Studio experiences in art education.

This article addresses K-graduate curricular implications, contemporary aesthetics, and professional development issues relating to a combined graduate and undergraduate course entitled, Studio Experiences in Art Education, offered at the University of Central Florida.

Course Configuration

The studio experience course focuses on sculptural concepts similar to students' three-dimensional work, which moves from a flat two-dimensional surface, to some manner of relief, to freestanding three-dimensional works. Various constructed and assembled method and objects are implemented. Along with the sculptural work, some in-class drawing and printmaking instruction is provided, and students keep an ongoing sketchbook for sculpture proposal planning and observational drawings. This course is offered twice a year and can be repeated for up to nine hours of credit.

A principal way students may develop a new studio and aesthetic approach is by researching a contemporary artist working with similar alternative materials. They then compile historical information and write a critical review about three of the artist's works. The selected images are presented in a twenty-minute PowerPoint presentation early in the course. The course emphasizes that contemporary art has a time component and addresses nontraditional art-making and aesthetic considerations.

With the studio and contemporary art emphasis, students will develop and expand aesthetic and critical appreciation, which will impact their own studio work. Hopefully, this personal artistic knowledge will transfer into instructional practice and assist these future teachers in developing a wider aesthetic attitude toward the teaching of art.

Collaborations

Probably the most successful sessions of studio experiences have been held during summer sessions at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Atlantic Center for the Arts, located in New Smyrna Beach, Florida is an artists-in-residence facility that provides artists with an opportunity to work and collaborate with master artists in the visual, literary and performing arts, and music composition. Master artists then select up to ten associate artists to work with them for three-week residencies.

Doris Leeper, a painter, sculptor, and active environmentalist, conceived the idea for this artists' retreat in 1977. She convinced friends, community members, and the Rockefeller Foundation of the merit of her idea. Now, some twenty-five years later, there is an artists' resource center and six buildings connected to existing structures by raised wooden walkways, thereby increasing artists' workspace by 10,000 square feet, and including studios for painting, sculpture, dance, music/recording, theater, and a library. Since its official opening in 1982, over 280 master artists and over 1,800 associate artists have participated in more than 100 residencies.

Educational Benefit of Studio Experiences

This course has been successful in providing Art Education majors with much-needed in-depth studio experience. Future art educators have the opportunity to advance their studio learning and appreciation of contemporary art. These experiences can be the foundation for what they will later teach in public schools.

When this course is held at the Atlantic Center for the Arts it offers students the concentrated time to develop their own studio concepts. Like Penland or Arrowmont, at Atlantic Center students stay on site and have access to the studios twenty-four hours a day. It is important to keep in mind that unlike the normal format for Atlantic Center residencies with master artists and mid-career associate artists, the Studio Experience course addresses pre-service and in-service art educators.

The curricular implications stemming from this course are perhaps its most significant contribution. The mission of art education courses in teacher preparation pro grams should be to make this type of direct impact on teachers, students, and the quality of instruction in our school systems.

WEB LINKS

www.atlanticcenterforthearts.org

pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~areted/

Thomas M. Brewer is a professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. [e-mail]