Summer Symposium
investigation of Artist and Teacher identities
In July I had the exciting opportunity to go to our annual Ohio Art Education Association’s “Summer Symposium”. Each year art teachers descend on a college campus to engage in artmaking and fellowship. This time it was being held at Kent State, and organized by my former mentor Juli Dorff, both of which I am a fan. I have done this 2 day workshop a couple of times, and I always have fun, even if I don’t love the things I end up making.
Day one was a whole-day enameling class with jewelery-metals professor Andrew Kuebeck. We learned how to etch copper before enameling just an electric current, and also learned now to create image transfers on enamel by using transparent decals. I have not enameled anything since high school and I don’t remember it being very good. I think, like with all things, I was too messy with the enameling powdered glass and so the lines weren’t great. Andrew is a great teacher, but there were so many people in the class that I didn’t have a chance to fire off all my samples. I did like several of the things I created, though.
This year, I had the unique chance to teach a workshop in addition to being an attendee. My experiences teaching other adults have never gone well, so I was really anxious about it. I lead an “Experimental Weaving” workshop where the participants were able to use lots of different materials like plastic, zip ties, yarns, and fabric to create a small piece on a cardboard 12x12 loom. Even though we didn’t finish the examples, we had a great time experimenting with materials and techniques. I am so happy that all the teachers in my group just went for it, and really tried things out.
I also was able to go on a “Behind the Scenes” tour of the KSU Fashion Museum which was amazing! I am hoping to do a piece based on this Oscar De La Renta party dress in the future.
In order to get a college credit for this workshop, I spent time reading a lot of articles about artist and teacher identities of art educators. For a long time I have kept these things separate, thinking that one could inform the other but they would never really meet in practice. I do notice that many of my weavings, for example, will have a checklist of “color, shape, and line” and in my teaching I will lead students down a path to their work that I follow when making my pieces. But these two identities really don’t interact. In my mind, they are like counties that border each other on a map, but don’t have the same rules. I can travel to the “Artist” country, but in order to do that, I have to leave the “teacher” country behind. Sometimes it is a long journey! This is totally different for every art teacher, and I hope that each of us will find our balance or integration, or whichever solution works best!
Keep up with what is on the loom on instragram; https://www.instagram.com/stephenweaves207/
Next newsletter: Chicago Trip!
