FORM
The form of a work is its shape, including its volume or perceived volume. Three-dimensional form is the basis of sculpture. However, two-dimensional artwork can achieve the illusion of form with the use of perspective and/or shading or modeling techniques.

SHAPE
Shape refers to a 2-dimensional, enclosed area. Shapes could be geometric, such as squares, circles, triangles etc. or organic and curvaceous.

LINE
Lines and curves are marks that span a distance between two points (or the path of a moving point). As an element of visual art, line is the use of various marks, outlines, and implied lines during artwork and design. A line has a width, direction, and length. A line's width is most times called its "thickness." Lines are sometimes called "strokes," especially when referring to lines in digital artwork. I have also heard that a line is simply a point moving through space.

COLOR
Color is the element of art that is produced when light, striking an object, is reflected back to the eye. There are three properties to color. The first is hue, which simply means the name we give to a color (red, yellow, blue, green, etc.). The second property is intensity, which refers to the vividness of the color. A color's intensity is sometimes referred to as its "colorfulness," its "saturation," its "purity" or its "strength." The third and final property of color is its value, meaning how light or dark it is. The terms shade and tint refer to value changes in colors. In painting, shades are created by adding black to a color, while tints are created by adding white to a color.

VALUE
Value is the degree of lightness and darkness in a color. The difference in values is called contrast. Value can relate to shades, where a color gets darker by adding black to it, or tints, where a color gets lighter by adding white to it.

SPACE
Space is any conducive area that an artist provides for a particular purpose. Space includes the background, foreground and middle ground, and refers to the distances or area(s) around, between, and within things. There are two kinds of space:  negative space  and positive space. Negative space is the area in between, around, through or within an object. Positive space is the area occupied by an object and/or form.

TEXTURE
Texture, another element of art, is used to describe how something feels or looks. e.g. her hair was smooth. Smooth is a texture, same as bumpy, hard, light, clear, rough and many more.
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BALANCE
Balance refers to the visual weight of the elements of the composition. It is a sense that the painting  feels stable and "feels right." Imbalance causes a feeling of discomfort in the viewer.
Balance can be achieved in 3 different ways: 

1. Symmetry, in which both sides of a composition have the same elements in the same position, as in a mirror-image, or the two sides of a face.
2. Asymmetry, in which the composition is balanced due to the contrast of any of the elements of art. For example, a large circle on one side of a composition might be balanced by a small square on the other side
3. Radial symmetry, in which elements are equally spaced around a central point, as in the spokes coming out of the hub of a bicycle tire.

CONTRAST
Contrast is the difference between elements of art in a composition, such that each element is made stronger in relation to the other. When placed next to each other, contrasting elements command the viewer's attention. Areas of contrast are among the first places that a viewer's eye is drawn. Contrast can be achieved by juxtapositions of any of the elements of art. Negative/Positive space is an example of contrast. Complementary colors placed side by side is an example of contrast.

EMPHASIS
Emphasis is when the artist creates an area of the composition that is visually dominant and commands the viewer's attention. This is often achieved by contrast.

MOVEMENT
Movement is the result of using the elements of art such that they move the viewer's eye around and within the image. A sense of movement can be created by diagonal or curvy lines, either real or implied, by edges, by the illusion of space, by repetition, by energetic mark-making. 
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PATTERN
Pattern is the uniform repetition of any of the elements of art or any combination thereof. Anything can be turned into a pattern through repetition. Some classic patterns are spirals, grids, weaves.

RHYTHM
Rhythm is created by movement implied through the repetition of elements of art in a non-uniform but organized way. It is related to rhythm in music. Unlike pattern, which demands consistency, rhythm relies on variety.

UNITY / VARIETY
You want your painting to feel unified such that all the elements fit together comfortably. Too much unity creates monotony, too much variety creates chaos. You need both. Ideally, you want areas of interest in your composition along with places for your eye to rest. 

  
​Scholar Olivia Gude​ believes that the traditional "Elements and Principles" are limiting, and that we need to expand our canon to include more contemporary principles. Two articles, which can be found here and here, outline her proposals. She says:

"The elements and principles of art are enshrined in most art education textbooks today (Crystal Productions, 2000; Hobb and Salome, 1995; Ragans, 2000; Wachowiak and Clements, 2000). Note the aggrandizing shift from elements of design to elements of art.  These elements and principles are proffered as universal and foundational. The use of the definite article the suggests that these lists claim to be more than attempts to present a descriptive vocabulary of observed form. They are not presented as some vocabulary words or concepts that have been identified as useful for interpreting the work of others or in constructing one’s own. The elements and principles are presented as the essence of artmaking, as pure art education gospel. If not literally engraved in stone, the big seven (elements) + seven (principles) are reified in print, achieving theoretical unity, not by dint of persuasive argument, but through seemingly endless repetition in formally oriented textbooks or, during the last decade, as government-mandated standards."
     
"We owe it to our field and our students to study the art of our times and to begin [...] with probing questions and far-reaching goals. What do our students need to know to understand the art of many cultures, in the past and in the 21st century? What knowledge do the students need today to stimulate and increase their creative powers?"
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"A basic tenet of all theory that can be characterized as postmodern is suspicion of what are called totalizing discourses and grand narratives—the belief that there is one right way to organize and understand things. Sadly, much contemporary art education has clung to these sorts of narrowly prescriptive theories—the elements and principles, the four disciplines that ostensibly include all the concepts one needs to adequately understand art, the sequence of steps that one should always follow in approaching an artwork."

"Postmodern thought embraces the heterogeneous, the local, and the specific. It affirms the choice making capacity of individuals to eclect from the past those things that will best serve them as the starting points for today. These choices will be different at different places—depending on the history and present issues of each school community. By structuring art projects to introduce students to relevant contemporary art and thus to postmodern principles—strategies for understanding and making art today—students will gain the skills to participate in and shape contemporary cultural conversations. "
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Among others, she outlines the following as additional elements and principles of art and design:

​APPROPRIATION, JUXTAPOSITION, RECONTEXTUALIZATION, LAYERING, INTERACTION OF TEXT & IMAGE, HYBRIDITY, GAZING, REPRESENTIN', PLAYING, FORMING SELF, INVESTIGATING COMMUNITY THEMES, ENCOUNTERING DIFFERENCE, ATTENTIVE LIVING, EMPOWERED EXPERIENCING, EMPOWERED MAKING, DECONSTRUCTING CULTURE, RECONSTRUCTING SOCIAL SPACES, NOT KNOWING.

Check out her amazing website.

"No Compassion" is a series of portraits depicting world leaders in the midst of artificial tears. Through computer manipulation, David superimposes his own tears on the likes of Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hessein and others... David selects world agents without judgements on their relative goodness or badness and affords them an instance of compassion (From The Portrait Now).

Dillon one of my A.P. Art students who graduated in 2018.
​Like Lewis Blalock (above), Dillon intentionally misused Photoshop to create these broken images.
Many of them started with a drawing in his sketchbook, which he then scanned and manipulated in Photoshop.

M O R E   L I N K S :
​
Aleksei Goferman
​Jati Putra
Kirby Jenner
Asile
KangHee Kim, @tinycactus
Erik Johansen​
Alayna Danner​
Felicia Simion
Charlie Davoli
Robert + Shana ParkeHarrison

​

The Bechers were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures, often organized in grids. (More here).

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20th century as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings, referred to as blueprints. The process uses two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.

A N N A   A T K I N S

C H R I S T I A N   M A R C L A Y

H U G H   S C O T T - D O U G L A S

W U C H I - T S U N G 

D A N   E S T A B R O O K

A L T E R E D    C Y A N O T Y P E S 

—     SLIDESHOW PRESENTATION    --

​(Google slideshow)

CURRICULUM SLAM 2018 /// Full presentation text 
Bridging Contemporary Art and the Sublime *

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There are three primary schools of thought when it comes to spirituality in secular education:
 

1. The first group believes we should be praying together and reading religious texts in our public schools.
2. The second group believes that religion and spirituality are just too complicated and too delicate to address in a public school, so it’s best to avoid these topics altogether... And I totally understand where they’re coming from — especially considering the terrible history of acculturation, oppression, and indoctrination in our educational system. 
3. The third group, however, believes that spirituality and religion are complex cultural phenomena that permeate nearly every facet of our lives, whether we see them or not, and we would be doing our students a tremendous disservice to not address, critique, and explore them. These spiritual dimensions of teaching and learning are being explored by a group of educational scholars, and I’m interested in joining that conversation.

In my personal practice as an artist, educator, and researcher, I am fascinated by the spiritual dimensions of teaching, learning, and art-making. I aspire to open up these difficult and layered conversations about the sublime in my classroom.
 
In my classroom I also aspire to introduce my students to contemporary artists — because I find value in exploring artists who are working today, and responding to the world we currently live in. Learning about Rembrandt is awesome, but Rembrandt didn’t know anything about smart phones, or Twitter, or what it feels like to have Donald Trump as a President.
 
So this curricular experiment is an endeavor to bridge two of my aspirations — exploring spirituality, and exploring contemporary art with my high school students.
 
>> I went to Nepal on a field study with a team of art educators led by Dr. Mark Graham. Our intentions were to study Hindu and Buddhist art-making and iconography. We trekked through the Khumbu region of the Himalaya for two weeks, walking beside porters and yaks with bells. As we walked through the rhododendron forests, the steep mountain passes, past ancient mani walls and prayer wheels covered in snow, we were welcomed into monasteries by generous Buddhist monks, who taught us about mindfulness and presentness.
 
Perhaps it was my unique company (being surrounded by a team of art educators) but while I was there, everything was art.
 
When I saw monks sitting in quiet meditation, paying attention to the present moment, I remembered Marina Abromovic, sitting with strangers in a moment of strange and beautiful availability.
 
When I saw Buddhist monks spend days creating sand mandalas, only to sweep them up and throw them in a river as a meditation on Impermanence, I remembered John Baldesarri, who cremated all of his work from 1953-1966.
 
As I followed behind Buddhist monks on narrow mountain trails, with hands clasped behind their saffron robes, I remembered Richard Long, who has endeavored “to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: Walking as art (Tufnell 2007, p.39).”
 
When I stumbled into Buddhist and Hindu temples, I noticed collections of rocks, beads, shells, candles, and pre-packaged processed food. Just by being in the temples, they became carefully curated collections of holy objects, and I remembered artists like Mark Dion and Fred Wilson, who disrupt the ways museums gather and display their collections.
 
As I watched Tibetan pilgrims circumambulate the the Dalai Lama temple, spinning prayer wheels along the way, I remembered William Lamson ceremoniously watering a patch of desert soil in Chile for 3 months, waiting for rare pink wildflowers to bloom (they never did).
 
When I saw young Buddhist monks practicing their prayers and mantras, stumbling awkwardly over the ancient Tibetan script, I remembered Janine Antoni stumbling awkwardly in her studio, as she practiced tightrope walking for a performance piece called Touch.
 
Perhaps it is a stretch to pull these disparate worlds together.
Perhaps mining contemporary artwork for elements of spirituality is misguided.
Perhaps these artists never intended to create work with a theological subtext.
But perhaps we can create new openings for generative dialog by tinkering with these communities of practice, and perhaps each genre of work can teach us something about the other.
 
After returning home, I began exploring these connections with my students. First, we developed a broad definition of spirituality as a class.
 
Students had beautiful and surprising definitions of spirituality:
They said that spirituality is:
Being alive in the here and now
Anything that gives you comfort or peace
What science can’t define.
That feeling that everything is gonna be okay
The absence of fear
Something that makes you whole
Something that makes you wonder
A recognition of purpose
Something that pulls people together
And a struggle to better yourself and your community
 
To their definitions I also added one by the scholar Patrick Slattery, who suggests that spirituality could be an embracing of the irrational or intuitive. Jacques Derrida also reminds us that the great spiritual traditions of the world teach us to call certainty and secularity into question. 

After creating a broad definition as a class, I encouraged students to find something spiritual in the work of a contemporary artist. They used Art21 as a starting point, and branched outward from there. Students began making surprising connections that were rich and unexpected. 

At the culmination of this unit, my students and I made work together. We challenged ourselves to create work that could be contextualized as both a spiritual practice and a contemporary art practice.

Our critique day at the end of the unit was such a good day. The student work was surprising and complex—many of the students pushed themselves into unfamiliar territory, and explored new genres while grappling with big ideas and questions about their own spirituality. A few students said that their art practice had given them a new vocabulary for their spirituality. 

The student work was surprising and complex. For example, this student was fascinated by the typographic experiments of the designer Stefan Saggmeister, and created an installation in the woods using fabric and a staple gun. The fabric spelled the word “Truth” when viewed from one precise angle, and the student documented his installation by taking video while rolling past on a longboard. His work led to discussions about the subjective nature of spiritual truth. The student wrote: “My spirituality is based on searching for truth, in whatever methods necessary, and there’s not one set way to do it. I’ve only found truth by changing my perspective.”
 
This student was intrigued by the work of Heather Hansen, who blends her identities as dancer and fine artist to create performative drawings. The student found something spiritual in the way Hansen approaches her work. The student wrote, “In spirituality, repetition is a common theme. Repetition of prayer, repetition of breathing, repetition of practice. Heather Hansen uses repetition to turn vague shapes and movement into something defined and beautiful, and that is what inspired me to do a movement piece of my own.”
 
Another student drew from the work of the contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn, who creates monuments and obscure collections as a form of artistic inquiry. She created a two-screened video installation that explores the spiritual dimensions of her life. She wrote, “I see people being drawn to religion and spirituality in hopes of finding answers and explanations to their questions — but for me, I often find that the further I walk down a spiritual path, the more questions arise. This piece is not only a collection of objects, but a collection of questions — a search for answers I’m hoping to find.” 
 
By attempting to build a bridge between contemporary art and spirituality, we opened up spaces for generative conversation and critical dialog. The prompts pushed our work in new directions and invited us to reframe our own conceptions of the sublime.
A student wrote, “I think by not talking about [spirituality] in classrooms, we accidentally perpetuate misconceptions people have about others beliefs. Rather than not talk about our beliefs, I think educators need to strive to create tolerance between their students and unfamiliar (and sometimes scary) ideas. By doing this, students would not only become more educated and humane citizens, but also learn how different people use spirituality to become better people.”

​Emma Kunz was a Swiss healer and artist. She published three books and produced many drawings. Kunz was born to a family of weavers in 1892 in Switzerland. She was not a trained artist; she is characterized as an outsider artist.

N A T H A L I E   M I E B A CH

S A U R A H B   D A T T A 
"Teacher"

More information here.

T I M   K N O W L E S 
"Tree Drawings"

K Y L E    M c D O N A L D 
"Blind Self Portrait"

More information @ new media intersections

R U P E R T   W H I T E 
"Drawing Room"

H A R V E Y   M O O N
"Drawing Machines"

E S K E   R E X 
​"Drawing Machine"

MORE VIDEOS:
Numerical Controlled Machine
Senseless Drawing Bot #2
Eske Rex ***
Drawing Tops

"Likeness is a doomed endeavor for portraiture."
​J Lyman Ballif & Ainsley Romero