My darling returning IB students:
Happy Summer! I know you miss me, but don’t worry—to fill that nagging void in your life, here is:
Your Official SUMMER ART ASSIGNMENT
First of all, I know you’re extremely busy, so I am not piling a lot of extra work on you. But I also know that you’re creative and driven to succeed, so I want you to continue an artistic routine this summer that will prepare you for the year ahead—at the end of which you will face the IB Art examiner with a solid portfolio and an air of almost unbearable confidence.
You spent your first year in IB art becoming familiar with a wide variety of media and completing specific class assignments that may or may not have reflected your own interests. This second year will be very different. You will have much more independence, and I will be assisting you as a consultant and critic, helping you to realize the ideas, projects, and directions that YOU bring to class. This summer project is designed to help you generate ideas about what means the most to you.
Your summer project has three parts, and involves approximately 16 hours of work:
1. Review and reflect on your progress so far
2. Read and think about artists with whom you identify
3. Create a work of art and thoroughly document the steps and decisions that led you to the final product (more on this below)
Your work on these summer assignments is due at the end of the first week of school. The assignments will be graded, and they will be a significant portion of your grade for the first marking period.
1. Review your portfolio and your research workbook: Look at the work you did last year with a critical eye. What are your most successful works? Think about the formal properties (value, contrast, unity, etc. etc.). What looks the best, and WHY? Write down these thoughts in the margins, on post-it notes, or directly on the pages themselves. If you are writing about a studio piece, take a picture of it, glue it in the middle of a page in your book, and write your thoughts around it.
Aside from how the works look, which pieces mean the most to you? This could be a feeling of pride, nostalgia, or a memory of how you were feeling when you created this work. Do any of your artworks capture and communicate what YOU were like when you made the work? Write down these thoughts in your book as well.
Finally, write down some questions or goals that arise from the work you have already completed. These could include how to improve upon something that doesn’t satisfy you; what if you had done this instead of that; or why don’t you try that thing that is quite different from what you have done already…
(Summer expectation: 3 hours work)
2. Research artists: Find two artists (painters, sculptors, cartoonists, designers…) whose work really interests you. At least one of these artists should be alive and working now. An excellent way to find contemporary artists is to loiter in your local bookstore reading the art magazines. Research their work in books, on the Internet, or in person. Describe the issues they explore in their work in your sketchbook and document with drawings and pasted-in photos. Find an interview or an artist’s statement, if possible, to learn not just what they did and when, but how and why.
(Summer expectation: 3 hours work)
3. Make art: Using a 25-foot-long piece of cotton rope, create a work of art that is meaningful to you and visually interesting. This should be a finished studio work, suitable for exhibition (whether it is presented in the classroom or somehow documented if you are not able to transport the original work). Do your preliminary brainstorming, planning, practicing, etc. in your sketchbook. These notes will also be graded. (Summer expectation: 10 hours work)
This work can take any form and use additional any materials you like. The only two rules are:
1. You must use the entire rope.
2. YOU MUST BE SAFE. Do not hurt yourself.
Things to think about and write about in your research workbook:
a) First, think about the rope. How is it made? What is it made for? What can it do that other things can’t?
b) What are some particular images or meanings associated with rope—in popular culture? In other cultures? For you personally?
c) How will you go beyond the rope’s many practical uses to make this a work of art? In other words, what does a work of art have that a regular old rope does not? Conversely, how will the rope be essential to the work of art?
d) Draw and write about ten different ideas for this work of art. If, by your second or third idea, you absolutely know what you want to do, come up with some ideas that are completely the opposite in form, function, or meaning.
Then pick an idea and make it. Repeat as often as necessary.
I’ve been reading a great book on creativity: How To Be an Explorer of the World, by Keri Smith. She has a lot of ideas to get you seeing your surroundings in new ways, both in her books and on her blog: http://www.kerismith.com/blog/
Some of her ideas I swear were my ideas this year, and I’ll steal a bunch of her’s for next year. But the main idea (in the words of yet another artist) is to:
“Begin to notice what it is you notice.” –Lynda Barry, What It Is
This process of becoming aware of what you are thinking is what IB (and art? And life?) is all about. Do good work, have fun, and I’ll see you in August!
