid technological change, some fear traditions in their "original" form may be lost. Practices such as trying to recapture the artist's intent should be abandoned as a way of opening up literacy discourse to multiple narratives. Failing to critically explore the possibilities of emerging models of thinking, teaching, and learning in a technological culture can produce a loss equal to the loss of tradition. An a/r/tographer works toward a fluid practice between the domains of artist, researcher, and teacher in order to negotiate emerging forms of visual/tactile/auditory communication which include the body as a networked organism situated recursively within the larger structure of society. This study occurred during two separate semesters of an art education course for pre-service elementary teachers. Through interaction with hypermedia, social networking, installation art, and mash-ups, the teacher and students became artists, researchers, and teachers in a community of practice. A new form of teaching practice was envisioned that opens the possibility for both collective and individual understandings in the formation of curricula. A set of guiding principles was invented through practice as a way of producing a deeper understanding of culture and self. The following principles were derived from engagement with emerging technologies: In<SCRIPT>ion, Flip the Script, (H)Activation, Sample, (Re)mix, and Avatar. (H)Activation produces a learning environment that disrupts the flow of teaching, learning, literacy, art, technology, etc., as a way of programming practice for the inclusion of multiple narratives. Utilizing bricolage or a Do It Yourself approach, an apparatus for programming emerged, "image"/"i"/"nation". The term "image"/"i"/"nation" is a play on the concept of the imagination. Through reflexive application the imagination is split allowing connections and disconnections through practice. By engaging in its application the …
Interrelated Histories, Practices, and Forms of Communication: Using Arabic Calligraphy to Learn Arabic Typography
In this self-study inquiry, I studied my graphic design practice in a professional setting, focusing on my Arabic typographic skills and knowledge. My roles as researcher and design educator indivisibly intertwined throughout this research. I worked to understand the value of calligraphy in art and design education, highlighting its power as an art form while also emphasizing its pedagogical potentials. I utilized two theoretical approaches suited to investigating and understanding the Arabic letters as text and image, Ibn Arabi’s science of letters, or 'ilm al-hurûf, and semiotics. I applied my theoretical framework to three distinctive artworks to investigate their uses of the Arabic letters, contemplating their roles in modern and contemporary Arab art. Essential to my research was learning Arabic calligraphy through two approaches: 1) I attended a calligraphy workshop, and 2) I conducted three self-study experimentations. I analyzed my experience through visual representations, commentary, and narrative inquiry to assess Arabic calligraphy’s significance for graphic design education. As such, my experimentations confirmed Arabic calligraphy’s aesthetic and educational value. I employed my findings to create a contemporary Arabic typography curriculum suitable for university-level students. This curriculum is built on learning theories such as visual culture analysis, semiotics, constructivist theory, play principles, and critical thinking, aiming to situate Arabic calligraphy as a modern learning model significant for typography education. Finally, I constructed a basic course for Arabic typography to support students’ development of Arabic typography fluency.
Learning From Each Other: Narrative Explorations of Art Museum Self-guided Materials
By engaging in collaborative arts-based and arts-informed narrative inquiry with my six-year-old daughter, we explored self-guided materials in art museums in the North Texas area. Though the field of art museum education is becoming increasingly participatory, most academic research related to self-guided materials has fallen short of exploring visitors' experiences with these materials. Furthermore, the perspectives of children have been long overlooked in academic and, at times, institutional research about family experiences in museums. Over the course of nine months, my daughter and I visited art museums and engaged with their self-guided materials, ranging from audio tours to interactive galleries. During this time we created collaborative works of art based on our experiences, which acted as both data collection and analysis in preparation for writing narratives. Our narrative explorations allowed us each to better understand our collective experiences. Though this research specifically targets self-guided materials in art museums, any educator interested in intergenerational or collaborative family learning may find both our methodologies and our conclusions to be helpful in better understanding how narratives are essential to this type of learning.
A Meaningful Task: Investigating Into the Culture of Assessment in the Art Classroom of the Schools in Denton
This is an enterpretivist cultural study on how the lively idea of assessment is enacted by the art teachers, students and administrators in Denton school art education, North Texas, the United States. This ethnographic research aims to extend understanding on assessment as vivid cultural and social dynamics that both reflects and enlivens varied and interconnected values promoted and shared among the people involved. Through a perspective of the culture of assessment, this study is expected to facilitate insights on art education as lived, purposeful experience bearing suggestions on a certain social environment and historical implications. Such insights as sought further illuminate specific understandings on art education in different cultural societies, such as China. From a Chinese native viewpoint, the researcher broadens her horizons on connection and independence important for informative performance of art education in the discourses of modern nation and schooling, as well as globalization. It is hoped that this study will interest other art educators, teachers, and researchers to make multiple and continuous efforts in further exploring the culture of assessment with cultural and historical consciousness and knowledge.
Perceiving Indeterminacy: A Theoretical Framework of the Perceptual Rite of Passage for Preadolescents
It is the fundamental insight of phenomenology that meaning is first and foremost - not something which we intellectually reflect on. It is not a product of the mind reworking raw, perceptual experiences. Rather meaning, and our connection to the world, are perceptual phenomena. Thus, to understand the ways in which children find meaning demands a turn toward perceptual experiences - how children see and feel. In this theoretical dissertation, I explore questions of perceptual experiences through a phenomenological framework that I refer to as the perceptual rite of passage (PRoP). The conceptual framework, which centers on attentiveness, labors to help us understand the ontology of perception for preadolescents and how meaning emerges through everyday encounters.
Portraits of Young Artists: Artworlds, In/Equity, and Dis/Identification in Post-Katrina New Orleans
Using portraiture methodology and social practice theory, this study examined the identity work of young people engaged in a teen arts internship program at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans. This research asked four interrelated questions. Through the lens of a teen arts internship at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans, 1) How do contextual figured worlds influence artist identity work? 2) How does artist identity work manifest through personal narratives? 3) How does artist identity work manifest in activities? 4) What are the consequences of artist identity work? The findings of the study highlight how sociocultural factors influence dis/identification with the visual arts in young people and provoke considerations of in/equity in the arts.
Sexual Orientation and the Advanced Placement Art History Survey
This two-part study included a content analysis of an AP art history text and a survey together with interviews with AP art history teachers that embraced both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. The first phase of the study examined one of the more popular art history survey texts in the AP art history program, Gardner’s Art through the Ages, in terms of how inclusive it is in addressing issues of sexual orientation and, particularly, same-sex perspectives. In addition, the text was examined for evidence of sexual orientation ignored – particularly same-sex perspectives ignored and for heteronormative hegemonies. The second phase investigated the understandings and opinions of AP art history teachers toward the inclusion of sexual orientation and same-sex perspectives in their curriculums and classrooms. Recent recognition of gay, lesbian, and same-sex perspectives in the study of art history has challenged art educators and art historians to begin to consider opening up their curriculums and writings to include these perspectives. These ignored perspectives produce important understandings that enrich and deepen the discourse of art history. The inclusion of gay and lesbian content and same-sex perspectives to the study of AP art history, not only effectively serves the needs of AP art history teachers, but it provides a more equitable and comprehensive visual arts education to students. The implications of this study are broad and complex. If students are to be well and comprehensively educated in the history of the visual arts, including discussions about the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian artists as well as artworks depicting same-sex perspectives is important. Similarly, their teachers must be well-informed and believe that including such material in the curriculum is important. There is definitely a need for designing more balanced and equitable AP art history programs that include gay and lesbian artists as well …
A Somatic Mindfulness Project Exploring the Effects of Meditation on Art Appreciation in the Gallery Setting
This dissertation describes the effects of a somatic mindfulness project on the way participants interact with and respond to works of art in a gallery setting. The study begins with a critique of Descartes' philosophy, Cartesianism, which emphasizes the role of the mind over that of the body and senses and argues that this thought continues to affect education even today. By contrast, phenomenology and mindfulness practices attempt to overcome Descartes' legacy by focusing on the importance of the body in lived experience. In particular, this study uses a phenomenological framework to conduct mindfulness on the relationship between the body and the perception of art. To do so, I utilized several phenomenological techniques for gathering data, including observations, video, and interviews, and I also created a unique method to analyze the data using a phenomenological verbal (written) description and visual (through photographic paintings) description. These techniques worked together to express the moment of reversibility between the meditative body and the artworks in the gallery setting. In sum, the findings of this study show that meditation changes the perceptual experience for different people in different ways. Another finding is that different forms of meditation may work better for some people than others. The findings of this study suggest that if art teachers are interested in using meditation, they need to be familiar with multiple forms of meditation. Also, they need to consider the role of the environment, as well as that of the artworks, in creating a wholistic meditative mood.
Unpacking Self in Clutter and Cloth: Curator as Artist/Researcher/Teacher
This a/r/tographic dissertation offers opportunities to interrogate curator identity and curator ways of being in both public and private spaces. Instead of an authoritative or prescriptive look at the curatorial, this dissertation as catalogue allows for uncertainty, for messiness, for vulnerable spaces where readers are invited into an exhibition of disorderly living. Stitched throughout the study are stories of mothering and the difficulties that accompanied the extremely early birth of my daughter. Becoming a mother provoked my curating in unexpected ways and allowed me to reconsider the reasons I collect, display, and perform as a curator. It was through the actual curating of familial material artifacts in the exhibition Dress Stories, I was able to map the journey of my curatorial turns. My engagement with clothing in the inquiry was informed by the work of Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, where dress as a methodology allows for spaces to consider autobiography, identity, and practice. It was not until the exhibition was over, I was able to discover new ways to thread caring, collecting, and cataloging ourselves as curators, artists, researchers, teachers, and mothers. It prompts curators and teachers to consider possibilities for failure, releasing excess, and uncaring as a way to care for self, objects, and others.
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