Ugly drawings: high school.

Having heard so many students make comments about their work being "ugly" I decided to make "ugly" an assignment.

I first showed them twenty prints from various artists--cave paintings, Pablo Picasso, Ida Applebroog, Adrian Piper, etc.--and they wrote on a piece of paper why they found these ugly or not. Then, without discussion, I gave them an 18 x 24" (46 x 61 cm) piece of paper and told them to make an ugly drawing before the end of class, using any materials or subject matter they could find. Some students headed out to the courtyard, some stayed inside, and some looked at magazines for pictures.

The results were quite interesting. I had expected students to concoct messy drawings or drawings with colors mashed into ambiguous neutrality. Instead, they drew more images than anything else. Students abundantly portrayed images of garbage, exaggerated "glamorous" images from fashion magazines, and images of health destruction (such as smoking). In addition, some students used non-traditional art materials such as staples and items from the trash to create that "ugly" feeling.

When the class ended, we had a wealth of images to talk about, and most students claimed that their notions of "ugly" had been shaken or minimized because they found their classmate's work beautifully interesting.

ClipCard submitted by Erin Tapley, an art education professor at University of Wisconsin (Oshkosh) who taught at the University of Iowa, University of Alabama, and various K-12 situations before, during, and after graduate school.