Why Art Education is Important and how to support it.

With the recent recession, American schools began to cut funding from their art programs. This included classes like drawing, painting, photography, theater, music, ceramics, etc. Many people don't see the value in teaching our future adults art, design, and fine art, and many more don't see how it is important to our society.

So I decided to compile a short list and explanation why I believe that art is important.


Art covers many disciplines.

There is, as a sure example, the art field known as Scientific Illustration, that especially in the past was able to show us how minerals looked, dinosaur bones fit together, how the planets revolved around the sun, the places around earth that pictures weren't able to capture. Before there was photography and the internet, much of the ways we saw science was illustrated by brilliant artists and scientists. It till is today and is a beautiful way of cataloging the wonders of our universe. 

An example of illustrated
minerals

Another example is paint pigments. Paint, at least traditionally, was generally made by taking materials like minerals and crushing them together with other substances like egg yolk to create different colors and kinds of paint like oil, and tempera. This involves at least, some basic idea of chemistry. 

(AB EX NY: Art Terms in Action: Paint)

Artist, Janet Echelman, uses different types of materials like ropes, to create large floating art installations in urban areas. She has given Ted Talks and her work has been featured all over the globe. The large moving sculptures responds to the environment and are beautiful. I believe this kind of art must take into consideration of some engineering, architecture, and environmental science. 

Simon Beck, a British cartographer and artist, uses math and snow to create beautiful designs. 

This HuffintonPost talks about eight contemporary artists who talk about how art meets technology. 

Art reveals to us the lives of our fellow human beings and helps teach us empathy

A photographer, Jimmy Nelson, went out and photographed a series of portraits about vanishing people and cultures. Photo Director for National Geographic, David Griffin, gave a Ted Talk about how photography connects us to our world and our fellow human beings. 

Another artist, Melissa McCracken, has made a series of beautiful paintings showing us what it looks like to her to live with synesthesia. A condition that allows one to see colors for music, or taste for touch, or to see sounds. Laura Rosser, a pianist, has the same condition which NPR interviews her about. 

Melissa McCracken
"John Lenon- Imagine"

Another form of discipline is writing. Fiction has been studied by science and is said to help us have more empathy for others and change the way we think. So its not just nonfiction is that is educational to read, but fiction is as well. It can be a fun way to show us other lifestyles and cultures. 

Art is about us, humanity, and the world.
Artist, Jen Lewis, uses macro-photography to show how period blood can be beautiful. She started the project wondering why we take something so normal and turn into something that's spoken of in whispers and rarely acknowledged in society. 

Jen Lewis

Cartography is a discipline that has often used math and art to create beautiful pictures of our world, not only as how it is viewed from space, but how we have seen our world in the past. For example, in the past a lot of maps would show beautifully illustrated mythical creatures such as mermaids in places like the Atlantic Ocean and wonderfully drawn ships. They could also show us how the people at the time saw their world. Many countries would use their capital cities as the center of the world and reflected that on their map, using important cities like Jerusalem as the center for theology-minded maps. 

When the Europeans first came to Japan, the Japanese were fascinated by the Europeans whom they spent a large amount of time painting, creating woodblocks, and drawings. From this we can see how the Japanese were just as fascinated with the Europeans as Europeans found them. It can help show us what they thought of them and what other cultures find/found fascinating and important to document and create. 

With the technology of photography, everyone from around the globe can and has documented everything from important battles and events in history to things like selfies that some people think in the future might be used as a way to show what my generation was like. Some argue in the future they could even be considered an art form. 

It can help change our world and make a difference. 

There is an artist, Olafur Eliasson, who set out 100 tons worth of ice into blocks arranged in a circle, to reminds us that climate change is real and affects us. 

Emily Pilloton, creator of Studio H, helped start a project that taught students in poor, rural communities design and helped them create change for the better in their towns. 

(Emily Pilloton: Teaching design for change)

The Association of Graphic Artists, also known as AIGA, created a movement called, Design for Good, to help showcase, empower, and inspire, artists and designers to create art and design for the betterment of our society. 

MICA, has a graduate program in Social Design, to help teach students how to create design and art to isn't focused just on making money.

Art has been shown to be a good tool for those with disabilities and as a means of therapy. A feature in National Geographic several months ago featured an artist who gave masks to soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Irag that they could paint. These masks represented what it felt like to live with PTSD and other feelings that came from being out in battle. 

It has impacted history and helps show us life in the past. 

Without paintings we might not having an idea of how Queen Elizabeth I looked or how many other famous people in the past looked like. We might not have an idea of how to read Mayan words if they hadn't carved it into the buildings and painted it on their walls. We might not have ever learned how to read Egyptian Hieroglyphics and decode the past if they hadn't painted it everywhere on their walls, burial chambers, vases, and so on so forth. 

As an article I was reading on Deviantart pointed out, art can also teach things like cultural appreciation, Ethics, creativity, along with how to be flexible when things don't turn out how you planned, collaboration which can help teach patience, and other things. It also has been proven to help kids be more motivated and confident. Plus, there's something extremely satisfying about finishing an piece of art work or a design. 

Ways you can help support art

1. Buy a piece of art (especially from your local artists!)
2. Tell an artist how much you like their artwork (and actually take the time to look at it).
3. Go to a museum and look around 
4. Attend an art show or exhibition
5. If there's a local college or university in the area that showcases their art students, attend the show and see what they're creating. 
6. Go see a play, opera, concert, or theater show. 
7. Share online art that inspires or touches you.
1. Good places to see art online and share it or buy it is Deviantart, Behance, Society 6, and Etsy.
8. Take an art class and create your own art.
1. You can take classes or lean about art on sites like Coursera, Skillshare, Craftsy, and Khan Academy,
9. Watch Neil Gaiman's "Make Good Art" speech. 

As an art student, I wish that everyone would at least appreciate art and recognize that it is important to our society and culture. Art captures what we believe is important, makes important discoveries, and helps bring us together. It can also help us improve our thinking, energize us, relax us, and inspire us. Art can be a tool through which we can change the world. 

Sincerely,

Sareh

Blackbird- The Stone Violin

The Blackbird, also known as the Black Stone Violin, is the only full sized, fully playable, stone violin. It was made by a Swedish artist named Lars Widenfalk who named the violin the Blackbird after blackbirds due to its coloring. Supposedly, Stradivari (a great violin making master, on whose designs this violin is based off of) often named his violins after birds.

According to his website,

"The belly of the violin is only 2.5 mm thick at its thinnest point. Such was the precision with which the belly was constructed, with its sound-holes, back and graceful scroll. The ribs were made in one piece by first sawing out a 30 mm thick plate shaped to form the external contour, and then, with infinite care, removing the inside using water-drill and hand-tools so as to create a thin rib, no more than a couple of millimetres thick at its thinnest point.
Stone may seem stable, static material, lacking in "give"; but when the work on the ribs was almost complete, they fractured at a point where the stone had a "give" of approximately 15 mm. Diabase is a very dense crystalline rock deriving from the interior of the Earth in the form of magma which solidified 1.6 billion years ago."

While working on two big diabase stones that were supposed to form part of the embellishment of the Norwegian TV building in Oslo, Norway, he discovered that the rock gave off a sound like a bronze
bell while using a hammer and chisel. After recieving his grandfather's headstone (a newer one was being built for a larger family grave), he reliezed that the stone was about the right size for a violin. And so he sought out to create the world's first and only playable stone violin.

A fascinating thought: what did primary rock - Mother Earth - sound like? Would it be possible to capture in a single instrument the sound of which we all form part?

Constructing the violin took some work. After most of the body of the violin was finished, when it came to the back piece, the headstone material had been used up. So Lars himself went out and cut a block of a porphyry resembling diabase, but that's black with pale flecks. The interior surface was finished with real gold to produce the finest possible tone and silver steel pegs were used to secure the neck to the body. The fingerboard, pegs, tailpiece, and chinrest were made from traditional black ebony. Inspired from the yellow bill of the blackbird, Lars used yellow ivory from mammoth to form the bridge.

The Blackbird is not the only stone violin, a Czech sculptor by the name of Jan Řeřicha, also made some stone violins from marble. These violins weigh in between 3.6 and 6.5 kg, while the Blackbird weighs only 2 kg.


The Swedish composer, Sven David Sandström, composed music specially for the Blackbird and in 1992 at the Seville Expo in Spain, at the Swedish Pavilion, the music debuted on the Blackbird. That same year the violin was blessed by Pope John Paul II in Rome, and since that year, the violin has traveled all over the world.

Sincerely,
Sareh


Resources
Wikipedia- Blackbird violin
Blackbird- The black stone violin

Classes that might be fun.

So I meant to post yesterday but I got caught up in packing for my trip today. Well since I'm all settled in pretty much, I'll try to find something interesting to make up for yesterday.

I've decided that since school is coming up or some of you may have already started school, I'm going to talk about some cool classes. At my school, you can take a bunch of neat ones but really only once you're an upperclassman. Some of ours include:

• Creative Writing- Yep, I'm sure most if not all of us, would really enjoy this class. I really want to do this class this year but I got put into British Literature. 
• Law and Justice- Here the teachers makes you watch Criminal Minds the whole time and then stops the show have way through and you have to guess what will happen. Afterwards you talk about the outcome.
• Comparative Religions- Here we learn about a whole bunch of different religions besides the different kinds of Christians (Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists, etc). Religions like Wicca, satanists, paganism, and voodoo are some of the examples. 
• Digital Photography- Here we learn about all the different stuff you can do with a camera and kinds of photo editing programs you can use. 
• Ceramics I and II: Pottery! Whoo! I really wanted to take the first class this year but instead they put me into Foundations of Art. 
• Pseo Classes- These are online classes you can take. The homework is stuff you have to do on your own and not only do you earn a high school credit for this but you earn a college one too. There's a bunch of stuff like American Sign Language and psychology (which my school also offers). 
• Christian Family and Life- From what I've heard this class is where we learn about how to raise families and live ours lives in a good Christian way. 
• Earth and Space science- Here we learn about space and where we have stargazing sessions too. We also study rocks and learn how to identify them.

Well that's all I can really think off the top of my head, but I know that this year my school is going to try something new. We're trying something called the J-turn. Here after Christmas break, instead of cramming finals and extra lessons in before the quarter ends, for a whole week, our teachers will be able to teach something special. Like one teacher might have a cooking class or another might have us carve a boat out of a tree. 

Plus then the seniors and juniors get first pick. So if you're a freshman and one of the special classes you want to take are full, you'll have to suck it up and take something else. Also, we'll only be able to take one or two classes the whole week. I hope it'll be fun! 

And apparently this year, my school is also making all of the freshmen take a new semester class called Freshmen Ordination, where they'll learn stuff like organizational skills.  We'll also have this new program every other Wednesdays where we'll get out of school an extra twenty minutes. But if you get a pass to a teacher's, you have to go in and work on that stuff until either the bell rings or you get your stuff done. 

So I think this year will turn out interesting. I think most of my classes are okay, although I want to switch out of Foundations of Art and British Literature. What cool classes does your school offer? Have you ever gotten to do any of them? What are the worst classes in your opinion? Does your school have any interesting programs? 

Sincerely,

Peony