Marisol Escobar, known in the 1960s as the "Latin Garbo," is a sculptor famous for showing with the Pop art greats. However, Marisol holds a curious position in art history, stranded between the formalism of the fifties' and sixties' male-dominated Pop movement and the conceptual experimentation and radicalism that followed. Trained as a draftsman and painter early in her career, Marisol's main body of work mostly consists of large-scale wooden and mixed-medium sculpture. Lesser known, her lithographs, drawings, collages and small figurines further prove her technical and artistic validity. Preferring to go by surname only, Marisol’s quiet yet intense observation pinpoints the overriding human elements present in the objects of her scrutiny. Most notable for turning her gaze inwards, her self-portraiture defies easy categorization. Meshing American art and non-Western art styles while bridging the gap between intellectual understanding and empathetic approachability, Marisol represents a unique perspective that remains relevant today. Marisol's approach to self-portraiture is, first and foremost, in service to the exploration of her own identity. Furthermore, her choice of subject matter, artistic methodology and style appear closely aligned with Postmodern discourse. Each period of her work from the 1950s to the present day includes different guises and methods that subtly critique societal roles and norms, all presented through the lens of the artist's acute wit. Internationalism, gender roles, and explorations of identity are inherent in each of her works, proving that Marisol deserves further examination to explore her relation to Postmodern thought.

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While there is growing research about the positive impact of teaching artists (TAs), these professional arts educators are an underused resource. As a TA, I have more than a decade of experience implementing spoken word and hip-hop as a pedagogical approach in urban public school classrooms. By conducting this autoethnographic study, I sought to explore insights from these 10 years of lived experience for understanding and documenting the critical principles of my practice as a TA. This autoethnography of my life as a TA tells stories from urban public school classrooms during my formative years as an educator. The research explored the impact my artistic practices have had on developing my pedagogical approach, including the emotional and financial challenges inherent to working on the margins. By interpreting and analyzing ethnographic material from five residencies, this research resulted in complex narrative accounts, which provide insights for the field of arts education, with a specific focus on TAs. Moreover, this study offers a visionary context for a liberatory educational praxis of spoken word and hip-hop in classrooms and communities.

The desire to recognize and celebrate a forgotten artist and her work presents an opportunity for an investigation into the meeting of art and architecture. The dialogue between these two entities highlights the complexity of exhibiting works of art within a space of architectural integrity. The challenge is to successfully address both the art and the architecture in order to achieve a relationship that is mutually beneficial and equally powerful. This thesis investigates the transcendent themes created in such a dialogue. An innovative approach creates opportunities for extraordinary spatial experiences of the architecture and the artwork itself while addressing the challenges proposed by the site, one that has tremendous historical and cultural significance. The ultimate goal is a place where the architectural conditions provide a canvas for the acknowledgment and celebration of the artistic endeavors. / Master of Architecture

This research builds on previous studies that have documented evidence of Professor Anna Craft’s concept of ‘Possibility Thinking’ (PT) as at the heart of creativity which involves children transitioning from ‘what is this?’ to ‘what can I or we do with this?’ as well as imagining ‘as if’ they were in a different role. My thesis titled “Communicating Possibilities” examines English nursery children's emergent creativity, exploring the three to four-year-old child as an artistic communicator and possibility thinker through a case study approach situated in one primary school in South West England. Three main research questions were posed concerning the ‘what, how, and why’ of creativity when children communicated through art; as well as exploring the nurturing role of others, and identity manifest through voice and learning experience. This doctoral study is essentially interpretivist in nature seeking to explain how people make sense of their social worlds, and is an exploration framed by culturally negotiated, shared meanings, and complex social relations. Data was collected over one school year, in three nine-week research phases by the following ethnographic methods: naturalistic observations; researcher diary; children’s creative journals; and practitioner interviews. These methods were repeated for each phase. Inductive and deductive data analysis was conducted. Undertaken over time as the project unfolded, a grounded theory approach was applied in total to 27 episodes. Micro event analysis of creative behaviours in action and narrative discourses of two kinds: peer-to-peer, and child-to-adult (teacher, early years practitioner, and my researcher dialogue) revealed four broad critical themes: Observing and documenting children’s creativity; What children can do together- recognising differences; Pedagogy of possibilities- developing a role; and The value of artistic communication in the nursery classroom. Each is discussed in terms of the key implications these themes hold for theory, policy, and early years practice.

Denna undersökning har fokus på frågor i relation till att professionella konstnärer är verksamma skolor som en del av att infria läroplanernas övergripande kulturuppdrag. Här problematiseras vad konstnärerna genom sin praktik kan tillföra skolan. Data till undersökningen baseras på erfarenheter av arbeten där barn och ungdomar har arbetat med konstnärer. Med en diskursanalytisk ansats undersöks hur olika aktörer beskriver konstnärers arbete i skolan.Citat ur statliga och kommunala styrdokument som rör samarbeten mellan skola och konstnärer återges i undersökningen, samt något om forskning om estetik i skolan. Projektet Skapande skola är ett av exemplen som beskrivs genom data som insamlats för att se vilken kompetens konstnärer kan behöva för att verka som konstnärer i skolan.Undersökningen lyfter fram fyra diskursiva förslag på positioner som beskriver hur konstnärer kan bidra till kunskap inom skolans ram. De fyra förslagen lyder;1. Konstnären som ögonöppnare (gör att andra elever och andra saker, än vanligtvis blir synliga, och att nya tankar tar form)2. Konstnären som pausfågel (gör så att lärare och elever i skolan får ett avbrott i den vardagliga undervisningen).3. Konstnären som specialist (gör så att eleverna får tillgång till nya material och tekniker och till ett nytt yrkesområde)4. Konstnären som samhällsguide (gör så att eleverna orienterar sig ut mot samhället).Genom beskrivning av vad konstnären kan bidra med i form av estetisk kunskap genom estetiska lärprocesser, syftar undersökningen till förståelse för konstnärens yrkesidentitet i skolans sfär. Diskurspositionerna kan sägas legitimera konstnärens verksamhet som komplement till ordinarie estetisk undervisning och i det övergripande kulturuppdraget inom alla skolans ämnesområden. / This investigation focuses on issues that arise when professional artists work in schools as part of a course of study to meet national curriculum programmes of study requirements and cultural education attainment targets.This thesis examines what artists can contribute to schools through their artistic residencies.The data for this study is based on experiences from artistic work with children and young people during artist residencies in schools and colleges. A discourse analytical approach has been used to investigate how different actors describe artists’ work in schools and colleges.Quotes from national and council policy documents on topics related to programmes that involve schools and artists can be found in this study, as well as selected research on aesthetics in schools.This study highlights four discursive suggestions of positions that describe how artists can contribute to knowledge within the realm of schools and colleges.The four discursive suggestions of positions are as follows:1.The artist as a catalyst (eye-opener) for new ways of thinking.2.The artist as a “break in routine”.3.The artist as a specialist. Gives access to new techniques or professional fields.4.The artist as a guide to society.Through describing what artists can contribute in the form of aesthetic knowledge and aesthetic learning processes, the aim of the study is to understand the artists’ professional identity in the educational sphere. The discursive positions one can say legitimises artists’ activities in schools as a complement to regular aesthetic teaching and in the overarching cultural attainment targets in all subject areas. / <p></p><p></p>