Exploring Wood

What gusto all my students had when they explored this medium on their own and as collaborators in a group! Before we started and after we had viewed the Nevelson sculpture and Safdie's Habitat, we had a small discussion and I wondered out loud if "my artist friends" could keep some key concepts in mind while they explored these 3-D forms. Could they build something that had balance and showed height? Could they include elements that leaned and showed detail?

Exploring a medium freely is a very important first step before one can consider what to do or what can be done with the media. There is a lot of learning that goes on in the many attempts to simply manipulate and use the material, tacit knowledge is the backbone in the arts and the more it is given a place, the more we can return to ask students deeper more critical questions. Can you describe this design? What does it mean to think in the round? What kind of purpose does this design have? If you could change it, what would you do? How would you do it?

Here at this point it is not the creation of art which is the focus, it’s the use of the medium to represent children’s thinking, encourage investigation and experimentation; to make the child’s learning visible to others and themselves. It’s using the exploration to show how the child is feeling, what they are experiencing, what thoughts are in the front of their mind, what connections they are making with previous experiences.