Wicked Arts Assignments are bold, unusual, contrary, funny, poetical, inspiring, socially committed, or otherwise challenging. Everyone who teaches art knows them: the assignment that is seemingly simple but which challenges participants, students and pupils to the max. Many artists and arts teachers have that singular, personal, often-used assignment in which everything comes together: their artistic vision, their pedagogical approach and their love for certain techniques or methods.00The almost hundred arts assignments collected here connect to the visual arts, performance, theatre, music and design, but more importantly: they encourage cross-disciplinarity. They reflect themes and ways of working in contemporary arts, offering opportunities to learn about ourselves, the arts and the world.00The first part of this book provides a theoretical view on arts assignments from historical, artistic and educational perspectives, complemented by interviews with experts in contemporary arts and education. The second part consists of the actual wicked arts assignments. These can be carried out in various contexts: from primary schools to higher education, from home to the (online) community, and from Bogotá to Istanbul. They are meant to spark the imagination of both teachers and students, contributing to new, topical educational and artistic practices.

“There are more than 50 creative prompts for the artist (or artist at heart) to explore. Take the title of this book as affirmation, and get started.” —Fast Company More than 50 assignments, ideas, and prompts to expand your world and help you make outstanding new things to put into it Curator Sarah Urist Green left her office in the basement of an art museum to travel and visit a diverse range of artists, asking them to share prompts that relate to their own ways of working. The result is You Are an Artist, a journey of creation through which you'll invent imaginary friends, sort books, declare a cause, construct a landscape, find your band, and become someone else (or at least try). Your challenge is to filter these assignments through the lens of your own experience and make art that reflects the world as you see it. You don't have to know how to draw well, stretch a canvas, or mix a paint color that perfectly matches that of a mountain stream. This book is for anyone who wants to make art, regardless of experience level. The only materials you'll need are what you already have on hand or can source for free. Full of insights, techniques, and inspiration from art history, this book opens up the processes and practices of artists and proves that you, too, have what it takes to call yourself one. You Are an Artist brings together more than 50 assignments gathered from some of the most innovative creators working today, including Sonya Clark, Michelle Grabner, The Guerrilla Girls, Fritz Haeg, Pablo Helguera, Nina Katchadourian, Toyin Ojih Odutola, J. Morgan Puett, Dread Scott, Alec Soth, Gillian Wearing, and many others.

"Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: the Art of the Art Assignment, is a unique and wide-ranging anthology featuring essays, drawings, and assignments from over 100 contributors including: John Baldessari, William Pope. L, Mira Schor, Rochelle Feinstein, Bob Nickas, Chris Kraus, Liam Gillick, Amy Sillman, James Benning, and Michelle Grabner. Practical and quixotic in equal parts, the art assignment can resemble a riddle as much as a recipe, and often sounds more like a haiku, or even a joke, than a clear directive. From introductory exercises in perspective drawing to graduate-level experiments in societal transformation, the assignment coalesces ideas about what art is, how it should be taught, and what larger purpose it might, or might not, serve. The book is a written record of an evolving oral tradition. Bringing together hundreds of assignments, anti-assignments, and artworks from both teachers and students from a broad range of institutions, Draw It with Your Eyes Closed serves as an archive and an instigation, a teaching tool and a question mark, a critique and a tribute."--Amazon.

Creative block presents the most crippling—and unfortunately universal—challenge for artists. No longer! This chunky blockbuster of a book is chock-full of solutions for overcoming all manner of artistic impediment. The blogger behind The Jealous Curator interviews 50 successful international artists working in different mediums and mines their insights on how to conquer self-doubt, stay motivated, and get new ideas to flow. Each artist offers a tried-and-true exercise—from road trips to 30-day challenges to cataloging the medicine cabinet— that will kick-start the creative process. Abundantly visual with more than 300 images showcasing these artists' resulting work, Creative Block is a vital ally to students, artists, and creative professionals.

This practical resource will help educators teach about current art and integrate its philosophy and methods into the K–12 classroom. The authors provide a framework that looks at art through the lens of nine themes—everyday life, work, power, earth, space and place, self and others, change and time, inheritance, and visual culture—highlighting the conceptual aspects of art and connecting disparate forms of expression. They also provide guidelines and examples for how to use contemporary art to change the dynamics of a classroom, apply inventive non-linear lenses to topics, broaden and update the art “canon,” and spur creative and critical thinking. Young people will find the selected artwork accessible and relevant to their lives, diverse and expansive, probing, serious and funny. Challenging conventional notions of what should be considered art and how it should be created, this book offers a sampling of what is out there to inspire educators and students to explore the limitless world of new art. Book Features: Indicators and lenses that make contemporary art more familiar, accessible, understandable, and useable for teachers. Easy-to-reference descriptions and images from a variety of contemporary artists.Strategies for integrating art thinking across the curriculum.Suggestions to help teachers find contemporary art to fit their curriculum and school settings.Concrete examples of art-based projects from both art and general classrooms.Guidance for developing curriculum, including how to create guiding questions to spur student thinking.

Visual artist' is a term with untold interpretations, nuances, variations and meanings. But how, as an artist (or designer, photographer, or other ?independent creator?), do you become who you are and who you would like to be?0What fundamental questions, characteristics, dilemmas, ambitions, restrictions and realities play a part? How, as an artist, can you guide your artistic practice, the main criterion being to answer the question: "where do I stand and what do I stand for?"0'Plan and Play, Play and Plan: Positioning by Artists' targets the artist, inviting him or her to reach considerations, often based on analytical models, that will help to determine his position.0The author knows from practical experience the complexity of the artist?s questions and dilemmas, the many areas in which the artist involved and how important self-reflection and self-determination are for artistic practice, without losing sight of the broader social context. He has scrutinized his considerations, assembled notes and pointers ? based on many interviews with a wide variety of artists, from beginners to old hands, from unknown to internationally celebrated ? assimilating them into an appealing book in which terminology, background, components and questions requiring reflection form a cohesive whole.

In Creating Wicked Students, Paul Hanstedt argues that courses can and should be designed to present students with what are known as “wicked problems” because the skills of dealing with such knotty problems are what will best prepare them for life after college. As the author puts it, “this book begins with the assumption that what we all want for our students is that they be capable of changing the world....When a student leaves college, we want them to enter the world not as drones participating mindlessly in activities to which they’ve been appointed, but as thinking, deliberative beings who add something to society.”There’s a lot of talk in education these days about “wicked problems”—problems that defy traditional expectations or knowledge, problems that evolve over time: Zika, ISIS, political discourse in the era of social media. To prepare students for such wicked problems, they need to have wicked competencies, the ability to respond easily and on the fly to complex challenges. Unfortunately, a traditional education that focuses on content and skills often fails to achieve this sense of wickedness. Students memorize for the test, prepare for the paper, practice the various algorithms over and over again—but when the parameters or dynamics of the test or the paper or the equation change, students are often at a loss for how to adjust.This is a course design book centered on the idea that the goal in the college classroom—in all classrooms, all the time—is to develop students who are not just loaded with content, but capable of using that content in thoughtful, deliberate ways to make the world a better place. Achieving this goal requires a top-to-bottom reconsideration of courses, including student learning goals, text selection and course structure, day-to-day pedagogies, and assignment and project design. Creating Wicked Students takes readers through each step of the process, providing multiple examples at each stage, while always encouraging instructors to consider concepts and exercises in light of their own courses and students.

This accessible guide will help studio art and design professors meaningfully and effectively transform their curriculum and pedagogy so that it is relevant to today’s learners. Situating contemporary college teaching within a historic art and design continuum, the author provides a practical framework for considering complex interactions within art and design pedagogy. Readers will gain a deeper appreciation of college students and their learning, an understanding of teaching repertoires, and insight into the local and global contexts that impact teaching and learning and how these are interrelated with studio content. Throughout, Salazar expertly weaves research, theory, and helpful advice that instructors can use to enact a mode of teaching that is responsive to their unique environment. The text examines a variety of educational practices, including reflection, critique, exploration, research, student-to-student interaction, online teaching, intercultural learning, and community-engaged curricula. Book Features: A clear introduction to research and theory in college learning and art education.A response to the current shift from studio practice to an investment in teaching practice.Reflective prompts, actions, teaching strategies, and recommended resources.User-friendly templates ready to customize for the reader’s own content.

In this student-centered book, Debrah C. Sickler-Voigt provides proven tips and innovative methods for teaching, managing, and assessing all aspects of art instruction and student learning in today’s diversified educational settings, from pre-K through high school. Up-to-date with the current National Visual Arts Standards, this text offers best practices in art education, and explains current theories and assessment models for art instruction. Using examples of students’ visually stunning artworks to illustrate what children can achieve through quality art instruction and practical lesson planning, Teaching and Learning in Art Education explores essential and emerging topics such as: managing the classroom in art education; artistic development from early childhood through adolescence; catering towards learners with a diversity of abilities; integrating technology into the art field; and understanding drawing, painting, paper arts, sculpture, and textiles in context. Alongside a companion website offering Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, assessments, and tutorials to provide ready-to-use-resources for professors and students, this engaging text will assist teachers in challenging and inspiring students to think creatively, problem-solve, and develop relevant skills as lifelong learners in the art education sector.