This past fall I had the opportunity to teach art to 7th graders two Saturdays a month at Kipp Austin College Prep School. It was a great experience for me. I haven't taught in awhile, let alone to 7th graders. My goal each class and project was either to introduce them to a period of art history or a professional art career. The students always surprised me, the projects I felt the least prepared for were the ones that they always embraced and enjoyed the most. Interesting how that works, isn't it?
My FAVORITE project that we did were photo collage self portraits.I showed the students a variety of different artists self portraits through the ages and even some of my own that I have done through the years. I took a digital picture of each student, had it printed and then they were all given a stack of magazines to go through and the challenge " tell me something about yourself that I didn't know before." They were pretty much allowed to do anything except cut the photo of themselves out and stick it to the paper and hand it in - they had to use color, words, images... something to make it an interesting collage and something that would tell the rest of us who they saw themselves as - now or in the future. The end results were amazing. I wish I had pictures to share with you of them because that were great.
As I prepared for each lesson during the semester I would do the project myself. This mostly started out to see how long it would take and make any revisions necessary. But this project was a little different for me. It got me thinking about the value and importance of self portraits in our lives. I think what is so important about doing a self portrait of any kind is that we take few opportunities in life to just sit and look at ourselves from the outside in. To study ourselves. For those of you who are artists you know the feeling of studying the human body and loosing yourself in the form and shape of what is in front of you. I think the same thing can happen when you take a step outside of yourself figuratively and look in. You may be surprised by what you find or see.
I wanted to take the opportunity with this self portrait to tell my classes that I was pregnant. Some of the students had figured it out on their own, but the majority hadn't. I sat down myself with a stack of magazines and started tearing out things that stuck out to me. Then I sat back and looked at what I had and started assembling them and tried to figure out how they related to one another. In the end a few things surfaced about the thoughts and fears that I had/have about becoming a parent - things that had never crossed my mind before. I learned something about myself.
I hope as we start out this New Year that you will take some time to reflect on your life, on the things that you enjoy, the things that you struggle with, the things that make you who you are as a person and let yourself roll around in those thoughts for awhile. You may come out on the other side learning a thing or two.
