The purpose of this study was to document and understand the meanings associated with the visual elaboration (Painter, 2002a), of a particular house i.e. what was done to it after it was built and why, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, by successive occupants, including myself, over a period of nine decades. I used a case study, involving documents and artefacts and interviews with key informants. Taking an interpretive epistemological stance, I employed a narrative approach to inquiry (Kramp, 2004, Johnson-Bailey, 2004).
The individual narratives resonated with recent anthropological findings. The house saw home managers exert their agency (Pink, 2004). Additionally, inhabitants left a signature on the structure (Dominy, 1997), and carried with them mementos from the home they had made there (Marcoux, 2001). Over time, through transformation processes, both individuals and the house were changed (Miller, 2001a). Further, the design legacy left by previous inhabitants acted as a form of agency on successive residents (Miller, 2001b), and through reciprocal accommodation the house and its occupants came to terms with each other (Miller, 2002).
Additionally, six common themes emerged: epistemological orientation, economics, male and female, reminiscences and affect, childhood to adulthood and history and presence. My finding that an individual’s epistemological stance was related to her/his artistry supports an emerging vision in art education, that of art practice as research (Sullivan, 2005). This has implications for both research and practice. Firstly, the processes through which non-specialists work need to be more fully explored. Secondly, we require a changed view of art history where art images are understood as part of a productive visual culture (Marshall, 2007). This is a concept-focused analysis of art where meaning is demonstrated to be contextual and intergraphical, and is manifest in artworks that can be scrutinized across cultures and time. Thirdly, our concept of visual literacy must expand; if we construct knowledge and reality through making images as well as by decoding the meaning of existing visual images, then art practice is schools is imperative (Marshall). Finally, visual thinking is integrative (Marshall), and thus art integration and a new approach to art and learning are essential.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/1552 |
| Date | 20 August 2009 |
| Creators | McLeod, Heather Skye |
| Contributors | Dalton, Robert |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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