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                                               Paper 

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                                               Paper 

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When i first started off the class, I knew i had to be open-minded to create with materials each week. Paper was our first to explore and play around with, at the time of creating my artwork I had mix emotions about the class. So i created my emotions on paper; Happy, Sad and Unsure. I showed different colours with different tones on how i felt about that emotion. Talking in groups we spoke about how paper is capable of allowing a person to release there emotions onto the paper and create what they feel. Paper allows us to interact with our surroundings, and see what we can create. We spoke about as young children, paper was only something that we create artwork with then it changed to studying in school and now we use it for us to teach children and help them come to terms with different materials.

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                                      History of paper

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                                      History of paper

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While working with paper, I thought to myself that I don’t know the history of paper and how it was made. So I did my own research and came to find out that the inventions were Chinese back in 105 A.D. It shown that Ts’ai Lun started with bark of a mulberry tree into fibres and pounded them into a sheet (Silkroad Foundation, 2019). Within the first few years the Chinese used paper which they called ‘Paper of Marquis Tsai’. The very first newspaper was seen in china. After the china kept paper manufacture a secret, the arabs learnt the paper making from the Chinese prisoners and later other countries started to learn about paper.

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                                The Movements of Making

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                                The Movements of Making

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Children are full of ideas just waiting to be expressed through materials. How we support and present the material to children will allow them to express differently. As Hillevi Lenz Taguchi (2010) describes, “the material world acts on our thinking as much as our thinking acts on the material world”. Allowing children to be able to question material and the reason it’s there, where it came from to open their minds to think about the material. Take paper for example, it is to be flat, bend, fold and any other way. The movements for paper may be subtle but it leads to different ideas by just experimenting with what paper can do. It might be a simple paper to a child but once we show them the example of what it does it leads them to expressing themselves in art.

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                                           Junk

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                                           Junk

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First starting with junk I thought to myself that children nowadays love to see different objects out to create new artwork, which is great as it means junk has become a great development in art. Back when I was younger junk was put in the trash and hardly used in kindergarten rooms or school to create art we had new supplies. Even growing up we had to be careful of how to play outside and not being allowed to explore any play ground or trees on our limit. As a future teacher I want children to be able to express themselves in the outside world with the environment and inside with using junk to create different artwork. I believe that each child goes with what they see; If you have a neat art area with new supplies it’s very limited to what they can create. But once you add junk and all different objects and just leave it there you’ll be surprise with what children can come up with. Art helps children to express themselves with all different materials. In class there were so much to choose from and i didn’t know where to start so i thought I’ll grab a few things and let the journey go and create art. It then got me to think that we need to give children that space and time, to give them material and step back to allow them to build knowledge about the material and Create a story with there art.

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                                  Thinking with clay 

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                                  Thinking with clay 

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Working with clay, I found that its not like play dough and while thinking that I imagine children getting excited to play with clay only to find that its not soft, more hard but it gives them a chance to use there skills and experience a different texture. In our group we were talking about how clay gets soft with the more you touch it and bend it in. It’s a more difficult material to create artwork but more fun along the way. You learn as you create, it holds a different story in showing us the way we have to use different equipments to create art. I found clay is different to paper and junk as this is something you use only and no other materials. To create with clay you need different equipments to make what you want, where as other material you use glue, paint etc. Children are able to explore more with clay as it’s more difficult and helps them to think and play around till they get how they want. I also found out with my group that once clay dries it goes hard and into dust, once you add water it goes back into clay. Showing children the dust then back to clay gets them more involved and wanting to create more. As Gabriel Orozco says when trying something new like clay, your doing it for yourself and trying new things, you have to go on and see what happens to create a piece of art (Orozco, 2019).

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                                                  Light

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                                                  Light

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Using light in a classroom with light tables, and having different shades of light in the room from natural sunlight to lights in equipments, it helps children to explore ideas and create visual artworks and design. It allows children to use and experiment with different materials, techniques, technologies and ideas to communicate with other children. Children are always looking for reflection in adults who around them. Having mirrors around the room with different shades of light allows children to observe the room and themselves throughout the day. Showing children different shades of lights attractive there eyes and also opens up them to questions to explore the material of light. There filled with wonder and curiosity, materials were light weight, they could hold them, the materials where their accomplice in their desire to know. Children are filled with wonder and curiosity to different materials having space in the room for them to explore and see the different ways to create art within the room. Neurobiologist Rizzolatti said,“A mind that is active is a mind which is learning”.

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                                ART AND SUSTAINABILITY

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                                ART AND SUSTAINABILITY

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Sustainability is present in many aspects of our everyday life. Our social wellbeing is ensure we take care of the environment, one of arts is an expression, a medium or an indictment on the development of sustainable. We know art and sustainability have a long history, at the end of 1970s the land art movement, gave us a sustainability message, through the materials used and their impact on the environment. Creating an emotional investment between people and nature, and connect to an emotional level, which helps us to change our actions on a everyday life. To change into a sustainable future it won’t happen overnight or with very little change. It needs to be something that is worked on everyday, on the way we live and happening through things we do including art. It requires us to be more emotional and not something we can get from technology, which is why art has an important role.

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                                     Junk Art

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                                     Junk Art

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I found before this subject I never really thought about the history of material. Junk art was considered as a movement in 1950’s and in the experimental work of Robert Rauschenberg. Before making junk as a movement, art was found by the rebellious Dada movement and the authors Marcel Duchamp (Widewalls, 2019). Junk and left pieces have motivated creatives to use abandoned objects into a piece of art. Junk art is an important movement in art that is imaginative, playful and a way to create art without throwing away our “junk”. For my future teaching I want children to explore what is at home and use objects that were meant to go in the trash to think about what they can create without thinking it’s a piece of junk. To allow my classroom to have a corner where it might not look as inviting but to children to create all different art work.

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                                     The Language of Art 

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                                     The Language of Art 

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“As the children use paper, clay, wire, and so on, different alphabets will develop from different materials. As children use their minds and hands to act on materials using gestures and tools and begin to acquire skills, experience, strategies, and rules, structures are developed within the child that can be considered a sort of alphabet or grammar” (Gandini 2005, 13). Giovanni Piazza, an educator in the schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, describes the process of learning the qualities and characteristics of an art medium as “learning the alphabet.” Children don’t only use their hands and minds but think while creating art. With every movement they create they learn a new skill and feel the different texture and knowledge. As they create with different materials they will be able to grow more skills and create art with self-expression. As Gandini comes to say children have a way to express art with learning along the way.

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                                    Reference 

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                                    Reference 

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1millionwomen.com.au. (2019). The role of art in sustainability | 1 Million Women. [online] Available at: https://www.1millionwomen.com.au/blog/the-role-of-art-in-sustainability/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019]

Bepsreggiotour.blogspot.com. (2019). Tuesday April 17th - Ray of Light Atelier and The Wonders of Learning Lecture. [online] Available at: http://bepsreggiotour.blogspot.com/2012/04/wonders-of-learning-auditorium-tuesday.html [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].

Orozco, G. (2019). Thinking with Clay — Art21. [online] Art21. Available at: https://art21.org/read/gabriel-orozco-thinking-with-clay/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].

Pelo, Ann. The Language of Art : Inquiry-Based Studio Practices in Early Childhood Settings, Redleaf Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vu/detail.action?docID=4674378.
Created from vu on 2019-11-19.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Kind, S. and L.M. Kocher, L. (2019). Shibboleth Authentication Request. [online] Www-taylorfrancis-com.wallaby.vu.edu.au. Available at: https://www-taylorfrancis-com.wallaby.vu.edu.au:4433/books/9781315743257/chapters/10.4324/9781315743257-1 [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].

Silkroad Foundation, A. (2019). The History of Paper. [online] Silkroadfoundation.org. Available at: http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/artl/papermaking.shtml [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].

Widewalls. (2019). Junk Art of the 20th Century. [online] Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/junk-art-history-artists-politics/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].