Unit Plan II: Doors Christopher Lee Mayfield

ENDURING IDEAS - Throughout time and across cultures artists (all people, really) have used and encountered doors in artwork and in everyday life. COURSE - Studio (intermediate level) ELO - Expressively manipulate the art elements and principles to create compositions that exhibit a compelling division of space [this can be taken with a dual meaning as doors are -quite literally- dividers]. Develop and successfully execute an idea/concept for a work of art. Demonstrate an understanding of ways to assess development and to defend one’s personal æsthetic [this is done through the collaborative process and through artists statements]. Demonstrate creative problem solving through the production of art that investigates formal and conceptual art problems. Describe, analyse, evaluate to show an awareness of multiple and diverse interpretations of art in relation to culture. Compose an artists statement that reflects æsthetic choices and personal direction developed over a period of time. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS - What does a door represent? How do barriers stop us from being aware of what lay on the other side? EXEMPLAR ARTISTS - Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise and many anonymous door paintings. OBJECTIVES - Artists will be able to: 1) create profound meaning through the use of the door as a symbol, 2) collaborate with other students in the class, 3) understand and express conceptual thinking within the confines of the guidelines. MATERIALS - Doors. Acrylic Paint. PROCEDURES - The artists will decide whether or not each artist works on both sides of the door or if the group will be subdivided into smaller groups working on opposites sides of the door. In this assignment, the artists will work together to depict what is beyond the metaphorical door (id est: the future, another (opposing) reality, their goals and dreams, et cetera) on a physically tangible door. A door is a movable barrier between two worlds; the point of the exercise is to understand that the door does not have to be open to know what it withholds. ASSESSMENT AND CULMINATING ACTIVITY - The doors will be installed in non-gallery spaces, to be displayed to the general public. A reception (crawl/scavenger hunt) would be available for directing audiences; otherwise, the work will be viewed by the general public. Viewers would be allowed to leave notes expressing their feelings toward the artworks on the site (to be gone through later by faculty in case of crude or barbaric remarks. The artists will write about the meaning they created in the work as well as the meaning perceived by the anonymous viewership. PRIOR KNOWLEDGE - According to several cognitive and behavioural theories, students in this age group are capable of complex conceptual/abstract thought - often trying to use it.