Art Practice Commons^™

Precarity In Feminism And Feminist Art Education: Decentering Whiteness Through Reproductive Justice Activism, Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, Olga Ivashkevich

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The article addresses precarity in mainstream feminism and feminist art education as a systemic dismissal and exclusion of the critical concerns and voices by disenfranchised women of color from its narratives and agendas. It draws on a case of the reproductive justice feminist activism to illustrate how the mainstream pro-choice feminist movement neglected the urgent and often life threatening reproductive concerns by Black, Brown, Indigenous and immigrant women, which led to an establishment of the reproductive justice coalitions by activists of color. The reproductive justice movement is an important call to action to challenge and decenter Whiteness in mainstream feminism …

Full Issue: An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause Part 2_June 2019, Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Full PDF of the issue An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause: Part 2. Co-edited by Susan Walsh (guest editor) & Barbara Bickel

Closing Pause, Peter London

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Peter London was invited to offer a response to the two part special issue of An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause as a last moment of pause. Peter, in turn, graciously offered his contemplative thoughts that we hope will inspire others to pause and engage their own contemplative reflections inspired by the artist scholar offerings in this special issue.

The Lion’S Gaze: Filmmaking As An Awareness Practice, Robyn Traill

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This is an extract from a Masters study describing my exploration of the art of film as an inner awareness practice from the view of the Buddhist yogic tradition and the teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called dharma art. I call this contemplative film practice.The article speaks to the initial pre-production and production phases of this research where formless Mahamudra meditations were most important. A camera lens was employed as a cue or reminder to practice the lens of awareness while capturing moving images. In the post-production phase, the creative meditations within Buddhist yogas became a major reference point: visualization, …

Music As Meditative Inquiry: Dialogical Reflections On Learning And Composing Indian Classical Music, Ashwani Kumar, Adrian Downey

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This dialogical paper explores Ashwani Kumar’s concept of music as meditative inquiry and its implications for teaching, learning, and living. The notion of music as meditative inquiry is rooted in Kumar’s journey of learning, composing, and researching Indian classical music. This paper makes use of an emerging methodological framework called dialogical meditative inquiry (DMI), which has been theorized by Kumar. Due to its emphasis on meditative and holistic listening, DMI goes beyond a usual interview where the intent is to elicit specific information. Through employing DMI to explore Kumar’s ideas regarding music, meditative inquiry, and creativity, this paper engages with …

Lectio Divina: A Call For Salah & Poetic Being, Momina A. Khan

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

I reflect back on the ARTS Pre-Conference 2017 of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education. It was a day full of non-linear knowledge exchanges, conversations, creations, contemplation and arts-based activities. Collaborators dwelled in, engaged, and emerged together spiritually, poetically, and musically to rekindle their learning, coexistence and mystical understandings. I was in my fasting state with dry mouth, hungry stomach, and thirsty soul combined with contemplative sessions, plus my scholarly and poetic inspirations in the flesh. It was purely an epoch of unbridled spirit tenderly wrapped in creative and contemplative ways of being present in the moment, with the …

Incarnatas: An Artist In Residence Practice In The Ubc Botanical Garden, Celeste Snowber

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article shares some of the poetry and dance that emerged out of a two-year Artist in Residency in the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As a site-specific performance artist, my practice has explored being with and in the Botanical Garden and allowing poetry and dance to emerge out of my walks, arts-based practice of listening, observing the various species in the Asian garden from all over Asia as well as indigenous plants and trees in B.C. My offering was to bring an artistic lens to the exploration and interpretation of the garden. Out of …

“Metramorphosis”: A Socially-Engaged Arts-Based And Contemplative Inquiry, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

The birth story of the Metramorphosis book begins in 2010 at an artist residency on Toronto Island. The book is bound with buttons allowing the cloth pages to be unbound and bound over and over again. In this way it is read anew each time, as it is never re-buttoned in the same order. After a year of stitching into the book I realized it was not my book alone to complete, as the study of matrixial theory (Ettinger, 2005) I was contemplatively engaging in the book making is about relationality, co-becoming and copoiesis. In 2012 I began to carry …

Living With A Liminal Mind, Yoriko Gillard

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Learning to be an educational storyteller entails using every creative skill I learned since my childhood and has allowed me to connect with others especially those in pain. This paper is a reflection of my emotional past. My tears are coming from the ocean and rivers in my liminal space. In this space, I contemplate my hopeful future and seek its contemplative challenges to discover what I still do not know and could learn as an educator. My sincere contemplation to serve society shall be a poetic reflection of who I am becoming each step of my life. Creative writing …

Indigenous Poiesis: Medicine For Mother Earth, Vicki Kelly

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Indigenous knowledge practices are ecological encounters of profound ethical relationality that acknowledge the act of co-creating through living embodiments of Indigenous Poiesis. This radical participation in Indigeneity through the offering of our humble humanity allows us to move into the living intensity of profound reciprocal relationship. Through Indigenous Poiesis, art becomes ecological activism. This Indigenous Métissage weaves life writing, indigenous woodcarving, and experiences of native flute playing, and presencing Anishinaabe stories in the spirit of Indigenous oral tradition.

An Arts-Based And Contemplative Pause: Introduction To Part Two: Creating Restorative And Caring Learning Spaces, Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

The introduction to Part Two of this special issue attends to arts-based and contemplative practices in inquiry and teaching. Co-editing this two-part special issue has been a gift of co-labour that we have been transformed by. For as Lewis Hyde wrote so beautifully in 1979, “it is when art acts as an agent of transformation that we may correctly speak of it as a gift. A lively culture will have transformative gifts as a general feature…. And it will have artists whose creations are gifts for the transformation of the race.” (pp. 59-60). The 20 contributors to Part One …

Front Matter Artizein June 2019, Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

What Can A Studio Approach To Teaching Tell Us About The Academic And Social Learning Of Middle School Students? An Exploration Of Student Understanding Of How Making Art Supports Their Academic And Social Learning., Maureen Creegan- Quinquis, Maureen A. Creegan-Quinquis

Educational Studies Dissertations

This study explores the types of social and academic learning typically overlooked in public school education. Art-based approaches to academic learning have been labeled as“fluff.” Education policymakers hold a biased view of the arts. When asked to consider art as a viable epistemology, cognition theorists have dismissed art as irrational. These biased views have contributed to the marginalization of the field of art education. The purpose of this study was to question this bias through an art-based studio approach to research. The goal was to explore how middle school students understand the role of visual arts in their own academic …

An Artistic Contemplative Inquiry: What Arrives In Co-Contemplating Assessment And Evaluation, Michelle Searle, Lynn M. Fels

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Contemporary arts-based inquiry invites us to linger in moments, to reflect upon our lives, our encounters, our relationships within the grander context of the worlds within which we dwell and those that we co-create. Here, we explore the landscape of the arts in relation to assessment and evaluation. Through a collaborative artistic contemplative inquiry, an emergent dialogue exploring assessment and evaluation is recorded and presented as a found poem, “What Arrives.” Our hope, when we embarked upon this artistic contemplation, was that we would evoke, provoke, and interrupt each other for the purpose of creating possibilities of alliance and (re)cognition …

Making Peace With The Highwood River: One Year In Contemplative Photographs And Flows, Jennifer Markides

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Since the 2013 Alberta floods, my relationship with the Highwood River has been changing. Before the disaster, I had taken the power of the river for granted. Then, the floodwaters ravaged the community of High River—my home. In the time after the flood, I engaged in a study of place as part of a course in Holistic Approaches to Life and Living led by Elder, Bob Cardinal of the Maskekosihk Enoch Cree Nation. I observed the flows through my camera lens: visiting and re-visiting the river, observing the seasonal changes, forming a stronger connection to my place in the community, …

Relations To Live By, Morgan Gardner

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

In 2017, I experienced the ARTS Pre- Conference of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education as a welcome refuge. As participants, we gathered to feed our minds, bodies and spirits via arts-based, contemplative practice. It became a day of (re)visioning academic life. In gratitude for this day, I share two poems from my research journal supporting my own (re)visioning of academic research. The poems are meditations on the small and large wonders of nature and their connection to the wealth of our fragile, mysterious lives. They explore our immeasurable interconnectedness to all of life and the life-giving relations that …

"Born Different, But Still The Same": My Journey As A Sibling Of Persons With Special Needs: Contemplative Practices In An Academic Environment, Annemarie Cuculiza-Brunke

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article is an autobiographical exploration of the author’s experience as a younger sibling of two people with a cognitive disability. It comprises nine years of conscious self-work and shows how an academic environment can nurture reflection on complex personal issues, and through this reflection, aid in the process of self-discovery and healing. The author explores autobiographical writing and poetic inquiry as a method to develop witnessing consciousness. The purpose of this piece is to contribute to the conversation about the challenges that siblings of people with disabilities face, as much attention is focused upon parents and the people with …

Looking For Water Stories, Janice Santos Valdez

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

As an immigrant settler, I contemplate my role as witness and participant in relation to water and First Nations people, who, for many generations, have been guardians of the ecosystems where I live. The poem I offer here is a reflection and response to my experience of witnessing a First Nations community during a consultation on the topic of water treatment systems with the engineering initiative Res’ Eau. My poem, Looking for Water Stories, contemplates a relationship to water and humanity through physical, socio-cultural, historical and spiritual perceptions. The poem is the form which my field notes took …

Performing Research: Contemplating What It Means To Be A "Man", George Belliveau

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Sharing research in performative modes opens new possibilities for meaning making. This article offers a monologue that explores my experience of working on a theatre project with military veterans. The impact of working on the creative process with veterans inspired this performed piece, and provided an opportunity to contemplate what it means to be a ‘man’ in today’s society. The article first situates performed research within current arts-based literature prior to sharing the creative piece, which is at the heart of this offering. The piece then concludes with how performed research opens the possibility for different forms of engagement and …

Sharing Footprints: Dwelling With/In Loss, Robert Christopher Nellis

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This essay explores spaces between— between presence and absence, model and canvas, page and thought. Launching from the cliché that love is blind, the piece reads through Jacques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind and its inspirations toward the paintings The Origin of Painting by Jean- Baptiste Regnault (1786) and The Invention of the Art of Drawing by Joseph-Benoit Suvée (1791) to locate spaces in between, spaces of contingency. The essay advocates not rushing through such spaces, but dwelling there—as sites of contemplation. The work engages in conversation with Lectio Divina as articulated by Mesner, Bickel, and Walsh (2015) and follows …

Holding Fast To H: Ruminations On The Arts Preconference, Carl Leggo

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

When Susan, Barbara, Diane, and I began planning for the ARTS Preconference, we quickly decided that the event ought to be different from most conference gatherings. Early on, we suggested that the event ought to be a “happening.” My main way of ruminating, investigating, and questioning is to write poetry. In the process of writing poetry I slow down and linger with memories, experiences, and emotions. In all my writing, I am seeking ways to live with wellness. In poetry I seek new ways of knowing and being and becoming. I write in order to invite conversation about what it …

An Offering And A Prayer, Vicki Kelly

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This offering and prayer opens this special two part issue of Artizein entitled An Arts-Based and Contemplative Pause. Vicki Kelly humbly offers this songful prayer as a way of welcome and as an act of reciprocal recognition for the diverse ecologies of place and being gathered here.

An Art-Based Contemplative Pause: Introduction To Part 1: Sharing Radical Creative Possibilities, Barbara Bickel, Susan Walsh, Diane Conrad

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Contained here is the Introduction for Part One of the special issue An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause. Co-written by Barbara Bickel, Susan Walsh and Diane Conrad.

Front Matter: An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause: Part 1

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Full Issue: An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause Part 1

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Using 3d Card-Making Project To Motivate Students’ Writing, Dan Li

The Montana English Journal

Based on the ideas of inclusive education and multiple intelligences, I advocate using a “3D card” project to inspire students' writing. A 3D card project incorporates sessions on organization's logo appreciation, discussion, letter design, slogan design, and 3D card making as well as a writing task. All of these steps provide students with background information on the topic. In this article, I use these steps to teach my diverse middle school students to design a logo and write a statement for a nonprofit organization.

Art Studio As Thinking Lab: Fostering Metacognition In Art Classrooms, Julia Marshall, Kimberley D'Adamo

Kimberley D'Adamo: Art, Curriculum, Publications, and Other Scholarly Works

What can high school art classes offer to both aspiring artists and students who have other interests and goals? Here’s an answer: thinking skills. Thinking skills are essential for all learners, and both art creation and encoun-tering art provide opportunities for complex thinking and, therefore, for honing conceptual skills. Beyond that, art experiences can spur students to reflect on how they think and to expand and refine their thinking. That is to say, art classes can cultivate metacognition.

This article pursues both trains of thought and describes how an art class can be an art thinking lab—a site for everyone …

Bringing Students Into The Picture: Teaching With Tableaux Vivants, Ellery E. Foutch

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This article explores a recent experiment in implementing tableaux vivants as a college-level art history assignment, in which students researched works of art and also assumed the pose, posture, and attributes of the work; students were also invited to reconceptualize and think transformatively about these historical works. Drawing upon the principles of Universal Design for Learning, the assignment offers an impetus for close looking, research, critical thinking, interpretation and creativity, and an engagement in metacognitive and embodied experiences, as will be demonstrated by the resulting assignments and students’ written self-reflections. While the assignment was originally designed for a course focused …

Dialogic Communication In The One-To-One Improvisation Lesson: A Qualitative Study, Leon R. De Bruin

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This qualitative study investigates the dialogic interactions between teacher and student that enhance learning and teaching within the one-to-one music improvisation lesson. This study analyses the ways teachers elicit student actions, thoughts and processes that develop student skills, critical and creative thinking processes necessary for improvisational development. Interactions and interplay between six Australian conservatoire improvisation students and their teachers were investigated. Data reveal dialogic interactions that span instruction, conversation, inquiry and enablement of student knowledge and skills that constitute a complex socio-cultural tapestry of discursive threads. Teacher-student interactions that activate desired creative student activity engage meta-cognitive processes and the cultivation …

The Art Of Reflection, Amy L. Ruopp, Mae Debruyn

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This writing shares a course designed to reconnect middle school students to the natural world. In reconnecting to nature while IN nature students are afforded the opportunity for deep reflection, and the space to wonder and realize the inter-connectivity between things. We highlight transformational thinking and feeling awareness as students’ connection with nature is expressed though art and writing while deeply immersed in the natural environment.