2021 Yearblog

In the tradition of observing the impending new year and the symbolic action of making resolutions, here is something a little different from the usual content that I post on this blog.

Since qualitative and formative assessment is a main part of the educational framework, I figured that as 2021 concludes, I should reflect on the state of the arts and education; and how some of the key social and cultural happenings throughout the past 349 days have impacted my practice and personal life.

I seek to create content that is differentiated and relatable; so I did some simple analytic research into the interests of you, the readers.

Top posts of 2021:

The clearest way for me to make a value judgment about what is most pressing, timely and/or collectively on many people’s minds, is to review the most read Artfully Learning posts of the year. The top three posts are Lessons in Critical Race Theory from the Arts, Still Climbing Booker T. Washington’s Ladder and Learning Through Play, Playing Through Art.

The takeaway is that most of my readers are drawn to posts about social justice and play; two seemingly disparate topics, but in actuality, they are largely intrinsic and complimentary. An equal, equitable and just society would include safe and accessible spaces for recreation. For years, there has been a notable disparity in access to these environments within schools (see: Brooks, Ashley, 2018) and communities (see: Scott, 2013; and Boppart and Ngai, 2021).

Racism and racial discrimination has had a significant impact (see: Stanfield, Rebecca et al., 2005; and KABOOM!, 2021) on the aforementioned disparity, which gets us to the hottest topic of 2021 as far as this blog is concerned (and perhaps education at large)…

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been one of the biggest educational buzzwords of the year. With right-wing politicians spreading misinformation about what CRT entails (see: Johanek, 2021), it is important to set the record straight. As long as racism is ingrained in the mindset and experiences of the American population, a dialectic is needed to weed out its roots and progress toward an equal, equitable and justice driven society. This is precisely what CRT seeks to rectify.

Some of the best resources we each can employ in our efforts towards the dissolution of racism and other biases, is our ability to grow and learn in safe and collaborative environments. Educators are incredibly adept at supporting their diverse student bodies under these circumstances. I have witnessed really transformative curricula that focus on dialectic conversations that strengthen students’ understanding and addressing their own implicit and explicit forms of bias. Students get it. We have all been exposed to insurmountable evidence of racial bias and devastating hate crimes motivated by sheer racism. How can anyone be a skeptic of what journalist, Marilou Johanek (2021), describes as “An honest rendering of our imperfect union with open, unsuppressed dialogue about the racism we all have seen manifest in myriad ways, especially last year”?

I hope that in 2022, teachers will be given more support to continue their challenging and empathetic work alongside their amazing students.

---

What’s inspired me throughout the year:

In addition to spending time researching topics, doing fieldwork, posting on this blog and writing supplementary newsletters (hint: subscribe to my mailing list!), I have enjoyed and found inspiration from several different mediums, some of which are described below.

Teachers and teaching artists from all over the world

First and foremost! Your passion, compassion and resistance to closure when so many obstacles have been thrown your way is superlative.

Blogs

As an art education blogger, I consider the blogroll I have created to be a form of professional development. I like to read other blogs by artist educators for multiple reasons. First, it is uplifting to see how they are approaching and contextualizing a variety of issues related to the profession and interests we commonly share. Additionally, every blogger has a personal writing style, which makes reading discipline specific material feel fresh. The following blogs have rejuvenated, captivated and compelled me to consider new perspectives, as well as refine some of my preexisting knowledge about creative development, teaching and learning.

• Pablo Helguera’s Blog: I have discussed Helguera’s multidisciplinary artwork frequently on Artfully Learning (here are all the posts that mention him). I am consistently influenced by the way he fuses pedagogy and conceptual art, and his blog is an incredible supplement to his artmaking practice. In fact, I consider his writings and musings to be a work of art in their own right.
  
  Helguera’s post, titled “Letter to a Future Arts Educator,” is an open-ended summary of the state of today’s artworld and educational system, presented as a narrative object that could be placed in a time capsule for a generation of art teachers who haven’t been born yet. He states the main issues that confound today’s artists, educators and teaching artists, such as inequality, inequity and a lack of overall diversity.
  
  Some of my favorite lines from the letter include a segment on the fallacies of considering artists and pedagogues as ingenious harbingers of unique knowledge and visions. When the role of the artist and educator becomes romanticized, it often leads to dogmatic attitudes, which elevate artists, works of art and the general appreciation of art to unrealistic and privileged plateaus:

“The great weakness that we have as artists born in the 20th century is that we still carry the baggage of Romanticism. We have a great difficulty not seeing the world without ourselves at the center, and by extension, it is hard not to see knowledge as a way to be above others. Furthermore, old ideas about education keep the perception that learning in art is dependent on fixed objects, ideas and people. When we attach ourselves into those fixed objects, learning instead becomes religion, and education instead becomes theology. We thus need to abandon objectivity and turn into faith. We are told, coerced to believe that art that today appears to us racist, sexist or in violation of other values that we subscribe to in our contemporary life needs instead to be accepted as great art due to the canonical articles of faith.”

He follows this with a very powerful sendoff message:

The role of education in this sense is to never succumb to the self-centeredness of the artistic self, nor to the servicing of those canonical articles of faith. Instead, our role is to promote a collective sense of self, valuing every individual perspective, while at the same time promoting a critical reflection on the art of the past. We need to do this with compassion (as I previously illustrated while referencing the voice of my young self) but also without justifications, such as saying that those who were before us were simply “people of their time.”

• The Creative Independent: This website/blog is chock-full of artistic and educational content that is sure enough to get the creative juices flowing. I have found it to be especially great for combating self-doubt about my practice and developing new skills, techniques and mindsets that help me grow as a writer and an artist.
  
  
• Aesthetics for Birds: What I love about this blog is how the editors and authors approach very complex and sometimes rather heavy arts and cultural subjects through a philosophical lens. And since I am well versed in pedagogy and art, but a novice in philosophy, I appreciate the manner in which they present topics that are very accessible to a general audience.

Books

I confess, I didn’t get around to reading many books outside of a few select titles that are field specific (what can I say, I am a glutton for academic publishing). Every year I tell myself that I should read more fiction, but alas….That said, here is a very short list of 2020-2021 publications that have made an impact for me:

• Sierra Rooney, Jennifer Wingate and Harriet F. Senie (eds.). 2021.Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversies. Bloomsbury Publishing.
  
  
• sTo Len. 2020. FOAM, FutureOfAMaterial Selected Writings. FreeLY Floating Press. You can read my review of this book here.

TV

• Chocolate School (Netflix): It’s rare to see a reality television show fulfill a meaningful space between entertainment and education. Much less a show that involves competition. However, Chocolate School is much more than a dog-eat-dog (or more apt, human-eat-chocolate!) kind of competitive program. The way that world-renowned French chocolatier, Amaury Guichon, mentors eight students throughout the course of the show, is not dissimilar from how an arts educator motivates and supports their students.
  
  In each episode, the students arrive to see an awe-inspiring chocolate sculpture on display. Guichon then enters the kitchen/classroom and begins by explaining the culinary work of art and demonstrating a technique related to its construction. Afterwards, he prompts the day’s activity with a theme and a technical or aesthetic challenge. Once the technique has been modeled and the topic assigned, the students are sent off to create their own creative pastries and/or chocolate structures.
  
  The run of the show has a familiar structure and flow that is similar to how an art class functions. While the students are working, the Guichon walks around and checks in with each of them. Like a seasoned and successful teacher, Guichon makes an effort to learn about the personal interests, backgrounds and prior experiences that his students bring into the classroom/kitchen. In doing so, he provides instructional scaffolding and individualized coaching. Whether a student has trouble with a particular challenge or is feeling generally insecure, Guichon utilizes flexible pedagogical strategies in order to meet them where they are at and help them to find the means to push forward.
  
  Another unique element of this show is that there is no elimination. And while there is only one “best in class” awarded at the end, it is clear that each student experiences a hearty amount of positive affirmation, sprinkles of insightful teachable moments and personal and professional growth and proficiency.
  
  
• How To with John Wilson (HBO Max): John Wilson wears many hats. He is a documentarian by trade, although in one episode of his current HBO series How To with John Wilson, he struggles to identify himself professionally. The truth is that Wilson is one of the most astute social observers in the arts and entertainment industry today. Wilson is a fantastic social commentator. His deadpan expressions, both through his dialogue and visuals, are indicative of a very effective satirist and social philosopher.
  
  To develop his show, Wilson shoots and mines through thousands of hours of footage, which he records on a simple handheld camera. The content is meticulously arranged to respond to themes for his episodes, such as, how to make small talk, how to put up scaffolding and how to cook risotto. Each episode features realistic scenes and diverse perspectives of daily life and human nature. Each segment is presented candidly, with very little judgment from Wilson himself (the latter is generally left open ended for the viewers).
  
  While this is an overall comedic show, there is a lot to seriously learn via the creative topics Wilson investigates. Furthermore, it is insightful to see many examples of whimsy, compassion and weirdness that paints a picture of our enduring creativity, audacity of hope and resistance to closure in light of the many obstacles thrown our collective way.

Exhibitions

What would an art-centered blog be without a reflection on exhibitions? Here are three of my favorites from the 2020-2021 art season.

• MONUMENTS NOW: Monuments that recognize historical figures who upheld and promoted racism, inequality and injustice, are some of most scrutinized objects within arts and culture. Overall, there is a disparity in monuments that purport to record history. Many of the existing monuments and statues feature the likenesses of white men and colonialist narratives. In 2019, only five out of the one-hundred-and-fifty statues in New York City were dedicated to historic women.
  
  Socrates Sculpture Park, in Queens, New York, responded to this disparity by commissioning socially engaged artists to create their interpretations of monuments that honor underrepresented and marginalized histories and narratives. The artists who built massive monuments included Jeffrey Gibson, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Xaviera Simmons and Nona Faustine. Each of these artists represents an intersectional perspective and presented work that raises awareness and pays tribute to diasporic, Indigenous and queer histories. In addition to these public artworks by renowned contemporary artists, an interactive sculpture, titled What’s Missing (2020) was collectively designed, implemented and exhibited by New York City high school students.

• Year of Uncertainty (YoU): In January of 2021, while the world was in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic’s winter surge, the museum launched a hybrid exhibition and public program called A Year of Uncertainty (YoU). The program aims to provide structure, support, dialogue and action around themes of care, repair, play, justice and the future. Each of these themes respond to both local and international uncertainty that has been intensified by the pandemic, public health policy (or lack thereof), climate change, xenophobia, racial injustice and income disparity.
  
  Contributing to YoU‘s framework and vision, the museum has brought on six artists-in-residence, nine Community Partners (i.e. nonprofit organizations) and twelve Co-Thinkers (a coterie of artists, designers, scientists, writers, architects and activists). Each of these individuals and teams provide organizational scaffolding, expertise and visitor engagement that is in line with the program’s various themes.
  
  I recently wrote about the work of one resident artist, Gabo Camnitzer, whose project, Student Body, Video School, and Glorious Wound, analyzes pedagogical methodologies and systematic structures within contemporary classrooms and schools. You can read that post here.
  
  
• Bob Thomson: This House Is Mine: Bob Thompson still remains a largely unsung legend of American modern art, but this incredible survey of his work at Colby College does a great job singing his praises.
  
  Thompson came of age during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, but was more drawn to representational imagery and “the classics” from earlier in the art historical canon. He referenced the latter in his own unique style, which includes a vibrant chromatic palette and compositional rhythm that is the visual art equivalent of jazz music. Overall, Thompson’s work is a reflection of contemporary Black culture and both the joys, as well as the trials and tribulations that African Americans experience in a society that upholds a white colonialist hegemony.
  
  By synthesizing European painting into a modern Black visual vocabulary, Thompson’s art communicates critical social messages around racial justice and inequality. He predates renowned contemporary artists like Kehinde Wiley and Titus Kaphar, whose work also powerfully addresses these issues. If you don’t know Bob Thompson, now you do.

Onward and upward:

So there you have it readers, a (somewhat) brief year in review at Artfully Learning. I think that I might resolve to make this an annual posting event.

I would love to hear your thoughts and reflections on 2021. What were your greatest challenges, biggest triumphs and most profound learning experiences?

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking this year-long journey with me. And thank you for reading and supporting my work!

I wish you all a very happy, healthy and artful new year!