Opposite page, left
to right: Bicycle-Life
Cycle ; Where Are
We Headed?
Top: Albatross.
Bottom: Carbon
Footprint.
Right: Tiger and
Wire Cutters.
in the case of her Tiger and Wire
Cutters drawing. This piece is about
animals whose habitats are being
clear-cut. Rather than illustrate tigers
living in degraded environments, or
bulldozers knocking down trees, she
chose to symbol-
ize the issue by
substituting for
the two main
elements—tigers
and destructive
machinery—with
miniaturized rep-
resentations: toy
tigers juxtaposed
with a hand-held cutting tool. The end
result is far more poetic and open for
interpretation.
cal phrase from the vernacular of her
topic. She chose “carbon footprint.”
This piece is also an example of allow-
ing a prepared ground to inspire an
idea.
Jennifer had glued a number of tags
from purchased
items to a canvas
board and ges-
soed over them,
planning to
make a different
painting on top.
But, the subtly
fragmented sur-
face suggested
to her the break-up of icebergs and the
root cause of global warming, so she
included painted iceberg references in
the background of the piece.
I feared that I would not
be able to guide students
effectively away from finished
products that looked more like
“save the earth” posters than
layered, metaphorical, and
sophisticated works of art.
construction of homes and buildings.
That short exchange led to a rich and
appropriately ambiguous—not moralistic—piece in which she layered silhouettes of houses, a tree with acorns, and
a compass drawn from observation.
Teach It
By borrowing a few pages from this
student’s playbook—not to mention
her sketchbook—art teachers may
be better equipped to help students
approach the highly relevant topic of
ecology in ways that do justice to its
complexity, significance, and ambigu-
ity.
Compare It
Similarly, Bicycle-Life Cycle grew out
of drawing bicycle gears from observation. But, beyond that, Jennifer chose
to address the disruption of nature’s
rhythms and “cycles” by humans,
which she did by juxtaposing two
objects with the same circular shape:
the bicycle gears and the life-cycle diagram.
Betsy DiJulio is a National Board Certified
art teacher at Princess Anne High School
in Virginia Beach, Virginia where she was
the 2010 Citywide Teacher of the Year.
betsy.dijulio@vbschools.com
Make It Literal
Another strategy that Jennifer used
was to interpret literally a metaphori-
Begin at Ground Level
Where Are We Headed? was inspired in
much the same way. Jennifer prepared
a ground by collaging pieces of an art
college brochure and brown recycled
paper onto her support, but she wasn’t
sure where she was headed. I told her
that the graphic “teardrop” shapes
and dotted lines from the brochure
reminded me of a map-like representation of forested areas and hiker’s paths,
which made me think of how much
wilderness has been destroyed for the
NATIONAL STANDARD
Students initiate, define, and solve
challenging visual arts problems independently using intellectual skills
such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
WEB LINK
www.collegeboard.com/student/test-ing/ap/ sub_studioart.html
