The Making of an Artist

Kristin G. Congdon

Description

What drives an artist to create? And are there common traits that successful artists possess? In The Making of an Artist, Kristin G. Congdon draws on her years of studying and teaching art at all levels – from universities to correctional settings – to identify three traits that are regularly found in successful artists: desire, courage and commitment. In this collection Congdon explores each of those traits, as well as giving ethnographic case studies of six visual artists from diverse backgrounds and locations whose practices embody them. Marrying the work of biography, journalism, sociology and psychology, the book opens up the often mysterious process of making art, showing us how those characteristics play into it, as well as how other factors, such as trauma, madness, class and gender, affect the ways that people approach the creative process.



Powerfully insightful and fully accessible, The Making of an Artist will be an invaluable resource for practicing artists, those just setting out on artistic careers, and art teachers alike.

Education

Kristin Congdon

 

Desire

Kristin Congdon

 

Flo Oy Wong

Kristin Congdon

 

The Highwaymen

Kristin Congdon

 

Courage

Kristin Congdon

 

Richard Brown

Kristin Congdon

 

Asma M Alahmad

Kristin Congdon

 

Commitment

Kristin Congdon

 

Erick Wolfmeyer

Kristin Congdon

 

Catherine Beaudette

Kristin Congdon

 

Teaching

Kristin Congdon

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des arts visuels
• EDUCATION
• History of art
• Sociology
• General officer
• Art
• General
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783208524
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2018 by Intellect Books,
The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2018 by Intellect Books,
The University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright ©2018 Intellect Ltd Copy-editor: Michael Eckhardt Cover illustrations: Asma M Alahmad. Courtesy of the artist. Design: Aleksandra Szumlas Indexer: Silvia Benvenuto
Production manager: Katie Evans
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written consent. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISSN: 978-1-78320-851-7
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-853-1
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-852-4
Printed and bound by Gomer Press Ltd, UK
This is a peer-reviewed publication

Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Education
Chapter 2: Desire
Chapter 3: Flo Oy Wong
Chapter 4: The Highwaymen
Chapter 5: Courage
Chapter 6: Richard Brown
Chapter 7: Asma M Alahmad
Chapter 8: Commitment
Chapter 9: Erick Wolfmeyer
Chapter 10: Catherine Beaudette
Chapter 11: Teaching
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
Introduction
I am more interested in the artist than in the work.
—Ai Weiwei 1
T he seeds for this book grew out of two noteworthy experiences. The first was in the late 1970s, when I was hired to teach art to women inmates in a maximum security jail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Recently equipped with the latest teaching techniques, after receiving a master’s degree in art education, I was young and idealistic. My students were enthusiastic and welcoming – only they didn’t want to draw, paint, or learn about great masterworks. Instead they wanted to make clothes, macramé jewelry, and crochet gifts for family members. When I complied with their requests and we began to feel comfortable with one another, they joked about my middle-class ways, my taste in fabrics and yarns (muted colors and organic fibers), and with great kindness requested that I tune in to their aesthetic preferences. I soon learned that if I was to be successful in the jail environment, I needed to broaden my ways of thinking about art and education. In 1980, their teachings led me to study art from a folkloric perspective so that I could understand and validate the artistic expressions of varied cultural groups. As Martin Heidegger would have it, my student inmates helped me refocus my thinking about art and education as a way to articulate the interpersonal world 2 .
The second experience came just after I started my doctoral program. Browsing in the University of Oregon bookstore, I came across Eleanor Lander Horwitz’s 1975 book Contemporary American Folk Artists . One of the featured artists was Walter Flax, a man from Yorktown, Virginia, who wanted to join the navy but had been turned down twice. 3 He claimed, “[w]hen the first war came, I wasn’t smart enough […]. When the second war came, I was too game-legged.” 4 Flax loved boats, and spent his childhood looking at battleships, tankers, and submarines at the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, the Naval Yard in Norfolk, and the shipyard at Newport News. He did odd jobs, collected throwaway objects, and lived down a dirt road in a two-room shack. Although Flax could neither read nor write, he had a vision that he made real – at least to him. He created his own fleet of model ships, placing them all around his small home. He constructed them from cast-off objects he had collected over the years. From these items that others found useless he made sea vessels and became the captain of hundreds of ships, even though he had never stepped foot on a real one. Almost no one knew about the life he created, one that obviously gave him great pleasure. Walter Flax, a man who didn’t know his age and sometimes referred to himself by several names, was someone who recognized the gifts he had. If he was told he couldn’t join the navy, he figured another way to live his dream. 5 I was struck by the courage and drive he had to make the world as he wished it, and the power of his vision has lingered in my mind for decades. It is with a respect for and an interest in artists like Walter Flax that I write this book. He demonstrated desire, courage, and commitment. He had the ability to create a world that others had denied him, and he did it without praise or acknowledgment from any other person, and certainly not the support or encouragement of curators, art critics, or art educators. There was something about Walter Flax that drew me in. I liked his work, but I was more curious about him. Since that time, so many other artists who have worked with and without the guidance of formal art education have compelled me to question what was right and wrong with the current state of education in the arts.
As a scholar with a Ph.D. in art education, I have taught in public schools, community centers, correctional settings, and universities. I have taught art education and art therapy as an assistant professor, and have been tenured as an art professor, a film professor, and a professor of philosophy and humanities. In all these many settings and disciplines I have wondered: what makes an artist an artist? And how can artists best be taught?
These two questions are the focus of this book. There seem to be many characteristics that contribute to someone becoming an artist, such as talent, a kind of intelligence, maybe even genius. But after years of study and work in education, the characteristics that intrigue me the most are desire, courage, and commitment. These three traits appear to be huge underlying forces that make artists who they are. They are perhaps easier characteristics to describe than to define. They manifest themselves in different ways, which makes addressing them in teaching difficult. One may desire to reveal a truth, encourage a new way of seeing, or document an event that is missing from memory. It may take courage to reach one’s goal, as the journey may take time, potentially robbing the artist of a balanced life, financial stability, and possibly one’s health. It is a commitment to fulfill this desire and the courage to “keep at it” that makes an artist successful. Being successful, of course, has its own definitional issues that will be revealed in this book.
In asking questions about the making of an artist, this book addresses today’s crisis in teaching – in this case, specifically about visual art, though there are correlations to be made with artists from other disciplines. If the reader is convinced that desire, courage, and commitment are central to the making of an artist, then schools at all levels may have to rethink their curriculum. While these three traits seem to cross time and place, art-making itself has changed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All kinds of materials are worthy of use, and artists are increasingly thinking about what it is that art should do for the viewer. 6 Additionally, art schools vary considerably: some students learn art-making in liberal arts colleges and universities; others go to schools focused on teaching art. Schools also vary from country to country, with some more successful than others. But in most every case, refocusing on what is taught and how it is taught should be ongoing. In some cases, changing an art curriculum and its pedagogy to more clearly meet today’s creative needs might take a total overhaul. In other cases, this book may simply reinforce what a faculty or art teacher is already doing.
First, we look at the education of artists as it is and has been. We then investigate the three traits I deem most worthy of exploration: desire, courage, and commitment. Two artists who represent each characteristic are used as examples. The six artists highlighted in this book create for different reasons, but they all have strong goals for creating the work they do, just as Walter Flax did. Given the research on the lives of creative people and the educational process with regard to the three focal character traits, the final chapter provides suggestions on how education in the arts might change to become more in tune to the personalities, working processes, and goals of artists.
Art schools are filled with would-be artists – individuals who want to express themselves, become famous, or make money by living what they envision to be a creative life. However, very few of these students will become the kinds of artists who create work that moves people to think, change, or feel in ways that are extraordinary. This book deals with artists – students, teachers, instructors, and professors – who want to make a difference in the world, even if that difference is only for themselves, as was the case with Walter Flax. These are the artists who want to make a statement so passionately and completely that they are willing to work long hours with hunger and purpose in order to reach their goals, sometimes at a heavy price. It is this journey that I describe in these pages. It is this journey that drives instruction.
CHAPTER 1
Education
School’s been blown to bits.
—Alice Cooper 1
A rtists respond to their formal educations positively and negatively, and sometimes somewhere in between. Artists with formal educations often refer to themselves as being self-taught, dismissing the influence of their teachers. Artists who do not have a formal education in the arts often embrace the fact that they figured things out for themselves. Everyone recognizes that formal education is but one way in which artists become educated. These facts raise questions and challenges for educators. Are art schools educating artists well? What are they doing right and what could they do better? And how is it that artists without formal educations become good artists?