Artist and author Faith Ringgold creates works of art that she refers to as storyquilts. Her most famous storyquilt, Tar Beach (1991), is also a children's book about Cassie. With her brother, parents, and neighbors, Cassie spends hot summer evenings on the roof of her building in New York City, imagining herself flying across the skyline, high above the buildings. Meaningful interpretations of this work reveal numerous references to other fields of knowledge. Wilson (1997) offers this summary of Tar Beach:Two adult couples are shown eating their supper (a picnic on a tar beach) and a young girl, Cassie, lies on a blanket with her younger brother. . . . In her imagination, Cassie can "own" anything she flies over. As she says, "I am free to go wherever I want for the rest of my life." The George Washington Bridge is her most prized possession, but she also flies over a labor union building and an ice cream factory. By owning the labor building, she will be able to put an end to the discriminatory practices that have kept blacks and Native Americans out of the union. Cassie's flight also echoes a motif in African American folktale literature, in which slaves dreamed of flying to the North and to freedom. (P. 158)
Tar Beach has inspired elementary and secondary art, reading, and social studies teachers to engage students in producing quiltlike works that depict narratives about cooperation, community, and freedom. A meaningful unit of instruction based on Tar Beach requires much research and the expertise of many contributors: teachers, students, and other school-community members with relevant information. Wilson (1997) comments on a Tar Beach unit taught by classroom teacher Chris Tonsmeire. Tonsmeire explained to her children that Tar Beach echoed the theme of slaves flying to freedom in African-American folk literature. As she explained, one of her students said, "That's just like Follow the Drinking Gourd"—a story of the Underground Railroad, by which slaves moved north to freedom before and during the Civil War. (P. 157)
Tonsmeire then ordered Follow the Drinking Gourd (Winter, 1988) to the unit. As the student's contribution suggests, important themes revealed through works of art can inspire research, discussions, and artworks that explore important social and cultural conditions.
Information synthesized from several subject areas uncovers the deeper meanings of some works of art. In this type of instruction, students engage in tasks that require visual, verbal, and written responses. For Tar Beach, students read, study, and discuss the book. They read critical writing about the book and the artwork; study the biography of the artist; view videotapes of the artist working and talking; examine how the work's sensory, formal, and expressive qualities contribute to its meaning; and discuss relevant aesthetic issues. The study of related materials and information places the work in proper historical and cultural contexts. Students also read about slavery, research the Underground Railroad, listen to African American spirituals, and hear poetry by Langston Hughes (Wilson, 1997).
Creating an Interpretive Unit of Instruction
- Ask questions and offer uncertainty about the meanings of works of art;
- Ask questions and offer uncertainty about the meanings of works of art;
- Refer to the cultural contexts of the work, the artist, the historians, and the critics;
- Actively translate visible signs in the works into critical oral and written interpretations;
- Use metaphors and symbols in the works of art that they create;
- Use everyday language in their interpretations; and
- Understand how symbols in artworks refer to contexts and circumstances relevant to the students.
In such a learning environment, each student uses his or her frame of reference and knowledge to construct interpretations. Combining the initial interpretations of all the students produces more complex understandings. One student might view a work as a political statement; another could emphasize its historical significance. With sufficient supporting information, each interpretation could be plausible. As students move from unit to unit, they should revisit questions, themes, and information revealed through their previous interpretations.
Units of Instruction
Instruction in the visual arts should combine a variety of ways of knowing and understanding. The following learning episodes center on the work of one artist and initiate inquiry at all levels.
Amalia Mesa-Bains. To illustrate process-folio assessment, which differs from portfolio assessment by including research notes as well as finished products, Wolf and Pistone (1991) feature the work of Chicana artist Amalia Mesa-Bains, who creates installations that comprise found objects, papers, furniture, and other materials. Mesa-Bains prepares extensively before constructing her installations, and her notes, sketches and other forms of planning suggest their complexity of meaning.
To prompt an interpretation of her work, teachers might ask, What images, symbols, and objects in Amelia Mesa-Bains's works do you recognize? Where have you seen them? Who uses them and for what reasons? How have these objects changed their original meaning or purpose?
After carefully studying the content and the process, secondary students create installations that function as symbolic narratives about their lives. Students have constructed a cross section of a landfill with a patch of sod growing on top; recreated the aftermath of a landslide, complete with family photographs, stuffed animals, clothes, and household objects swept away in the destruction; and built a revolver, complete with a spinning chamber made from a beer can. Like Mesa-Bains, students conduct research and compile notes and sketches with historical, cultural, political, and personal information. These documents form a process-folio that reflects the complexity of a work's meaning.
Joseph Stella. We are all familiar with the metaphor "building a bridge to the 21st century." At the turn of the 20th century, the Brooklyn Bridge served as inspiration for the new millennium. Stella, who emigrated from Italy in 1896, was obsessed with the Brooklyn Bridge. He saw it as a philosophical, spiritual, and technological metaphor.
Inspired by Stella's paintings of the bridge, students explore immigration, technology, science, the arts, and philosophy. Well-developed student interpretations emphasize how Stella's paintings reflect multiple facets of life in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. After exploring these facets through history, social studies, science, and language arts, students create paintings of bridges and other structures important to their own lives.
While echoing the stylistic qualities of Stella's images, the student paintings depict structures as metaphors of human achievement. As students produce visual and written interpretations of important structures in their own lives, they become aware of the economic, social, and symbolic significance of these creations.
Beverly Buchanan. Through interpreting works by contemporary artist Beverly Buchanan, students explore issues of class, social status, history, memory, and place. She uses shacks as the subject matter for her sculptures, paintings, and drawings. To help students interpret Buchanan's work, teachers might ask, Who might have lived here? What does your house say about you? What assumptions do we make about people on the basis of where they live? How do structures remind us of our past and present values?
Following Buchanan's lead, students create abstract drawings of houses inspired by photographs. Students use discarded pieces of wood, metal, and foam core to create sculptures that explore formal and conceptual construction issues. As students build these works, they explore relationships between interior and exterior, learn about resourcefulness, and learn firsthand about the nature and limitations of found materials. Buchanan's sculptures and drawings become a starting point for understanding the range of people who make up our society, the places they inhabit, and our perceptions of them.
Reflections and Thoughts
This constructivist approach to inquiry, which encourages students to link works of visual art to other bodies of knowledge, begins with interpretation. In this type of art curriculum, students need a strong foundation in history, literature, the sciences, music, and other subjects to support the content of art instruction. They need reading and writing skills to decipher, digest, and reconstruct critical writing about works of art. Mathematical skills and logic help them engineer complex installations and plan and construct three-dimensional works.
A curriculum based on visual and verbal interpretations of works of art benefits from Internet access. Students can download relevant images and information for written interpretations, historical research, and multimedia presentations about these works. Books from all subject areas should have their own place in the art room library, along with slides, posters, and digital reproductions of works of art. Teachers who promote this approach to curriculum display didactic exhibitions of student work and critical writing. Viewers can then assess the learning of each student by comparing the product of his or her performance with the content and requirements of the assignment.
Indeed, our students find themselves within an ever increasingly complex world replete with visual imagery. Unless we strengthen the curriculum by requiring a visual arts education for all students, one that affords them sequential and meaningful opportunities to develop their skills in deciphering this visual world, we do them, and ourselves, a disservice.
