AMERICAN FORK — This is how many elementary schools approach the subject of art: Give the kids big, fat crayons and let them color on newsprint.
But, asks Joseph Germaine, how many real artists do you know who work that way?
If you want kids to know, to love, to create art, he said, you need to use the methods and techniques and approaches that artists use.
And that's exactly what Germaine does, teaching art to grades K-6 at Shelley Elementary School in American Fork. He uses a method called Discipline-Based Art Education, which involves four components:
Criticism. How to tell good art.
Aesthetics. A look at the philosophy of beauty, and why everyone may not agree on what is beautiful.
History. Where art comes from, where it is going.
Production. Creating actual works of art.
And he doesn't use that term loosely. His students have had exhibits at major museums, including not only the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University and the Springville Museum of Art, but a photography exhibit that was recently shown at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Germaine taught at BYU for 16 years and at BYU-Hawaii for five years and has degrees in art, history and linguistics. People often ask him why he wants to teach in elementary school instead of at a university. "There's a window of learning in art when you're 8," he said. "It slams shut when you get to 18. It's a lot harder to teach those 18- and 19-year-olds who know everything there ever was or will be."
In those early grades, he said, kids believe that anyone can do art. They have no fear. They are willing to experiment. And we need to encourage that. "Visual art means more than playing with art supplies."
Creativity is a "magical, mystical" process, he said. "It doesn't just happen. But if you learn all the elements involved — things such as line, shape, value, color and texture — then creativity is possible."
What Germaine is doing with art is "just wonderful," said Sue Heath, principal at Shelley. "I wish we had a Joseph in every school in the state. We are very, very fortunate to have him here."
Not only does he have a background in art, she said, "but he has fine teaching skills. I would love to see the same quality in every arts discipline in every school." It's what the State Office of Education and various arts education groups are working toward, Heath said, but "we aren't there yet."
Education in the arts is so important, she adds. "It gives kids a whole new channel, a whole other way to get and process data about their world. It's a completing factor. Science and math are important, but by themselves, they are not complete. You need the arts, too."
Germaine sees art as a "visual language, a way of interpreting the world." And that begins with learning what art is. "We start with art criticism and aesthetics." And while those concepts may sound complicated for elementary students, they really aren't.
"We start with 'signifs' — helping children to see what is particularly significant about a work of art. We develop a model for them: What does it look like? Who did it? How was it done? Do you like it? Why or why not?"
Art, said Germaine, is not really the thing you look at but how you look at that thing. Students use the other people at their tables to give critiques, but those critiques have to be more than "I like it" or "I don't like it." They have to say why.
And students are encouraged to critique their own work. "What if you are finished with your artwork and you don't like it? You can fix it. One of the true lessons in art," he said, "is that artists can change their minds."
By the time they get to third grade, his students will also know the names of at least 40 artists — and not just the so-called classic artists. Artists they study include Pablo Picasso, Dorothea Lange, Faith Ringgold, Pieter Brueghel, Tinglit Indians, Grant Wood and many more cutting across both genders and all cultures.
Then, when it comes time to produce works of art, Germaine takes his students through a six-step process:
1. THINK of what you are doing.
2. Come up with a specific IDEA.
3. Make a PLAN.
4. DO IT.
5. Have an EVALUATION.
6. Plan an EXHIBITION.
Too often, he said, art projects begin and end with "do it." But everything before and after is equally important.
Take a recent ceramics project, for example. The students first had to come up with a theme that had to do with the spirit of something. It could be something intangible, such as happiness or a color; it could be something from the world around them: trees, the fall season, Christmas, family.
Then they divided a piece of paper into fourths. "We start every project with that. Those squares are our thinking spaces," said Germaine. For this project, the students had to draw a spirit object in each square: a spirit mask, a spirit dreamscape, a spirit box and a spirit vessel. After they finish the drawings and are satisfied with them, the students will translate those ideas into clay.
Spirit ideas were many and varied. Jessica Draper chose to do the spirit of kittens. Adam Day was working with the spirit of scooters. The spirit of flying intrigued Adam Derfler, while Logan James worked with the spirit of life and Brei Maxfield chose the spirit of Halloween.
It's great to see such variety and creativity, said Germaine. Sometimes, he will use background music to help energize the kids; sometimes he'll pull out his guitar and start singing. "First you have to think, to get a picture in your head," he sings. "Art's the kind of thinking you do with your mind."
The arts all work together, he said. "The bottom line is that instead of a classroom, we have an art studio. There is room here for all kinds of creativity, personality, ideas."
A glance around the room provides ample evidence of that: drawings, photographs, ceramics line the walls, sit on shelves, are stacked in corners. "I buy a lot of their art work for my own collection — $5 a pop." Germaine has also been known to spend hours before and after school, and even in the summer, to help students finish projects. And he looks for opportunities for them to exhibit their art work. Some of it hangs in the school. Some goes to special shows. "There's a mural in the American Fork Library that has 6,000 tiles. About a third of them were made by our students."
Do you know what that can do for kids? he asks. To see something that they have done out there for the rest of the world to see? Joseph Germaine is teaching art, but he is also teaching possibilities.
Not every student will grow up to be an artist, he said. But they will know what art is and what it can mean to our lives.
Is it any wonder that when class is over, the kids moan about having to leave? "In how many other classes do you see that?" he asks with a smile.
There's so much more to art than big, fat crayons.
E-MAIL: carma@desnews.com