Blog #2 Barrett and Seranno A Combo that Never Fails

As I was reading everything this evening, in my lovely, well loved, and old reclining lazy boy chair mind you, I couldn’t help but feel like this all had an air of familiarity to it. In reality I had just left quite a few of these topics in one form or another less than two weeks ago. However everything seemed to have a refreshing feel to it, like lemonade on a hot summers day.

 Much of my research in 8730 revolved around how to get dialogue about students own artwork in a critique or other setting. During that whole time I couldn’t help but feel like it could have a VTS feel about what everything I was reading about but nothing would ever flat out nail down the head completely. Then this wonderful statement appeared before my eyes!

“Interpretations are not so much absolutely right, but more or less reasonable, convincing, enlightening and informative.”

There it was not being tip toed around anymore it actually gave all the frame work of VTS. A reasonable statement that was could be conceivable, shine a light something someone else had missed, and provide information to others. Working with the Boys Writers all last year they exhibited these types of answers, most of the time, and even when they disagreed they were able to see why it was said and where in no ways disrespectful.

As a side note: I still can't find the answer to the question Livek asked me about "the perfect question" in discussions. In many ways I am finding this to be a quest that halfway through these articles I thought would surely be answered..

I couldn’t help but also be highly draw to literally the last section I read the work of Andres Serrano’s Immersion (Piss Christ). It does not help that he is one of my favorite artist but the topic of how people think his work should be treated or has always been almost maddingly intriguing. The responses that were gained were ones I have typically heard, however what was a surprise was how respectful the discussions were with differing views. I think this says a lot about how to have meaningful dialog it has to be a respectful and safe environment with a great facilitator in charge of the conversation.

Other  bits that stuck out and felt like they should be mentioned:

Students learn from observation.

-I wrote something like this in my artist statement/bio for student teaching a few weeks ago as a quote that I believed in and felt was important to write.

Students learn less just because that’s the way it is.

-I feel like this is something that I haven’t truly seen in some ways yet because I feel like at times I have either been underestimating students or literally not knowing what to expect. The thought of them learning less might just be somewhat do to my own lack experience or because I literally don’t know what to expect. Either way it feels hard to see them as learning less. Maybe not something as quickly as we think, but not less. 

Possible Questions:

Does anyone really feel like the really learn less? I can understand maybe not as fast as expected but learning  less seems a bit odd in someways.

How can you deal with people where great offense is taken on an artwork. It seems like the best option is possibly to step away from everything and revist it under cooler times.