I AM Reflections (a/r/tographer), paper weaving, seminal papers, projectors, slides, installation of literary & research texts books, box of photographs, 2014 - 2016
Metaphor and Metonymy
As a/r/tographer, the artist-researcher-teacher selves are tangled as the artist writes, the researcher makes and the teacher does both, while instructing others to do the same. Exploring this narrative of tangled selves through metaphors and metonyms has opened new dialogue, new ways of understanding visual imagery and offered time to notice rhizomatic discourse differently. My artmaking practice invites the theoretical voices in my research community to create new dialogue with each other through problematising and theorising metaphors. Reminded that “visual imagery is never innocent; it is always constructed through various practices, technologies and knowledges” (Rose, 2001, p.32), some metaphors have developed into further work over years of this study, some explored for understanding and becoming. Each metaphor has framed a new way of seeing, and responding to learning and creativity through ideation and testing of ideas. “A/r/tography as a methodological process infuses understandings of metaphor and metonymy. Through metaphors and metonymic relationships, we make things sensible—that is, accessible to the senses” (Springgay, Irwin & Wilson Kind, 2005, p.904). Through folding, sewing and weaving all of my thinking, making and doing in some way together, I have continued the metaphoric conversation of portfolios, creativity and art education together in community and ensured that these metonyms are always relational, inter-related, not attached, but interwoven here in this site. The metaphors that have emerged and continue to develop and grow in and through this study have led to a becoming in a Deleuzoguattarian encounter of the rhizome. A rhizome that “connects any point to any other other point” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.21) in the journey.
Each metaphor that was explored early in this inquiry, opened new possibilities and led to another, feeding the idea from the centre of the rhizome. The central metaphor of this journey is that of a portfolio. A portfolio is a metaphorical image and metonymic concept. We all think and visualise different things when we hear the term portfolio or see the image of a folder, a symbol associated most commonly to visualise the concept. Based on our experiences with portfolios and with art we associate different meaning and attitudes. The common symbol for a portfolio is a folder, it is used in our visual language and represented in our use of technology. As a metonymic symbol, the portfolio is grounded in the collection of items as an image, it is not symbolised by a curated selection of this collection, represented as merely a space to hold items like a container, a vessel. My shift in this understanding for art education and educators is based on the use of visual metaphors to develop a clearer understanding of the pedagogy and praxis behind and within the portfolio. The central visual metaphor of this living inquiry is the wunderkammer as portfolio. The wunderkammer, is a cabinet of curiosity; a space to create place through the selection, collection and curation of objects through classification and categorisation. The wunderkammer creates a space between the arts and the sciences and offers an insight into how to design portfolios, display, archive and build a pedagogy of portfolios through the metaphor of a defined and compartmentalised set of adjoining spaces.
Each metaphor that was explored early in this inquiry, opened new possibilities and led to another, feeding the idea from the centre of the rhizome. The central metaphor of this journey is that of a portfolio. A portfolio is a metaphorical image and metonymic concept. We all think and visualise different things when we hear the term portfolio or see the image of a folder, a symbol associated most commonly to visualise the concept. Based on our experiences with portfolios and with art we associate different meaning and attitudes. The common symbol for a portfolio is a folder, it is used in our visual language and represented in our use of technology. As a metonymic symbol, the portfolio is grounded in the collection of items as an image, it is not symbolised by a curated selection of this collection, represented as merely a space to hold items like a container, a vessel. My shift in this understanding for art education and educators is based on the use of visual metaphors to develop a clearer understanding of the pedagogy and praxis behind and within the portfolio. The central visual metaphor of this living inquiry is the wunderkammer as portfolio. The wunderkammer, is a cabinet of curiosity; a space to create place through the selection, collection and curation of objects through classification and categorisation. The wunderkammer creates a space between the arts and the sciences and offers an insight into how to design portfolios, display, archive and build a pedagogy of portfolios through the metaphor of a defined and compartmentalised set of adjoining spaces.
“As educators we must become the significant others in their journeys of learning who listen to their stories, enable the retelling of their stories to help them establish a sense of self and a sense of place in the world. We must provide them with the examples of others who have followed creative pathways and put before them the stories of those who have lived their lives in creative ways” (Flood, 2010, p.8).
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What if we explicitly enabled metacognitive and creative pedagogies through our learning design by developing a storied curriculum to notice the common threads in our practice? What if we invited learners to focus on developing, designing and documenting the creative process as well as they do the creative product?
Sketches for new keys to the cities that have unlocked learning for me.
The skylines of Denver, Sydney, Venice, Boston and Melbourne.
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Just as I have always felt learning to be, Alice found herself at the bottom of the rabbit warren, in front of her led a curious hall with many locked doors. Sitting on a table close by was a small brass key. A key to a door too small for her to fit through. Upon turning the key and opening the small door, Alice found a beautiful floral garden with green grass and roses that she wanted to explore.
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The metaphors that are implied in a/r/tography and those that have helped me to map my explorations as artist, researcher and teacher, that of cartography, rhizomes and weaving are symbolically threaded throughout this study and explored here as methodology. They are all embedded in my praxis, while reflection on the metonyms of a/r/tographic practice have allowed me to organise and categorise my thinking through making and writing. I explore them here to develop the pedagogical through metaphor. Making metaphoric artworks have opened creative possibilities to explore, create new discourse and to personalise my knowledge while creating new ideas and actions as a researcher and teacher and curriculum writer. “Art impacts us in profound ways not previously understood. There are serious implications for how we might teach, learn, conduct and share research most effectively. These are primary drivers of the arts-based research movement” (Leavy, 2014).
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Reflection (One of the many trips to Geelong), 2013
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My developing story continues through the chapters of Alice, as a guide, a mapping of my continued quest for learning about what an artist thinks a portfolio reflects about practice and process and what we can learn from artist portfolios to inform art education. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) suggest, a map has "multiple entryways" (p. 12). It can be cut, torn, reworked and collaged in new spaces. A new rhizome can form in a new space, begin again. "The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to contacting modification" ( p.12). This ongoing quest to map this a/r/tographic exploration and living inquiry is inspired by many people, at what has felt like mad tea parties over the last ten years. The mapping follows the lines of the journey. This is a shared journey through story, conversations, art, reflection, meetings and serendipitous moments of discovery that have led to new understandings of self, new and clearer interpretations about the role that portfolios play in establishing an understanding of self and always reminded me why I am doing this; to create a place to demonstrate the potential of personalised portfolios in art education for creativity.
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“A metaphor sets one thing beside another and says, ‘see, they have the same form’ Which is to say: They make the same gesture; they mean in the same way…Metaphor is one way of showing how patterns of meaning in the world intersect and echo one another” (Zwicky, 2003, p.6). The metaphors of the nomadic journey and storyteller have continued to nag at me in wonderland. Through a/r/ts based research my voice, artmaking, experiences, reflections and conversations have woven their way through this study as it progresses autobiographically with Alice. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures Underground in 1864 (Ciezarek, 2015) and my unfolding relationship seems all the more fitting as my new city celebrated the 150-year anniversary of the book through a number of exhibitions and events in 2015. Just as Deleuze and Guattari suggest the metaphor of the map for rhizomes, I too use the metonym of mapping and cartography (Irwin, 2013) for becoming a/r/tographer through creativity in this Portfolio. The mapping of this inquiry, in this curated cabinet of wonder as Portfolio is an important aspect of becoming, where I weave a/r/tefacts together.
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Being in wonderland is like having two lives, I live one where I inhabit physically the space of teacher, mother and researcher. I live another as artist, explorer and accidental ethnographer. I have continued to fall further down the rabbit hole since my Fulbright Teaching Scholarship in 2005 where I was an Arts Integration teacher at Horizon High School. I never went back to art teaching full time in high schools after the fall, I wanted to learn more about why art was important in schools and why art matters in our learners lives. Am I Alice? or am I similarly on a quest? Like Alice, my new world asks me to look through new selves, new identities, hear different voices and see new ideas on the journey. |
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“Metaphor is essentially the transference of meaning from one symbol (the topic) to another symbol (the vehicle). The metaphor "down the rabbit hole" reflects transference in which one thing is understood in terms of another. We may understand this metaphor as an adventure into the unknown, where the topic (a mysterious adventure) is "seen-as" the vehicle (down the rabbit hole)” (Morey, 2011, p.18).
Just as an ePortfolio enables a learning story and narrative to be told through artefacts and objects, a digital portfolio is composed of artefacts and digital objects that represent both creative process and product of practice in an open environment, unbound by technological walls and systems. The digital is boundary-less, open and multi-modal. Metaphors enable the pedagogy of a digital portfolio to reflect the image of personalised learning spaces beyond classroom educational technology environments. To take this metaphor further, portfolios offer a personal space to design, build and own in the digital architecture of the internet. Portfolios are a digital personalised space that is selected by the designer, for the context and purpose in which it best suits. Digital sites have altered our learning spaces, opening opportunities for learning and teaching in rhizomatic and relational places. What interests me most as an art educator is the affordances of digital learning spaces for multi-modal artefacts and how reflection on evidence of learning is considered when converting format for the digital. The participants of this inquiry have presented how digital portfolios as sites, have allowed them to diversify their form of exhibition and multiply the different perspectives of their stories to a range of audiences.
In art education, the digital world opens the possibilities for students to learn about themselves as contemporary artists in new spaces beyond the studio or school, while developing an understanding of sustained practice through creativity in the digital environment. The digital is both an interesting metaphor and metonym itself just as portfolio is a loaded term, as is digital. What does learning look like in the digital space for art education? How do we learn about art in the digital age? Where will the digital turn take us? Digital portfolios are an opening in art education to integrate, diversity and design future learning that is personalised and collaborative, creative and critical, temporal and experiential. Learning that goes beyond the physical walls and out into others.
When I fell down the rabbit hole into wonderland on this journey to develop a storied curriculum as Portfolio, I wanted to develop something pedagogical to support my art teacher colleagues. Underlying that necessity or passion was always the learner, learning to learn as artist. I could see my own artist son, with works all over his room and in our study. Disparate works to him without the knowledge to see the connections in his genre and continued narrative of works he began as a child. If only he had been asked to collect and curate these works, reflecting critically as an auto-ethnographer and curator, gazing back and forward at his artist narrative, making connection through seeing the common threads in his practice and developing an understanding of praxis as an artist-student. This reflective practice through critical engagement with his work, before he set out on his artmaking journey in Senior school, would have allowed him time to see his continued and recurring signs and symbols, notice the obvious influences and reflect on this art making practice before starting to develop his final senior body of work.
If my continued fall into Wonderland was to mean something, I needed to create my own Portfolio and share what I have learnt through a life of learning and reading across disciplinary areas and fields. Developing this storied curriculum to support art education students to design and develop digital places to present and curate their creative practice throughout the learning journey became the aim of this study and this Portfolio. As my mentors have led before, a/r/tography is “concerned with self study, being in community, relational and ethical inquiry” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p.xix). As a/r/tographer, I seek to provide new knowledge in art education through an exploration of creativity, curation and identity, and to share through authentic voice how a digital portfolio for an artist provides space to present and story practice to many audiences through placemaking.
When I fell down the rabbit hole into wonderland on this journey to develop a storied curriculum as Portfolio, I wanted to develop something pedagogical to support my art teacher colleagues. Underlying that necessity or passion was always the learner, learning to learn as artist. I could see my own artist son, with works all over his room and in our study. Disparate works to him without the knowledge to see the connections in his genre and continued narrative of works he began as a child. If only he had been asked to collect and curate these works, reflecting critically as an auto-ethnographer and curator, gazing back and forward at his artist narrative, making connection through seeing the common threads in his practice and developing an understanding of praxis as an artist-student. This reflective practice through critical engagement with his work, before he set out on his artmaking journey in Senior school, would have allowed him time to see his continued and recurring signs and symbols, notice the obvious influences and reflect on this art making practice before starting to develop his final senior body of work.
If my continued fall into Wonderland was to mean something, I needed to create my own Portfolio and share what I have learnt through a life of learning and reading across disciplinary areas and fields. Developing this storied curriculum to support art education students to design and develop digital places to present and curate their creative practice throughout the learning journey became the aim of this study and this Portfolio. As my mentors have led before, a/r/tography is “concerned with self study, being in community, relational and ethical inquiry” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p.xix). As a/r/tographer, I seek to provide new knowledge in art education through an exploration of creativity, curation and identity, and to share through authentic voice how a digital portfolio for an artist provides space to present and story practice to many audiences through placemaking.
The garden is a wonderful sight of learning for me. As a metaphor for portfolios, it is representative of a site/sight that needs to be tenderly taken care of routinely. This Portfolio has been slowly and carefully curated, designed and composed from my digital collections of text, ethnographic video, reflections and visual ethnography (Pink, 2001, Biklen, 1995). Pages are developed for spatial contiguity, to create coherence and clarity for the reader. I have planned, arranged and designed each page to speak and reference other rooms and spaces in the Portfolio. This garden needs constant watering, pruning and re-planting of crops and flowers. If it is not taken care of, visitors rarely return. The garden may become overrun with weeds, left to sit with no new planting, or no new things to see or learn about. A tendered portfolio garden is managed, planned and taken care of, curated and re-curated, re-composed and re-presented for the audience and the self to improve and increase growth. Portfolios are merely collections of digital objects and artefacts, they are not engaging, coherent and contiguous spaces without ongoing development, maintenance and a coherent clear narrative curated through place-making. Portfolio curation is developed through reflection, reflection on and in action, firstly for the self and then for an audience. It is upon curation as reflection on praxis that a portfolio is able to shift the sight toward the self to see the connections and common threads through reflection in action of the curation, that portfolios have the potential to show the artist as creator and designer what they can do.
A/r/tography has provided new insights into how I see myself and the stories of my memories through metonymy. This insight into becoming and being a/r/tographer like Alice’s journey, is serendipitous. The story of Alice in Wonderland is one that I have been drawn to since childhood and continued to play a significant aspect in my high school teaching, where I was able to share the stories of the Antipodeans (Smith, 1975) and together with my students, look at how Blackman as a Modernist shared his surreal and personal iterations of the story for his wife Barbara. The story of Alice has been a continuously returning metaphor in my artist-teacher life, offering me a place to explore and revisit like an old friend in curriculum writing. I have many copies of Alice books I have collected over decades. I taught artwork and artists inspired by Alice and her adventures each year to Year 9 girls to satisfy my love of Alice and develop bodies of work related to memory, metaphor and identity, as girls approached their understanding of self differently, now as adolescents and young women. It seems a little indulgent to say that the adventures of Alice metaphorically represents or signify aspects of my life, however, “given the personal characteristic of auto ethnography, the auto ethnographer, can not leave the metaphoric field, we can not easily run away from our identities and colleagues, friends and family” (Leavy, 2014, p.281).
A/r/tographic practice as a form of cartography, is the creative mapping of the rhizomatic connections and possibilities of the lines of light, a metaphoric understanding of the layers, borders and boundaries in which we re-search. Mapping the pathways of this journey, has allowed me to consider the roads travelled as a nomad in this relational space where I seek to create connection and transformation through this curated collection as a thesis as currere. To do this mapping, Alice and her adventures in wonderland have guided this storied exploration as artist-researcher, while the image of clouds have guided my artist-teacher self journey.
A/r/tography has provided new insights into how I see myself and the stories of my memories through metonymy. This insight into becoming and being a/r/tographer like Alice’s journey, is serendipitous. The story of Alice in Wonderland is one that I have been drawn to since childhood and continued to play a significant aspect in my high school teaching, where I was able to share the stories of the Antipodeans (Smith, 1975) and together with my students, look at how Blackman as a Modernist shared his surreal and personal iterations of the story for his wife Barbara. The story of Alice has been a continuously returning metaphor in my artist-teacher life, offering me a place to explore and revisit like an old friend in curriculum writing. I have many copies of Alice books I have collected over decades. I taught artwork and artists inspired by Alice and her adventures each year to Year 9 girls to satisfy my love of Alice and develop bodies of work related to memory, metaphor and identity, as girls approached their understanding of self differently, now as adolescents and young women. It seems a little indulgent to say that the adventures of Alice metaphorically represents or signify aspects of my life, however, “given the personal characteristic of auto ethnography, the auto ethnographer, can not leave the metaphoric field, we can not easily run away from our identities and colleagues, friends and family” (Leavy, 2014, p.281).
A/r/tographic practice as a form of cartography, is the creative mapping of the rhizomatic connections and possibilities of the lines of light, a metaphoric understanding of the layers, borders and boundaries in which we re-search. Mapping the pathways of this journey, has allowed me to consider the roads travelled as a nomad in this relational space where I seek to create connection and transformation through this curated collection as a thesis as currere. To do this mapping, Alice and her adventures in wonderland have guided this storied exploration as artist-researcher, while the image of clouds have guided my artist-teacher self journey.
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Cloud Collecting
The metaphor of cloud collecting - collecting the ephemeral and uncollectable in artist portfolios is an important aspect of my a/r/t practice. When you stop and look, really stop, and see the clouds above you - the world stops. Clouds are constantly moving, morphing and changing. The light, texture and shape of clouds trigger memories, places and stories. For me, they contain possibilities, provocations for my thinking, reflections, stories and memories. I try to capture clouds because they are for me, one of the hardest things to capture, to collect. Clouds are ephemeral, mysterious, and metaphoric. Teaching cloud capturing in the early years of secondary art education can ask students to stop, look and continue with their exploration of the world through seeing, noticing, differently. There comes a time when a student stops looking, stops noticing. Learning to see as an artist through metaphors is an important part of our teaching in art. |
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I have photographed clouds for a long time. One of my favourite painters, Georgia O’Keefe painted the clouds of New Mexico that I did not truly understand until I stood in them. Many artists have felt as much passion as I about clouds, from their visual symbolism and metaphoric association, to their ability to make us feel small as humans. Clouds have the power to make us see new things, explore new ideas and think creatively, if only for a moment. This is why I have such an affinity for them as a metaphor for learning and seeing as artist. My own cloud zines and cloud photographs are pedagogical tools for teaching, using the cloud as a way to look, notice and pay attention to the world around us. Clouds do this for me as a researcher, they ask that I centre my thoughts and redirect my thinking from the jumbled mess to a more layered bricolage. |
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Using visual metaphors as method to explore portfolios
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Many artists use portfolios, some process oriented, many product based, some keep them neat and tidy and ready to show, others keep boxes, some collections in corners of their studios. I know as an artist what they bring to new artists in the community when you curate both process and product together, to develop a habit of mind for collecting, selecting and curating a portfolio through sustained practice. To understand this and explore with me, I ask you to step into this metaphoric wonderland with me and consider what the artist diary, collection of artworks and reflection on process and product might look like when designed in one digital portfolio as a curated body of work. Through the design and presentation of a digital exhibition of artwork, composed and created as a digital artist monograph, as a digital solo show. To achieve this, metaphors found in wonderland can be helpful for understanding the potential of portfolios and designing learning for creativity in the digital.
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Wunderkammern
The wunderkammer “first emerged in the late sixteenth century known as ‘Cabinets of curiosity’, which included natural marvels, religious relics, works of art, and antiquities, among other things. These objects were often gathered on expeditions and trading voyages, and reveal the fascinations and preoccupations of the Age of Discovery. Wunderkammern were intended to be a microcosm of the broader world and are acknowledged as Early Modern precursors to the contemporary museum” (MacKinnon, Poore & Helmrich, 2015, NPN).
The wunderkammer “first emerged in the late sixteenth century known as ‘Cabinets of curiosity’, which included natural marvels, religious relics, works of art, and antiquities, among other things. These objects were often gathered on expeditions and trading voyages, and reveal the fascinations and preoccupations of the Age of Discovery. Wunderkammern were intended to be a microcosm of the broader world and are acknowledged as Early Modern precursors to the contemporary museum” (MacKinnon, Poore & Helmrich, 2015, NPN).
In 2009 I visited the the Fortuny Museum, located in the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice Italy. The show In-Finitum was an Axel Vervoordt living curated wunderkammer, selected from his collections, curated inside and alongside the Fortuny collection. The rooms were dark with spotlights on work to highlight juxtapositions or connections made, the blinds drawn, you were immersed in the collection and connections you began to make as you narrated your path. The sound was minimal and the audience was immersed and embodied the explorer. All around the rooms, up and down stairs were artefacts, from a range of centuries, a range of finishes and contexts, displayed, archived and arranged in dialogic ways to create new discourse between art, object, image and audience. I am unable to recall single pieces, what I recollect was the beginning of a love affair of being within a cabinet of curiosity rather than peering in on one.
“From the Renaissance to the French Revolution, the cabinet of curiosities displayed disparate objects in a single place. Our culture continues to gather diverse objects in one setting” (Davenne, 2011, p. 6) and the wunderkammer is a relational curated space that many contemporary artists have played with as a postmodern and post structural art concept. Teaching metaphors such as the wunderkammer is one way of deconstructing and constructing the self as artist-curator in portfolios. The metaphor of the cabinet of curiosity is a multi-layered one. Just as the object itself represents historically, I explore my a/r/t self through the visual metaphor of the cabinet of wonder, while developing pedagogy for portfolios based upon the same image. As a metaphor it shifts and morphs its representation and associations dependent on the role that the viewer receives the message, that of artist, researcher, teacher or that of curator. The curator of the wunderkammer is the creator; the designer of systems and spaces, drawing connections and interconnections through the collection and curation of the objects and artefacts. I take this metaphor from my a/r/tographer self to visually represent digital portfolios. They too are wunderkammers, digital collection spaces where the possibilities to draw connections between object and artefacts is in the hands of the artist and the beholder. A space to create and curate place in compartments to create dialogue and discourse through relational aesthetics. These digital cabinets of wonder are designed around collections of artefacts, curated as new forms of relational exhibition. A digital portfolio as a cabinet of curiosity is a space, where both process and product interplay, where the curated artefacts speak with the past and the present and create dialogue across a body of work with the audience, relationally. It is not often that an artist sees all of their work all displayed in one space, in one large room, curated by themselves. “Today, we are witnessing a dilution of border: The curator and the artist are combining their missions, the former proposing organizing principles, and the later depending on the museum to legitimize his work” (Davenne, 2011, p. 9). The borderlands of a/r/tography similarly dissolve here.
“From the Renaissance to the French Revolution, the cabinet of curiosities displayed disparate objects in a single place. Our culture continues to gather diverse objects in one setting” (Davenne, 2011, p. 6) and the wunderkammer is a relational curated space that many contemporary artists have played with as a postmodern and post structural art concept. Teaching metaphors such as the wunderkammer is one way of deconstructing and constructing the self as artist-curator in portfolios. The metaphor of the cabinet of curiosity is a multi-layered one. Just as the object itself represents historically, I explore my a/r/t self through the visual metaphor of the cabinet of wonder, while developing pedagogy for portfolios based upon the same image. As a metaphor it shifts and morphs its representation and associations dependent on the role that the viewer receives the message, that of artist, researcher, teacher or that of curator. The curator of the wunderkammer is the creator; the designer of systems and spaces, drawing connections and interconnections through the collection and curation of the objects and artefacts. I take this metaphor from my a/r/tographer self to visually represent digital portfolios. They too are wunderkammers, digital collection spaces where the possibilities to draw connections between object and artefacts is in the hands of the artist and the beholder. A space to create and curate place in compartments to create dialogue and discourse through relational aesthetics. These digital cabinets of wonder are designed around collections of artefacts, curated as new forms of relational exhibition. A digital portfolio as a cabinet of curiosity is a space, where both process and product interplay, where the curated artefacts speak with the past and the present and create dialogue across a body of work with the audience, relationally. It is not often that an artist sees all of their work all displayed in one space, in one large room, curated by themselves. “Today, we are witnessing a dilution of border: The curator and the artist are combining their missions, the former proposing organizing principles, and the later depending on the museum to legitimize his work” (Davenne, 2011, p. 9). The borderlands of a/r/tography similarly dissolve here.
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Portfolios invite independent reflection on the process in a body of work, and they enable synthesis of knowledge through the curation of artefacts while narrating process and practice through visual and textual connections. Portfolios offer a site, a space to notice, within a curated and designed place that highlights and reifies the common threads of practice through the display of work in an iterative reflection cycle. This iterative process of curation, reflection, selection, curation and rhizomatic writing forces the gaze inward, you are affected. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) tell us, "affects are becomings" (p.299). Through the teaching of personal narrative, autobiographical writing, metacognition and curated portfolios as sites of wonder, as metaphors of the learning journey, we can scaffold and guide our artist-students toward critical self-awareness and understanding of the self as learner, maker, writer and creative through a relational understanding of creativity.
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I am increasingly interested in designing learning that invites creative practitioners to use reflection and portfolio driven pedagogies to enable learners to see the common threads in their practice, through sustained deep personalised learning. As an artist, researcher and teacher I am committed to providing spaces and places to notice for becoming. To notice the multiplicities of creativity through practice, and to notice through reflection on the creative process how the common threads weave their way through works over time. For me, as Carl Leggo so eloquently shared, “pedagogy is about transformation” (2008, p.9). My understanding of creativity in art education is based on my own metaphoric reflection on this transformation through praxis. How I choose to engage in art, as a researcher and teacher is woven with these common threads, and intertwined in my identity as a creative practitioner.
Collecting the a/r/t of metaphor
“Through metaphor, both the artist and the viewer engage in a complex epistemological process involving somatic and cognitive understanding” (Morey, 2011, p.18).
As Lakoff (1993) suggests, “the metaphor is not just a matter of language, but of thought and reason” (p.208) where relationships between stories, ideas and experiences may be found to further strengthen my understanding of identity and inform art education and portfolio practice through creative expression. Black (2011) furthers, metaphors “can be used as a backdrop for in-depth understanding of problematic situations” (p.70). In art education, we strive for learning to be authentic, invite criticality and consider ways in which students respond to and connect to the world through art making as audience, artists and researchers. We teach our students to develop and see solutions to problems, ideate and test ideas as art makers. Through the use of metaphors as the “phenomenon of 'seeing-as'" (Zwicky, 2003) learning, we can create openings for creative learning and teaching, while creating relationships between ideas, concepts, themes and problems in the world that foster creativity in artmaking and responding. Flood (2013) reminds us that “the use of metaphor in a story can provide new ways of interpreting actions, ideas or situations” (p.27). By inviting metaphors into learning and teaching in art education, we can facilitate the capturing of our phenomenological experience of the world and artworld. “Metaphors provide an opening, acting as conduits to experience. The meanings of metaphors shift depending upon contextual factors during the participation of the artist and viewer” (Morey, 2011, p.24). Metaphors can provide opportunities to make connections between ideas, objects and actions as an artist and as a curator.
As Lakoff (1993) suggests, “the metaphor is not just a matter of language, but of thought and reason” (p.208) where relationships between stories, ideas and experiences may be found to further strengthen my understanding of identity and inform art education and portfolio practice through creative expression. Black (2011) furthers, metaphors “can be used as a backdrop for in-depth understanding of problematic situations” (p.70). In art education, we strive for learning to be authentic, invite criticality and consider ways in which students respond to and connect to the world through art making as audience, artists and researchers. We teach our students to develop and see solutions to problems, ideate and test ideas as art makers. Through the use of metaphors as the “phenomenon of 'seeing-as'" (Zwicky, 2003) learning, we can create openings for creative learning and teaching, while creating relationships between ideas, concepts, themes and problems in the world that foster creativity in artmaking and responding. Flood (2013) reminds us that “the use of metaphor in a story can provide new ways of interpreting actions, ideas or situations” (p.27). By inviting metaphors into learning and teaching in art education, we can facilitate the capturing of our phenomenological experience of the world and artworld. “Metaphors provide an opening, acting as conduits to experience. The meanings of metaphors shift depending upon contextual factors during the participation of the artist and viewer” (Morey, 2011, p.24). Metaphors can provide opportunities to make connections between ideas, objects and actions as an artist and as a curator.
Can secondary visual art students benefit from structured, curricular support for the building of artist identity through digital portfolios?
"The power of metaphor lies in its potential to further our understanding of the meaning of experience, which in turn defines reality” (Feinstein, 1982, p. 45). We can learn from the collection of visual metaphors the underlying skills, abilities and possible competencies in portfolio development and thinking. Making metaphor essential in art education fulfills the goal of students learning to think and practice as artists (Alter, 2010) and learn from artists metaphors of experience and embodied practice to understand how they articulate their digital identity and practice within their portfolios. Thus, assisting our students to develop a coherent artistic identity as they establish their self worth and self confidence as artists. This inquiry has sought to re-frame and re-contextualise the curated digital portfolio in the art world, while substantiating the impact that they have in an early career artist’s life in the establishment of a professional and digital identity in their art education. To design a curriculum for portfolio pedagogy, the themes and concepts need to be personal, invite a mirror to the self through reflexive and reflective practice, for our students to bring their creativity to the fore through experiential learning, problem solving and storytelling of experiences and memories through new knowledge in ideation, media and materials. My invitation to the artist co-participants in the inquiry had this aim in mind, to gather and collect their visual metaphors as both pedagogical tools for teachers and students to learn from and as a guide for artist-students to develop metaphors as an entry to mapping an understanding of art practice and portfolio curation. I extended the provocation of the co-participant's narrative participation to include the development of two new artworks for this currere:
My rhizomatic method of analysis is as an a/r/tographer, through the lenses of a/r/t, therefore, I have not completed a metaphor analysis. Rather viewing these metaphors as cultural images of experiences, as embodied knowledge shared with my community as guides curated amongst this curriculums lines of flight.
"The power of metaphor lies in its potential to further our understanding of the meaning of experience, which in turn defines reality” (Feinstein, 1982, p. 45). We can learn from the collection of visual metaphors the underlying skills, abilities and possible competencies in portfolio development and thinking. Making metaphor essential in art education fulfills the goal of students learning to think and practice as artists (Alter, 2010) and learn from artists metaphors of experience and embodied practice to understand how they articulate their digital identity and practice within their portfolios. Thus, assisting our students to develop a coherent artistic identity as they establish their self worth and self confidence as artists. This inquiry has sought to re-frame and re-contextualise the curated digital portfolio in the art world, while substantiating the impact that they have in an early career artist’s life in the establishment of a professional and digital identity in their art education. To design a curriculum for portfolio pedagogy, the themes and concepts need to be personal, invite a mirror to the self through reflexive and reflective practice, for our students to bring their creativity to the fore through experiential learning, problem solving and storytelling of experiences and memories through new knowledge in ideation, media and materials. My invitation to the artist co-participants in the inquiry had this aim in mind, to gather and collect their visual metaphors as both pedagogical tools for teachers and students to learn from and as a guide for artist-students to develop metaphors as an entry to mapping an understanding of art practice and portfolio curation. I extended the provocation of the co-participant's narrative participation to include the development of two new artworks for this currere:
- A visual metaphor of your own digital artist identity,
- A visual metaphor of your own digital portfolio.
My rhizomatic method of analysis is as an a/r/tographer, through the lenses of a/r/t, therefore, I have not completed a metaphor analysis. Rather viewing these metaphors as cultural images of experiences, as embodied knowledge shared with my community as guides curated amongst this curriculums lines of flight.
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American photo media artist Pamela Frandina's metaphor is reflective of the issues we face as artists in digital spaces. Pamela shared this narrative with me about 'Artifacts and Mementos', it "visually expresses the current state of my online portfolio. Due to extenuating circumstances, I've been unable to access the website, thereby eliminating possibility of current updates. As a result, the website could be likened to a leftover past-era relic ... one that showcases a decades worth of old creative pursuits, with individual pages for visual mementos of favored projects. The original purpose of the website was to showcase ongoing fine art and exhibition work. A second web domain was purchased for eventual development of a separate website (to feature work from other photo genres ... lifestyles, travel, animals, etc.). Nevertheless, for the time being, both websites sit stagnant, waiting for recovery of important files from the failed external hard drive. The image pictures a diverse mix of analog and digital cameras, heaped into a non-discriminatory pile, where all manufacturer brands are presented as equal. This collection of cameras symbolizes the vast mix of subjects, technical experimentation, and momentary captures encompassed by the totality of my creative work. Additionally, the cameras represent the passing of time as presented through the evolution of photo process and equipment .... time that continues to pass as the website sits idle ... a remnant from a more productive phase, and reminder to what I must get back to."
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Flávia Pedrosa Vasconcelos is an A/r/tographer from Brazil, in South America. Flavia came to this study through Facebook, accepting my open call to artists online with digital portfolios to join this inquiry. We spoke on two recorded Skype calls and online in Facebook. She was working on her own a/r/tographic dissertation when we connected online and became online friends and colleagues. In 2015, Flavia sent me her “visual narrative of microscopic particles of wine. I think that it is how I see my portfolio/artist web space, it’s mix of different possibilities, not afraid of how they could appear, the lines can be anywhere and any color, the density and space are experienced from mental images, intuition and perception.” |
Flávia Pedrosa Vasconcelos, Microscopic particles of wine, 2015
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The power of this metaphor lies in its cartographic association for developing an understanding of how one image can indicate and represent something else. Just as the wudnerkammern is a metaphor for my portfolio association, visually and rhetorically. Flavia’s tapestry like rhizomes are interconnected, woven and multilayered as are her portfolios that represent a number of contexts and audiences that she lives and works within as a lecturer, arts based researcher and visual artist.
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As a participant of the inquiry, I too created a metaphor for the identity I have developed in my online portfolio sites and what these spaces indicate in my practice. My visual metaphor is an image of my entangled selves, resting with traveller’s pack on, looking back. I have my head turned over my shoulder while holding an artist sketchbook. The pack is a large one, like the pack I backpacked overseas with in my early twenties, a pack that you live out of that carries all your worldly possessions, rolled and stacked together. A heavy laden traveller’s backpack, is filled with stories, memories and objects collected over time, carefully selected because there is little room for memorabilia. This pack is overfilled and lumpy, carried proudly with shoes hanging off and a rolled up sleep mat on the side. If you’ve ever packed one of these, you know that you have to pack carefully, consider each piece and where it will lie, where its next use will be and then how closely it goes to the top if needed in the next day or two.
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Australian artist Pamela Griffith is connected to my artist community by a number of threads. Her participation in this inquiry led from a Design colleague that I worked with at the University of New South Wales. Her mother, a prominent artist had an extensive online portfolio and digital archive of her work and was interested in sharing her story. When we connected, Pamela and I had more threads in common than I imagined. We spent the afternoon together at her Sydney home and studio one hot summer afternoon. My mother and Pamela had studied only years apart at the same institution, the National Art School, she was friends and colleagues with some of my own friends and colleagues, and we had interconnected and overlapping education, careers and interests as feminist artists and educators. Pamela is one of Australia’s best known printmakers and runs the famous Griffith Print Studios in Sydney’s south and she is a leader in supporting new and upcoming artists start their careers. “Pamela’s vision was to create a professional printmaking studio in Sydney, where she could facilitate the production of prints of the highest technical standards for professional artists. Griffith Studio and Graphic Workshop was not to be financed by government grants, nor was it to be a print seller, or attached to a commercial gallery. The focus was on providing artists (many who had not produced prints) with the technical support they needed to create a printing matrix, and then to supply the services of skilled printers to produce the editions” (Butler, 2003, NPN). Pamela’s studio and print rooms are exquisite, clean, well designed and professional, and invite you as a visitor to participate in her dream of artist living and working throughout their lives as Artists. She invites many Australian and international artists to print here and it is a renowned site for printmakers and artists working in the medium for a series. Her artist portfolio is not the only digital site she maintains, a joint portfolio for the studio is also online at Edition Prints.
Edition Print Australia, screenshot, 2016
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In 2015, Pamela sent me her visual metaphor with the following narrative: “I have shown myself working on my current project. An exhibition, like the one that I am preparing for, will be two years in the making. My following audience will think I have gone off the air or succumbed to old age if I do not keep up the news on my website. On my website I can talk about my many different projects that come up, as well as the big one that takes time to prepare. I can also sell work from it to underwrite the cost of the big show. My work in progress lets me show pictures of me in action so that my audience can come along with me and share the thrills of creation. I would like to do this better than I currently do but sadly all this technology takes time out of my creating images" |
Transforming Nature, Pamela Griffith, 2015
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Pamela's correspondence continues. "Recently I made two books in the photo album style and I sent them to a client who wanted to browse all my still life images for a calendar of events for the National Trust. The ladies browsing it are not all that familiar with making books or using the internet so this was helpful and will give me a lot of publicity if it comes off. Often I refer groups like this to my website to make up their minds which is why I have so many images of sold work there. I have videos of myself working and of various exhibitions but I will have to make the time to put them up for me following to enjoy.
The biggest cost to me is time not money although that is always a thing that has to be taken into account. I actually see the website as taking over from the expensive ads and glossy brochures that I have produced in times gone by. Often my site makes life easy for me as clients or prospective clients can contact me after looking at the website and then they are more informed. Many people who inherit my work or buy second hand go there to learn more about me which does not translate into sales but keeps my reputation going. It is nice to be helpful. I am always obliging to the people who take the time to communicate with me.
My next step as my big show approaches will be to tweet images and put some on Instagram and also use Facebook. It is too soon to do that because none of the many works that I have made are ready to be photographed. I like to hoard them for a while and tweak them so that when they go on display they will be shown at their best. I hope to build interest in my show by showing some works being created. I will make a film of this activity as I like to give something away on my website and a demonstration of technique can be useful to visitors to the site if they are amateur artists who I have taught in the past or newcomers who are interested in my style.
I have an exhibition coming up at a golf club in October so this will become news. It is of no importance to my career but will earn me a few dollars and keep the website active if I do some publicity for this. I have a number of projects on the go and these may also appear on the website soon. An artist does not do one thing only. One has to survive and remain connected to the real world. It is lonely in the workshop. This is a condition that I do not enjoy because I get too many interruptions, but my web site does allow me to connect with like minded people even if it is only a virtual connection.
Here I am depicted using my digital camera to take a photograph of a commonplace and humorous cockatoo. My lens is powerful and the bird is ridiculously close to the lens. Like the sticky beak that this bird is, it is leaning forward to look at me just as I am peering into its personal space.
By inserting the magnificent and noble sea eagle in a frame I am making a metaphor about how an artist can transform, or gild a lily. I would call this work “Transforming Nature” because once I have done my research I am able to transform the image taken digitally and turn it into anything that takes my fancy. The cockatoo becomes an eagle”.
The biggest cost to me is time not money although that is always a thing that has to be taken into account. I actually see the website as taking over from the expensive ads and glossy brochures that I have produced in times gone by. Often my site makes life easy for me as clients or prospective clients can contact me after looking at the website and then they are more informed. Many people who inherit my work or buy second hand go there to learn more about me which does not translate into sales but keeps my reputation going. It is nice to be helpful. I am always obliging to the people who take the time to communicate with me.
My next step as my big show approaches will be to tweet images and put some on Instagram and also use Facebook. It is too soon to do that because none of the many works that I have made are ready to be photographed. I like to hoard them for a while and tweak them so that when they go on display they will be shown at their best. I hope to build interest in my show by showing some works being created. I will make a film of this activity as I like to give something away on my website and a demonstration of technique can be useful to visitors to the site if they are amateur artists who I have taught in the past or newcomers who are interested in my style.
I have an exhibition coming up at a golf club in October so this will become news. It is of no importance to my career but will earn me a few dollars and keep the website active if I do some publicity for this. I have a number of projects on the go and these may also appear on the website soon. An artist does not do one thing only. One has to survive and remain connected to the real world. It is lonely in the workshop. This is a condition that I do not enjoy because I get too many interruptions, but my web site does allow me to connect with like minded people even if it is only a virtual connection.
Here I am depicted using my digital camera to take a photograph of a commonplace and humorous cockatoo. My lens is powerful and the bird is ridiculously close to the lens. Like the sticky beak that this bird is, it is leaning forward to look at me just as I am peering into its personal space.
By inserting the magnificent and noble sea eagle in a frame I am making a metaphor about how an artist can transform, or gild a lily. I would call this work “Transforming Nature” because once I have done my research I am able to transform the image taken digitally and turn it into anything that takes my fancy. The cockatoo becomes an eagle”.
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The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed Alice in a languid, sleepy voice. “Who are you?” said the caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation Alice thought. She replied, rather shyly, “I – I hardly know, Sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” |
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A digital portfolio is as Pamela Griffith suggests, a place of change. A site to share your practice with an audience, to reflect on practice and develop an understanding of audience. For our secondary art students this is an opening. An opening to see art praxis where knowledge of art theory as writing and history and art making meet, to experience in a real world setting what it is that artists do as sustained creative practitioners. A digital portfolio is a relational space for creativity, learning, researching and presenting practice, a site that allows the artist to be in a constant state of creative becoming while the audience connect and draw connections between works and themselves. For art educators, the portfolio is a pedagogy that supports becoming through a digital turn and a creative turn in learning. It is here that we can support our artist-students to develop a deep understanding of the role that art plays in the contemporary relational and globalised world at the same time as developing an understanding of self through ongoing reflection and curation of practice. As Flood (2010) reminds me, as art educators we are “directly concerned with the construction of identity in those we teach.” (p.1). “We are significant people who can create opportunities for the emotional and intellectual growth of an individual; thereby supporting them to become a productive and contributing person within a community” (p.1). I believe in the value of the visual arts in learning, teaching and research to develop sense making skills to tap into the self and “into issues that are otherwise out of reach and reach people in meaningful ways” (Leavy, 2014).
Samuel Massey, Untitled, 2015
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Sydney based painter, Samuel Massey is an early career visual artist. He is a passionate artist, painter and storyteller. More beautifully, he came to live within this inquiry through one of my high school art students, Jessie Smith, a burgeoning writer. I taught Jess in the early 2000s when she herself was a very good painter. Jess passed on my call for artists with digital portfolios to her good friend Sam, a painter studying at one of Australia’s oldest art schools the National Art School, whose alumni include inquiry co-participant Pamela Griffith. |
Sam Massey was the first of the artists in my study to sit down and be filmed. We met in Newtown, not far from where I used to live and my kids grew up before moving to Melbourne. I knew this space well and we sat and talked easily. His visual metaphor above, of a single figure represents the function of his online portfolios to him. He sent me this in mid 2015, as he was preparing a show of his work. His artist portfolio @sammasseyartist on Facebook states, “I am a Sydney based painter trying to capture the essence of things, I like my paintings raw.” My own reflection on Sam’s visual metaphor is analytical as a/r/tographer, the lone figure seems restless as explorer, seeking a site to settle with this bundle of goods under arm. He strides down hill, looking for the site to stop and unload, his right arm free to keep the momentum and carry on forward. Critically analysing, I am exploring portfolios here through a knowing lens, here in this currere (Pinar, 1975), the transformation is for you as audience to learn from, the function shifts. “The method of currere is an autobiographical means to study the lived experience of individual participants in curricular conversation” (Pinar, 2010).
“Art is less involved in making sense of the world, and more involved in exploring the possibilities of being - becoming - in the world; less involved in knowledge, and more involved in experience, in pushing forward the boundaries of what can be experienced” (O’Sullivan, 2001, p.130).
“Art is less involved in making sense of the world, and more involved in exploring the possibilities of being - becoming - in the world; less involved in knowledge, and more involved in experience, in pushing forward the boundaries of what can be experienced” (O’Sullivan, 2001, p.130).
Using metaphors to explore professional artist identity
As co-participant Pam Frandina suggests, reflection and time be reflective of the self and practice is an important aspect of artistry and artful inquiry. To be reflexive is to consider the role that I play in the context and situation that I find myself. To be a reflexive a/r/tographer is to consider my own identity, social status, culture, and politics and those around me through auto-ethnography. As a/r/tographer I position myself clearly in the research and present myself with a privileged education. I am both reflexive and reflective of my privileged position, and I acknowledge that my experiences and knowledge guide and shape the way I do research. What this also enables is a lived experience, while inquiring meaningfully as a participant in my culture “through an ongoing process of artmaking and writing while acknowledging one’s role as artist (a), researcher (r), teacher (t)” (Irwin, 2004, p. 1).
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Belinda Allen spends much of her practice in the digital space as a photographer and digital media artist. As her portfolio indicates, Belinda's practice is evocative, multi-layered and metaphoric. Her images are openings into new spaces and places that extend beyond the layers into new sites and sights. I met Belinda in her home that she shares with her artist husband south of Sydney in Bundeena, nestled in the Royal National Park in New South Wales Australia on a hot summer day to capture her story. As an artist, the story she shares in the videos recorded and presented in this Portfolio indicate, that her work is representative of the contiguity of an artist researcher and researcher artist. She is an artist that reflects deeply on her identity and purpose as artist, and her work aesthetically and conceptually reflects this rendering of the selves. Belinda's labyrinth/maze metaphor invites us into a mapping of her identities over layers of threads and storylines that lead us from site to site through the use of signs and symbols.
Belinda Allen's digital visual artist portfolio, 2016
Belinda's artist statement on her portfolio homepage reads:
"For several years, I have been exploring the landscape as a metaphor for human relationship to environment, culture and heritage. I propose that seeking the idyllic equates to the search for a spiritual relationship to land, and that in the context of a culture whose edifices and lifestyles serve generally to alienate its residents from the ‘natural’ in their environment, we experience an intrinsic and chronic hunger for the kind of archetypal and meaningful experience of nature and place that we see expressed by indigenous cultures. Each of us has our own ‘sacred sites’ – those places that are embedded in our lives, and associated with a sense of rapture, of connection to a realm beyond the mundane. Sources for my work include mythological and religious texts, documents and literature of early Australian settlement, the landscape and textures of Australia (and beyond), particularly the Royal National Park where l live." 
Belinda Allen, Digital portfolio metaphor, 2016
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Belinda Allen, Digital identity as artist metaphor, 2016
Stories give meaning to our personal experiences (Dewey, 1934), they affirm our identities, support collaborations through connections with others, and hold values and beliefs for the creator and audience (McAdams, 2008) in art. We experience the world as a set of shared narratives and stories (Baguley & Brown, 2009) and as an educator it worries me that we don't often ask our students to incorporate, see or construct a narrative about their learning or journey into creative practice as artists in the construction of self identity (Hull & Katz, 2006). When we re-tell our memories and experiences as stories we invite an audience into our narrative, and as Dewey (1996) also recognised, storytelling is important, but how we convey that story is essential as “most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories” (Pink, 2006). These stories that we convey connect and build bridges between ourselves, the audience and discourse into practice in whatever platform the story is told is the important one.
Belinda's visual metaphors for her identity as artist and for her portfolio open new stories, and evoke memories and journeys of art as the artist leads her way between spaces and places in the rhizome. Layered within Belinda's identity metaphor contains a series of transparencies centred around a heart, underneath is a maze or labyrinth where the path is multi-directional and guided by the walls that steer the path around the story like a fingerprint. Underneath is a reflective tree whose branches lead us in and out of the image to spaces and sites beyond the metaphor.
Belinda has generated two metaphors that open rich stories to pedagogically inform the many weaves of storylines that artists live in and within throughout their multifaceted protean careers. Both metaphors overlap and reflect one another like mirror images informing each other and her audience about her practice as a contemporary and relational artist who chooses to use a digital portfolio for her presentation and exhibition of practice. Belinda's digital portfolio metaphor leads us, as her audience between the sites of her explorations, presentations and collaborations connecting the selves between ideas and concepts that all lead backward and forward from her research and practice growing from the bottom of the image. The transparent papers in the foreground of her digital portfolio metaphor seem to have flown into sight, yet are trapped in the foreground holding the viewer to cite her research. These storylines Belinda defines as creative history and experience, photography and travel, creative work, and work, research and conferences. Hovering over the image like stars or windows are insights into Belinda's creative practice that provide an opening into her creativity where image is research and research is image. |
Flávia Pedrosa Vasconcelos, Continuous becoming in Visual Arts Teacher Education, 2015
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In August 2015, when Flávia Pedrosa Vasconcelos sent her Portfolio visual metaphor to me, she also shared her visual metaphor of her artist identity. Her artist metaphor is titled, Continuous becoming in Visual Arts Teacher Education. The collection of artist selves is an interesting window into Flavia’s life as artist, researcher, teacher. The window leads us through Flavia’s career in the arts, from a young painter in the top left hand corner to a recent photograph of Flavia in the bottom right. Interestingly I am able to draw connections between Flavia’s Portfolio design and composition and her metaphor for self. The windows to her world view offer insight into her lenses and framing of ideas while holding her work and practice in compartments and cabinets like my wunderkammer metaphor. |
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Australian artist Glenn Smith has been an artist in my community for many years. He has an active social media profile and accepted my request for artists with digital portfolios with a tentative question up front. He had a number of digital portfolios and used the online environment to present and share his work, but he was not a digital artist. An interesting conversation to begin our work together when you consider the metonymy of the digital and what it signifies for artists who use this space. Glenn is a painter, drawer, printmaker and illustrator. Upon sharing his metaphor for his self as visual artist, he chose to share his artist signatures. The images that he uses to sign off on his work as complete, resolved and finished works for sale as ‘Signatures that I identify with.’ |
Glenn Smith, Signatures that I identify with, 2015
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Screen shot of Glenn Smith’s (old) Portfolio site, 2014
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Glenn’s work is highly detailed, and drawing associations between his artist signatures and his work is possible. The self portrait on the front of his ‘old’ portfolio, offers insight into how he sees himself, surrounded by art in his studio, with a shining smile on his face. He refers to his portfolio as a digital sketchbook in his artist statement, another metonymic exploration to investigate with students for portfolio development.
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Samuel Massey’s artist identity shifts sight away from his lone and hurried figure in the visual metaphor for his portfolio, toward a pair of explorers searching a vast landscape of barren earth. “Metaphors provide an opening, acting as conduits to experience. The meanings of metaphors shift depending upon contextual factors during the participation of the artist and viewer” (Morey, 2011, p.25). Sam’s metaphor is a catalyst for stepping into another’s shoes and thinking through who it is that travels alongside you as artist. Is it another self? A reflection or shadow? Or is it the artist influences, family, friends and colleagues that seem to hover around us as we travel the art maker journey. |
Samuel Massey, Untitled, 2015
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Pamela Frandina shared her metaphor 'Within' as a visual representation of her identity as a digital photographer, artist, and woman. She shared this statement with me: "Development of my creative work tends to evolve over time. It results from keen analyzation of concerns, observations, interests, passions, and fears, which through ongoing conceptual focus, redirects the creative imagination into fresh visual expression. In today's world, much knowledge comes from online sources, thereby doubling digital influence in my work. For this image, a vintage floral tablecloth becomes the symbolic backdrop. An illustrated floral pattern references idealized femininity of past eras, when women were conditioned as beautiful complimentary blooms amidst dominant male existence. That aptly describes the social atmosphere encountered during my first few decades working in the photographic field. A white border boldly separates the background from foreground, creating two distinct visual spaces. The female figure sits upon a pedestal that extends below the bottom border, thereby 'breaking the frame'. Healthy green leaves and a sturdy forest grow within the wire figure, with a bed of lush rose petals at its base, signifying the diverse mix of strength, beauty, and growth within each individual woman. My own artistic experiences included gradual progression of skills and conceptual direction, with confidence slowly building until finally recognizing the value of my own authentic voice. That has been enhanced by the digital medium, which makes capable the creation of images that could otherwise not be handled through photography."
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Metaphors are one way to open the threshold, shifting the sight of what a portfolio is through reflection on critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, and visuacy. Developing visual metaphors for self as artist and the role that portfolios play in creative identity can aid in this shift for understanding of self as artist as a threshold learning concept. “A large part of self-understanding is the search for appropriate metaphors that make sense of our lives” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 233). Creativity is not about developing unique works of art all the time, it is found within the possibilities of practice and ideas. Developing skills in working in the liminal spaces to ideate, prototype and test the limits of creative practice as makers, researchers and designers is troublesome and many wicked problems will be explored. However, working within the spaces and gaps for creativity in deep sustained learning can offer the opportunity for a creative turn through placemaking and curation as reflection on site. Practicing the methodology in the inbetween, liminal spaces, shifted my own “perspective...lead[ing] to a transformation of personal identity, a reconstruction of subjectivity” (Meyer & Land, 2003, p.4) in this inquiry and Portfolio.
Exploring the self while developing research as curriculum is a window to many aspects of knowledge revisited through memory, metaphor and reflection. Meyer and Land (2003) define a threshold concept “as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view” (p.1). Threshold learning concepts are defined within each discipline and contextual to the body of knowledge being explored. Meyer and Land tell us that threshold learning is:
Exploring the self while developing research as curriculum is a window to many aspects of knowledge revisited through memory, metaphor and reflection. Meyer and Land (2003) define a threshold concept “as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view” (p.1). Threshold learning concepts are defined within each discipline and contextual to the body of knowledge being explored. Meyer and Land tell us that threshold learning is:
- transformative,
- irreversible,
- integrative,
- bounded, and
- often troublesome.