Teaching Portfolio

 Teaching Examples from Introduction to Art

Understanding Linear Perspective

When we are first learning about space and perspective, I have the class head out and look closely at the lines and features of the hallway. Then, with no instruction, I ask them to draw a hallway that includes a locker bay, a doorway, ceiling lights, and a side hall. The idea is to put them into the shoes of artists who for centuries could not figure out how to accurately render spaces in perspective. After about ten minutes of struggle, I show them how the hallway would be drawn and explain to them how Filippo Brunelleschi reinvented linear perspective in the 15th century.

Color Review Games

As a review for the midterm, I ask the students to come to class wearing a solid-colored top. I then split them into teams and have them compete to complete various color-related and shape challenges as quickly as possible. E.g. “separate into warm and cool colors” or “form a geometric shape with your group.”

Campus Art Collection Scavenger Hunt

Either as homework or as an in-class activity in the Haas Center for Performing Arts, I have the students search through the campus art collection for examples of certain visual concepts. Depending on the class location (downtown vs. Allendale) and time of year, I have encouraged students to complete this assignment at the UICA, GRAM, or ArtPrize. Scavenger Hunt Worksheet.

How to Look at Art

We spend 1–2 class sessions each semester learning step by step how to look at an artwork and then as a class spend approximately 45 minutes looking at a single artwork together. I have the students form groups of five, and ask them questions like, “what do you feel the figures’ body language is communicating?” or “if the figures are strangers in conflict with one another, what is a time in your life you were in conflict with a stranger?” After discussing in small groups, I ask each group to share some of its conversations with the class at large. How to Look at Art slides.

Art Viewing Assignment

About halfway through the semester, I ask the students to complete the assignment below. Depending on which parts of campus they frequent, they end up choosing very different artworks.

Choose three artworks on campus that you're drawn to and spend five minutes looking at each. One must be representational (depicting something from the real world such as a landscape or person), one must be nonrepresentational (also known as abstract, not depicting anything from the real world), and one must be three-dimensional. Set a timer on your phone/watch for at least five minutes and look at the artwork until it goes off. Then write a paragraph about each work.

In your writing, you'll mainly focus on the third and fourth steps from our in-class art viewing activity (1. Look,  2. Analyze, 3. Put into Context, 4. Interpret). Write about what the piece made you think of (context), what feelings the work invoked in you (interpretation), and if you feel there was a story to the piece (interpretation). Did the piece change for you as you looked at it longer? How?

Tip: Some artists create work with deeper meanings or stories behind them, while other artists create work that is purely visual with no deeper meanings.

Family Favorite Assignment

Over spring break, ask a family member about an artwork in their home that they particularly like and record your answers to the questions below in a document. If you are not going home to see them (and the artwork) in person, then have them send you a photo of it. Upload an image of the artwork along with your answers.

1. How did they come to own the work?

2. Why is it special to them?

3. What do you think of the work? Do you like it as well? Is it not your taste? Why?

Art Therapy Activity

During a class in which we learned about artists using their work to heal personal wounds, I brought in raw eggs and had the students apply patterns to them while visualizing inserting a point of stress in their lives into the egg. We then took our eggs to the ravine and simultaneously dropped them off the edge of the bridge. Video clip

AI Image Generators

After learning about and discussing the ethical dilemmas of generative AI, I have the class try out Dall-E and Midjourney. Class instructions are below.

Using either of the image generators below (Midjourney is the better experience of the two, in my opinion), work with the AI to create images.
Things to try
1. Try a one word prompt.
2. Try a short phrase prompt.
3. Try a very long, complex prompt.
4. Test out how changing one or two words in your prompts results in a different image.
5. Pay attention to what others in the servers are creating and what their prompts are like. What can you learn from them?
6. Try a prompt that includes the phrase "in the style of..." and fill in an artist's name to see how the AI interprets it.

Student Works