I was so excited to work with art materials during our first class session. Not only was it fun to proverbially get my hands dirty, but I agree with Leah Levinger and Ann-Marie Mott (1992) that in order to understand children’s experience with art, it’s essential that as teachers we “explore and try out some of the materials for [ourselves].” If we’ve never worked with the materials that we’re asking our students to work with, how can we know what it’s like and what we can expect of them or ask them to do?
It also was so much fun to be allowed to be creative in a graduate school class. I find that aspect of attending Bank Street so rewarding because I am a creative, visually focused person by nature and often found it very frustrating when my undergraduate professors would frown upon creative methods of performing the tasks assigned and would only accept papers formatted in a certain way.
I loved being able to essentially whatever I wanted with the materials, though there definitely was a slight sense of anxiety in terms of figuring out exactly how I wanted to position the torn paper on my page. I also very much wanted to create a representational image, but worked to follow the instructions and keep my collage work nonrepresentational. Ultimately, that allowed me more freedom to actually explore the materials and how I could use them creatively than focusing on whether or not what I was creating looked exactly like I wanted it to.
Though we had plenty of freedom to use the materials in various ways and explore our own, personal creativity, I was glad that there was a clear and obvious structure provided for the exercise because I think it would have been difficult to start any kind of project if we were just told to get the materials and begin doing whatever. As Levinger and Mott say, “too little structure can inhibit children’s expression just as too directed experience can” (1992). I can definitely see how that happens.
