JILL PARRY

Jill Parry is a visual artist working in Fiber Arts and Painting. She studied Art and Design in the United Kingdom and taught Textile Design at University of Papua New Guinea. During the last fifteen years she has worked as a Teaching Artist and Artist in Residence in schools and community centers. She was awarded a competitive grant through the Westchester Arts Council, New York, to work with children on a Fabric Mural for the Mamaroneck Library, Westchester, New York. She has taught many after school programs in Art and Fiber Arts. As a professional artist she has exhibited extensively in UK, PNG and USA.

Name:

Jill Parry

Subject:

Conference at the Guggenheim

Date:

30 Jul 2006

Time:

10:27:51 PM -0400

Blog

LEARNING THROUGH ART PROGRAM SUMMER CONFERENCE INQUIRY AND EXPLORATION IN ART: creativity and critical thinking in the classroom I attended the summer conference at the Guggenheim Museum this year as a teaching artist hoping to learn more about the issues involved in teaching through art in the classroom. The conference was well attended with 230 participants made up of museum educators, classroom teachers and some teaching artists. The first topic discussed was the recent findings from a Department of Education funded research project on the impact of the Guggenheim’s Learning Through Art program in the classroom. The program sends teaching artists into the classroom to work with the classroom teachers and also brings them into the Guggenheim Museum for several visits. The findings basically were that the LTA program had improved literacy and critical thinking skills but had not raised scores on the standardized English Language Arts test. Positive results were found in the areas of children’s attitudes towards art and the artistic process and visiting art museums. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) the New York Times printed an article on these research results that was published on the same day (July 27th) take a look if you can. This article made the list of top ten articles that generated most email responses to the New York Times! Kieran Egan gave the keynote address today and I thought he had some very interesting things to say in the realm of how children learn. He likened the standard classroom to an assembly line! He believes that children are able to understand abstract ideas and he questions why so much of children’s literature seems to be about “talking middle class rabbits”. I am tempted to buy his recent book The Educated Mind; How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. There were several panel discussions amongst theorist’s, educators and teaching artists. The key word seems to be “ inquiry” having children look and inquire about a painting and then transfer that inquiry into analyzing a piece of literature. There was a consensus that lingering on the inquiry stage i.e. discussing the artwork was a very important step in an artist residency project. Another recommendation was to be open minded and ready to come up with new interpretations and to help students find deeper levels of meaning in art that can then be transferred to other areas of learning and life. It was felt that learning through the arts opened up new sensitivity in the students and indeed the teachers too. Research shows that opening up these pathways creates positive attitudes towards the art process and to visiting museums. Next Debra Butterfield the artist gave a wonderful presentation of her work and life. I admire her work and so this was a treat for me and a welcome break from the data! DAY 2 Today started really well with an amusing, informative and inspiring talk from Shelley Harwayne, founding Principal of the Manhattan New School. She was refreshingly strait forward in an area that can be plagued with vagaries and jargon. She put out the provocative comment that she would not want her favorite novel turned into a mobile. I understand her point but I believe most teaching artists could make a mobile an enriching experience. A quote she uses that perhaps describes the role she sees the teaching artist playing is “One who learns from one who is learning is drinking from a running stream”. She talked about “meaning making” or reading for meaning, not just learning the techniques. Next there was an interesting artist presentation from Alison Saar the Los Angeles based sculptor. Again, I loved these artist breaks, probably because I am an artist! A panel discussion came next on grants, funding and the importance of good research in evaluating projects in order to get funding again! This was really for institutions and not for individuals. I have to admit to losing interest here, as it did not really apply to teaching artists. After lunch a keynote address from Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times. This was a great talk questioning the purpose of art, and asking what is art and therefore what is art not? He did this through reminiscences of interviewing or trying to interview Cartier- Bresson. He also took some artists such as Kiki Smith and Richard Tuttle around a museum to try to experience the visit through their eyes and concluded that we take what we want or need from what is presented to us through museums. Finally Ernesto Pujol, a conceptual artist, curator, and teacher had a more progressive view of the purpose of art in the present day. He questioned whether learning to “read” a painting is a necessary skill for the future. He suggested that it might be more useful to be able to “read” an advertisement in order to understand what it is trying to make you do. Or ‘reading” an Internet page may be the way of the future. This ruffled some feathers in the audience! I found it to be an interesting starting point for a debate and perhaps a questioning of what we really need our children to know about art and what kind of a tool art really is or should be in the classroom. I have a lot of ideas swilling around in my head from these two days and that has to be good, yes? There is much to think about in this fairly new area of education and these ideas need to be thrashed out. This is a growing area and the role of the artist as part of the school environment is becoming more established. So lets plan for the future. Find more information on the LTA program at learningthroughart@guggenheim.org