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In the ever-changing world of visual arts education, there is a gap in the literature about the incorporation of creativity, risk-taking, and play in the curriculum. The purpose of this study was to understand how high school visual arts educators teach visual arts and creativity in the age of digital media, including the practices art teachers use to engage their students in their development of art-making and ways teachers encourage students to take risks in art-making practices. Utilizing an arts-based research method focusing on four case studies in the Central Valley of California, this inquiry examined the way visual arts educators teach the arts at the high school level. Further, this study used data sources of classroom observations, surveys, and one-on-one interviews. Data analysis utilized the theoretical lens of multiple intelligences to examine the different ways each visual arts teacher teaches visual arts. Findings indicated that there is a need for a common definition of creativity, student-teacher relationships are critical for improving students’ efforts in the arts, learning about the visual arts develops skills that students can use throughout their lifetime, and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be more willing to take risks in their artwork. Recommendations for further research and policy for school leaders conclude this study.

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This paper discusses the twentieth century American artist Frederick Sommer (1905-1999) and a subject that concerned him throughout his career: the image of the body. From his visceral photographs of the late 1930s to the finely organized anatomical collages of the 1990s, Sommer engaged the image of the body as primary subject matter. Sommer’s revisioning of the body—earth, animal, and human—characterized his life’s work, informed his most striking imagery, and enabled the realization of his aesthetic achievement. The centrality of the body throughout Sommer’s oeuvre, as primary visual material and organizational metaphor, is the theme of this study.

Concerned with anxiety and displacement, the artist explores a sense of place within the self. Personal experiences are presented as an accumulation of fragmented symbols, textures and pattern. Symbolic imagery is being created, influenced by a devaluation of established norms and a reorganization of cultural identity. The individualÆs interaction and experience with the surrounding world affirms his idiosyncratic symbolism. The artwork is a visual language that through the use of disparate segments sets up the portrayal of the fragmented self and psychological journeys of the artist. Individuals establish themselves in many ways, including gestures as part of expression. This expression can be in the visual plane, such as works of art with their color and exploration of ideas. Thus there is continuity in life being established by the artist, while looking for meaning in the apprehended sense of place created in response to natural instinct and intuition.

This document is a supportive paper for the M.F.A. Graduate Exhibition "Marking Time" held at the B. Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, in fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree. Within this paper, I discuss the subjective nature of my drawings and claim my role as a figurative humanist. Through drawing, I explore the emotive qualities of my own form. Rather than depicting actual spaces, I place myself in psychological spaces that reflect specific moods. Chiaroscuro creates an altered reality where visual tension is implicated through the physicality of my movements. This paper also briefly discusses the history of figurative expression, the figurative artists whose works embody this concept, and their influence on my work. An explanation of the individual drawings in the public exhibition is included in the paper. This document concludes with a personal reflection on my growth as an artist.

The evidence of cultural and social partiality within the methodology of art history has influenced the manner in which art is presented to the public. The formally structured and often obsolete methods of the earliest art historians continue to influence the telling of art history today, relying on and emphasizing art historical fact over the viewer's personal interaction and interpretation. The traditional structure of both the public art museum and art education course rely on the classical methodologies of the past, resulting in the presentation of the object as historically and socially removed from the viewer's own experience. The role of the art historian should cease to be one of translator, but rather one of facilitator to the artistic exchange. It is through this intentional dialog between artist, viewer and art object that authentic enlightenment occurs.

This thesis, in support of the Master of Fine Arts exhibition entitled Burnished Souls at East Tennessee State University, Carroll Reece Museum, Johnson City, Tennessee, November 25- December 18, 2004, describes in detail three aesthetic themes that have informed my work; The Refined Sense of Beauty, A Newly Defined Function, and The Artistic Element of Smoke and Fire. These aesthetic themes are discovered and explained through both historic and contemporary influences and are described in relation to their influence on my current work.

In Has Modernism Failed? (1984), Suzi Gablik calls for a postmodern art that has preserved the values that modernism lost over the 20th century, stating that only through "direct knowing" may we be shocked out of art-for-art's-sake. In Art As Experience (1934), John Dewey similarly proposes that "thinking is a kind of doing," recommending an instrumental art in one's drive to better him/herself. Contemporary artist Linda Montano challenges the status quo by exploring the nature of art beyond its material value. In her Living Art performances (1970-1986), Montano creates a postmodern pragmatic aesthetic that is conducive to the unique interchange between knowledge and experience. Using descriptive analysis, this study investigates the functional relationship between postmodernism and pragmatics as an aesthetic in performance art. Particularly, it addresses how Gablik's theory and Dewey's methods provide a framework in which Montano's art may be discussed as instrumental to both self and society.

A group of oil paintings completed in partial requirement of my MFA degree is discussed. The paintings are on wood panels and are the result of a combination of old master techniques of under-painting and glazing and more contemporary approaches to the painting process. Each painting represents a particular concept or event from Mormon theology; whereas, the pictorial structure is inspired by Medieval manuscript painting. Thus, this body of work is a synthesis between two worldviews existing centuries apart, yet sharing certain core values and beliefs.