Lesson 9: Individual Lesson Planning

Working off the big idea of memories, I would plan on students taking the memory of a significant object/person/event from their lives, creating a visual representation of the object/person/event (through a photograph, drawing, etc...) and then telling a story about the object/person/event in text form.

To gain a different perspective, the students would then produce a text or story based on the point of view of the object/person/event itself [similar to the studio activity based upon Donald Lipski's work (Walker, p.21)].

This would not only lend a different perspective, but also (hopefully) create empathy for the object/person/event before creating the actual art.  It would be important for the students to try and recall the smells, textures, sounds and emotions associated with the memory in order to get more than a superficial treatment.

After creating the visual representation of the memory, the text of the stories related to the memory would be incorporated into the image, perhaps through cutting out selected "important" words from the stories and pasting them onto or around the image.  The idea of including text in art was taken from Howardena Pindell's work- creating a disarrayed puzzle that must be pieced together for meaning.

Taking the exercise a step further, the students could then create stories based on the images and text created by others, adding more words to the visual representations through collaboration and layering.  

References:

Walker, S. (2001). Teaching meaning in artmaking. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications.

Images courtesy of Google images.