Using Windows for good...

What did you choose (key ideas for artmaking and big idea) and why?

My lesson plan titled, Framing the outside – What are you a witness to? addresses the idea of ‘Where/How do I fit into this world?’ for each student. I feel that this is one of the most important ideas for artists to continually address. This assignment provides a simple yet powerful outlet for students to answer the question. The lesson plan slots seamlessly into my curriculum for second-year students (High School Photo II) where a level of technical skill is expected. As this is an ongoing question in art, I would revisit the idea of ‘Where/How do I fit into this world?’ each year and catalog the images to show the individual students’ progress through photography courses. The advanced students would then have an extensive portfolio of personal artwork upon graduation.

Lesson:

Framing the outside – What are you a witness to?

Windows can be a powerful metaphor for artists to use. The idea of a window within pieces of art can be used in many ways. Is it a view in? Or is the window a view out? Can I see what other people are doing? Or are they the ones who are watching me? The window, like a door, allows for actions to be happening on each side of a division line but unlike a traditional opaque door, a window is constantly shielding us from what is on the other side while allowing both sides to see in/out.

Things to think about -

In our home, when we peek at the world through a window, we can see how we are connected to the community that surrounds us. Outside of our homes, the world is constantly moving with activity and interaction: people working, shopping, walking, animals eating, plants soaking up sunlight, automobile traffic, airplane traffic, conversations, weather patterns, etc.. It is the culmination of all these activities that connect us to our community. If you spent 24 hours sitting in front of a window in your home, what would you see? What would these exterior routines reveal to you about where you live? How would these observations make you feel about your own connection to your community? What role do you play on the other side of the window?

On the flip side of the coin… we complete everyday activities as humans within our homes: we sleep, we eat, we work, we interact, we play, and then we sleep again. If you spent 24 hours sitting in front of a window outside of your home, what would you see? What would your routine and the routine of your family reveal about you? How do these observations make you feel about your own space within your home? What role do you play on the other side of the window?

Assignment -

Using a window in your home, your camera, your choice of lenses, output sizes, and artistic techniques, capture and edit a set of 10 images from inside of your home looking out. The images should convey a sense of connection to the community around you. During the assignment review, students will be asked to use their photos to explain the answer to the question: “Where/How do you fit into your community?”

Things to remember -

The window frame itself allows for our eyes to have a physical outline to encapsulate the outside world, creating a virtual painting / photograph / video for us to imagine. The frame separates the interior inanimate walls from the moving images happening on the other side. Sometimes our windows are interrupted by bug screens, storm windows, drapes, condensation, fog, rain, sunlight, dirt, and other forms of distortion.

What artists are you drawing from? How do these artists inform artmaking in this project?

We will be studying the work of Ruth Orkin, a photographer, journalist, and filmmaker who documented life outside of her 15th story apartment through the window with her camera for decades. She would use different focal lengths (wide angle shots of Central Park as well as telephoto photos of people on the street more than 100’ below her) and she changed her point of view by filming through the window as well as move her head/upper body and the camera outside of the window to achieve different angles. Her photo collection book, 'A World Through My Window' published in 1978 is considered her greatest collection of photographs. Her technique of watching and waiting to capture scenes that moved her will be the same technique instilled in the students.

How do you anticipate your class/participants responding to this plan?

To be completely fair, I think this lesson plan will take some adjusting as it is used. I think certain students will flock to it’s absurdity and begin to grasp the idea of creating a vision of one’s self through images outside of their home while others will have a hard time seeing beyond the mundanity of the images they create for the assignment. I believe that the continuation of the assignment from class to class will help the students see the larger scale implications of using art to access how you see yourself within the smaller community and within the larger world. Being able to provide the students who are truly excited about photography with a portfolio that expresses their own understanding of themselves after 3-4 classes is something that I very much look forward to providing.

Teacher Identity

As a teacher, as an artist, and as a human, I lean into the idea that we are constantly evolving and moving from stages within our lives. I see these three distinctions vanish into a more malleable state of ‘me’ as opposed to individual tables of artist/teacher/human but each silo holds its own importance. The part of me that people would call artist for example has changed drastically through the years. My work today is vastly different from my work of 15 years ago as the amount of time, thought, and experience that has elapsed between the two points in my life are immeasurable but inevitably present.

If we are going to split the greater ‘me’ up into these silos, the Teacher silo is the one that is most connected to my human silo. As I move through life, my experiences as a husband, as a father, as a son, as a brother, as a co-worker, and as a friend inject themselves into how I see myself as a teacher and how I see my students and mentees as humans.

As an art teacher and professional mentor, my first goal is to create a safe space for students to explore their own creativity as they work on finding and establishing their own ever-evolving identity. If we don’t have a proverbial room to build up, break down, expand, and destroy with ideas… we don’t have a foundation for which to build art. Through thoughtful communication and genuine connection, I am looking to establish this safe space for the students to create their art. In my own student experience, once that level of empathy and comfort was achieved, I was empowered to tap into my own emotions and I was given the space to express them.

My biggest influences in creating connections with students have come from a diverse set of experiences in life, from an AP English Teachers in High School who taught me to trust myself and my creative instincts, all the way to former bosses who called me out of the blue because they respected my latest work. A lasting human connection is made via honesty, empathy, and a sense of kindness coming from someone in the place of authority. For me, empathy and sympathy for my students doesn’t mean that I change how, who, or what I represent but it allows me to help to understand where they are coming from and the path they traveled to get there.

Early in High School I encountered three teachers who proved to be large influences on my career. They taught three distinctly different subjects yet they all allowed me to discover things and encouraged me to embrace wonder and creativity as much as the finite skills they were also preaching. They all were strict in their assessments but encouraging in their critiques. Art and creativity need some sort of guidelines (no matter how ethereal) and art needs room to grow and evolve. My favorite teachers allowed for the theoretical fences to be erected and then they immediately talked about using tools to push those fences further. 

My greatest artistic influences are based in aesthetics as opposed to a style, vision, or medium. My love of music is just as much a part of how I create art as my love of photography, painting, color use, or cinema. Expressing a feeling or capturing an inspiration for me is about using whatever tools I have at my disposal to make it happen. Does my art get made without me listening to music? Sure. But to deny that sounds and visuals don’t generate feelings is preposterous. And I am always listening, looking, and feeling while I make art.

I look at my identity as a teacher as being that of a world class tour guide. I want to point out to my students ALL of the requisite talking points that their artwork has to offer, at the same time allowing the students to ask questions, push boundaries, and inevitably take a much closer looks at the places I have introduced them to. Setting the tone for being creative is about trust, safety, and a lack of judgement. Being creative is about letting go of the shackles of preconceived notions and labels while working in said safe environment. If you create the space and deliver the tools, the possibilities are endless.

MA in Art Education - Ian

Hello!
My name is Ian Merritt and I am a husband, father of two almost teen boys, and the central caretaker of an 80 lb. pup named Stella. We have settled in Evanston, Illinois (the first town north of Chicago) but I grew up in the farms and mountains of Vermont. After a 22 year run working as a creative within the advertising and marketing industry, I started the Masters of Arts in Art Education program at The Ohio State University this fall. As my portfolio shows (in no particular order) I have made a lot of ‘things’ for a lot of clients and I have amassed a list of titles that is mostly long-winded. In short? I make art with cameras and computers.

As a side note… my life is fueled by music. A day without music is a horrible waste time.

After graduating college, my initial goal was to work for a year while I got my academic life together to go back and get my masters in teaching. These plans were sidelined after my own artistic and professional ambitions got the best of me. Fast forward to 2019 and like many professionals, the pandemic solidified my frustrations within the industry I was living in and I needed to make some changes. Over the last 20 years, my favorite professional moments have always been when I was in a position of being able to teach and mentor those around me who were just starting out or looking to get to the next level within the creative industry. I have thrived in situations where professional and personal growth is nurtured and promoted. So by the end of 2020, I was ready to make a life pivot and start working with the next generation of artists to help them get the most out of their expressions.

After a few months of searching, I chose to apply to the OSU MA in Art Education program as it was a great fit for me. The flexibility of the class schedule and online capabilities allows me to balance my focus on my own artwork, my current and future freelance clients, as well as being an excellent scholastic conduit to my next job. The program’s focus on social justice is a big part of why I put the OSU program on the top of my list as I am looking to give back to my local community, teaching high school, college, within a community based arts program, or a combination of all three.

As for my research aspirations, I really want to focus on how to be an effective mentor / teacher to the marginalized youth of my community who do not have the access to make photography and film (and music!) viable forms of expression. I want to help them express themselves in the ways that my high school and college art teachers showed me a love for photography and film (and music!). Paying it forward is a kind and simple way to explain my aspirations for this new 22 year segment of my life but I would take it a step further as I see it as a natural progression, fueled less by the need to give back and more by the undying urge to teach people the tools that I have amassed, to express themselves artistically.

My latest series of work, Perception, at the very least, is a collection of images that keep the viewer guessing. The images have been manipulated in the vein of naturally occurring fractals, the repeating image created in a two mirror bathroom, and with a large nod to the folding landscapes created in the movie Inception by Christopher Nolan. Perception is a collection of single image photography, adjusted and replicated to create landscapes that are completely different from the original intention, that laugh in the face of gravity as well as turn the viewers own eye a little bit inside out; if not completely upside down. Intricate in their geometry while simple in their repetition.