Interdisciplinary approach to art education within the field of humanities is my philosophy. My map is messy and each word wants to connect with other words, yet my map is like a puzzle or a game of Scrabble; still looking to find meaningful and significant connections to discover novel perspectives and multidisciplinary angles. The story behind the words are my acquaintances with various subjects of interests over the years without any predetermined intention, but by only showing great curiosity for each discipline such as art history, mythology, color science and travel to archeological sites. Having experienced this, I like children to find their core interests at younger age and work on it with deliberate enthusiasm. As I have started my search too late and running three steps behind today, I like children to use art as an entry point to find their own unique voices in life as early as possible.
The background of my map/work represents the past, an ancient terrain of layered information still yet to be uncovered while part of it has been excavated and represented by two separate pieces in shape of fragmented mosaics. I like to ask questions using archeology as a act of excavation and burial, kind of a metaphor of unearthing, assessing the past as well as our place in the world today.
The opposition between old and new, the duality of the notions such as ancient and modern is also part of the art education like its elements, light/dark, symmetry/asymmetry and dissonance/consonance and etc. I would like to teach these principles and elements in a story format and see how each child’s own interest shapes about what kind of connections they would like to make.
While I survey the surface of the past, I also notice how unsettling the present is. Uncertainty and ambiguity of the past resemble the state of our contemporary issues. I would like children focus on their own interest of issues and develop stories by making meaningful connections with other fields. If it is an environmental concern, story making may include other concerns such as social and economical issues from the past or imagined future.
In some cases, complete representation of the past is not possible. Unproven periods of the past are depicted based on hypothesis and theories, thus using imagination and wide range of knowledge from other disciplines to fill these gaps becomes an important skill. In this case, abstract expressionism gives me freedom to render depth and complexity to tell visual stories. My process also includes simple materials such as paper, wire, stones, clay which mediates for more discoveries in art education. Gradually introducing new materials into the work narrates and renews the story into meanings, such as textural, “wrapping” and “healing” feature of the plaster/gauge cloth and the earthy and lasting effect of the clay. My challenge is to find methods and techniques that are development appropriate for early childhood education.
My art and art education philosophy looks puzzled and incoherent like individual mosaic fragments. Each piece has the potential to become part of a finalized work. This freedom of selecting pieces among many is liberating, yet it is also confining in terms of having no answers at all. My mind chooses to keep asking questions while moving and circling around the senses with an eye for searching, researching and discovery. I like children to do the same with fresh eyes.