Some projects produced with children at Clementine Montessori as Artist in Residence
The project:
Here is something I want, maybe others do to, and maybe someone else is working on this and would be willing to collaborate or offer pointers or even present on this topic at the Montessori for Social Justice conference this year.
This past year I have been struggling to build an arts curriculum as an artist in residence in a small Montessori primary program that is uh..."decoloniz-ing". By that I mean, I've been working on decolonizing my arts practice on a personal level and also trying to twist my brain to think outside of a colonial/patriarchal/racist/capitalistic, etc. framing and that instead privileges indigenous, brown, and global south cultural production, and seeks to be less oppressive, more representative of the diversity of the planetary cultural production than the usual canonical artists presented to little people, and also! earth-centered, and utilizing the minimum of harmful and scarce, expensive, and non-renewable or ecologically damaging art supplies. I have been working on this for several primary classes, trying to fit these interests also into correspondence with and supportive of what faculty are sharing with the children in their classrooms at the time, and the three year primary cycle. Using a loose outline of what they are covering each month in their classrooms, I make works on my own and with the children to accompany and support those aims.
However, I am but a newly trained/certified Montessorian and have 0 formal art training and 0 formal art history training and 0 art therapy training and am trying to decolonize myself so....it's kind of a lot! This is my first time trying to make any kind of curriculum at all, and my first time trying to build/make arts curriculum!
Other things I have in mind as I write this curriculum are:
- backwards-curriculum development: big concepts and skills that I am hoping to impart/achieve each week, not just the product output of the particular project at hand.
- I am simultaneously endeavoring to earnestly engage with Montessori principals of [simulacra] to concrete to abstract, and also the Recapitulation Theory reiterated by Dr. Montessori which I have quite taken to heart and have found inspiring, of the "ontogeny recapitulating the phylogeny.”
In my interpretation for the purposes of art study at this level: charting to some small extent the development of human beings as culture makers from a linear (think time line of life or art blended together) historic perspective (both in the broad span of history and potentially through the course of each child's life) through the development of art/artistic concepts & praxis... in a developmentally appropriate way (sometimes I am too verbose and intellectualizing and therefore unsuccessful at this, ha!), through the art that the children make….if that makes sense?
So what could this look like in practice? Our first week making art together, we focused on pre-historic ancient Art: Discussion about what art is and could be. Looking at many kinds of art. We made a group Cueva de los Manos Mural, I left 3-part cards of petroglyphs and geoglyphs on the shelf in their classrooms (which you can download for free on Teachers Pay Teachers if you are interested!) , as well as another tray work of individual hand tracing work with oil chalk on greyscale paper on tray for the week in the classroom.
Additionally, I have put together a portfolio of "Art from Around the World: Architecture, Textiles, Sculpture, Mural, Furniture, Writing, etc. Symbolic, Useful, Decorative, Representational & Abstract, 2-D & 3-D, Spanning across the eras” for the children to choose from, in chronological order so they may take turns in their classes being “Curator of the Week”.
Later in the year, we enthusiastically made art out of trash after reading about Tyree Guyton in the book "Magic Trash."
These are just a few examples, this is already rapidly turning into an essay and I don't want to bore you to tears.
Of course I can’t help but let some of my personal interests seep in. I have a background in anthropology (though I know how problematic this lens is!), politics, and herbalism. So I’ve seen echoes of those elements in-(the)-form this curriculum is taking: earth-based, centering the art-production techniques/imagery/themes of ancient peoples and indigenous peoples, not just the usual Western European arts canon (though I love many of those artists, too. We of course made self-/portraits and still lives and landscapes, too!)
Let me know if any of this is of interest to you and you would like to work on it with me. It is a lot to try and balance and also feels very important.
Thanks!
In love & solidarity, Lily Sage
Here is something I want, maybe others do to, and maybe someone else is working on this and would be willing to collaborate or offer pointers or even present on this topic at the Montessori for Social Justice conference this year.
This past year I have been struggling to build an arts curriculum as an artist in residence in a small Montessori primary program that is uh..."decoloniz-ing". By that I mean, I've been working on decolonizing my arts practice on a personal level and also trying to twist my brain to think outside of a colonial/patriarchal/racist/capitalistic, etc. framing and that instead privileges indigenous, brown, and global south cultural production, and seeks to be less oppressive, more representative of the diversity of the planetary cultural production than the usual canonical artists presented to little people, and also! earth-centered, and utilizing the minimum of harmful and scarce, expensive, and non-renewable or ecologically damaging art supplies. I have been working on this for several primary classes, trying to fit these interests also into correspondence with and supportive of what faculty are sharing with the children in their classrooms at the time, and the three year primary cycle. Using a loose outline of what they are covering each month in their classrooms, I make works on my own and with the children to accompany and support those aims.
However, I am but a newly trained/certified Montessorian and have 0 formal art training and 0 formal art history training and 0 art therapy training and am trying to decolonize myself so....it's kind of a lot! This is my first time trying to make any kind of curriculum at all, and my first time trying to build/make arts curriculum!
Other things I have in mind as I write this curriculum are:
- backwards-curriculum development: big concepts and skills that I am hoping to impart/achieve each week, not just the product output of the particular project at hand.
- I am simultaneously endeavoring to earnestly engage with Montessori principals of [simulacra] to concrete to abstract, and also the Recapitulation Theory reiterated by Dr. Montessori which I have quite taken to heart and have found inspiring, of the "ontogeny recapitulating the phylogeny.”
In my interpretation for the purposes of art study at this level: charting to some small extent the development of human beings as culture makers from a linear (think time line of life or art blended together) historic perspective (both in the broad span of history and potentially through the course of each child's life) through the development of art/artistic concepts & praxis... in a developmentally appropriate way (sometimes I am too verbose and intellectualizing and therefore unsuccessful at this, ha!), through the art that the children make….if that makes sense?
So what could this look like in practice? Our first week making art together, we focused on pre-historic ancient Art: Discussion about what art is and could be. Looking at many kinds of art. We made a group Cueva de los Manos Mural, I left 3-part cards of petroglyphs and geoglyphs on the shelf in their classrooms (which you can download for free on Teachers Pay Teachers if you are interested!) , as well as another tray work of individual hand tracing work with oil chalk on greyscale paper on tray for the week in the classroom.
Additionally, I have put together a portfolio of "Art from Around the World: Architecture, Textiles, Sculpture, Mural, Furniture, Writing, etc. Symbolic, Useful, Decorative, Representational & Abstract, 2-D & 3-D, Spanning across the eras” for the children to choose from, in chronological order so they may take turns in their classes being “Curator of the Week”.
Later in the year, we enthusiastically made art out of trash after reading about Tyree Guyton in the book "Magic Trash."
These are just a few examples, this is already rapidly turning into an essay and I don't want to bore you to tears.
Of course I can’t help but let some of my personal interests seep in. I have a background in anthropology (though I know how problematic this lens is!), politics, and herbalism. So I’ve seen echoes of those elements in-(the)-form this curriculum is taking: earth-based, centering the art-production techniques/imagery/themes of ancient peoples and indigenous peoples, not just the usual Western European arts canon (though I love many of those artists, too. We of course made self-/portraits and still lives and landscapes, too!)
Let me know if any of this is of interest to you and you would like to work on it with me. It is a lot to try and balance and also feels very important.
Thanks!
In love & solidarity, Lily Sage
