Intermediate Lesson Plan #2

Lisa Stegall

Unit Title- Does this mural make my butt look big?

Enduring Ideas- Throughout time and across cultures artists have used their work to investigate, portray and deconstruct the VISUAL CULTURE of their time.

Course- Intermediate

ELO- Demonstrate creative problem solving skills through art production, analysis, and discussion. Demonstrate creative problem solving through the production of art that investigates formal and conceptual art problems.

Relate skills and experiences learned in class to post-secondary career and life. Relate studio experiences to the real world by exploring post-secondary opportunities and by connecting to the larger art and academic community.

Essential Questions-

• What is Visual Culture? • What does it mean to, and how can we, deconstruct visual culture? • How are we manipulated by the visual culture around us? • How can we manipulate visual culture? And our audience? • Most murals are sponsored by someone, usually a business. How does the

sponsor affect the artwork? How does the sponsor affect the audience?

Exemplar Artists-

Alison Jackson- English photographer. embed something + TED, “Up There” vimeo, Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen-Art 21, Other mural people.

Objectives- Artists will be able to:

1. Consider and discuss ways that the media and other interested parties can manipulate people on a large scale.

2. Become more aware of their own participation in the visual culture around them, and explore visual culture through different media.

3. Work collaboratively and democratically to envision, design and produce a large scale public mural.

4. Be prepared to discuss the mural with peers, school and community members using well thought out information on its design, content and meaning.

Materials-Paint and primer, brushes, chalk lines, ladders and scaffolding,

Procedures-

• Talk about visual culture, with a prezi and a bit of TED. • Use Terry Barrett article “Interpreting Visual Culture” to bring discussion. • Brainstorming and idea creation. Students work in journals on ideas for a

mural with something to say. • Presentation of possible mural ideas, with a discussion, vote and any changes or

accommodations necessary. For instance, the class may decide to merge the ideas and/or images of more than one person.

• Discuss and plan ways to transfer image from paper to wall, including historical and modern methods.

• The site for the mural will be prepared, the mural image transferred to the wall, students will paint the mural.

• At the opening ceremony, the class will represent themselves to an audience of school, business, community and media members. They will have a practiced rationale and be able to discuss their work with the public.

Assessment-

• Formative assessments will happen each day, as the students work independently and then together on their ideas and images.

• Collaboration is crucial to this project and will be encouraged and promoted. Students will be assessed on their cooperative abilities. A rubric for self and peer assessment.

• Is the message of the mural clear? Too blatant? Too subtle? What does it say to its audience.

• Video the class making the mural, to put in the online gallery. • Personal assessment as each student writes a statement about working on the

mural. • Peer assessment in a practice class for talking to an audience about the mural. • Public assessment in the form of public reaction to the mural; peer responses,

newspaper articles, letters to the editor, tv segments, radio stories…

Evidence of Prior Knowledge

Who doesn’t love a mural? Whether it is on a huge wall in a big city, or a faded advertisement on an old brick wall in some Podunk town, I think murals are interesting. I have always thought of them as being permanent, but the batman link and the vimeo show that this is not necessarily true, some murals are temporary. Especially the ones that are advertisements, as there are always new things to advertise.

Website with mural info- http://www.art-is-fun.com/how-to-paint-a-mural.html

Blog about a wall in NY that is painted often http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/07/this-is-how-you-paint-a-150-foot-tall-batman

video about mural painters in NY-http://vimeo.com/10562000

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/barry-mcgee

Barry McGee-Vanity Fair/Cadillac sponsored mural in Brooklyn. Interesting intersection between street art and corporate sponsorship, on a huge scale.

Barrett, T. (2003) Interpreting Visual Culture. Art Education.

In Kathy Unrath’s Curriculum in Art Education class last year, we read:

Eisner, Elliot. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind Freedman, K. (2003) Teaching Visual Culture Pink, D. (2005) A Whole New Mind

We talked a lot about visual culture and the ways that the world is changing. I feel that most people in America, and possibly the world, do not think much about how they are affected by the visual culture around them. I want my students to at least be aware that there are forces at work.