I Didn’t See It Coming

I’ve been teaching since 1999.

And last week, something happened that hasn’t happened before.

Teaching art analysis isn’t easy – most of the time, art students would prefer to just *make art* and ignore all the written and theoretical stuff that is part of our classes. But art analysis is a really important part of the curriculum and it helps for so many reasons. I would list them all but I’d get distracted and miss the point of my story, so…

Back to last week.

Last week, our Principal shared some resources for Black History Month:

• https://www.canculturemag.com/arts/2021/2/27/10-black-canadian-artists-to-follow-and-celebrate
• https://www.rom.on.ca/en/exhibitions-galleries/exhibitions/here-we-are-here-black-canadian-contemporary-art
• https://sencanada.ca/en/about/art-architecture/art-heritage/honouring-canadas-black-artists/

I clicked on the first link and tried to choose an artist I hadn’t seen before. I settled on this work by artist Kaya Joan:

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A post shared by K A Y A (@kayajoan)

I also chose it because it was *so* different than artwork that I connect with on a personal level. I wanted to talk about this with my class so they knew that it’s still possible to discuss art and appreciate it on different levels even if it’s not something they automatically like.

We went through the stages of analysis — I found a simplified analysis sheet on Canva to help us start off the semester with some baby steps before diving into anything more challenging:

After we discussed each step, students were finishing their responses for “Critique,” and my mind began to wander. I asked them “if you could choose any song to accompany this artwork, what would it be?”

One student said “hard rock,” and another said “jazz,” which made more sense to me. Then, one student said “the Cantina music from Star Wars.”

O.M.G!!! 

My mouth dropped and I spun around to look at the artwork again — I couldn’t believe it, but the artwork I had struggled to connect with suddenly became something I liked more! We played the music and then we could even imagine the two alien-type figures holding instruments we couldn’t see. Everyone in the class suddenly loved this artwork.

We’re definitely going to try this again.