By way of introductions, my name is Jason Beirens and I have been drawing since I was two years old. I love art, give me a pen and paper and I am a happy man. I grew up at Disneyland, my dad worked there for most of my childhood. So my life has been greatly influenced by cartoon characters and watching the effects that they have on others, young and old. Goofy can melt the heart of the most hardcore goth. And no I will not describe the scene here, I want your imaginations to put it together.
As for what art means to me, it means I can't go an hour without doodling, or thinking about lines and how they should fit together and having them flow together to create depth, breadth and scope. How a line drawn just right can be a world. I honestly love to draw a few random shapes, leave them for a while and then come back ad see what they become after they have percolated on the page. I love that a drawing doesn't have to be what you expected, it can change course and become something else. When art works it just works, and when it doesn't you can still learn from it.
Why an art teacher, mostly because in one single day 3 people independent of each other said: "Why don't you become a teacher?" So here I am. It feels right, graphic design work, web design, law clerk, they all didn't fit, though I am still doing all three, teaching though it seems to work. It seems right. Things are clicking into place.
Literacy means a lot of things to me, you can be literate but not understand what you have read. You need to be literate in many different areas in order to gain a full understanding, to have all the possibilities open. To be literate means to in a very general, but real sense is to have an open mind and to take in knowledge ad nauseum. Whatever is available soak it in, and learn. To be literate is to learn and learn and learn, learn to understand, learn to think, learn to accept the possibility that you are wrong and with new knowledge one day you may be right, though don't hold your breath.
Art needs knowledge from multiple content areas to be worth anything. Art is context, context is knowledge and for knowledge to exist you need to be literate. Literacy is extremely important to art. Artists need to be smart in order to make art worth observing.
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ReplyDeleteI liked your point that you drew as a two-year-old. Kids typically draw before they write. (I love seeing this fact with my two-year-old nephew.)
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite theorists, Gunther Kress, talks about how schools privilege writing over other forms of representation. He argues this privileging is wrong because some things are best said through images rather than through words, and some students prefer images over words. He argues that if students could express themselves through drawing more, then schools could be a more empowering place. I like how your discipline reaches out to students in that way.
Thanks for your posting and I look forward to reading more as the semester progresses!
(Sorry for the deletion of the previous post; I realized I had a grammatical error).
I am impressed by how much you truly love art. From the classes we have had together I have seen that but it is refreshing to hear you talk about it. It was also interesting to get a glimpse into your mind. I was imagining seeing the world as you do, through the lines and colors, and it was beautiful. I wish my brain worked that way.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that impressed me was how confident you were about the fact that you are supposed to be a teacher. So many people, especially in the arts, teach solely because they think they have no other options but I can tell from this post that you truly feel you fit as a teacher.
I also loved your definition of literacy. I agree that literacy should be learning and learning and learning no matter how you do that. However, I had never really thought about it that way.
Thanks for your point of view, it is helping me to expand my own.
I like your definition of literacy , that it is to continuously learn. To be literate is to constantly seek and attain knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI love your passion for art. You also have a talent for weaving a mental picture with your words too. As I read your blog I a fantasia with lines experience. I usually view lines in a completely different way. Instead of being interested in how they creat images, I always view them as having values, area, and labels.
I enjoyed reading your blog, and am still thinking over your goofy comment.