Norman Lyndsay nymph
Photo: Simon Pockley
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Chalk drawing with John Hughes
Photo: Simon Pockley
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Tails on bare nymph bottoms.
Chalk drawings, doors sliding.
Termite puppet theatre.
Zooplankton.
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On 30 September Simon wrote:
Thoroughly enjoyed our mountain outing last Saturday with John. It was a treat to spend time with him and to meet David and Joyce in their domain. It made me think about the artist’s life in ways that I hadn’t done before – something to do with inquisitiveness, mutual respect, shared activity and following threads for the sake of the journey…
On the way back John showed us Termite puppets in his house.
Dear Simon,
I am curious to know what place you think this kind of dialogue through practice has in art education today.
What we see here is a healthy expression of the old studio based teaching – a mutually respectful dialogue through practice. There is no judgment; we acknowledge that we all work differently. It was like this at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne, which later became the Victorian college of the Arts, where I studies in the 1970s. John Brack, and later Lenton Parr, modeled this approach to us. We were part of a community.
This kind of teaching is completely dependent on the values of the people involved – staff and students. At its best it is a community. At its worst it is a tyranny. It presents a real challenge to those wanting to promote, sell, deliver and assess competency based training.
I think about your Chinese delegate asking how we teach creativity in Australia.
Best wishes,
I had a similar conversation today at RMIT where the so called ‘studio model’ has many flavours. At core there are some simple but profound questions.
The first question is what is a ‘good’ education?
Without cynicism – I’d say, the ability to think, read, listen and see imaginatively and critically, to write and speak effectively, to enquire rationally and less importantly but realistically – find paid employment.
The next question is how to provide a good education?
Clearly this is not about filling up empty vessels with information. Teacher centrics resort to lecture-like approaches. Learner centrics devise more constructivist models involving learning by doing.
However, the arts present an interesting challenge because of the fundamental incompatibility between the constant need to suppress rationality (in order to make art) within a rational framework.
It’s a hard thing for artists to explain rationally to rationalists and I suspect this is why the rationalists who control the framework appear to be winning.
As for teaching creativity, a woman I listened to today was adamant that this was as much about clearing out and letting go as it was about learning to draw and to communicate. She was at pains to point out that neither of these is actually taught in the School of Creative Media.
The door is open to improvement…
What do you think?
Your good education definition starts off like my living will:
“In the event that I am unable to walk, talk and think, after any recovery that is likely , then I refuse all medications apart from Morphine and Maxalon.”
Life is simply not worth living if I can’t think, talk or walk. And as a doing person, I need to walk. Through moving and doing, I think.
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Without a rational framework art cannot be made; only within a framework can we let go.
Jack Colwell, a musician friend, was over here today.
He told me about Tori Amos’s new book, Piece by Piece, where she talks about structure in her creative process. He said that’s how he composes.
“It’s like building a house,” he said, “and you have to move into the house with your words and sounds.”
Collecting sounds of glass and metal from the kitchen with a digital recorder, he structured sound patterns on the computer.
A sound made from striking glass against metal suddenly became music, in a new order responding to an animation: the re-ordering of water molecules freezing and melting.
Like a conversation, he said, the music’s made with materials at hand, in response to the moving images.
I agree with the woman who suggested that teaching creativity is about clearing out and letting go. We must be open to the possibilities that seem to randomly suggest themselves: the icypoles in the fridge, tap water, and the kitchen sink.
Jack is no empty vessel. Trained from childhood in classical music, he lets go now with that knowledge within him His hand knows how to strike a wine glass to get those delicious sounds he’s learned through daily training of the ear. He improvises from years of experience in classical structures. And it’s as physical as it is intellectual and emotional.
It’s all of a piece.
Practice in the sheer physical aspects of drawing, painting, building, dancing and so on is an excellent basis for improvisation, and original composition (creativity): learning what tools and materials are capable of, and what you can do with them.
The work that I have been doing with primary school teachers has been modeling a process. Showing one way of developing art works using research, experimentation, making and documentation. All of these interwoven. It is part of a journey not an isolated occurence. Producing not one but a series. There is no need to think up a new idea every week, they just grow. It is only one way, and its what works for me at the present. I like to explore an idea, a material. Explore those ideas through materials. The materials within themselves carry their own stories, and pushing the materials finds their essence
I find it very difficult to imagine ‘the clearing out and letting go’, as this is not something I have tried. Maybe I should have a go, I’m not sure I would know how to go about it. The idea of having ‘a script’ for the ‘Gathering’ performance on Sunday, was something that I needed to mull over. Sometimes it takes me a while to incorporate new ideas into the work that I am doing. To feel confident in their use. This may be taking risks or where I need to ‘let go’.
Just the other day you talked about the materials you use, Christine – the xanthorrhoea resin, echidna quills and carp scales. You said your work invites people to think about the materials – about their stories – as well the effects of the abstract forms you make with them, or the possible meanings and metaphors you might intend, or that people read into them.
We talked about the different ways people look at art – the different angles and levels from which it can be approached.
Again it’s the dialogue that’s important, between the materials and the artist, and the work and the observer. And the process is another point of entry.
About letting go, and trying new ways of doing things, that’s been challenging for me too, particularly in collaborations.
What I suggested we use was a score, not a script. A score is deliberately simple – a minimum structure, or framework, within which you can improvise. My understanding of a script is that someone has prescribed words and gestures, for example, that you must follow.
This summary, by Lenton Parr, of his essay, Assessment of students, may be relevant to this discussion of art education:
Reprinted from the W.A. Teachers’ Journal, November-December, 1971, pp. 401-403. It was originally issued as a guide to staff of the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, of which Lenton Parr was the Principal.
Antarctic expeditioner and once Director of the Australian Antarctic Division, Phillip Law was also an explorer of solutions to arts education in Australia.
As a member of the Council of Melbourne University, he advocated “a multi-school of the arts, embracing art and music and later, hopefully, dance and drama.” His emphasis was on the vocational as opposed to the academic philosophy of education.
Law wrote that:
Law’s vision was later to evolve into the Victorian College of the Arts.
Lenton Parr and the Victorian Institute of Colleges; Lenton Parr – sculptor (1984)