aesthetics & problem solving
AA1 Cr.11
planning & experimentation
AA1 Cr.12
skills
1. All assignments must be completed on or before the due date. 2. Unfinished artwork is graded as such. 3. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to make up all work. You can sign out art supplies if needed. 4. If your project requires extra time to be completed, you have to make arrangements with me prior the due date. This is your responsibility. 5. Each project has a rubric with specific requirements and guidelines. Follow them. 6. Unless an assignment specifically requires copying, it will be interpreted in the same manner as plagiarism. 7. You are also graded for your in-class studio work.
1. Food, drinks, candy, gum are not allowed in the Art rooms. A bottle of WATER is permitted in room 206 (only). 2. Cell phones are not allowed at any time. Phones should be turned off and put away. 3. Be in the room before the bell rings. Dropping your stuff and leaving does not qualify you as being on time. 4. Sit at your assigned seat unless I give you OK to move. That means you do not walk around the room during the class. 5. Talk quietly with students at your table. Do not talk during the instructional time. 6. Draw, paint, etc. on your artwork only! 7. Use materials from your tote-tray only... don't go into other people's trays. 8. You can bring your work home anytime. You are responsible for having it back next day. 9. If you must swear, please do it elsewhere... Thanks. 10. You are responsible for cleaning your work area and the tools that you used. 11. If you are in the Graphics lab, use the printers for the current ART assignments only!!! 12. Encourage your fellow classmates in a positive way... treat them fairly and nicely. This room should be a fun and comfortable place for everyone.
Professor of Art Therapy Research, Drexel University
Girija Kaimal receives funding from the national Endowment for the Arts, Drexel University, Department of Defense, Johns Hopkins University and the Prasad Family Foundation.
Drexel University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.
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When you think about the word “art,” what comes to mind? A child’s artwork pinned to the fridge? A favorite artist whose work always inspires? Abstract art that is hard to understand?
Each of these assumes that making art is something that other people do, such as children or “those with talent.”
However, as I explain in my book “ The Expressive Instinct ,” art is intrinsic to human evolution and history. Just as sports or workouts exercise the body, creating art exercises the imagination and is essential to mental as well as physical well-being.
I am a professor of art therapy who studies how creative self-expression affects physical and emotional health. In our clinical research studies, my colleagues and I are finding that any form of creative self-expression – including drawing, painting, fiber arts, woodworking or photography – can reduce stress , improve mood and increase self-confidence.
As a sickly child who needed to stay home from school a lot, I found that making art helped me cope. Today, creating art is my sanctuary. I use it as a sounding board to better understand myself and a way to recharge and learn from the challenges of life.
Although everyone has their own concept of what defines art, one thing is universally true: Creativity is a defining feature of the human species.
How so? Well, human brains are not computers processing data. They are biological prediction machines that perceive the environment through memories and the senses, with the capacity to use that information to imagine plausible future scenarios.
These inherent predictive and imaginative capacities are the wellspring of humanity’s abilities to survive and thrive – because self-expression is a safety valve that helps us cope with uncertainty. No one truly knows the future; they must live each day not sure of what will happen tomorrow. Art can help us all practice this imaginative muscle in a useful way.
In our study examining brain activity while using virtual reality tools to create 3-D digital artwork, my team demonstrated that creative expression is a natural state of being . The brain naturally uses fewer cognitive resources to be expressive and creative, compared with the brain power needed to do a rote task that requires conscious effort.
Seemingly ordinary everyday activities can provide opportunities to tap into one’s natural creativity and imagination: whipping up a meal from leftovers, figuring out an alternate route to work, dancing a little jig in response to hearing a song, or planting and tending a garden.
We have repeatedly found in our studies that even a single session of real and honest self-expression can improve self-confidence and reduce feelings of stress , anxiety and burnout .
This is partly because creativity activates reward pathways in the brain. Using our hands and bodies to express ourselves activates dopamine pathways and helps us feel good. Dopamine is a neural messenger that is associated with feeling a sense of hope, accomplishment or reward . Our brains are wired to secrete feel-good hormones whenever we move , create something or engage in any type of expressive activity.
Tapping into the creative resources within is one of the most underrated seeds of well-being in the world.
By comparison, bottling up or denying these feelings can cause distress , anxiety and fear because we have not processed and expressed them. This is probably one of the reasons why every community around the world has its own creative and expressive practices. Even our ancestors in Indigenous communities all around the world intuitively knew that self-expression was essential to emotional health and social connection.
Being unable to share our lives, keeping secrets and feeling isolated and lonely tend to worsen our health . To our brains, social isolation feels like a chronic disease because it interprets this loneliness and inability to express as a threat to survival.
Since creative expression can engage the senses, it can also be a body workout: a sensual as well as emotional and cognitive experience. Being active in expression – be it art, music, dance, drama, writing, culinary arts or working with nature – imparts a sense of confidence and hope that challenges can be navigated and overcome .
Given the integral role of art in our lives, it makes sense that making art can help people manage transitions, adversity and trauma, such as the stresses of puberty, the death of a loved one or experiencing a serious illness .
According to a global study, 1 in 2 people will experience a mental-health-related challenge in their lifetime , whether from life’s challenges, genetic predispositions or a combination of the two.
This is where art therapy can come in. Art therapy is a regulated mental health profession in which clinical psychotherapists with extensive clinical training offer psychotherapy to patients with diagnosed mental health needs.
The origins of art therapy go back to attempts to treat soldiers struggling with post-traumatic stress during the 20th century’s two world wars. Today there is evidence that traumatic experiences tend to be stored as sounds, images and physical sensations in the brain. When someone lacks the words to process these experiences through traditional talk therapy, art therapy can provide an indirect way to express and externalize those feelings and memories.
One of art therapy’s unique strengths is that it provides nonverbal ways of communicating, processing and eventually managing the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In fact, in a recent study, my team has found that a personal history of trauma is related to how people react to evocative images . Images of distress and pain resonate with us when we have known similar kinds of distress ourselves. This implies that our life stories make us sensitized to distress in others and even personalize it more.
Creative self-expression is especially relevant in coping with trauma because it provides an outlet through which a person can regain a sense of agency and control.
For those new to exploring art as a creative pursuit or for well-being reasons, engaging in creative activities begins with letting go of unrealistic expectations. Being creative isn’t about becoming a famous artist or even a mediocre one. It is about allowing ourselves to flex the creative muscle that we all have and enjoying all the sensory and emotional aspects of imagining.
Next, think about activities that made you feel free to explore when you were a child. Did you like singing, playing in the outdoors, dancing, making up pretend plays, or writing little tales? Allow yourself to indulge in any and all of these creative pursuits that made you feel relaxed and joyful.
A cultural tradition , tinkering with electronics, making a gift for someone or simply paying attention to everyday beauty – any of these can be a creative activity. And just like any muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. Over time, you will notice yourself getting more confident and adventurous in your creative practices.
Whatever it is, make time for this creative pursuit every week – which is possibly the hardest step of them all. If it seems “unimportant” compared with the demands of daily life, such as work or family, try thinking of it as another form of sustenance.
Remember that creativity is just as critical to human health as eating nutritious meals or getting exercise and good rest . So as the Latin saying goes: “Plene vivere.” Live fully.
This article is part of Art & Science Collide , a series examining the intersections between art and science. You may be interested in:
Literature inspired my medical career: Why the humanities are needed in health care
I wrote a play for children about integrating the arts into STEM fields – here’s what I learned about interdisciplinary thinking
Art and science entwined: This course explores the long, interrelated history of two ways of seeing the world
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Assignments. SINCE 2013, The Art Assignment has been gathering assignments from a wide range of artists, Each commissioned to create a prompt based on their own way of working. you don't need to have special skills or training in order to do them, and The only materials you'll need are ones you probably already have or can source for free.
Pre-order our book YOU ARE AN ARTIST (which includes new assignments!) here: http://bit.ly/2kplj2hFor much of human history, people made art by trying to rep...
Have your students create stop-motion videos using clay-like material. This can be done with clay, play-doh, or even cookie dough. Paper Pottery. Cardboard Sculptures. Here are some additional clay recipes your students can try to make their own homemade clay: Paper Clay. Salt Dough. Baking Soda Clay.
The Art Assignment is an educational video series hosted by curator Sarah Urist Green. We explore art and art history through the lens of things happening to...
Pre-order our book YOU ARE AN ARTIST (which includes new assignments!) here: http://bit.ly/2kplj2h So you look at a work of art and think to yourself, I coul...
Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning offers a comprehensive introduction to the world of Art. Authored by four USG faculty members with advance degrees in the arts, this textbooks offers up-to-date original scholarship. It includes over 400 high-quality images illustrating the history of art, its technical applications, and its many uses.
The Art Assignment is an educational video series that introduces you to innovative artists, presents you with assignments, and explores art history through the lens of the present. The series premiered in 2014 as a co-production of PBS Digital Studios and Complexly, with episodes featuring emerging and established artists who share assignments ...
The Art Assignment is a book! New assignments, along with a selection gathered during the course of making the series, is available for sale in the usual places books are sold. If your favorite local book shop or library doesn't have it in stock, ask for it! You Are an Artist includes over 50 assignments from some of the most innovative ...
5. Value Scale Water Droplet. This small but mighty pencil and paper assignment is a tried and true plan for working with the most limited materials to generate the most significant impact. Students will be delighted as they work to create the illusion of a water droplet on paper.
The Art Assignment is a weekly PBS Digital Studios production hosted by curator Sarah Green. We take you around the U.S. to meet working artists and solicit assignments from them that we can all complete. Make a Book with Meat (or other atypical materials) 5m 28s.
The Art Assignment is a PBS Digital Studios webseries focused on contemporary art that debuted in February 2014. The Art Assignment is hosted by Sarah Urist Green who was a curator of contemporary art for the Indianapolis Museum of Art from 2007 to 2013.. Green's goal for this web series is to demystify the art making process and educate people on contemporary art and how it can be ...
Lesson Plans. These lesson plans help you integrate learning about works of art in your classroom. Select an option below to browse lesson plans by grade, or continue scrolling to see all lesson plans. Lesson plans for elementary school students. Lesson plans for middle school students. Lesson plans for high school students.
Sampling, appropriating, borrowing, stealing. Whatever you want to call it, artists have been copying since time immemorial. We look into the history of the ...
Assignments. In the first three years of the video series, we gathered sixty assignments from artists working in a wide range of places and with an even wider range of approaches to art making. In these episodes, we introduce you to an artist who presents you with an assignment and contextualize the activity with relevant works from history. ...
"The Art Assignment" is a weekly PBS Digital Studios production hosted by curator Sarah Green. We take you around the U.S. to meet working artists and solicit assignments from them that we can all complete. Read more Episode. Make a Book with Meat (or other atypical materials) Watch this show and many more anytime, anywhere on the free PBS App. ...
Join curator Sarah Green as she interviews some of today's most inspiring artists and offers a historical exploration behind their methods and techniques. Whether it's transforming materials to help people look at the changing environment with new eyes, or taking classic artistic trends and adding a modern twist, The Art Assignment shows that ...
1. All assignments must be completed on or before the due date. 2. Unfinished artwork is graded as such. 3. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to make up all work. You can sign out art supplies if needed. 4. If your project requires extra time to be completed, you have to make arrangements with me prior the due date. This is your ...
EARTHWORKS. LAND ART. EARTH ART. Whatever you call it, we look at what it means to make art out in nature and in the world from the 1960s to today. To suppo...
Art can help us all practice this imaginative muscle in a useful way. In our study examining brain activity while using virtual reality tools to create 3-D digital artwork, ...
Special Topics. We make a wide range of videos about art that we post to our YouTube channel, responding to events in the world and ideas that arise in the comments of our videos. We explore challenging subjects and common conceptions and misconceptions about art, with the goal of making the worlds of art and art history more open and accessible.
The Art Assignment. Unlock 89 posts. Join now. Unlock 89 exclusive posts and join a community of 673 members. Starting at . $2 /video. Join now ...
Reflect upon your exploration: (6 points) • Choose one particular artwork not mentioned in your description under the Art - Experience It assignment. Include a screen shot of the artwork. • Tell which museum houses the artwork. Discuss the art: including the artist's name, title of the art piece, time period of art piece, and specific details that made it stand out to you.
The Art Assignment is a production of Complexly. Complexly is the production company for Crash Course, SciShow, and a dozen other education video channels and podcasts. Founded in 2012 by Hank and John Green, Complexly has a worldwide audience of 20 million subscribers and 2.4 billion views on YouTube, making it one of the largest global online ...
Pre-order our book YOU ARE AN ARTIST (which includes new assignments!) here: http://bit.ly/2kplj2h"Surrealism" has become shorthand for the bizarre, the irra...
Pre-order our book YOU ARE AN ARTIST (which includes new assignments!) here: http://bit.ly/2kplj2hYou've heard his name. You've seen the Campbell's Soup cans...