Education Association
Educators Guide
Educational Resources
Kentucky History and Education Association (KCHEA) Exhibit
Overview
The Crafts Luminary exhibit sponsored by the Kentucky Craft History and Education Association (KCHEA), provides a stellar opportunity to address the Kentucky Academic Standards in the Visual Arts as you engage your students in exploring artworks by contemporary Kentuckians. You can expand the experience with the pre, post, and on-site activities included in the Activity Guides provided.
You will want to consider your ultimate goal as soon as you begin planning your field trip experience (either on site or virtually--see links to virtual gallery and tour below). Artistic processes are cyclical in nature, and activities are likely to include all four artistic processes of creating, presenting, responding, and connecting, but each Activity Guide focuses primarily on one anchor standard and may include a secondary standard. Each guide is divided into pre, post, and on-site activities with anchor standards and grade-specific performance standards included for grade levels 4th-High School to help you refine the activities for your students.
If your goal is to connect visual art with society, culture, and history, you will focus on the aspects of culture, community, and economics in the exhibit introduction and the biographical information for each artist. You might follow up by creating artworks that represent a community tradition, by hosting a community art fair, or by writing stories about Local Luminaries.
Use the Connecting: Who is a Crafts Luminary? Activity Guide.
If you want to address presenting visual art, you might have your students focus on the way that the exhibit is presented physically and virtually. As a follow-up, your students might create an exhibit (physical or virtual) of local or regional artists’ work or of their own artwork.
Use the Presenting Artwork in an Exhibit Activity Guide.
If you want students to respond to the artwork, you might compare and contrast the visual imagery used to convey messages or moods and have your students follow up by creating their own artwork that uses visual imagery to communicate.
Use the Responding: Visual Imagery Activity Guide.
Or you might have students take notes in order to develop criteria for critiquing a work of art with the idea that they will follow up by writing about their observations or critiquing their own work.
Use the Responding: Developing Criteria Activity Guide.
You might want to use the field trip as a springboard to creating art in a specific medium, in which case you might want to focus on the woodwork, fiber arts, ceramics, or other media artworks in the exhibit.
Use the Inspiration and Creativity Activity Guide.
Each of the four artistic processes and eleven anchor standards are associated with enduring understandings and essential questions that transcend grade levels and might help you select the approach you want to take with your students.
Visual Arts/Creating
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#VA:Cr1.1
Process Component: Investigate, Plan, Make
Anchor Standard: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
Enduring Understanding: Creativity and innovative thinking are essential life skills that can be developed.
Essential Question: What conditions, attitudes, and behaviors support creativity and innovative thinking? What factors prevent or encourage people to take creative risks? How does collaboration expand the creative process?
#VA:Cr1.2
Process Component: Investigate, Plan, Make
Anchor Standard: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
Enduring Understanding: Artists and designers shape artistic investigations, following or breaking with traditions in pursuit of creative artmaking goals.
Essential Question: How does knowing the contexts histories, & traditions of art forms help us create works of art & design? Why do artists follow or break from established traditions? How do artists determine what resources are needed to formulate artistic investigations.
#VA:Cr2.1
Process Component: Investigate
Anchor Standard: Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
Enduring Understanding: Artists and designers experiment with forms, structures, materials, concepts, media, and art-making approaches.
Essential Question: How do artists work? How do artists and designers determine whether a particular direction in their work is effective? How do artists and designers learn from trial and error?
#VA:Cr2.2
Process Component: Investigate
Anchor Standard: Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
Enduring Understanding: Artists and designers balance experimentation and safety, freedom and responsibility while developing and creating artworks.
Essential Question: How do artists and designers care for & maintain materials, tools, & equipment? Why is it important for safety & health to understand & follow correct procedures in handling materials & tools? What responsibilities come with the freedom to create?
#VA:Cr2.3
Process Component: Investigate
Anchor Standard: Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
Enduring Understanding: People create and interact with objects, places, and design that define, shape, enhance, and empower their lives.
Essential Question: How do objects, places, and design shape lives and communities? How do artists and designers determine goals for designing or redesigning objects, places, or systems? How do artists and designers create works of art or design that effectively communicate?
#VA:Cr3.1
Process Component: Reflect, Refine, Continue
Anchor Standard: Refine and complete artistic work.
Enduring Understanding: Artist and designers develop excellence through practice and constructive critique, reflecting on, revising, and refining work over time.
Essential Question: What role does persistence play in revising, refining, and developing work? How do artists grow and become accomplished in art forms? How does collaboratively reflecting on a work help us experience it more completely?
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Visual Arts/Presenting
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#VA:Pr.4.1
Process Component: Relate
Anchor Standard: Select, analyze and interpret artistic work for presentation.
Enduring Understanding: Artists and other presenters consider various techniques, methods, venues, and criteria when analyzing, selecting, and curating objects artifacts, and artworks for preservation and presentation.
Essential Question: How are artworks cared for and by whom? What criteria, methods, and processes are used to select work for preservation or presentation? Why do people value objects, artifacts, and artworks, and select them for presentation?
#VA:Pr5.1
Process Component: Select
Anchor Standard: Develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation.
Enduring Understanding: Artists, curators and others consider a variety of factors and methods including evolving technologies when preparing and refining artwork for display and or when deciding if and how to preserve and protect it.
Essential Question: What methods and processes are considered when preparing artwork for presentation or preservation? How does refining artwork affect its meaning to the viewer? What criteria are considered when selecting work for presentation, a portfolio, or a collection?
#VA:Pr6.1
Process Component: Analyze
Anchor Standard: Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work.
Enduring Understanding: Objects, artifacts, and artworks collected, preserved, or presented either by artists, museums, or other venues communicate meaning and a record of social, cultural, and political experiences resulting in the cultivating of appreciation and understanding.
Essential Question: What is an art museum? How does the presenting & sharing of objects, artifacts, & artworks influence & shape ideas, beliefs, & experiences? How do objects, artifacts, & artworks collected, preserved, or presented, cultivate appreciation & understanding?
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Visual Arts/Responding
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#VA:Re7.1
Process Component: Share
Anchor Standard: Perceive and analyze artistic work.
Enduring Understanding: Individual aesthetic and empathetic awareness developed through engagement with art can lead to understanding and appreciation of self, others, the natural world, and constructed environments.
Essential Question: How do life experiences influence the way you relate to art? How does learning about art impact how we perceive the world? What can we learn from our responses to art?
#VA:Re7.2
Process Component: Perceive
Anchor Standard: Perceive and analyze artistic work.
Enduring Understanding: Visual imagery influences understanding of and responses to the world.
Essential Question: What is an image? Where and how do we encounter images in our world? How do images influence our views of the world?
#VA:Re8.1
Process Component: Perceive
Anchor Standard: Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.
Enduring Understanding: People gain insights into meanings of artworks by engaging in the process of art criticism.
Essential Question: What is the value of engaging in the process of art criticism? How can the viewer "read" a work of art as text? How does knowing and using visual art vocabularies help us understand and interpret works of art?
#VA:Re9.1
Process Component: Analyze
Anchor Standard: Apply criteria to evaluate artistic work.
Enduring Understanding: People evaluate art based on various criteria.
Essential Question: How does one determine criteria to evaluate a work of art? How and why might criteria vary? How is a personal preference different from an evaluation?
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Visual Arts/Connecting
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#VA:Cn10.1
Process Component: Interpret
Anchor Standard: Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.
Enduring Understanding: Through art-making, people make meaning by investigating and developing awareness of perceptions, knowledge, and experiences.
Essential Question: How does engaging in creating art enrich people's lives? How does making art attune people to their surroundings? How do people contribute to awareness and understanding of their lives and the lives of their communities through art-making?
#VA:Cn11.1
Process Component: Synthesize
Anchor Standard: Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding.
Enduring Understanding: People develop ideas and understandings of society, culture, and history through their interactions with and analysis of art.
Essential Question: How does art help us understand the lives of people of different times, places, and cultures? How is art used to impact the views of a society? How does art preserve aspects of life?
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Activity Guides:
Creating - Inspiration and Creativity (PDF)
Presenting - Presenting Artwork in an Exhibit (PDF)
Responding - Developing Criteria (PDF)
Responding - Visual Imagery (PDF)
Connecting - Who is a Craft Luminary(PDF)
Exhibit Decisions (PDF)
Virtual Exhibit Decisions (PDF)
Powerpoints:
Artwork in Diverse Media (PPT)
Developing Criteria (PPT)
Exhibit Decisions (PPT)
Virtual Exhibit Decisions (PPT)
Visual Imagery (PPT)
Media Essays:
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Craft Media Introduction (PDF)
Artwork in Diverse Media (PDF)
Ceramics (PDF)
Fiber (PDF)
Glass (PDF)
Leather (PDF)
Metal (PDF)
Mixed Media (PDF)
Natural and Organic (PDF)
Stone (PDF)
Wood (PDF)
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