running fences

Every Monday night I travel to Eagle River to teach a course called Art Appreciation A160. It is a low level required class that students must take to graduate college and often this class is looked upon as an inconvenience to their studies. The question I continually pose to my students is, what is art and is art important in our lives? This course also helps me examine my own persona as an artist and with each semester I begin with a new premise and a new introduction to teaching. This spring, I introduced art as being integral to our society; how it investigates our cultural understandings on what society is composed of - the myriad of peoples, our ethnic backgrounds, and most importantly how art explains our histories and the universe. It is a general exploration of art history and I try to show a variety and a wide array of visual expressions aside from regular Western stigmas and household artist names.

But, the piece de resistance comes from the students themselves. The last five weeks consist of each student presenting a ten minute PowerPoint lecture on an artist of his/her choice. I stress the importance on using successful visuals to explain what each art piece means, what it expresses and it's historical importance. Many students pick difficult concepts to investigate - like installation art of Christo and Jeanne Claude (an example is pictured above called Running Fences completed in CA) or Donald Judd's minimal geometric sculptures or Robert Smithson's earthworks. Others chose more traditional artists like Rembrandt or Delacroix only to find the magnitude and complexity impossible to examine faithfully giving the artist full credit of their mastery.

Often I think we cruise through life in a sleepwalker's mode but this semester students made curious investigations and explored new things outside the box. Bravo!