My Love is Complex, Mister.
Words and Photos by: Nathan Greene
In integrado class, the integrated art class that I teach with the middle schoolers, we have now begun the visual art quarter. This has proven to be the most challenging quarter for me to plan (the other two being drama and music) because I don’t know a whole lot about art. It might have helped if I had taken an art class at some point in my life, but I have been managing ok with the class. I think I have them fooled into believing that I actually know something about art, when the truth is that everything I know has been learned from watching youtube clips over the past 3 weeks.
We started the unit doing continuous line portraits. In continuous line drawing, the artist cannot lift the hand from the page from start to finish in the drawing. It is a great exercise for the brain and causes an interesting abstraction of a portrait when you have to figure out how to get from the eye to the ear without adding lines that will make your picture look like crap.
Many of the student’s drawings sucked, not because they dont have talent, but because the kids didn’t take the project seriously or didn’t follow the rules to continuous line drawing. However, some of them ended up coming out really great.
This past week we started color theory. We made some nice color wheels, talked about primary, secondary, tertiary and complementary colors. We also talked about the emotions that we associate with color and the ways in which we can use color in our paintings to our advantage. We looked at pictures from Picasso’s blue period and then I asked them to choose an emotion and try to paint a representation of that emotion using strictly warm or strictly cool colors.
When I was circulating around the room, I noticed that one of my students was crying. I went over and checked out her painting and it was of raindrops falling on a dark, stormy sea. At the top was painted in black ink “sad.” I wanted to comfort her. I really wanted to give her a hug, but am always aware of my limitations as a male middle school teacher. I put my hand on her shoulder, got down to her level and told her that I really loved her painting, asked her if she was alright and if she wanted to step out to get some air. She nodded implying that she was fine and wanted to stay. This student lives a very modest life in a very small house with her grandmother and has no parents. I have gotten the feeling that her home-life is not the best. I felt bad for her, wondering what the depth of the sadness was that she was experiencing in that moment. At the same time though, I felt filled with a feeling of happiness, with this being one of the few instances that a class lesson so clearly had actually reached and affected one of my students. I told her I was around if she decided she wanted to talk and told her that sometimes when we express ourselves through art, it can stir up some emotion and that this release is so important. Then I let her be.
I walked around the class to some other students and came across one of my sassy 8th grade girls. She was painting a red-orange heart with green trim. I asked her what emotion she was expressing, while I already had a bit of an idea (despite the cryptic symbolism). I said that it looked great, but explained that for the assignment, I wanted them to use explore using either only warm colors or only cool colors. She rolled her eyes at me, gave a middle school girl huff, and said, “Mister, my love is incredibly complex.”
I’m sure. Lots of feelings today. It must be art class.
Nathan, After reading this post, I am even more certain than ever before that your kids are very lucky to have you as a teacher.
J
Thanks Jaime. That is a really nice thing to say. I’m glad you feel like your school is in good hands.