Recordari - A kinder, gentler approach to postmodern art education.

The artwork “Onion” is a hybrid style of art, which incorporates Postmodern, and Conceptual style characteristics. In the artwork “Onion” I also employed a methodology I will call “recordari”, from the Latin “to remember, call to mind (re-restore and cor, genitive, cordis heart, understood by the ancients as the seat of judgment and memory” (Barnhart, 1988) (p. 896). I would like to identify “Onion” and artwork like it, as representing our “lived experience” (VanManen, 1990) in visual form. I suggest we are practicing “recordari”. “Onion “ takes you on a journey, which explores and records all the communication modes employed by our virtual community. This article is intended to share the process of creating a postmodern collaborative artwork and includes a classroom lesson plan.

Deconstructing the Terms.
In the classroom I call this activity “symbol detecting.” Postmodernism has received a negative reputation for being “art of the intellectuals”. Deconstruction gives access to the “people” and provides critical thinking skills so lacking in American students.

Post-modernism.
Postmodernism is based on structural anthropology. The term “postmodernism” first appeared in print in Joseph Hudnot’s Architecture and the Spirit of Man (1949). The term “postmodernism” started to be used by critics in the late 1970’s and usually meant “after” modernism but was translated by many to mean “against” modernism. Modernisms’ “artist as lonely solo voice” (no longer influenced by the patron) reached the far left (or right according to your world view) of the pendulum swing with the arrival of “minimalism” defined as “form stripped down to ground zero” (Atkins, 1990 p.131) and, as many artists stated, such as Donald Judd, “with no contextual meaning”. “Onion” was created in direct opposition to this worldview giving the pendulum a vigorous push to the right (or left according to your world view) by inviting over 300 voices to contribute to the “conversation”.

Conceptualism.
Conceptual art emphasizes the concept, the feeling, and the idea which is created in the viewer’s mind. The idea (hopefully a new one) is the art. Atkins (1990) describes conceptual art as “a DOCUMENT of the artists’ thinking” (p. 63).

My objective in creating “Onion” was to invite you to experience membership in the Bemidji/Metro/DLiTE virtual community.

First Our Journey

Naming the Artwork.
The title of the artwork, “Onion”, was chosen with a great deal of care. Naming an artwork provides me with the opportunity to take an etymological trip, a journey which always fascinates me. The origin of the word “community” is found in the Latin “unio” – meaning, one, onion or large pearl. The idea is that many, many layers make up but ONE sphere. Although the investigations into the origins of the words “technology”, “art”, and “postmodern”, “conceptual”, and “record keeping” were equally fascinating, “Onion” kept calling me back. “Many layers make one sphere”. What a great way to describe a healthy community.

Methods and Techniques.
I selected an assemblage method to construct the visual representation “Onion”. This is one of my favorite art making methods because it encourages the artist to incorporate “power objects” in the artwork. In this case, I took pictures of all the hands, eyes, ears, and mouths - the communication tools of all the students, faculty and administrators who make up the Bemidji/Metro/DLiTE virtual community. The experience of collecting these images was powerful.

There were many teachable moments to educate the wider community on this style of art making, of course, and my art methods specialist, Sally Gibson, would have been proud to hear the students discuss how to arrange their hands in patterns using the elements and principles of design, which she taught them years before.

I am sure the Bemidji State University Vice-President (now President) was very nervous as I took pictures of his ears with my close up lens. Everyone wants the ear of the President. His ear is here – can you find it? The creation of this artwork, “Onion”, acted as actual community building.

The photographs were powerful. My experience in Chiapas, Mexico, taught me the Mayan people believe photographs “capture the soul”. I felt power in the photos as I handled them, cut them, and arranged them. I thought about the people – my memories with them. It was a very positive experience – re-visiting our mutual history – “Recordari”. I decided to eliminate the use of color, I felt the message was cleaner using black and white photos.

Papermaking.
During the creation of “Onion“, I was also working on an MnSCU Emerging Curriculum grant with 10 community college partners. As you might imagine, there were dozens of whole document edits. I was inspired, when I finally sent the last edit in, to create handmade paper from the plethora of drafts. I employed a rough blend technique – leaving large chunks. Look closely – you may find yourself or a person you know.

Hidden Meanings.
Under each box are handwritten messages to all the MnSCU people who have connected with the artist of “Onion” in real or virtual time. The back of the assemblage holds cardstock comments/feedback/responses from all the people who attended the unveiling of “Onion“ on September 7th, 2001 at the Midway Center in St. Paul, MN. The back of the assemblage also holds the master to create more deconstruction text and map brochures.

Mounted on the front of the map holder is the drive for a motor – information is the driver on our particular ride. The silver nameplate speaks to our profession–Education– the only word which uses all the vowels. Education gets a bit tarnished occasionally–but we bring it out, polish it, reflect in it and go forward with zeal.

The Framing Material. was also given great consideration. The shadow box design protects the community we have created and is held together with “Liquid Nails”–I could have bought the cheaper “construction cement’ but the “Liquid Nails” metaphor was too irresistible for me to pass by. I will aspire to be the Liquid Nails for the Bemidji/Metro http://bsued.bemidji.msus.edu/Metro/index.html.

The silver circuit boards represent technology, so fast moving, doubling all human knowledge every 9 months, obsolete on the day it rolls into production. The silver nerve center is surrounded on both sides by the traditional gold picture frames which represent the tradition of higher education which binds us to our history. In a very real way – these two worlds are alien worlds – my administrators are visionary and brave.

Wallpapers. (a techie term for background patterns) were created by scanning selected parts of the assemblage and manipulating them in Photoshop- look closely at the walls of the “rooms”. You may find yourself or a person you know. If you are interested in learning more about this kind of art making see references following this article.

Would you like to try a community-building project with the people in your lived experience?

Carl Anderson Shares His Life World:

“Last night my fine arts class and I presented our proposal for a public sculpture to the school board. We were last on the agenda in a meeting which included a lengthy and somewhat heated discussion about whether or not to turn one of our elementary schools into a charter school. The discussion took up the better part of two hours. I am sure our proposal must have been refreshing to hear after such a controversial piece on the agenda. I went into the meeting fearing they might turn the proposal down but instead I was met with an enthusiastic sound of approval. They even hinted that they would like the art department to build more in the future.

I would like to thank the ISD 118 school board and all the members of the community who are supporting this project. This project will surely be a great experience for all involved, especially my students. I left the meeting feeling overwhelmed by the support this project is receiving. It was also a plus that this came in the same meeting as such a hot topic because now a great majority of the public know about what we are doing in my classroom. There must have been 60 people in the audience at this meeting and in a district where normally you are lucky to have two or three this was a major showing.

I decided to let the board decide which of the student designs we would build. They were split between two design concepts. One was a design involving a circle with different colored lines radiating form the center representing all different races of mankind as one. The other was a patriotic tribute involving the globe with North America prominently displayed and a large American flag sticking out of the soil. The class and I decided that these two designs would work well together when merged. This merger seems to work conceptually and makes both designs more visually interesting. We start construction tomorrow. “

–Carl Anderson, 2001

References

Atkins, R. (1990). Art Speak. New York, New York. Abbeville Publishing

Barnhart, R. (1988) Dictionary of Etymology. Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. New York, New York.

Berlo, J. C. (1993a). Aesthetic systems: Knowledge, beauty, power. In J. C. Berlo & L. A. Wilson (Eds.), Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas (pp. 1-3). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Cassirer, E. (1964). The philosophy of symbolic forms. In Ralph Manheim (Trans.).

Eisner, E. W. (1981). The role of the arts in cognition and curriculum. Phi Delta Kappan, 48-52.

Eisner, E. W. (1984). Reading the images of culture. Momentum, 15(3), 56-58.

Fineberg, J.D. (1995) Art since 1940- strategies of being. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Freedman, K. (1995). Teaching visual culture: The social reconstruction of art education. In C. Grant & M. Gomez, Campus and classroom: Making schools multicultural. Columbus, OH: Merrill.

Garber, E. (1995). Teaching art in the context of culture: A study in the borderlands. Studies in Art Education, 36(4), 218-232.

Hatcher, E. (1985). As culture: An introduction to the anthropology of art. New York: University Press of America.

Hudnot, J. (1949) Architecture and the Sprit of Man Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.

Lyotard, J. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report of Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

(Onofrio website) artsconnected.org/artsnetmn/inner/onof.html

Popkowitz, T. (1980). Paradigm and ideology: The social functions of the intellectual. Educational Research.

Powell, J. (1998). Postmodernism for beginners. New York: Writers and Readers Publishers.

Shipley, J. (1967), Word origins, Littlefield and Adams, Savage, MD

Thompson, R. F. (1993). An aesthetic of the cool. In J. C. Berlo & L. A. Wilson (Eds.), Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas (pp. 22-35). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

VanManen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience; Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. New York: State University Press.