Teams Workshop 2
- ShannonandDeasheArtEducation
- May 27, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 4, 2021
Group Workshops - Art as an Educator and Rhizome Theory
(available at https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lO3_IJc=/)
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Discussion and prompts
Q. What are Rhizomes?
A. A type of plant stem system underground that provides new shoots. It can be seen as the foundation of the plant, without which there would be no new growth. An example could be how mushrooms all join together under the ground, but there is no hierarchy.
Q. What is Rhizome theory?
A. The rhizome is anti-hierarchal and a-centred. It fosters intersecting, even alogical, connections between different, independent events. This helps us to imagine different ways to approach a thought or activity, by looking at it as an open system with multiple entrances that keeps everything connected and interrelated.
Q. How might Rhizomatic thinking aid art-making?
A. Rhizomatic education is more about the process of continuous learning and finding rather than the working towards a specific outcome, result, or grade. This can aid art-making as it can foster creativity and experimentation based practices, as well as exploring the idea of people not feeling accepted in the art world (mirrored by the links of rhizomes being hidden underground) by allowing those voices to aid our art-making.
Q. How might Rhizomatic thinking aid education?
A. This may aid education by giving everyone the space to work together for the purpose of education, the way that roots work together to aid growth. Rhizome theory could also allow us to see everyone as equal instead of having unequal power dynamics in the teacher-student relationship. This kind of thinking will open the doors to seeing knowledge as equal, and seeing everyones thoughts and ideas as equally deserving of hearing.
Q. What was your art education like at school, college, and/or university?
A. There wasn't much diversity in art education at school, in terms of the artists we learnt about or the art that we were encouraged, even allowed, to make. At college it seemed as though our horizons were broadened a little as well learnt more than just copying other people's art styles. However, art still seemed a little limited as there was a lack of artists who appealed to us, they were always pre-selected. It was at university that I found the room and support to be able to find out what kind of an artist I wanted to be.
Q. What is an art educator?
A. An educator is someone that makes learning interesting and accessible in a way that gives people the opportunity to get involved in an active and practical way. An art educator is anyone or anything that inspires you and therefore your art practice. This could be your family, friends, teachers, pets, nature etc.
Q. What can artists offer to education practices?
A. Artists can help to inspire, motivate, and teach different methods of absorbing information through practical and kinaesthetic learning. This can offer a valuable source of inspiration and safety, especially as art can be used to verbalise emotions and concepts that you don't have the words for, something that traditional education can sometimes neglect.
Q. What can education practices offer to art and artists?
A. Education can offer insight into guidance and structure. On the other hand, I think its equally important to learn from the parts of education practices that can be stifling for an artist's creativity and spontaneity as that is something that is often lost in traditional education.
Deashe's response
Automatic drawing
I chose to respond to rhizome theory using automatic drawing; the process of making marks without using the conscious mind mirrors the way that rhizomes seek to find the root and the pinnacle in a non linear and anti-hierarchical fashion.
I taped three pencils together, end to end, as well as three paint brushes together, and then secured them to each other so that the 'handle' of the brush was long and less secure. I then closed my eyes and cleared my mind, and began painting, applying more pressure to the paper every time a thought popped into my head. This allowed me to create a series of continuous lines that all exist in the same space without any need for a clear beginning or end. I think it's natural for us to subconsciously want to 'make sense' of what seems like chaos, but rhizome theory teaches us that nothing has a singular existence, everything is connected and so interdependent and unending.
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