With an awareness of the social, historical, and aesthetic aspects of cultural difference, and while embracing a range of artistic voices, I believe that each student's creative direction is perforce affected by many factors, including, but not limited to, the following: future goals, the marketplace, public and private life. In other words, I enable students to do work that suits their own particular needs and abilities, yet, at the same time, I provide students with relevant examples drawn from the history of art that show how the visual arts are not only an expression of technical skill, but also a liberal exercise of the spirit.
First and foremost, I respond to each student individually and never compare individual students to one another. Furthermore, I recognize that each student's choice of materials, manner of working, type of problem-solving skills, and manner of expression fit together into a unique package that describes each student's personal idiom. Moreover, I start with each student wherever he or she is in terms of development as an artist, help him or her to gain the technical confidence necessary to permit his or her signature style to unfold and, for further library research and creative thinking, I provide each student with visual references, i.e., names of both historical and contemporary visual artists whose modes of personal expression are relevant to each student's goals.
Consequently, I believe that in teaching students how to discern what is aesthetically appropriate or excellent for a given audience through a process that involves visual research, i.e., both collecting visual materials and the making of studies in an artist's shorthand diary to use as springboards for larger scale works, visually analyzing these works in progress, refining one's vision through this analysis, and implementing the new works of art into practical effect, i.e., a student show in the school or through other means approved by the school, such as competitive exhibitions. Such competitive exhibits might be sponsored either by a manufacturer of the finest art supplies and paints in which entries are fully refereed by a selection committee or by a community center that seeks to obtain works of art for display on its premises through both the distribution of an annual exhibition prospectus and the judging of entries submitted in response to that prospectus by a community-based exhibition committee.
Ultimately, the art student in a studio program must learn to gauge the relative importance of all factors in artistic creation through a customary course of academic study, as well as to be exposed to the cultural practices of museums, galleries, and art centers in one or more of the following areas of study: marketing and public relations, catalogue design, scene design, exhibit installation, or by serving as lecturers or tour guides.
Finally, my teaching practice in the studio classroom is as follows:
keith-fox@uiowa.edu
keith-fox@juno.com
foxkeith@hotmail.com [with attachments]