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Identity
and the Arts (And All That Jazz*)
Teacher:
Stephen Walker, Gaithersburg
High School, (contact Stephen)
Arts Discipline: Visual Arts
Grade Level: High School
Team: F
Topic: Jazz & America
Click
here to view the lesson plans
of other Team F members.
Rationale
Why is
this unit worth teaching?
The connections
between the arts and identity are important notions for students
to explore if they are to understand the human impulse to create
art and the personal values of the artistic process. The arts
are not separate from the artist. They offer an opportunity
to discover and transform who we are. Jazz, America's contribution
to music, is a particularly rich vehicle for teaching students
about the relationship between artists and identity. A player's
art even under the guidance of a composer, this music of spontaneous
melodic embellishment is an art form which has developed in
the recent past out of African American culture and reflects
a sense of group identity. Its distinctive rhythms, scales and
modes, harmonic progressions and riffs, and its improvisational
elements celebrate the communal need for self-expression and
allow the individual performer an opportunity to unmask and
explore in order to develop his unique voice.
* Thanks
to mentor Dr. Paul Traver for naming our unit
Unit Plan--Overview
(6-8 lessons)
Big Idea:
Identity and the Arts
Essential
Understandings:
Topic:
Jazz
Essential
Understandings:
Discipline:
Visual Art
Learner
Outcomes and Expectations
-
the student will demonstrate the ability to perceive, interpret,
and respond to ideas, experiences, and the environment through
the visual arts activities.
-
the student will demonstrate an understanding of the visual
arts as a basic aspect of history and human experience.
-
the student will demonstrate the ability to organize knowledge
and ideas for expression and the production of art.
Essential
Questions:
1. How can
art help us to discover and express our identity? In relation
to others?
2. How does art reflect an artist's identity?
3. What's the role of structure in helping us to find our own
voice?
4. How can improvisation challenge traditional notions of art
and self?
Assessment:
What should students understand and be able to do as a
result of this unit?
-
Students should be able to express their own identity in art.
- Students should
be able to use improvisation to energize and focus their self-expression.
- Students should
be able to give examples of how an artist's identity is reflected
in his work.
- Students should
be able to create within the structures of art forms.
Lesson
1
Big Idea:
Artists and Identity
Essential
Understandings:
Essential
Questions:
1. How does art reflect an artist's identity?
2. How can improvisation challenge traditional notions
of art and self?
Lesson
Objectives:
-
After studying examples of jazz and abstract expressionism
and their structures, students will identify these areas
of human activity in which structure inspires creativity.
-
The student will explore the creative process by executing
a collaborative, structured, improvisational "action painting"
while listening to jazz.
Materials:
-
select a jazz piece to be played during the improvisational
"action painting;" running time should be at least 8 minutes
in length.
-
material or board to paint on; should be large enough to
accommodate group size.
-
assortment of pre-mixed water-based tempera paints (at least
10 colors); paint brush for each student; rags for clean
up
-
video camera; tech crew using a high vantage (ladder) and
video down over the canvas
-
small table, low to the ground, allows for "dripping and
splattering" of the paints
-
drop cloth under table; secure canvas with tape
-
students should wear suitable clothing for active painting.
Warm
Up:
-
have students listen to the chosen jazz recording, identifying
the different instruments, solos, rhythms, tempo and repeating
melody.
-
assign each student to an instrument and color; the color
will represent that instrument. Have students listen
to the music again.
-
before beginning, explain to the students to move around
the canvas in one direction, to ensure paint application
to the entire canvas.
-
rehearse the routine with music, but without painting first,
and then again using some test sheets to show examples of
technique and style. Now you are ready to begin!
Procedure:
-
design and video a title sheet for filming identification;
remove from canvas as painting begins.
-
start video and music
-
have students begin to paint by listening for their assigned
instrument and with hand signals, teacher directs them to
all keep moving and painting to the music by splattering,
dripping, and slinging their colors to the beats and expressions
of the jazz piece.
-
once the music draws to a climax, again by using hand signals,
encourage the students to increase their painting action
and feeling, while applying their final strokes.
Assessment
and Evaluation:
What should students understand and be able to do as a
result of this lesson?
-
the student will have knowledge of jazz and abstract expressionism
-
they will have experienced an artistic freedom to express
themselves individually and collaboratively and they will
have crossed new boundaries of self-expression.
Sponsored
by The
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, The
Center for Renaissance and Baroque
Studies, and the Maryland
State Department of Education.
We welcome your comments
and suggestions.
Last updated 25 April 2001
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