I believe that the education of an artist roughly takes place in three stages. The first stage is the introduction to basic terminology, materials and processes. This is critical to establish a common vocabulary for future communication throughout the educational career.

The second phase is the consistent ongoing practice (with the eventual goal of mastery) of basic techniques introduced in the first stage. (Many might argue, and I might tend to agree, that this goal is never fully achieved, but rather, it is a life-long pursuit of the refinement of skills and acquisition of new processes and understanding of new materials.) Learning how to accurately represent our everyday surroundings is a crucial, early part of this level of development, but realistic replication, or creation of a convincing likeness of the subject matter is not the only goal. It is also crucially important to understand the methods and expressive purposes of abstraction, as well as the significance of non-objective art, both for the sake of a compositional understanding of form, and for understanding the creation of art objects and images for the purposes of purely aesthetic experience.

The third stage is the innovative extension of these basic understandings and techniques, which are now used to interpret surroundings and experiences in an expressive manner that is unique to each artist. It is during this stage that an artist finds his or her “voice,” and style, and fully realizes and personalizes the notion that art is not only about making visually compelling images and objects, but that it is also about communication, and that successful communication must have significant content. In other words, the artist must have something significant to say though the artwork, or else it fails to mature into something beyond mere decoration, or does not meaningfully engage the intended viewer.

Most often, the stages of development overlap somewhat, and the cycle often repeats as students learn more, and begin to apply what they have learned to new process and sub-disciplines. As I have observed many students and other teachers over the years, I have at times noticed a failure on the part of the students or faculty members to fully glean or provide everything from each stage that is necessary in becoming a well-rounded artist. Students can become stuck in a specific niche based on a comfortable skill set, and never fully explore how the world relates to them, or discover how they themselves truly respond to their physical, social, and psychological surroundings. On the other hand, I have also watched students grow frustrated when they were allowed so much freedom in their techniques that they never learned the basics skills and principles. Such students often had much to say about themselves or the world around them, and were already beginning to move into the third stage, without having acquired the basic tools needed to express themselves in a satisfying way. Either scenario can cause great frustration for both the student and the teacher.

I believe that the mature art begins to emerge from students only when they truly get to know themselves. It is crucial for students to already have an in depth exposure to a wide variety of materials, history, and processes as they begin to evolve personal styles. From my experiences I have found the following to be important goals in my teaching.

As a teacher, I seek to:
– help students master the basic skills and knowledge of their materials;
– make students aware of, and able to learn from the vast historical and technological resources available to them;
– encourage students to express their own unique individuality in a constructive, skillful manner;
– teach students to recognize the value of unplanned “mistakes,” to trust their own instincts and work intuitively;
– teach young artists to become receptive “listeners;”
– realize that every student is unique, with individual skills, needs, and desires;
– teach students to recognize, solve, and (most importantly) create, their own visual problems;
– encourage students to express their passions in life through their art making;
– help students realize that they, and their art, are a part of a larger whole.

As I teach discipline-specific content and skills, I employ various methods in the attempt to achieve the above goals, including:
– discussion of content, and quizzes covering content from assigned readings;
– interactive PowerPoint or Keynote lectures, which include terminology, concepts and processes, visual examples of art work, diagrams, etc., to introduce or elaborate on new material;
– formal writing assignments and formal exams, to demonstrate understanding of terminology and concepts;
– classroom live-response systems and semi-competitive review sessions, to quiz for content knowledge and prepare for exams;
– live or recorded demonstrations, to teach creative techniques;
– large group discussions and question and answer sessions, to clarify assignment expectations;
– self-reflective writing and online group discussion via blog, to encourage introspection about recent learning and future re-application of what was learned;
– hands-on application of concepts through creation of art objects and images during preliminary exercises and final executions;
– group oral critiques or assigned creative visual problems, to assess levels of creative success and learn to orally communicate about art.

In conclusion, it is also my philosophy that as students learn the basic skills and processes of their trade, they must also become sensitive to their surroundings (physical environment, social groups, civic structure, political sphere, etc.) in every possible way. Artists function as mirror-makers, and as creative interpreters. Art is communication. As they learn to express their ideas and feelings through their chosen media, students must be encouraged to inspect those emotions, issues and concepts which are most important to them as individuals, and those that they believe are important to a larger society. It is my job to provide the basic tools to do so, and to create an environment in which it is acceptable to experiment, fail and succeed, for only in such environments can anyone truly learn.

Most importantly, students must be gradually taught how to become their own critics, their own defenders, and, eventually, to teach themselves. Through teaching, I do not wish to make carbon copies of myself as an artist. Rather, I hope to help students become well-rounded artists, with unique styles and messages who can continue to explore and re-invent themselves as their own personal interests and expressive needs require.