Foxx 1

Liana Foxx
ART 133
Amber Ward
September 6, 2017
Unit Paper 1

In the world of art education, teachers encourage their students to explore art as a way of

self expression and as a meaning-making process. In other words, creating a piece of art which

the artist personally connects to. In order to establish this concept of meaningful art, artmaking is

therefore influenced by big ideas. Big ideas are defined as overarching notions that reach

beyond a particular discipline or the conceptual ground for artmaking (Walker, 2001, p.3 ).

These big ideas motivate artistic expression and represent an artists overall purposes. With that

said, one example of a big idea would be Identity, which also serves as one of the Four

Avenues To Meaning Making (Franco, Ward, and Unrath, 2015, p.46). Through big ideas, such

as Identity, artists are able to construct their own understandings of art making and ultimately

help establish the foundation on which the artwork is going to be built upon.

In an art therapy setting, I would modify the content learned in this unit in order to best

serve my patients needs by allowing them to choose their own big idea as opposed to

establishing a big idea for them to focus on like one would do with a lesson plan. By providing

them the freedom to choose their big idea, I will encourage my patients to construct their own

understandings of their artmaking process and to develop an intimate relationship with their

work. I would also establish the concept with my patients that art is a meaning-making process in

order for them to gain the full benefits from art therapy. With that said, I would then take my

patients big ideas and use them as the direction in which we focus our attention to in our therapy

setting in order to grasp what my patients are thinking and feeling at the time being.
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References

Franco , M. J., Ward, A., & Unrath, K. (2015). Art 133 Course Reader. Artmaking As

Meaning-Making:A New Model for Preservice Elementary Generalists , 43-48.

Walker, S. (2001). Teaching meaning in artmaking. Worchester, MA: Davis.