9: Contemporary Art as Public Pedagogy Curricula Lesson

Unit Title: Our Spaces, Our Places
Enduring Idea: We reflect our surroundings and our surroundings are a reflection of us.
        Exploring and expressing our personal, community, and environmental stories
        through recontextualization, juxtaposition, and layering.

Lesson One: A Place for You
Grade: First Grade
Time Allotment: Three 45 minute class periods
Summary: Students will analyze images of house interiors, discussing who would feel comfortable and live in a space and why. Students will then select an image, a person who would live there as is, then collage to change the space to be their own story. After drawing a new interior space for the person, students can explore layering and juxtaposition further by gluing their magazine person in the drawn environment and gluing a drawn version of themselves in the magazine environment. Students will learn that spaces are a reflection of the people that live there and that they have the power to change what they are given.

Artworks, Artists and/or Artifacts:
        Where Children Sleep by James Mollison
        what if you lived at ikea? by Christian Gideon
        home decorating catalogs and magazines

Key Concepts Addressed in This Lesson:
        --Art can tell stories of people and places.
        --Art is not limited to a painting or drawing, but includes the built-environment.
        --Meaning can be found in the altering of images within our visual culture and public pedagogy.

Essential Questions Addressed in This Lesson:
        What parts of us are visible in this art?
        What parts of our culture and community are visible in this art?
        How does art reveal our personal stories?
        How does art reveal our surroundings?

Standards:
        1a.4 Create artwork in a variety of two-dimensional (2D) media (collage and drawing)
        3a.3 Create 2D artwork from memory or imagination to tell a story or embody and idea or fantasy
        4a.1 Integrate knowledge of the visual arts and apply the arts to learning other disciplines
        4b.2 Investigate uses and meanings of examples of the arts in children’s daily lives, homes, and
                  communities
        5a.1 Understand there are different responses to specific artworks
        5a.4 Participate in classroom critiques of examples of art from themselves, the class, and art history

Interdisciplinary Connections:
        --Many factors, including communities of which you are a part, influence your personal identity.
            (Social Studies Unit: People and Places in a Community)
        --Places can be described by human and physical characteristics.
            (Social Studies Unit: People and Places in a Community)

Lesson Objectives:
        Knowledge--Students will know that places can reflect different people.
        Skills--Students will create artwork (collage and drawing) that shows a basic understanding of depth in 2D work.
        Dispositions--Students will demonstrate intentional artmaking, characterized by care and concern, through
                craftsmanship in cutting, gluing, and coloring.

Assessment:

Teacher Research and Preparation:
        cut magazine rooms and people (of various ages and ethnicities)

Teaching Resources:
        magazine images of rooms
        magazine images of people
        photography by James Mollison
        photography by Christian Gideon
        audio recording device

Student Supplies:
        scissors, glue, magazines, copy paper, pencils, black marker, colored pencils