I stopped off at UALR while I was in Little Rock yesterday to visit with their woodworking program director and a visiting artist. The visiting artist had been taking students through the lengthy, abstract process he uses for designing work, and a small sketch of proposed work on a board by a student was shown to me as a bad example of the process of design... something that was to be avoided. I was in the awkward position of guest who disagrees with what was being taught. So I tried to politely suggest the dramatic contrast in methodologies between the beginning days of Sloyd and how it is currently practiced in Scandinavia. I often start my projects with no sketch at all. I may have a view in my mind's eye of the joinery to be used, and have some sense of what the wood will look like and how I want the finished object to appear. But I often start projects with few if any of the important decisions made in advance.
Children (here I use the word very lightly as we are all children at times as we learn, full of wonder and making connections with new things) move in their learning from the concrete to the abstract. And those who are involved in science know that one's relationship with the concrete never comes to an end. All scientific speculation must be tested against the hard edges of physical reality. It is the same with art, craft and design.
Piaget, in his theory of cognitive development recognized the time between ages 6-12 as "the concrete operational stage," and some theorists believe that computer gaming has actually delayed arrival of this stage as settings are pre-imagined and gamers work within sets of predetermined conditions set by game designers rather than by physical reality. This means that even at the time of entrance to college, many students have barely emerged into comfortable relationship with the abstract.
Drawing has immense value in the development of concepts and designs. But for beginners, to start with required drawing overlooks the important requirements of understanding the tools and materials and their participation in the creative act. So you put a blank piece of paper in front of a kid and ask him or her to make a bench? You are so much better off giving a kid a board and a saw. From that you will have a much greater opportunity to actually engage the child in creative work.
The director of the woodworking program at UALR is concerned about how to get more students involved. The place was empty but for us on a Friday afternoon, when it could have been packed with noise and activity instead of completely idle. I will offer this... we never outgrow our relationship to the concrete. To focus too strongly on design as being of greater importance than the making is but one more roadblock standing in the way of creativity. I am so grateful that I am able to walk to the barn and pick up a piece of wood and make. If my objective were to become a designer for industry, I may not be in the best position to do that. I would never be engaged with the kinds of materials I use for that. But if my objective is to be a craftsman and maker, actively involved in my wood shop, the relationship between the abstract and concrete is important to me. You start with the concrete, journey into the abstract and then reemerge into the concrete with a finished object which you can share and which becomes the next platform or foundation from which to continue exploration of the abstract.
Unfortunately most schools have journeyed too far from the fundamentals of tools and materials, and it is very hard for our kids to catch up.
I was surprised in my visits to Scandinavia that Sloyd has moved so far from its foundation of engagement in tools and materials. Now, instead of working from models, the children are supposed to work from their imaginations first. Sloyd teachers are told to have their children draw first and then make so that what they make will be more expressive and unique. It is as though participation in the world of the abstract is more important than participation in the real world. But how can children be expressive and unique and express any reasonable level of quality in their work if they have no understanding of the tools and materials first?
Originally, Sloyd was intended as the necessary second step. Play and manipulation of objects in Kindergarten was to lead to the making of useful objects as children matured and became more engaged in the real world as responsible citizens. But children starting out know very little about the materials and their qualities. They know very little about the tools and their uses. They know very little about the geometry of their own bodies in the use of tools. And these things are extremely important parts of the child's engagement in the creative experience.
I can tell you from my own personal experience as a teacher, you can spend a bit of time on design, but children can hardly wait to get their hands on real things. They can hardly wait to test the ways things work or to feel the transformation of materials in their own hands. If you want to build a great program, even at the university level, you start with the concrete by engaging the hands. There is plenty of time for the abstract, if it is all that important, to come later.
Sounds like the wrong end of the stick.
ReplyDeleteI do so much better when I approach things with little preconception - throwing myself at the materials and bashing them around. It seems that technique and design arise from this, at least so far as I am concerned.
I think in abstractions, I can picture what I want to create, I can even draw it fairly well. But there is something very valuable in the immediacy of simply going at it.
Given this produces less than a more disciplined approach but production of objects is not the principle goal is it? Answering the drive to create, to mold and shape to connect heart, hands and brain at a visceral, unconscious level is the real goal.
I fear without the knowledge gained from simply diving in working I would miss half of the benefits of the process.
I live on little snippets of sketches,piles of sawdust and many playful approaches. Look at Architect Frank Gehry - his childlike approach with paper scissors and tape, connecting his abstractions to the real world and then figuring out how it will be built. Instead of serving the limitations of material and engineering he makes them adapt to his design.
Any skill I have has grown from this, it drives me to read and investigate, to develop better approaches, to understand the limits of the materials and tools.
I can not begin with books and discipline but I certainly get there and with a sharper hunger for knowledge.
In so many Philosophical conversations I have had, I can find myself coming upon the opportunity to see a bizarre reversal of what we usually like to call "reasoning"- where one who is in the middle of speaking about his concrete example, is really revealing a hidden abstraction (hidden that is to him or herself, even or especially in the midst of speaking about it!) and then will go to argue the point... and likewise, one who is in the midst of the abstract, can come upon the hidden concreteness, the real Truth of what they were looking at (and this is what I call the "Meeting" - the meeting of this moment, just as it is)
ReplyDeletewhen one sees the truth of either, the concrete or the abstract, something completely NEW comes into being- and this is what I would call the true learning (if one can be present for it)... it is here, where no argument can be called forth, no debate really survives this sort of seeing - the movement of the agree/disagree mind is meaningless and impotent... yes, I would say this sort of moment can certainly be exemplified by the feel-sound-smell of a toothed steel blade running itself along a piece of tree that has given its life for usefulness- you bet!
I just looked up the etym, only to discover again, a hidden beauty in the abstraction of a word- how fun!
concrete (adj.)
1471, from L. concretus, pp. of concrescere "to grow together," from com- "together" + crescere "to grow" (see crescent). A logicians' term until meaning began to expand 1600s. Noun sense of "building material made from cement, etc." is first recorded 1834.
I enjoy getting thoughtful comments. They tell me that I am onto something meaningful and important, and that I, though I sometimes feel I am out on a limb with saw in hand, am trimming the right end of the stick.
ReplyDeleteI am one of those who can do math in my head but need my fingers to remind me how many screws I need to buy at the hardware store. While early educational theorists said we need to move from the concrete to the abstract, the truth is that we are always moving between the two, and the idiocy that we find in today's society comes when we forget to test our ideologies in the harsh glare of physical reality.
I agree with Clarke and Tom and you on this. The first things kids do with wood might not be great work, but they will learn something very valuable from their mistakes. Every project is a lesson, even after years of working with wood. May as well start from an idea, even if I can't put it on paper.
ReplyDeleteMario
I have had about two or three real teachers... ones that actually broke through and engaged my interest.
ReplyDeleteOne was a shop teacher in the seventh grade. He let me go do things instead of putting me through a series of lectures. I wonder what would have happened if I had more than an hour to spend in his class every day or two.
One was an english teacher who was really engaged in real thought, not just in covering material.
One was a good friend and artist of real genius. He was little interested in the materials and tools but had an innate sense of the process. When he said "A line is a poem" he taught me something more vital than hours of reading or studio time would garner.
All three of these teachers gave me the sense that they really believed in me. They never once tried to exert any sort of control or limitation but encouraged me to create.
How is it that the process Tom describes in his comment is so seemingly uncommon and undervalued in education?
So much of education seems to be concentrated on producing an object rather than a thinking, acting, inventing individual. We are so distracted with excellence of product and seem to ignore the vitality of process that brings about actual accomplishment.
Someone once said that our educational system and an automotive assembly line are so similar as to be indistinguishable. Hesse wrote Unterm Rad or 'Beneath the Wheel' 100 years ago and it has not lost it relevancy.
What part of the human condition makes education what it has become?
Mario -
ReplyDeleteAre there any mistakes? Really?
A child crawls, drags himself up on his feet, holds on to something, takes a shuddering step and falls down. They keep doing this over and over again and end up walking then running then dancing.
What is our standard; performance or effort? What do we reward?
I really think the work is not the product but the process.
One of my teachers once told me of a studio class that concluded with each student tearing up all their work and putting it in the trash can. It was a (arguably over-the-top) demonstration that the product of their work was really not as important as the processes and skills they had developed; that the real art was something other than the paper.
Like most of us I have to earn money with the product of my work so product is important. Somehow, though, if I focus on the product I make crap; If I focus on the process I make art. How the heck does that happen?
Concern for efficiency and economics lead to obsessive involvement in measuring and quantifying. So things that can be measured like GNP, profit, monetary loss, and those things have become the driving force of our culture. But things that are relative, personal, and are a reflection of individual values, like joy, satisfaction and beauty are pushed aside as irrelevant. But the line that is a poem, or a poem written in a single line are central to the human heart. When a single species is lost to greed, when glaciers melt due to our failure to choose beauty and joy over measurable economic concerns we cease to be human, becoming something so much less.
ReplyDeletewhat we are talking about here is the mistaking of Craft for Art...
ReplyDeleteArt should never be spoken of- should never be practiced- should never be valued- should never be pursued
Craft, is Love... love of the material, love of the source of that material, love of the tools that work that material and of the toolmaker that makes the tools, love for the person for whom this material will form into usefulness, love for the person who delivered the material to the shop in which it will be worked...
Art is the product of that Love
pursuit of Art is foolishness, because it will be absent of Love, and instead, filled with the "what about me" thought- as Doug called it, "measurement"... "what will I get out of this?" - "what will THEY think of me?" - "how much will this be worth?" - "will I be respected by THEM?"
all of these are thoughts of separation - of me and you - of I and other - there is no Love there in these thoughts, and this is what "Art" has become... I say, let us not speak of Art at all... let us instead put ourselves to the material, and learn of it... learn of earth, and dirt, and sunlight, and tree, and mountain, and brook, and ocean, and all the creatures therein... learn them through the love of the Meeting - through the Wisdom of the Hands - through the Union of Heart and Mind and the materials of the earth... This is what Craft is- Love!
as well, the materials do not have to be of the earth, although it is surely with them that we will come to learn this... but the materials are also YOU- your life- your heart- your thought- your experience- your loves- your losses- your craft... that also, is the material of this Love- and there is where the true meeting will take place! the truest of all learnings, is not that which might produce a craft, but that which meets the other fully, as they are, without measurement and in FULL recognition- of the falseness of our perceived separation - seeing the mirror of the other- seeing me, when I look at you, when I look at a tree, a bird, a field mouse, a pine cone, a pumpkin, a grapevine, a crystal of tourmaline trapped in some rock, the sediment at the bottom of a stream bed... this is what the materials of the earth are there to teach us- LOOK at their sacrifice! that we may learn this lesson!
Trees, Mountains, Creatures, give their LIFE, that we may come to this meeting! That you and I are not the separate things we think we are- that you and I are one thing, and in that oneness, everything... this is the purpose of Craft, of Love!
let us not speak of Art- let us instead learn what Art is, through the meeting with the materials of this earth, these planets, these suns... this existence...
Tom,
ReplyDeleteAs a resident of an "arts community" I have been involved in endless discussions about "what is art?" and "what is the relationship between art and craft?" Then you add in the ubiquitous "arts and crafts show" which is likely to include feathers glued on pecan shells with pipe cleaners and googly-eyes, and you can see why I have come to regard both terms (arts and crafts) as generally lacking in real meaning.
But I do like your comments. The cetripedal force (which scientists will firmly disavow) that draws things together is present in craftsmanship and could be called love. The impetus that artists and craftsmen feel when they are facing the payment of bills and thus are required to look at their work in terms of profit, sales, marketing, etc. pulls them into the measuring mind, which is framed in its distinctions between things and is the centrifugal force, throwing us into maya, and illusion, stripping from us the sense of wholeness that arises as we gather and shape materials in the making of things. The challenge is to find balance.