Presenter: Duane Lutsko
Scheduled for Tuesday, August 27, 2024 7:30 am to 10:30 am
For Art teachers
A hallmark of the transformative power of art lies in its ability to promote open-ended
problem-solving. Art fosters the ability to embrace ambiguity, to understand divergent
perspectives, and to develop decision-making skills that thrive in a growth mind-set.
One that welcomes challenges and risk-taking, one that perceives effort as a path
toward mastery and failure as an opportunity for learning.
In the art room, learners are notoriously compelled by a self-imposed peer-pressure to
“look good”,to create nice-looking art. Art making is risk-taking, to be sure. The Phoenix
unit strives to tap into this vein by encouraging students to deliberately fail, or more
accurately, to destroy something in order to recreate something new. This will challenge
the learner because it presents participants with the expectation of exploring their
tolerance for ambiguity. We grab the fixed mindset by the horns to tackle issues around
fear of failure, comfort zones, and coveting the precious.
The workshop begins with members drawing either personal objects from observation
or copying a painting or sculpture from art history. We then cover the entire sheet with a
translucent coat of white gesso to deliberately destroy the drawing. When dry, the
original drawing resurfaces as a ghost image that now provides suggestive possibilities
for more layers of exploration. Participants can recover (redraw) the original, or use it as
a springboard to transform content, narrative, and meaning.
As the group dynamic evolves, mindsets shift. Learners begin to appreciate the cycles
of rediscovery and reworking as imagery and narratives change, disappear, and are
reinvented. Additionally, students gain self-motivating habits as they begin to
understand that it is not about the extrinsic rewards of a good-looking product, but about
the intrinsic rewards of a process of discovery, inquisition, and accomplishment – not to
mention the human qualities of inventiveness, joyfulness, and play.
Participants will gain a hands-on understanding of, and application for, a metacognitive
awareness that kindles complex forms of problem-solving. One that readily adopts
ambiguity as a gateway for the open-ended, decision-making skills indispensable to
independent, critical thinking.
