As a young adolescent, shortly after my extensive beading hobby, I ventured into the art of collage. I collected stacks of Vogue magazines from Italy, England, Spain, France (occasionally the United States), by way of my local bookstore. I remember starting out with repetitive themed pictures such as lips, eyes, shoes, and faces; but as my interest in poetry grew around a similar age, my collages quickly began to represent more emotions and phrases. I tried to make them symbolically represent the hopelessly romantic and/or angst driven short poems of my youth. I let the subject matter of the pictures take precedence over the shapes I was cutting the pictures into. This greatly reflects on the developmental stage I was in at the time.
On our first day of Art Workshop, we explored a simpler form of collage art. The materials provided for the first of two college projects were a large brown piece of paper, a piece of classified newspaper, diluted glue, and a paintbrush. In addition to these materials, the project, along with instructions, and examples, were posted on a bulletin board.
While we were creating our individual collages, it was mentioned regarding this assignment, that for younger children, the materials should be the motivation, not necessarily the context of the materials. Questions, additionally, can be an excellent motivator for a younger age group. Some suggested questions were:
‘How can I change this piece of paper?’
‘How will you arrange the shapes you make?’
‘ Will you make big or little pieces?’
‘If you tear the pieces, will they be jagged or smooth or straight or curved?’
These types of questions can assist in the extension of young children’s thinking.
The second collage assignment was making a color paper collage of our name for our semester’s portfolio. Again, motivations were given for this project that predominantly focused on the size and form of the letters we were to create, as well as our placement of them on the page. Clean up instructions were also provided, and once our spaces were tidy, we were dismissed.
Some of the deeper thoughts I gathered from this enticing first class include the idea that art is subjective and very difficult to grade. It is so important to let your students create and feel safe and free to express themselves. It is also important for them to follow directions. I feel that more so than the physical outcome of their art, it is most important for the students to follow directions, share when appropriate, and clean up their spaces upon completion. That is why age appropriate directions are completely necessary, as well as patience and attentiveness on the part of the teacher.
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