THE VISUAL ARTS

The Visual Arts                
Visitation Academy
Mrs. Sarachman

Art is a way of making and communicating meaning through imagery. It is a unique symbolic domain and is a discipline with its own particular demands and core of learning. Art is a natural and enjoyable way of extending and enriching the child’s experience of the world.
Visual arts activities enable the child to make connections between the imaginative life and the world and to organize and express ideas, feelings, and experiences in visual, tangible forms. In drawing, painting, constructing and inventing, the child assimilates and responds to experience and tries to make sense of it.
Visual arts education provides for creative and aesthetic experiences through exploring, investigating, experimenting, inventing, designing and making in a range of media. It promotes observation and ways of seeing; it helps the child to acquire sensitivity to the visual, spatial and tactile world and to aesthetic experience. Visual arts education channels the child’s natural curiosity for educational ends: the development of perceptual awareness helps the child to enjoy and interpret the visual environment and art works and can facilitate learning in all areas of the curriculum. Creative achievements in art contribute to a sense of personal identity and self-esteem and help to create cultural awareness and empathy.
The visual arts curriculum
The curriculum is designed so the child can explore, respond to, and interpret the world visually by:

·       Drawing

·       Paint and color

·       Print

·       Clay

·       Construction

Drawing is an instinctive way for the child to communicate understanding, feelings and her imaginative life. The developing child quite naturally invents symbols to represent the human figure, animals, and a variety of observed objects. Later, the need to progress beyond repeated symbols and to express a growing sense of individuality becomes apparent. Developing the ability to look with curiosity and concentration at qualities of line, rhythm, texture, color and tone in the child’s surroundings and in the work of artists is essential to developing drawing potential and enjoyment. Drawing has particular importance in the curriculum.

Paint is an ideal medium for developing the child’s sensitivity to color, because it is fluid and its effects are immediate. It is important to explore the expressive and descriptive effects of a variety of color media and to encourage adventurous use. Color awareness promotes sensitivity to and enjoyment of color in the child’s surroundings and is further enhanced when the child has opportunities to look at the work of artists.

Printmaking extends the child’s range of expression. Printmaking activities provide additional opportunities for developing awareness of the interrelationships between shapes and colors and the impact they can have, and for experimenting with pattern. They also draw attention to the use of print in everyday objects and help to expand understanding of the image-making processes in evidence in the child’s surroundings.

Clay is a versatile medium for free imaginative expression. Children begin to understand its inherent possibilities for three-dimensional expression as they model with it and change it. The plastic, malleable nature of clay makes it an ideal medium for learning about form.

Construction activities with a variety of three-dimensional materials can help the child to become more spatially aware, can encourage inventiveness, and can help to promote sensitivity to structure in the immediate and wider environments.

The visual elements

The visual arts activities for the different media help to develop sensitivity to qualities of line, shape, form, color and tone, texture, pattern and rhythm, and spatial organization, and enable the child to use them purposefully. These qualities are both the elements of the visual world and the language of artistic communication.

Integrated learning is an important aspect of primary education.  The visual arts activities incorporate a number of media, and many are cross-curricular; they provide a variety of contexts for developing concepts and skills and are added opportunities for creativity and inventiveness. 

Language and visual arts education

In visual arts education, language is vitally important in stimulating ideas and recalling experiences so that they are vividly present as the child tries to express them visually. Being able to talk about art is also an essential part of the child’s development in art.

Assessment

Assessment is related to:

• The child’s ability to make art
• The child’s ability to look with understanding at and respond to art works
• The quality of the child’s engagement with art
• Disposition towards art activities - the child’s ability to take a positive approach to and become personally involved in the creative process, and take risks in making and responding to art works so that her work is always personal and inventive.

The visual arts curriculum enables the child to:

• Look at, enjoy and make a personal response to a range of familiar and unfamiliar objects and images in the environment, focusing on their visual attributes
• Explore and begin to develop sensitivity to qualities of line, shape, color and tone, texture, pattern and rhythm, spatial organization and the three-dimensional quality of form
• Express ideas, feelings and experiences in visual form and with imagination, enjoyment and a sense of fulfillment
• Experiment in spontaneous, imaginative and increasingly structured ways with a range of art materials, including pencils, paints, crayons, chalks, markers, inks, clay, and construction materials
• Explore the expressive and design possibilities of the materials within a range of two and three-dimensional media, including drawing, paint and color, print, clay, construction
• Apply skills and techniques, demonstrating increasing sensitivity to the visual elements in her art work
• Look with curiosity and openness at the work of a wide range of artists and craftspeople
• Explore atmosphere, content and impact in the work of artists, especially when they relate to her own work
• Identify a variety of visual arts media and describe some of the creative processes involved
• Develop an ability to identify and discuss what she considers the most important design elements of individual pieces, especially when they relate to work in hand
• Discuss the preferred design elements in her work and in the work of classmates
• Begin to appreciate the context in which great art and artifacts are created and the culture from which they grow
• Respond to visual arts experiences in a variety of imaginative ways
• Use appropriate language in responding to visual arts experiences