Vasily Kandinsky, Several Circles, January–February 1926
Image source: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/
The other day I read about a recent study that looked at what factors influence students' academic performance. While being conscientious played an obvious role, what surprised researchers was the importance of curiosity. The study describes curiosity as a hunger for exploration. I often find that creating art is often fuelled by this kind of 'hunger' either as a way to answer nagging questions or to solve problems.  image source: www.last.fm Someone who I think of as a curious artist is conductor Lawrence “Butch” Morris. In an interview, click here to watch, Morris discusses what he calls conduction where he communicates with the orchestra using improvised gestures rather than relying on sheet music. The resulting music becomes an exploration of each musician’s own unique musical style. This kind of risk taking where the result is unknown can be unfamiliar territory for some of the musicians. For example at 2:35 of the video Morris tells one musician to pick a note when she states that the music they are playing is not how it was written. So what do you think, do schools encourage enough curiosity in their students? Recently AESA was asked to participate in EDSA's first annual conference. During the conference we created a collaborative patchwork mural where all education students could show off their artistic talents. While our resulting image was of a Tom Thompson forest scene, collaborative murals can be useful for any subject matter. For science, why not create a mural on the human body where each student is responsible for representing and sharing information about a different organ. For social studies, students could create a patchwork map showing their interpretation of a specific place. Most importantly, collaborative murals can be a great way to develop a sense of community in your classroom, and even within the entire school.  Feeling inspired? A step by step guide to creating collaborative murals can be found on our resources page. | 
AuthorHeather Hyslop is the Vice President of AESA. She has a background in Art History and Art Education, and specializes in teaching middle school. ArchivesJuly 2012 CategoriesAll |
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