February 25 Hand outs > Teen Brain. Grow Up? Manga. PBS evening news article on shootings. 2 studies with rats and mothering – 1950s study by Harlow on monkey mothering. Effects of absence of affection in early life. Absence of touch >> relation to Winnicott. The tenth month of pregnancy. Sensory K of the world. TRY something new > a new bodily experience. New awareness of body. Tried to be blind. Used the left hand. Climbing beyond level. Yoga. Uncomfortable feeling – noticing everything – muscle, frustration, perception. Throw your body out of kilter to get at ado experience of anxiety. Physical changes throw their center of gravity off balance. Another sensory mode > a new period of learning, a new toddlerhood > over estimating what they can do. Return to toddlerhood. Constant movement > jumpy, dancing, all on the go. [slides] change in ado art • doodles, cartoons, sketchbooks • ado as great doodlers mark up the pristine surface draw and scratch themes out horrendous and wonderful narrative of face. We all have bad thoughts. Drawings are safe places to play them out. Feelings of vulnerability > one thing becomes another thing -----transformation drawings, not linear – like thinking it’s not linear. Social criticism: sexual depictions They’ve got questions and those questions come through drawings. Is it okay to ask these questions? Teachers’ role is to respond. Kids need to be able to talk to each other and themselves. The drawings are the way into it. Teenage art – what is the question being asked? Eyes – inclusion, ubiquitous, cross cultural. Cartoons – death destruction power, coming from media, pages of manga with captions, physicality, spontaneous, copies, tracings. Invented characters. Invisible friends. Narrative embedded. Copy and take bits from other work. Exposed vulnerability. Center of their own drama. Sketchbooks. Text. Example: (story of the day) without recognizable images. “rather than telling kids to make an abstract” • the line • repeat. Re-work. Kids who see artists who are transforming things. There may be an influence of the outside world. Guston. Graffiti. Lichtenstein. Magritte. Close. Sketchbook travelogue. Basquiat. Quick to See Smith. Miro. The role of the environment in sketch books is different from what happens in “art class.” Applications to art college. Role of sketch books in that process. > the student’s voice and thought process. Judy: 7 yr old designs but no story on computer. Different when the surface feels the same or if it changes with the change of surface. Wendell – drawing on tablets because parents don’t want kids to get dirty. Judy B: development up to beginning of adolescence > all marching together within the boundaries of capacities. Then things begin to come apart. With the body changes and social changes. Try to capture how you feel about the world. Not well defined. Overly felt. How to express ideas. Whole new set of feelings and no where to put them. Except in the ten year old structure. Adolescent is trying to find new vocabulary and new structure. Blos (in Kroger) – Ado stepping backwards in order to go forward…to re-find responses from earlier. Literature as psychology of regression but JB > not the same. Earlier modes of working with materials. Set down in pre-symbolic age. Early image making. < kids are going back there. Out of that repertoire kids look for ways of understanding the newness of adolescence. That way of exploring materials gets recalled and becomes a vehicle, an expressive vehicle. Looking back to early childhood repertoire. Drawing as a memory, as a skill, but not rooted in repertoire. Becca – how does it work if you can’t go back to that repertoire? JB: root the experience of learning skills in the experience of the kid. [China experience, looking at drawings – disconnect between what happens and how it’s taught.] Question: how to grade works of art ------ JB: leave assessment for later. Hold the doors open. Don’t play one off the other. Look for integrity than transcends style. Spontaneous forays into new kinds of visual explorations out of school. Traditional patterns: development is about giftedness and talentedness, so art education is often dropped to elective status after grammar schools.