the ARt project

Getting excited for the unveiling of the ARt project 2nd phase refinements, in a brand new custom app! Mark your calendar, to meet us there!

There are several inaugural parallels at work in this posting!

The first is- a new annual student exhibit on display now at Oregon State University’s new Beth Ray Student Success Center.

The second inaugural parallel is- you can see the first image of new art in a series, entitled: Iconic Views at OSU Series #1 on view there, with 19 other juried student art works until June 2014.
Make plans to stop by! Hours are 8-5, M-F.

Iconic Views at OSU is a new series that once completed will be comprised of 15 works. The artist is creating this series to raise local capital in support of her on-going work on the ARt project, and you can help by making a purchase of one of these works as a gift for yourself, your department, someone in your family, or as a gift to the community.

Watch a slideshow documenting the progression of the inaugural work in this series.

Iconic Views at OSU Series takes viewers on a visual exploration of human culture and natural resources operating in this particular setting; providing associative technology examples that exist in a collaborative reality across our local academic life.

From the artist’s original vision to provide greater public access to the Percent for Art collection, valued at $2.4 million at Oregon State University alone- the second phase prototype refinements of the app, is now preparing for what is the 3rd inaugural parallel: unveiling it at the 2014 Engineering Expo, on May 16th. This event is open to the public, so be sure to meet the artist, and the rest of the ARt project’s collaborative and exceptionally talented team.

Contact the artist here to purchase, or pre-purchase a work in the Iconic Views at OSU Series, and to find out more details about her vision for the series.

Support the ARt project’s development in art and access to culture in our community.

the ARt project student director, Kerrie B. Wrye is showing the first image in a new art series, called: Iconic Views at OSU.

As a post-Bacc student at OSU, I am pleased to invite you to attend the first annual juried art exhibit reception at the new Beth Ray Success Center (located between the new bookstore & CH2M Alumni Center!).

Shout out: the reception is TODAY from 4-6. It is a catered event, open to the public.

*I am showing a juried work that raises awareness and funds for the ARt project. I hope to see you there.

***Thank-you Pegasus Frame Studio & Gallery for the beautiful matting and framing on my work in this exhibit!

It’s tonight!

Come see me present the ARt project in South Town, beginning at 6pm!

There will be finger food and there are micro brews on tap. Come out to listen to and support the 8 presenters, as we go for a chance to experience 2 months of start-up input from the OSU Accelerator.

Oh! There’s a cover to get in: $10.00, unless you are an OSU student- with ID, your cover is $5.00.

For the sake of privacy, the image below appears mostly blank. It is the 2013-2014 Capstone Projects- list, and I found it on the website last week. There in slot #33 out of 42 projects included, is the ARt project! It’s still ecstatic news! I meet with the new development team for the first time, tomorrow!

The next update, and boy! Oh boy! The good news keeps rolling in support of this joyful project! Which means the next update is, I just submitted the first grant application on behalf of the ARt project’s second phase refinements at the university, 2 days ago! If it comes in the affirmative, it will pay me to keep working! That’s always good news! More updates soon- as new information develops!

Wow! I just received an email telling the ARt project the good news!

This is step two on the 2013-2014 grant application calendar!

Everybody is doing the happy dance at the ARt project!!

Sir Ken Robinson – Changing Paradigms

I had the opportunity in January 2013 to attend my first professional development VTS event at the MoMA in San Francisco. The video above is of a Level 3 Practicum student demonstrating her image selection, paraphrasing and linking skills and proficiency. This recording later provided cameo videotape material in submission of her facilitation of the image discussions we shared and experienced, as VTS para-professionals and professionals.

I first discovered it several years ago in a museum training program I had participated in for nine months.
VTS stands for Visual Thinking Strategies. Within the first twenty minutes encounter with the basic way in which it is designed to work, I was totally hooked! I could immediately intuit the way in which VTS is uniquely designed to facilitate student development, because I instantly recognized parallels to the way the Looking/Seeing Project I once taught as an artist volunteer to elementary, middle school and high school students, had similar goals. Goals I can sum up in six words- Empower each viewer within a group!

As I say, the Looking/Seeing project I had designed in 1992, and taught over a six year period, had several goals. One was to teach students through the experiences of making art, to pay attention to their own perceptions. Through inquiry combined with individual and group work, I stressed noticing that each person’s perceptions- as recorded in their own visual expression, might differ from the person sometimes sitting right next to them.

The students worked on a whole class project within clusters of 4 students, each cluster sharing one historical art image to observe or not, while each art print was different from table to table.

In beginning to notice individual perception, I next asked them very simply to also notice those differences within their cluster group while pursuing their art projects.
In the next step, I asked them to bring their awareness for differences into the next phase of the process, as the whole group joined to brainstormed about their experiences to that point.
Once each student felt their art work was complete, they were guided to mat their individual works according to cluster mat colors agreed on together, as preparation to join their works with the other clusters, to a whole classroom arrangement.
Next they collaborated to produce a writing project with multiple focuses: 1_ talk about the art they were making individually in their clusters, and 2_ how they experienced discovering their differences in perceptions through visual expression, 3_ talk about sharing discussions of differences in small groups, 4_ and just describe joining both their visual work and their dicussions together as a whole group.
Lastly, they were asked to come together to produce and host their own exhibit as a final step of returning to a combined whole classroom experience, to open their multi-level experiences of process, observation and collaboration, up to their extended world through empowered and experiential articulation.

To summerize, students excitedly created an expression of their own perception. Participated in cognizantly noticing those perceptions at first as uniquely their own. Shared observations within small groups about those differences in perception through looking, seeing and discussion. Further acknowledged their experiences of individuality and participation within a small group by organizing their works together via agreed-to mat color. Rejoined the whole classroom as one large group through brainstorming to write a class statement together, to reinforce their individual and shared Looking/Seeing experiences of combining multiple processes.
Processes that ebbed and flowed as they encountered and experienced individual and collaborative observation, making and discussion; concluding by taking the entire set of processes into yet a larger world experience, via statement writing and hosting their own whole classroom exhibit, with family and extended community.

Visual Thinking Strategies is essentially interested in ‘what aesthetic skills are developed when a viewer looks at art. What causes such development?’
The ways I see this model facilitate empowerment, is found in the originator, Abigail Housen‘s early research: ‘…only by understanding viewing from the viewer’s perspective… how to support… nurture and finally, foster aesthetic growth.’
After years of teaching and research, she collaborated with Phillip Yenawine ‘to create educational practices that help learners move to new levels of aesthetic experience.’ ‘…teachers encourage student participation and sharing of each student’s current understanding by asking carefully designed and sequenced questions that have been paired with carefully selected images. Both questions and images are targeted to the viewers’ questions, interests, and skills based on their aesthetic stage.’ (Housen & Yenawine, 200a, 200b, 2001b, 2002).

‘Students are asked to do what they can do and they are challenged to do what they are ready to do next. Teachers paraphrase, in a nonjudgmental way, each student’s contribution, ensuring that each voice is heard and understood. They link ideas, ensuring that the conversations deepen, encouraging learners to continue to look for and construct meanings. In the course of talking about the image. learners effectively teach each other, bringing new observations to light, offering opposing views, and ever widening the discussion. The care of designing suitable and sequenced questioning paired with carefully selected images and paraphrased responses, are critical in the process of fostering aesthetic growth and critical thinking.

Art affords an ideal environment for teaching and learning. It provides an object of collective attention- something concrete for a classroom to observe and experience, provoking thoughts and feelings while at the same time generating simultaneous and distinctive meanings. The more one looks and discuss images, together with well chosen questions and adept facilitation by a teacher, the more there is to see, and the deeper and richer is the learning experience.

There are many pathways to move through a stage of aesthetic understanding and growth, and each viewer discovers her own way. Well-chosen works of art support these multiple pathways, and well-crafted educational designs can support a multiplicity of learners as their thinking develops. Together, they provide the foundations for lifelong viewing and learning.’ (VTS: Visual Thinking Strategies; Art Viewing and Aesthetic Development: Designer for the Viewer; Abigail Housen, Ed. D.; Visual Understanding in Education.)

Though different, the Looking/Seeing project engaged a hands-on combination of individual and group making with active self and collaborative observation, to provide students direct integration through which to articulately share their empowered perceptions and multi-level experiences with others.
VTS provides participatory discussion facilitated through carefully chosen images that are combined with non-judgmental paraphrasing and linking, as students are invited to discuss, listen, observe deeply, and build a shared viewing/learning experience that can be repeated. Over time, the stages of aesthetic development grows in active breadth and depth that is as individually empowering as it is inclusively interactive.
In my experiences with both, I continue to uncover rich parallels and cross-over possibilities with unending and expanding excitement. My experiences have evolved into revelatory explorations that have never rung more true for me, than in learning to design the developmental reality of joining the powerful critical thinking and articulation skills of VTS, within mobile app content creation.
From a vision I originated, and through talented on-campus collaborations that facilitated public launch to what has become the phase I prototype of my post-Bacc student design and development job, called the ARt project, is now entering phase two application refinement of the proof-of-concept. The goals of the ARt project are playing a dynamic role in opening up access to the facilitative conversations the visual arts in public places have to offer us all, in seemingly limitless possibilities, that are timeless and at once substantively empowering!