an art lesson

Today I taught my private students how to create a self portrait collage. It was cute at first, arranging the black clippings from the magazines as the hair, then the lips, skin,eyes, and nose... When it was finished it looked scary actually... Not pretty. Even so, I explained to them that art is what we make it. Art is what we find to be beautiful, interesting and meaningful to us. As we were critiquing these alien collages, I realized the words that were coming out came natural and were easy to roll off my tongue. Art is what I understand, it's what makes sense to me. A kid asked me last week a grammar question and I struggled to find a real answer for him. In English we have all these rules and exceptions to the rules and the answers still leave you wondering "Why?" Why is it like this? The answer is because someone made it like that and we have to accept it. Art is more natural more flexible, and easier understood for me. So as I was explaining to them that it's okay these pieces of art look a bit freaky, we put ourselves into this work and that alone is beautiful.

Here are the photos of Ashlyn's and Jimin's art work.