Curriculum Sketch II: Mandala

T H E E X P E R I E N C E O F T I M E:
Transcience and the Spirit

E N D U R I N G   I D E A

Perspective

Q U E S T I O N S

• What is the difference between religion and spirituality?
• Talking about: What is a thought? 

• How do we experience time?
• How do we know that time has passed?
• How does our perspective of time influence how we experience things?
• How do you feel when you are waiting?
• How does change influence your understanding of time? (physical, natural, etc.)

R A T I O N A L E

Perspective influences interpretation.

When we recognize our perspective we can better understand our interpretation.
It is important that students understand what spirituality is and the role it has in culture and health. Spirituality is rarely addressed anywhere else in school

L E A R N I N G   G O A L S

• Students will recognize how their culture influences their perspective of time.
• Students will recognize how their physical state affects their mental and emotional state (through meditation).

• VA:Cr1.2.Ia: Shape an artistic investigation of an aspect of present day life using a contemporary practice of art
• VA:Cr1.2.IIa: Choose from a range of materials and methods of traditional and contemporary artistic practices to plan works of art
• VA:Cr2.1.IIIa: Experiment, plan, and make multiple works of art and design that explore a personally meaningful theme, idea, or concept.

K N O W L E D G E

• Time based art - time as an element of the art
• Video, audio, slides, performance, etc.
• EXAMPLES
• *** Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing by Francis Alys

• CROSS CULTURE: Tibetan Sand Mandala, Navajo Sand Painting 

• Interdisciplinary:  
• Social: Time Perspective
• Psychological ideas/concepts: The Secret Powers of Time

A C T I V I T I E S 

• Rituals: Identify a daily ritual of yours and create a work of performance art or video art that includes that ritual.
• Daily meditation: Each day a student will lead the class in a meditation. 
• Using collage methods create a mandala to explore spirituality.

B I G   P R O J E C T
Create a mandala that uses time as a factor. (Might it naturally decompose? Do you have to deliberately destroy it?). Document the creation and destruction.

EPHEMERAL MANDALA

C R E A T I O N

D E S T R U C T I O N

 

Response to Chapter 2 of Teaching Artist Handbook

How Will I Teach?

A Collection of Gatherings

• "Becoming an artist" is NOT becoming a "professional" artist alone.
• THUS: all my students are artists. (Am I treating them as artists? Do I treat their work/opinions/input seriously? Am I invested in what they make?)
• Learning "non-art related" skills happens best "when one actually makes art"
• THUS: my job is to enable actual creation of actual art.
• I can do this by asking on a daily basis (maybe on a poster where I will see it everyday or through out the day in the classroom:
• Would I want to do this project?
• Is their "mis-behavior" getting in the way of the art making?
• Are the "rules" relevant to making art?
• Does the space encourage art making?
• Do I treat and talk about their work as art or just assignments?
• Do I encourage discipline integration as the natural participator it is?
• Am I introducing and exposing my students to a generous variety of exemplars?
• Does the work all look the same?
• Am I in the way?

Collage Artist

JOHN STEZAKER

Readings Response

Graphic Novels as Contemporary Art

Having experienced the use of graphic novels as an access point into contemporary art I felt it was thoroughly enjoyable and a great way to include visual culture as a form of art. I also understand how it is contemporary as in current and is becoming a wider accepted and wider read form of literature. But as a connection point for students to access contemporary art (much of which is highly conceptual) graphic novels seems vague. Perhaps more background into the artists themselves and their own motivations and creative processes will make this clearer. I think the most valuable use of graphic novels is as a means to include current visual culture that is engaging, interdisciplinary, and aesthetically productive.


How the Teaching Artist Can Change the Dynamics of Teaching and Learning

Engaging Minds

The article may not have been complete (missing pages)? But it offered a lot of great points. I feel that in teaching art this is the value of being being a teaching artist who students can look to as an example and source of inspiration and motivation (not solely the only source but one of them).