Tea Cups from Conversations with the Seminals in Wonderland (The Researcher Tea Party) folded & woven selection of academic papers and tea chest, 2014-2016
Reverberations
“Reverberation refers to a dynamic movement, dramatic or subtle that forces a/r/tographers to shift their understandings of phenomena” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p.xxx).
A reverberation is a resonating sound, that continues on through memory, flowing and bouncing off space. The sound is constant, it niggles and prods knowing, doing and relating, opening new possibilities with its subtle reminders. The rendering of these reverberations through the curation of this Portfolio has given rise to a greater understanding of this living inquiry as currere (Pinar, 1976). The reverberations have provoked an auto-biographical turn to praxis. As Irwin and Springgay (2008) suggest, “reverberations often take us deeper into meaning or they shift us toward a slippage of meaning” (p.xxx). The prolonged sound of reverberations continues to affect and transform my professional, artistic, social and theoretical position. The theoretical turns that reside in the gaps have led to a changed understanding of self, shifting my gaze, while my art making practice has twisted and turned in the inquiry toward an embodied understanding of pedagogy. As Flood (2013) refers, the gaps are “the zone between delineated areas of knowledge” (p.213). These areas between theoretical and practical knowledge overlap and intertwine in a/r/t, exposing the liminalities of art as theory and art as making.
This A/R/T Portfolio is a space of resonance, possibility and activation. It is created and curated in the ecologies of practice and criticality by an a/r/tographer, re-presented through the lens of auto-ethnography to expose the rhizomatic self. It is designed through “personal experience to create nuanced, complex and comprehensive accounts of cultural norms, experiences and practices” (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015, p.32). It is a “self narrative that critiques the situatedness of self [as a/r/tographer] with others in social contexts” (Spry, 2001, p.710). It is a reflexive and reflective collection of artefacts, curated as a digital living inquiry. The reverberations in this study have continually asked me to re-examine my own creativity and identity through a turn to embodied praxis. I have felt this need to observe, scrutinize and survey the borders within this a/r/tographic exploration as the reverberations affected my making, reading and writing, forcing embodied knowledge and memories to rise, shift and turn my gaze toward pedagogical needs in contemporary art education.
"Artists and art educators work in liminal spaces and often act as liminal beings (Conroy, 2004). While education often suffers from an excess of standardization and sameness, liminal experiences accept otherness and difference. Liminal spaces are neither inside nor outside and exist as dynamic spaces of possibility where individuals and cultures come in contact with one another creating interstitial conditions for learning” (Irwin, 2013, p.211). The voices and metaphors of my co-participants have opened new spaces, creating new relationships with knowledge about artist and about portfolio as site for auto-biographic exhibition. They have offered an insider’s viewpoint, reflecting on their own life and professional experiences for this inquiry. Pedagogically, the reverberations have been profound. Developing an understanding of self as a/r/tographer, a becoming event, was a distinct shift. A turn to praxis that offered the space to consider how personalised learning portfolios can support creativity through sustained and deep learning. “Events are produced in a chaos, in a chaotic multiplicity” (Deleuze, 1992). In the chaos, I found how important an embodied praxis is for art education, and the role that curating a portfolio space played in creating the site for a praxis becoming as event for artist-teachers and for artist-students.
"Artists and art educators work in liminal spaces and often act as liminal beings (Conroy, 2004). While education often suffers from an excess of standardization and sameness, liminal experiences accept otherness and difference. Liminal spaces are neither inside nor outside and exist as dynamic spaces of possibility where individuals and cultures come in contact with one another creating interstitial conditions for learning” (Irwin, 2013, p.211). The voices and metaphors of my co-participants have opened new spaces, creating new relationships with knowledge about artist and about portfolio as site for auto-biographic exhibition. They have offered an insider’s viewpoint, reflecting on their own life and professional experiences for this inquiry. Pedagogically, the reverberations have been profound. Developing an understanding of self as a/r/tographer, a becoming event, was a distinct shift. A turn to praxis that offered the space to consider how personalised learning portfolios can support creativity through sustained and deep learning. “Events are produced in a chaos, in a chaotic multiplicity” (Deleuze, 1992). In the chaos, I found how important an embodied praxis is for art education, and the role that curating a portfolio space played in creating the site for a praxis becoming as event for artist-teachers and for artist-students.
I Am (Artist as Frida). Reflection in frame, over drawn on envelope that contained signed ethics form, from co-participant Flavia Pedrosa Vasconcelos.
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“I sense that, once we get ‘it’, it is always with us, always in us, always ‘on’. Praxis – as I understand it – embraces practice; it transcends and includes it. Practice is more habit and routine – going through prescribed motions. For myself, praxis is essentially transformative – an ongoing evolution, on a trajectory to the ever-more-whole. I would assert that our practice may have us, but we can make our praxis – if we have a mind to ... and a heart, and a soul. In fact, praxis is potentially where our spirit also shows up, big time” (Wight, 2015, NPN). |
Reverberations carry with them reminders that are always prodding. Prompting new ways of thinking within and about an inquiry. The reverberations wake you, making their way into your imaginings and permeate your being, your gaze turns inward. Unlike epiphanies or ‘aha’ moments, a/r/tographic reverberations prompt a shift, they awaken new possibilities, open new questions, transform knowing, doing and making. Found in the in-between, the liminal spaces provide the opportunity to be with creativity and allow praxis to create new moments in time and space, raising issues of identity through an embodied understanding. This site of creativity, has also shifted my sight. Portfolio pedagogy is about designing deep sustained learning. It is about designing learning opportunities for developing an understanding of self through an ongoing reflection on and in the action of artmaking and responding through the curation of practice. Merely plugging in a portfolio to a learning environment not designed for explicit, personalised, reflective and creative practice will not enable an artist-student to build an understanding of self or develop artist identity without prolonged and sustained reflection, over time. Purely publishing artefacts online do not make a digital portfolio. Just as sketching in a paper visual sketchbook does not constitute an artist diary portfolio without ongoing reflection and sustained use that intertwines and weaves together processes and products.
A digital portfolio for publication has a purpose, a context as a designed and curated site of exhibition. Artefacts and art process and products can be easily shared in online blogs and forums, online social spaces to share and publish practice. This is a very different practice from to what I refer to as portfolio. A digital portfolio in art is a purposeful collection of digital identity artefacts designed to share as a narrative. A personal digital story by an artist that exhibits and displays skills, experience and knowledge in a sequence for an art audience. It is a site, a space curated and created through place-making. The digital portfolio of an artist-student needs a pedagogical underpinning that is designed for creativity with embodied praxis leading, scaffolding and modeling it. The digital turn has altered many pedagogies and methodologies in art education and research, the portfolio has been altered, turned toward an open, creative site as a result.
Developing a practice of digital portfolio pedagogy in art education supports deep learning for an artist-student in art, to publish and present a developing understanding of artistry and relationship with the art world through sustained creative practice. Art making is not a switch you can just turn on, it is very difficult for any artist to come into a studio or classroom and in isolation, make without an interlocking and weaving of theory and practice that is maintained and nourished over time. From the earliest years of art education an introduction to sustained deep learning, and scaffolded through an engagement with art through a body of work, and reflection on process as an artist-student can build skills, knowledge and experiences in art through art encounters as a disciplinarian. This sustained creative practice is an important curriculum design need and currently resonates in the arts in contemporary music education. These shifts and turns toward an embodied real-world creative practice of artful inquiry through musicianship (Jeanneret & Wilson, InPress) has emerged in Australian music education. In art education we have witnessed this shift since Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) invited a disciplinary engagement with art making, researching and theorising. “Educators who take the DBAE approach integrate content from the four disciplines that contribute to the creation, understanding, and appreciation of art. These disciplines of art provide knowledge, skills, and understandings that enable students to have a broad and rich experience with works of art
A digital portfolio for publication has a purpose, a context as a designed and curated site of exhibition. Artefacts and art process and products can be easily shared in online blogs and forums, online social spaces to share and publish practice. This is a very different practice from to what I refer to as portfolio. A digital portfolio in art is a purposeful collection of digital identity artefacts designed to share as a narrative. A personal digital story by an artist that exhibits and displays skills, experience and knowledge in a sequence for an art audience. It is a site, a space curated and created through place-making. The digital portfolio of an artist-student needs a pedagogical underpinning that is designed for creativity with embodied praxis leading, scaffolding and modeling it. The digital turn has altered many pedagogies and methodologies in art education and research, the portfolio has been altered, turned toward an open, creative site as a result.
Developing a practice of digital portfolio pedagogy in art education supports deep learning for an artist-student in art, to publish and present a developing understanding of artistry and relationship with the art world through sustained creative practice. Art making is not a switch you can just turn on, it is very difficult for any artist to come into a studio or classroom and in isolation, make without an interlocking and weaving of theory and practice that is maintained and nourished over time. From the earliest years of art education an introduction to sustained deep learning, and scaffolded through an engagement with art through a body of work, and reflection on process as an artist-student can build skills, knowledge and experiences in art through art encounters as a disciplinarian. This sustained creative practice is an important curriculum design need and currently resonates in the arts in contemporary music education. These shifts and turns toward an embodied real-world creative practice of artful inquiry through musicianship (Jeanneret & Wilson, InPress) has emerged in Australian music education. In art education we have witnessed this shift since Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) invited a disciplinary engagement with art making, researching and theorising. “Educators who take the DBAE approach integrate content from the four disciplines that contribute to the creation, understanding, and appreciation of art. These disciplines of art provide knowledge, skills, and understandings that enable students to have a broad and rich experience with works of art
- by making art (art production);
- by responding to and making judgments about the properties and qualities that exist in visual forms (art criticism);
- by acquiring knowledge about the contributions artists and art make to culture and society (art history); and
- by understanding the nature, meaning, and value of art (aesthetics)” (Getty Institute, ND).
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Learning to learn as artist, in context, about what artists do and how artists work is the aim of this digital curerre. Knowledge of the visual arts as a discipline, led by an artist-teacher who understands artistic practice can support an artist becoming and build the ability to think like an artist for problem solving, creativity, criticality and visuacy. Artist-teachers guided by an embodied understanding of praxis can steer, model and scaffold learning for the artist-student. The artist-student, just as the artist-teacher “see the world differently and understand educational problems aesthetically because of their artistic activity” (Daichendt, 2010, p.65). |
It is important for art education to support the learning journey of our students through a critical engagement with art and creativity. Not the significance on the turn to creativity that we have observed as the ‘innovative’ blanket solution for building 21st century skills, but a turn to a personalised creative pedagogy and storied curriculum with openings for authentic artist practice. We know that “creativity arises from a complex synthesis of abstract knowledge, concrete know how of specific skills and processes, and inner drive; to downplay the importance of knowledge and knowhow in the creative process can only diminish it” (Earle, 2013). A portfolio site offers the space to house, display and present this iterative and ongoing creative reflection as artist, on practice (history, theory and artmaking) through placemaking and curation.
Praxis is a shift in this phenomena. I have found a new embodied understanding of praxis in the fourth dimension of the digital (Scott, 2015). Curating and creating this storied curriculum in a digital site, as a Portfolio, has required sustained and deep engagement in creative practice. Through different voices, methods, times and spaces I have reflected in this relational and rhizomatic digital site as a/r/tographer. A digital site that is multi-faceted, multi-modal and multi-dimensional. It is an inward, invisible space that is deep, broad and interconnected, an aesthetic form created by an artist-researcher-teacher for art education. Through holding a mirror up to your practice; a reflection on making, researching, and doing - the inquiry is deeper, it invites an understanding of praxis. Through this mirrored image, there is time to reflect again, to sort, to clear, to exhibit. As a/r/tographer, this shift to understanding of self has been pivotal to this becoming, a praxis turn. Praxis is “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Friere, 1990, p.36). Praxis is an embodied understanding that both practice and theory are always interlocked, never in opposition. “Praxis is a network of relays from one theoretical point to another, and theory relates one praxis to another. A theory cannot be developed without a wall, and praxis is needed to break through” (Deleuze, 2004, p. 206). Practice and theory are intertwined, woven, intertextual, transformative, always working together to further the inquiry and being, as artist-researcher-teacher for community.
Praxis is a shift in this phenomena. I have found a new embodied understanding of praxis in the fourth dimension of the digital (Scott, 2015). Curating and creating this storied curriculum in a digital site, as a Portfolio, has required sustained and deep engagement in creative practice. Through different voices, methods, times and spaces I have reflected in this relational and rhizomatic digital site as a/r/tographer. A digital site that is multi-faceted, multi-modal and multi-dimensional. It is an inward, invisible space that is deep, broad and interconnected, an aesthetic form created by an artist-researcher-teacher for art education. Through holding a mirror up to your practice; a reflection on making, researching, and doing - the inquiry is deeper, it invites an understanding of praxis. Through this mirrored image, there is time to reflect again, to sort, to clear, to exhibit. As a/r/tographer, this shift to understanding of self has been pivotal to this becoming, a praxis turn. Praxis is “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Friere, 1990, p.36). Praxis is an embodied understanding that both practice and theory are always interlocked, never in opposition. “Praxis is a network of relays from one theoretical point to another, and theory relates one praxis to another. A theory cannot be developed without a wall, and praxis is needed to break through” (Deleuze, 2004, p. 206). Practice and theory are intertwined, woven, intertextual, transformative, always working together to further the inquiry and being, as artist-researcher-teacher for community.
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“By looking into the soul of another we often find ourselves delving just as deep into our own private worlds of identity and place” (Cowell, 1997, p. 46). |
As an a/r/tographer I explore, create and make art, as researcher and teacher. I teach, create learning spaces, write curriculum sites, as artist and researcher. I research, theorise and write critically, as artist and teacher. Through curation and reflection on memories, experiences and storytelling, I have intertwined and woven these three selves to (re)frame and perform my creative practice and create a space for an embodied praxis of pedagogy to develop portfolios for creativity and artist identity. I have re-examined the literature of creativity, portfolios, artistry and art education through image as research, considered and interpreted collected artist stories as video ethnographer to design a portfolio curriculum through auto-biography, and been compelled to make art and rhizomatically write research for understanding. Always driven by new questions, new reveals and new thoughts. There were times over the last few years that I was unable to write without considering my thinking, as image as research. Driven to praxis through creativity, where the theory and practice interlock like a group of islands, I needed to map this exploration and journey to creativity found in the liminal space. This shift, enabled a new sight. The journey to creativity is through ongoing, deep and sustained artistic practice, iteratively reflecting, working in partnership with community toward a way of knowing that is personal and collaborative.
I write in a digital space, in a portfolio repository of folders that I have created in Google Drive. These folders are living, digital artefacts, shifting and changing as the study has taken creative and pedagogical turns. Digital writing is fluid, not linear, left to right, top to bottom. Digital rhizomatic writing and research is deep, broad and multi-modal. This fluency of digital literacies opens the living inquiry for my artist self to consider practice and pedagogy. I was drawn to paper to consider the relationship between sites of the digital and situated in my a/r/t practice because of the opening found between the situated and the digital. I have both digital books and physical printed books in my researcher gaze. The paper versions are all drawn over, marginalia and sticky notes have transformed their pages. They have metaphoric and symbolic drawings all through them. The initial drawings of the inquiry took a turn as the physical researcher objects were re-conceptualised as works that reverberated, they affected me. The voices of the seminal thinkers, with echoes of my artist co-participants swirled in word clouds, they permeated my dreams and shifted metaphors, reverberating. The ideas and reflections needed to be made, explored by the physical artist self. My metaphor for the study, Alice in Wonderland was drawn in the earliest iteration of these artworks. I was not able to define what I was doing without painting the ideas for understanding, developing the research as image. Digitally painted on trips to and from work, sitting on trains, drawing my thinking, developing my understanding of praxis for pedagogy.
I write in a digital space, in a portfolio repository of folders that I have created in Google Drive. These folders are living, digital artefacts, shifting and changing as the study has taken creative and pedagogical turns. Digital writing is fluid, not linear, left to right, top to bottom. Digital rhizomatic writing and research is deep, broad and multi-modal. This fluency of digital literacies opens the living inquiry for my artist self to consider practice and pedagogy. I was drawn to paper to consider the relationship between sites of the digital and situated in my a/r/t practice because of the opening found between the situated and the digital. I have both digital books and physical printed books in my researcher gaze. The paper versions are all drawn over, marginalia and sticky notes have transformed their pages. They have metaphoric and symbolic drawings all through them. The initial drawings of the inquiry took a turn as the physical researcher objects were re-conceptualised as works that reverberated, they affected me. The voices of the seminal thinkers, with echoes of my artist co-participants swirled in word clouds, they permeated my dreams and shifted metaphors, reverberating. The ideas and reflections needed to be made, explored by the physical artist self. My metaphor for the study, Alice in Wonderland was drawn in the earliest iteration of these artworks. I was not able to define what I was doing without painting the ideas for understanding, developing the research as image. Digitally painted on trips to and from work, sitting on trains, drawing my thinking, developing my understanding of praxis for pedagogy.
Coming to the reflective turn through embodied praxis
Reflection on and in action (Schon, 1983) within a digital portfolio, creates an opening for developing skills and experiences in curation as artist-curator through an auto-ethnographic practice. This ongoing reflective practice unlocks the space for connections to be drawn rhizomatically between artefacts and the self. Here in this creative product, through the lens of digital curation and storytelling I have felt the reverberation, a shift in thinking as artist-teacher toward the curation of auto-ethnographic storytelling as a device for constructing new knowledge and complex problem solving as artist. Designing authentic, real world complex tasks in the form of a digital portfolio holds the potential for change, a change in art education to an embodied understanding of artist and artistry through praxis.
There are many tasks that we design for artist students that are artist oriented, some designed to support artful inquiry as artist, others designed to teach artist audience perspectives. An authentic art and design task presents real world relevance for students, bringing the world of the artist into the classroom. Authentic assessment is sustainable for the learner and reverberates through future learning, this type of assessment AS learning is deep engaged learning and is investigated over a sustained period of time, providing opportunities for students to examine a task that represents what artists do, developed from a range different perspectives. Designing a curated portfolio as an authentic assessment task provides opportunities for reflection on and in action as artist while making a valuable 'real world' art product that can be utilised afterward (Herrington, Reeves and Oliver, 2010) beyond the assessment task and learning site. “An authentic assessment task is one that is: grounded in real or simulated contexts; experienced-based; problem-oriented; and, integrated in the curriculum as an instructional tool” (Fletcher & Macuga, 2004, p.72). An opening for digital portfolios to provide a space for holistic development and authentic learning of a range of digital, visuacy, creative skills and capabilities both academically and socially through embodied praxis.
Embodied Encounters with Research (woven threads looking and learning), Paper (Academic research papers)/Weaving, 2014-2016
This A/R/T Portfolio digitally frames my praxis and captures an exhibition performed here in an “ethnographic moment” (Spry, 2001, p.706). The common threads that I found here in my practice through reflection and curation, as well as those selected to weave the rendered chapters together, were selected to create material connections between the a/r/tefacts. This Portfolio is at once an auto-ethnographic collection of an a/r/tographer and an ethnographic product of praxis. My knowledge, skills, experiences, education and creativity underpins this Portfolio, are laid bare. Looking through this lens of digital curation and digital storytelling enables a shift, a digital turn for artist-teachers. The term digital is important to expand on here as a turn and as a pedagogical inquiry. The digital offers new ways to explore the possibilities of technology, space, memory and site for art and artistry.
The creative potential of the digital offers a new environment that is participatory, collaborative, public or private to share, publish, present, research and connect with audiences. The digital is an intersection of praxis, where theory and practice meet, education and entrepreneurship collide and creativity opens. The digital portfolio as a pedagogy in art education, is an opening for visible digital learning. “The visible aspect also refers to making teaching visible to the students, such that they learn to become their own teachers, which is the core attribute of lifelong learning or self-regulation, and of the love of learning that we so want students to value. The ‘learning’ aspect refers to how we go about knowing and understanding, and then doing something about students learning” (Hattie, 2012, Loc. 164 of 5563). A nexus.
“Praxis – is embedded in social practices – practice architectures – which enable and constrain conduct in three dimensions: cultural-discursive, material- economic, and social-political, or “sayings”, “doings”, and “relatings” (Kemmis, 2008, p.17).
The creative potential of the digital offers a new environment that is participatory, collaborative, public or private to share, publish, present, research and connect with audiences. The digital is an intersection of praxis, where theory and practice meet, education and entrepreneurship collide and creativity opens. The digital portfolio as a pedagogy in art education, is an opening for visible digital learning. “The visible aspect also refers to making teaching visible to the students, such that they learn to become their own teachers, which is the core attribute of lifelong learning or self-regulation, and of the love of learning that we so want students to value. The ‘learning’ aspect refers to how we go about knowing and understanding, and then doing something about students learning” (Hattie, 2012, Loc. 164 of 5563). A nexus.
“Praxis – is embedded in social practices – practice architectures – which enable and constrain conduct in three dimensions: cultural-discursive, material- economic, and social-political, or “sayings”, “doings”, and “relatings” (Kemmis, 2008, p.17).
Mapping the practice architectures
1. Sayings
Designing artist portfolios through a rhizomatic lens has created a number of openings. Firstly, an opening to self, enabling the portfolio to be living inquiry that invites a collage, bricolage and wunderkammer of stories. A portfolio as auto-ethnographic, auto-biography involves “turning the ethnographic gaze inward on the self (auto) while maintaining the outward gaze of ethnography” (Denzin, 1997, p.227). Auto-ethnography is a methodology that invites personal and cultural critique through writing as representation. “Viewed as a mode of inquiry, writing is a way of coming to know an experience better or differently” (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015, p.68). This is one way to define the pedagogy underpinning the practice of reflection and curation for art education in digital portfolios, through a personal storied narrative. “Auto-ethnographies often begin as journal entries, narratives, poetry, blogs, or other forms of personal writing in which authors explore their experiences with the goal of understanding these experiences” (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015, p.68). This process of looking inward at practice leads me to creativity and the 5Ps of portfolios pedagogy: process, product, person, practice, place (after Kaufman, 2009). What brought me to ePortfolios in the first place, was the ability to support students in higher education to tell their stories through a multi-modal narrative, smoothing that I understood as artist. Not only tell, but store and collect, present and publish through purpose driven spaces, curated to share purposeful stories in places that provide new context for self. What shifted on this journey for me as teacher, learning designer and artist-teacher was an understanding of self and the role that identity plays in the curation of artefacts in digital portfolios for understanding, comprehension and relationality in art.
Designing artist portfolios through a rhizomatic lens has created a number of openings. Firstly, an opening to self, enabling the portfolio to be living inquiry that invites a collage, bricolage and wunderkammer of stories. A portfolio as auto-ethnographic, auto-biography involves “turning the ethnographic gaze inward on the self (auto) while maintaining the outward gaze of ethnography” (Denzin, 1997, p.227). Auto-ethnography is a methodology that invites personal and cultural critique through writing as representation. “Viewed as a mode of inquiry, writing is a way of coming to know an experience better or differently” (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015, p.68). This is one way to define the pedagogy underpinning the practice of reflection and curation for art education in digital portfolios, through a personal storied narrative. “Auto-ethnographies often begin as journal entries, narratives, poetry, blogs, or other forms of personal writing in which authors explore their experiences with the goal of understanding these experiences” (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015, p.68). This process of looking inward at practice leads me to creativity and the 5Ps of portfolios pedagogy: process, product, person, practice, place (after Kaufman, 2009). What brought me to ePortfolios in the first place, was the ability to support students in higher education to tell their stories through a multi-modal narrative, smoothing that I understood as artist. Not only tell, but store and collect, present and publish through purpose driven spaces, curated to share purposeful stories in places that provide new context for self. What shifted on this journey for me as teacher, learning designer and artist-teacher was an understanding of self and the role that identity plays in the curation of artefacts in digital portfolios for understanding, comprehension and relationality in art.
The auto-ethnographer lens allows a clear look at creativity, highlighted and reified by curation and storytelling in portfolios. Portfolio learning design can enable a shift in thinking for art educators to use the language and action of curation as well as storytelling as a device for constructing new knowledge and complex problem solving in art. Through the curation of creative practice through reflection on process and product, artist-students have the opportunity to reveal multiple views and perspectives about themselves in relation to others, for becoming. Using personal storytelling as a device for curation, requires skills to link theory and practice, to evidence through a focus on both the process and the product of art, creating opportunities for a becoming-event (Irwin, 2012). A “becoming-event does not reside in a single personal encounter: it resides in a multiplicity of events that are social and collective” (Irwin, 2012, p. 2017). Using portfolios to harness the creativity of the self narrated and curated in art education, requires us to get “the balance right between generating ideas and making critical judgments about them … important to creative growth as an artist” (Alter, 2010, p.2).
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“Art today is surrounded by explanation and contextualisation. It is curated. A curator is someone who organises exhibitions and museum displays. But in contemporary art, the curator has become a far grander figure, a super-curator who uses the position of curating exhibitions, selecting and presenting contemporary art, to manipulate taste, power broke careers of artists and become as much of a star as the artists themselves. At its best, curating is an art of juxtaposition, scholarship and display that brings old art to life and makes new art surprise us all the more. At its worst, the curator stands between us and the art (like the texts on the wall).” (Sylvester, 1999). |
Developing the portfolio curation and publication skills as artist, is an important learning outcome of art education because relational, rhizomatic and personalised learning are an imperative for understanding the culture of our contemporary art world. Developing the skills to reflection through an inward auto-ethnographic gaze, opens the opportunity to see the importance and relevance of documenting practice, experimentation, process and product development in the discipline for a creative becoming. Teaching our students to be reflective artist practitioners to collect, select, reflect and curate their practice digitally supports students as they develop the necessary digital literacy and visuacy skills to interpret, assemble, design, compose and tell stories about their creative process and material practice. Portfolios designed for this purpose can serve as an invitation into the discipline as artist, to explore the self through art and artistry within creativity. As Enid Zimmerman (2010) clearly posits, “as with a singular definition of creativity, the notion is quickly dispelled that creativity in art teaching and learning is based on one singular process or methodology” (p.12). Portfolios as objects and digital forms creativity have the potential to open and render possibilities for a becoming, through:
Portfolios and artist diaries have been spaces of exploration, reflection and ideation for centuries. The digital turn has shifted my sight, altering portfolios into a new realm of understanding. My proposal for art education renders the portfolio as a relational object, an auto-ethnographic artefact that offers a personal dialogue through self study and exploration of identity in a site specific happening or situation, through opening the possibilities for creativity. As Bourriaud (2004) called upon, “the forms that the artist presents to the public does not constitute an artwork until they are actually used and occupied by people” (p.46).
- Understanding, inventing and presenting the self as artist.
- Exploring creative practice through research and inquiry.
- Critical and creative thinking, in the event, in the in-between.
- Reflection on process, technique, skills and experience.
- Learning to learn as artist through seeing, noticing and reflecting on practice as curator.
Portfolios and artist diaries have been spaces of exploration, reflection and ideation for centuries. The digital turn has shifted my sight, altering portfolios into a new realm of understanding. My proposal for art education renders the portfolio as a relational object, an auto-ethnographic artefact that offers a personal dialogue through self study and exploration of identity in a site specific happening or situation, through opening the possibilities for creativity. As Bourriaud (2004) called upon, “the forms that the artist presents to the public does not constitute an artwork until they are actually used and occupied by people” (p.46).
2. Doings
Curating the Self (a/r/tography) was opened in Blackheath, New South Wales in March 2016 to open the physical doors to my artist-researcher-teacher digital journey. To invite new discourse with artists and artist-teachers in the situated world, on site, a living inquiry in sight. I chose to iteratively curate the exhibition throughout the week, to aesthetically create a space for affect, as a relational site that needed to be activated by participants. As a relational space, I interceded in the audience participation through dialogic intervention. The works were curated as one, not a collection of individual pieces, but a room, a portfolio of works that required the audience to participate through their own story telling. Each participant was greeted by me as I presented the a/r/tographic inquiry. I chose to intervene through dialogue, as artist, as researcher, as teacher, as a/r/tographer. The exhibition was not a cultural artefact, rather a ‘bloc of sensations’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994) and as artist, I was also participant in the inquiry. The exhibition was curated to experience the works together for my own art encounter, my own creative affect, as an event site (O’Sullivan, 2013, p. 13) where I experienced all aspects of the a/r/tographic exploration, in all a/r/t identities.
The gallery became a site for exploration, for research and for reflection on pedagogy. “Art is … a portal, an access point to another world - a world of impermanence and interpenetration, a molecular world of becoming” (O’Sullivan, 2013, p. 16). My curated exhibition of self portraits was designed as a placemaking exhibit to present the creative self in a situated space, and invite artists, writers and poets to discuss the role of identity and self exploration on site. The exhibition was designed for creativity through the design and curation of the space and aesthetic affect (O’Sullivan, 2013). The gallery, the curated space, artworks, participants and I acted in a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; 1996) to interpret, represent and reflect on a living inquiry.
Curating the Self (a/r/tography) was opened in Blackheath, New South Wales in March 2016 to open the physical doors to my artist-researcher-teacher digital journey. To invite new discourse with artists and artist-teachers in the situated world, on site, a living inquiry in sight. I chose to iteratively curate the exhibition throughout the week, to aesthetically create a space for affect, as a relational site that needed to be activated by participants. As a relational space, I interceded in the audience participation through dialogic intervention. The works were curated as one, not a collection of individual pieces, but a room, a portfolio of works that required the audience to participate through their own story telling. Each participant was greeted by me as I presented the a/r/tographic inquiry. I chose to intervene through dialogue, as artist, as researcher, as teacher, as a/r/tographer. The exhibition was not a cultural artefact, rather a ‘bloc of sensations’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994) and as artist, I was also participant in the inquiry. The exhibition was curated to experience the works together for my own art encounter, my own creative affect, as an event site (O’Sullivan, 2013, p. 13) where I experienced all aspects of the a/r/tographic exploration, in all a/r/t identities.
The gallery became a site for exploration, for research and for reflection on pedagogy. “Art is … a portal, an access point to another world - a world of impermanence and interpenetration, a molecular world of becoming” (O’Sullivan, 2013, p. 16). My curated exhibition of self portraits was designed as a placemaking exhibit to present the creative self in a situated space, and invite artists, writers and poets to discuss the role of identity and self exploration on site. The exhibition was designed for creativity through the design and curation of the space and aesthetic affect (O’Sullivan, 2013). The gallery, the curated space, artworks, participants and I acted in a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; 1996) to interpret, represent and reflect on a living inquiry.
My father’s family has lived in Blackheath for over 100 years. Five generations have played, laughed, cried and lived in our little Blackheath house that we fondly call the Rabbit’s House. This exhibition marked a significant point in my living inquiry with a/r/tography, and no other site could have played a more meaningful role in the framing of this story. The site specific, relational exhibition brought together work developed throughout this inquiry that explored notions of creativity, identity, critical pedagogy and art education together. Site is an important part of my creative practice, it offers new possibilities, opportunities for new relations and examinations of self through space and placemaking. The objects and artefacts I had woven, cut, stitched, folded and framed, were curated here in a new context, to create a new story. Each day as I wrote in this curated space, I was invited into new personal stories from artists and art makers visiting, and we found common threads through our shared experiences that led to my own (re)framing of a/r/tography.
For a week over Easter 2016 I curated my first solo show at Virgin Walls, a small gallery near my family mountain home. I had been working on this exhibition for over a year with work developed over the last three to four years within this living inquiry. This show was held to create a space for critical reflection in a physical site of cultural importance, a turn to open and present the turn to praxis. My work intertwined and woven from the digital, pedagogical and theoretical, is hidden, often invisible. Bringing it out in the open into the physical space was important as a/r/tographer and for the advocacy of arts based equational research where art is often seen as the decoration of the text. “We might say that art is situated on the borderline between the actual and the virtual” (O’Sullivan, 2013, p. 18). Reflection on self, research, family and storytelling is an important factor in my creative practice in the borderlands between the virtual and the actual, the nexus. Reflection invites new possibilities between the two contiguous sites, within the spaces and the gaps. In the gaps, the liminal spaces, lie invitations to new opportunities, openings and discourse. I came to a number of realisations sitting in the gallery each day, discussing my work, engaging in dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2008) with audience as participant and thinking through the theories that underpin much of my practice. This praxis is rendered here in this Portfolio.
For a week over Easter 2016 I curated my first solo show at Virgin Walls, a small gallery near my family mountain home. I had been working on this exhibition for over a year with work developed over the last three to four years within this living inquiry. This show was held to create a space for critical reflection in a physical site of cultural importance, a turn to open and present the turn to praxis. My work intertwined and woven from the digital, pedagogical and theoretical, is hidden, often invisible. Bringing it out in the open into the physical space was important as a/r/tographer and for the advocacy of arts based equational research where art is often seen as the decoration of the text. “We might say that art is situated on the borderline between the actual and the virtual” (O’Sullivan, 2013, p. 18). Reflection on self, research, family and storytelling is an important factor in my creative practice in the borderlands between the virtual and the actual, the nexus. Reflection invites new possibilities between the two contiguous sites, within the spaces and the gaps. In the gaps, the liminal spaces, lie invitations to new opportunities, openings and discourse. I came to a number of realisations sitting in the gallery each day, discussing my work, engaging in dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2008) with audience as participant and thinking through the theories that underpin much of my practice. This praxis is rendered here in this Portfolio.
The first of many embodied reverberations that shifted my gaze further into my a/r/tographer self began in the margins. “A/r/tographical research means being open to a continual process of questioning” (Springgay, 2008, p.160), re-visioning and revising. The research process took me to spaces in the self as artist and as teacher that were awakened and significantly shifted. These reverberations were rendered as works that explored my identity as a/r/tographer and toward the end of the study were exhibited as a collection of work. All of my identities were presented in this self curated, exhibition as self portraiture. The reflexive, critical and reflective works were brought together to form my evolving creative practice as a site for research and pedagogy through the creation of an experience, my creative becoming. “Art is less involved in making sense of the world, and more involved in exploring the possibilities of being - of 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, 2013, p. 20). This arts-informed practice based action-research created new data, and forced reverberations. My studio based work needed to be published in the digital space, to be wrapped and interwoven with the narrative in a portfolio. This Portfolio took a turn, it had to be re-presented, re-curated and re-experienced, the turn to praxis led to new ways of seeing, new writing, new reverberations that continued to resonate. This criticality, is an unfolding process of relational and rhizomatic work that has created a new conceptual practice in renderings.
Blackheath in the New South Wales, Blue Mountains holds a special place in my heart. It is a town that I have found myself return to since childhood for family, for work, for relaxation and for my writing. Blackheath is the top of the Blue Mountains, the highest point on the topographical map and has its own weather pattern. You can drive to the towns on either side of Blackheath and encounter very different temperatures and climates. It is a beautiful place, a town that many artists have come to flourish in and has a history of artisans and writers living in the community. I have come to Blackheath every Easter since I can remember, give or take a few years as an adult when I lived overseas. It is a beautiful town that my Great Grandfather lived in with his family and my Grandfather was born in. We still have this home in our family and my parents live here. The gallery where this research was curated is located a street away.
Blackheath in the New South Wales, Blue Mountains holds a special place in my heart. It is a town that I have found myself return to since childhood for family, for work, for relaxation and for my writing. Blackheath is the top of the Blue Mountains, the highest point on the topographical map and has its own weather pattern. You can drive to the towns on either side of Blackheath and encounter very different temperatures and climates. It is a beautiful place, a town that many artists have come to flourish in and has a history of artisans and writers living in the community. I have come to Blackheath every Easter since I can remember, give or take a few years as an adult when I lived overseas. It is a beautiful town that my Great Grandfather lived in with his family and my Grandfather was born in. We still have this home in our family and my parents live here. The gallery where this research was curated is located a street away.
3. Relatings
To curate an a/r/tographical self portrait, the place is very important. Relational, reflective and reflexive. To let people into my lived and living story as inquiry, site and sight are important characteristics of the place narrative. “The relationships between studio and theory form meaning-rich partnerships. They resonate within and across our fields, as arenas for presentations of credible and compelling stories. These stories address processes for exploring the aesthetic, empirical (experienced based) and ethical dimensions of what it is to practice in the studio as artist” (Stewart, 2005, NPN). In Blackheath, the overlaps and connections between the liminal spaces formed new stories. Just as Alice fell down the rabbit hole, chasing that elusive rabbit, praxis is found through a discovery of self, found through sustained reflection on theory and practice. “Praxis is a particular kind of action. It is action that is morally-committed, and oriented and informed by traditions in a field. It is the kind of action people are engaged in when they think about what their action will mean in the world. Praxis is what people do when they take into account all the circumstances and exigencies that confront them at a particular moment and then, taking the broadest view they can of what it is best to do, they act (Kemmis & Smith, 2008, p. 4; emphases in original)” (Kemmis, 2008, 19).
Praxis frames this curation of self, reflective of my pedagogical philosophies as an a/r/tographer. Searching and re-searching are a common thread in my artist, researcher and teacher practice. The weave serves as a metaphor for my identities that intertwine and overlap, as well as the research and theoretical models that entwine their way into new dialogue, new conversations through praxis. I have been living in a world of stories as an artist-teacher since my undergraduate studies in art education. At Horizon High School in Denver Colorado on my Fulbright Teacher Exchange, I found myself down the rabbit hole on a new learning journey, teaching in disciplinary art studios and outside in multi disciplinary spaces as arts integration teacher for the first time. In disciplinary based classrooms, and through arts integration my understanding of art education in schools altered. I continue to embody these roles of the artist-teacher that were first introduced to me in my undergraduate degree, inviting students to see and notice the world through the eyes of the artist. I found out why art matters in schools in Denver through arts integration. Art teaches us to view, to observe, to look. It teaches transformation, as Hamlyn and Punton (2011) agree, through a shift from aesthetic to conceptual awareness, understanding of how research influences and informs creative practice, and understanding of the professional context in which artists work. I think continuing to fall deeper down the rabbit hole was inevitable, when inter and multidisciplinary research in education became an important part of my teaching identity. Teaching is who I am. To steal Carl Leggo’s (2008) words here, “Teaching is my life. No other vocation has even come close to compelling the kind of commitment of heart, imagination, passion and energy that I have devoted to teaching” (p.4). After returning to Australia, after teaching at Horizon I embarked on a researcher’s journey in art education. A journey to praxis through a deeper understanding, in a living inquiry.
To curate an a/r/tographical self portrait, the place is very important. Relational, reflective and reflexive. To let people into my lived and living story as inquiry, site and sight are important characteristics of the place narrative. “The relationships between studio and theory form meaning-rich partnerships. They resonate within and across our fields, as arenas for presentations of credible and compelling stories. These stories address processes for exploring the aesthetic, empirical (experienced based) and ethical dimensions of what it is to practice in the studio as artist” (Stewart, 2005, NPN). In Blackheath, the overlaps and connections between the liminal spaces formed new stories. Just as Alice fell down the rabbit hole, chasing that elusive rabbit, praxis is found through a discovery of self, found through sustained reflection on theory and practice. “Praxis is a particular kind of action. It is action that is morally-committed, and oriented and informed by traditions in a field. It is the kind of action people are engaged in when they think about what their action will mean in the world. Praxis is what people do when they take into account all the circumstances and exigencies that confront them at a particular moment and then, taking the broadest view they can of what it is best to do, they act (Kemmis & Smith, 2008, p. 4; emphases in original)” (Kemmis, 2008, 19).
Praxis frames this curation of self, reflective of my pedagogical philosophies as an a/r/tographer. Searching and re-searching are a common thread in my artist, researcher and teacher practice. The weave serves as a metaphor for my identities that intertwine and overlap, as well as the research and theoretical models that entwine their way into new dialogue, new conversations through praxis. I have been living in a world of stories as an artist-teacher since my undergraduate studies in art education. At Horizon High School in Denver Colorado on my Fulbright Teacher Exchange, I found myself down the rabbit hole on a new learning journey, teaching in disciplinary art studios and outside in multi disciplinary spaces as arts integration teacher for the first time. In disciplinary based classrooms, and through arts integration my understanding of art education in schools altered. I continue to embody these roles of the artist-teacher that were first introduced to me in my undergraduate degree, inviting students to see and notice the world through the eyes of the artist. I found out why art matters in schools in Denver through arts integration. Art teaches us to view, to observe, to look. It teaches transformation, as Hamlyn and Punton (2011) agree, through a shift from aesthetic to conceptual awareness, understanding of how research influences and informs creative practice, and understanding of the professional context in which artists work. I think continuing to fall deeper down the rabbit hole was inevitable, when inter and multidisciplinary research in education became an important part of my teaching identity. Teaching is who I am. To steal Carl Leggo’s (2008) words here, “Teaching is my life. No other vocation has even come close to compelling the kind of commitment of heart, imagination, passion and energy that I have devoted to teaching” (p.4). After returning to Australia, after teaching at Horizon I embarked on a researcher’s journey in art education. A journey to praxis through a deeper understanding, in a living inquiry.
Easter in the Mountains brings cool weather, crystal blue skies, day trippers and my family to Blackheath. This Easter, it invites reflection on my life and work. When I opened the doors on Monday morning I was filled with excitement to see my work that has been folded and captured in my studio and study at home for years. Here in Blackheath, the story was unfolded, laid to bare, open and ready for another chapter to be written. I was possibly not prepared for what it means to be an ‘accidental ethnographer’ (Poulos, 2010). Many artists visited me over the 5 days of exhibition, each with their own lenses on. I sought to intervene. I let visitors walk in, I’d say hi and let them begin to talk. Then I would start a narrative, tell my story of a/r/tography. I met a glass artist on my first day here. He was an agent of change for me, I have reflected a lot about what it is that I want to achieve in my life. I want to tell the stories of artists through a storied curriculum to understand art and artistry through the self.
Is this understanding of the self important for an artist and seeing the world as an artist? If so, what does a sense of self bring to a curriculum conceived as a journey? (Wang, 2004, p. 122).
“Practice develops the ability to use materials and techniques intelligently, imaginatively, sensuously and experimentally in order to respond to objects and ideas creatively through personally meaningful, communicable artefacts in school, later life or professionally” (Swift & Steers, 1999, p.18). As with many a/r/tographic studies, this rhizomatic inquiry is centred around my embodied and living inquiry as artist, researcher and teacher. What I have learned as a re-searcher from the artist co-participants about portfolios and creativity in action is an important aspect of this shared journey where stories have created openings and these openings continue to reverberate and shift the gaze. “Many of our earliest learning experiences most likely involved stories, some told to us directly, others read and, still more, played out around us. Even before we had the ability to articulate what we knew, felt and thought, we learned to make sense of our world through stories” (Alterio, 2001). In digital portfolios we research ourselves, choosing what and when to present in the multi-modal story. We select aspects of ourselves through the section of artefacts that we have collected that indicate our creativity, skills, experiences and knowledge to an audience, in context to an outside audience. We then construct and compose the page structures so that we can re-present and re-frame our practice through reflection and the curation of the artist identity artefacts to present praxis, to present ourselves as a self portrait. Reflection, and reflection on reflection, provides an opening that enables the artist to see the self for others and themselves through a multi-layered series of metaphors and metonyms.
“Practice develops the ability to use materials and techniques intelligently, imaginatively, sensuously and experimentally in order to respond to objects and ideas creatively through personally meaningful, communicable artefacts in school, later life or professionally” (Swift & Steers, 1999, p.18). As with many a/r/tographic studies, this rhizomatic inquiry is centred around my embodied and living inquiry as artist, researcher and teacher. What I have learned as a re-searcher from the artist co-participants about portfolios and creativity in action is an important aspect of this shared journey where stories have created openings and these openings continue to reverberate and shift the gaze. “Many of our earliest learning experiences most likely involved stories, some told to us directly, others read and, still more, played out around us. Even before we had the ability to articulate what we knew, felt and thought, we learned to make sense of our world through stories” (Alterio, 2001). In digital portfolios we research ourselves, choosing what and when to present in the multi-modal story. We select aspects of ourselves through the section of artefacts that we have collected that indicate our creativity, skills, experiences and knowledge to an audience, in context to an outside audience. We then construct and compose the page structures so that we can re-present and re-frame our practice through reflection and the curation of the artist identity artefacts to present praxis, to present ourselves as a self portrait. Reflection, and reflection on reflection, provides an opening that enables the artist to see the self for others and themselves through a multi-layered series of metaphors and metonyms.