Time in Art, in Learning, in Life

An assignment I had this week was to create a 30-second lesson using a popular movie-creating software program. Most of the week I spent trying to figure out what to teach in merely thirty seconds! Any demonstration in the Arts would certainly take more time. I thought about teaching how to make a great peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, but realized my tiny "vintage" kitchen would be the back-drop. After becoming so overwhelmed with the assignment, I cracked open the planner/calendar that I carry with me, and I reorganized my time. I have some major events approaching soon: my portfolio will be reviewed by my professors and by local community Art Educators. If the work, and my panel-interview, does not measure up, I do not get the opportunity to work for free as a student-teacher in the spring. The calendar is my life line now, keeping me on-task and at a steady pace. I also have a wind-up timer. My tasks are too enormous to tackle all at once. The timer gets set for twenty minutes at a time. I work on one thing for twenty minutes, and break for twenty minutes. Things get done - bit by bit - on time, and I get to keep most of my remaining sanity. FlyLadies will recognize my pattern here. For those interested in Fly Lady, check out this site: http://www.flylady.net

Would you care to guess what my 30-second lesson will be on? I am going to teach time-management for the college student. Working on my project for twenty minutes at a time, I will demonstrate (in thirty seconds) how I keep my studies, family life, work schedule, and bank account all in order. Me - organized. Me - the artist, the 'free-spirit', knowing where I'm supposed to be, what is expected of me, and what's coming up next. I even have prepared for the unexpected, which I have come to expect. Cars require maintenance, people require doctor visits, and we all have to fly by the seats of our pants sometimes - and improvise.

Time has played a central role in my life this week. I have been waiting for a response from a gallery. I have been waiting for a few major deadlines to be secured. I'm still waiting for a paycheck to arrive. I have taken tests that have required a lapse of time to compare results. Because of the CHAOS surrounding me before becoming re-organized, I did not have any time to myself, and I certainly wasn't setting aside time to create any new art.

Art takes time. It takes more time than most other classes in school. My college Art courses were typically six hours in class each week. That did not include homework. The other subject courses typically spent ninety minutes in the classroom per week. Art is labor-intensive, and theory-intensive, and reading-intensive, and writing-intensive, and history-intensive, and philosophy-intensive, and multi-culturally-intensive, and scientifically-intensive, and mathematically-intensive.

ALL core subject areas are inherently a part of most lessons in the visual arts, and in every medium. There is a different way of thinking and seeing that is used when learning 2-D media than there is when learning 3-D media. The brain works differently to process the information you receive. However, with the inclusion of the other core subject areas in art lessons, the information is processed better, retained longer, and the lesson becomes personalized and more meaningful to the individual student. From my own observations and the data I have collected, it seems that Art majors are very capable learners. SAT scores of students attending at the College of The Arts at CSULB are consistently the highest in the university - rivaling only the College of Engineering with the Math section. I wonder if this is true at other universities, too. It was easy data to find: I went to the university's main web page, and typed 'SAT scores by college' in the search field. Usually the data is a year behind. It takes a while to collect and process the data. Might it go faster if the Art majors were processing it?