In fall 2014, Judy Chicago posed six questions to art administrators, studio art educators, curators, art historians, and artists, in which a discussion is taking place at http://judychicago.arted.psu.edu/forum/forums/dialogue-portal/dialogue-portal-1/ You are invited to join this important dialogue. In the hour video-recording on October 25, 2014, available at https://meeting.psu.edu/p4eg5p6hz2g/, she facilitates a discussion in relation to these questions and to issues raised by participants regarding how to contextual their content-rich art, as well as issues of diversity in terms of students, faculty, and content within studio art programs.
Karen Keifer-Boyd, Ph.D. Professor of Art Education & Women's Studies School of Visual Arts The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802-2905 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/gender/inhalt/1621.htm Co-editor of Visual Culture & Gender @ http://vcg.emitto.net Coordinator of the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection @ http://judychicago.arted.psu.edu/ Coordinator of the Penn State Online Master of Professional Studies (MPS) in Art Education: http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/MPSAE
It was with great pleasure that I joined the live chat dialogue on October 25th.
I am grateful for the diversity of voices represented and the rich conversations that emerged.
I made many notes as i listened and participated during the hour session.
….. as I reflect today, I am intrigued by this concept of voice, personal voice and collective. As an artist and educator I am treading through waters that are ambiguous at times, muddled and various languages are intertwined. How do I enrich my art with content and cement it in some type of background and context to allow for voices to come through? In essence, this is one of my questions that I posed for this live chat. We, as a group, discussed how context and content is important as well as illumination to the viewer as well.
(voice>clarity>context>illuminate>viewer)
Judy asked, What will they come away with? In what ways will the viewed and experienced art articulate a common language and point that is being delivered? In thinking of this point, I am frustrated. I am reminded of my native spanish tongue and the one of the world, my english tongue. Am I being privileged or assuming privilege by using a dominant discourse in any of these ways? What is my role as artist? curator? educator? We discussed the various definitions of what these may mean in various spaces. Being specific and having a focus and clarity of voice being essential in this process. However, this is complicated as we discussed our own personal stand points in challenging and resisting traditional systems and embracing new ones. Which brought us to another point: the gap that many times exists between theory and actuality or practice is another point of frustration among these various spaces as artist, educator and curator. How do we then go about bridging and navigating through these areas? these systems? which then has left me with the lingering question as our live chat came to a close of: is there a difference then in teaching/educating artist and educators? is there a historical divide that must be addressed as a fundamental understanding of what the goal of artist and art educators should be? needs to be? is assumed to be?
How may we incorporate others into these dialogues?
This hour live chat event provoked many questions and a consensus that it was a fantastic introduction setting the stage for much needed dialogue in these areas.