In the reading Golomb compares drawing to clay referring to clay as a "reversible medium" that can be added to and subtracted from. I think that the students enjoyed this aspect of clay, knowing that if something went wrong all they had to do was return to a ball or remove a piece or add clay. For the most part students seemed to thoroughly enjoy the project which I would attribute to the subject matter of the actual project and the medium it's self. Based on the excitement about working with the clay and the way the students handled it I would have to assume that they have not had a lot of opportunities to work with clay. I would agree with Golomb in saying that working with clay is often avoided because of its messiness, time consumption, and the space it requires.
During this project most students focused entirely on the front of the creature and ignored the back. Golomb talks about modeling of sides and how four year-olds already consider all sides of a clay creation. I think this may have been due to the amount of time the students had to work on their creatures and the type of sculpture they were making even though a few students to work on the back of their creatures by either adding pieces of clay or smoothing out the clay. I am really excited to see how they paint their creatures and if they put any detail on the other sides of their creatures.
That is interresting that your students focused primarily on the front of their figure. I would not have considered a child doing that before this article and your post. It is easy to assume that a curious child would be more apt to explore all sides.
ReplyDeleteIt is unfortunate that researchers and schools do not strive to include more clay art practice in their curriculum. But, like you, I agree with the valid reasons they avoid it: mess, cost, time. It seems though that if art were a more valued subject in school, efforts could be made to easily overcome those obstacles. What is a $2000 kiln in comparison to costly investments in athletic programs and marketing?
I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the additive and subtractive aspects of clay. I too think, that when children work with clay, this is a very important aspect to teach and allow the children to experience. To me personally, most if not all other mediums in art have a similar way of adding and subtracting elements but I believe that they are not as versatile as clay. Great thought!
ReplyDeleteI too found it interesting that your students focused primarily on the front of their creatures. A couple of our students added tails, but I don't think they would have if we hadn't shown them how during the demo. I think students work more frontal in clay figures because the face is the best way to describe someone's personality.
ReplyDeleteMy students also enjoyed the reversible aspects of the clay. It was so cute to see their little hands using the tools!
I think one of the reason why I hated (and why my teachers hated) using clay was that, it is just very messy like Golomb said. Because of that, I didn't have much opportunity to work with clay and never had much chance to develop my skill in sculpture making (atleast with clay)
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if there was any alternatives choice that is less messy yet yields similar result, so that we can replace clay .
I was not expecting our students to enjoy clay as much as they did! It sounds like your kids enjoyed it just as much. It was awesome to see them get excited about working in a new medium. It is a shame that clay and sculpture is easily forgotten about due to the reasons you discussed in your blogs. However, I am glad we had a chance to expose them to this medium early on, and maybe they will use their interest to further study ceramics and sculpture!
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