Artist-Educator Residency at MassArt — Oct 8–20
“You don’t know me but I have your Unfolding Practice handout and am using this accordion book practice with my students.”
Todd and I have been hearing that for some time now and we love it! This passion project has grown legs and is going places.
It is the permeable, sharable, and spreadable nature of accordion books for reflective practice that led us to make an artist book, put together a process exhibit and workshop series, and create these large panels that are excerpts of each chapter of the artist book.
Todd and I are full-time educators, and our work in education is the fertile ground for our arts-based-research on accordion books for reflection, creative inquiry, and art & education practice. With support from the PanteRhea Foundation we have been able to carve out a little time to come together over the past few summers to reflect, consolidate, plan, create, and publish around our Accordion Book practice.
From October 8th– 20th, high-school students from Boston Arts Academy and Artward Bound, student-teachers from MassArt, Art and Art-Education faculty, researchers and students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and other Boston area educators joined us for workshops and viewing of the process exhibit — Unfolding Practice: Reflection on Learning and Teaching at MassArt Arnhiem Gallery.
It was an intense few weeks getting the exhibit and concurrent workshops up and running. A huge thank you to our friend and mentor, Lois Hetland, for being willing to support a first-time experiment of an artist-educator residency, a process exhibit, and a workshop series, together in a single gallery space.
Standing there, surrounded by the exhibit while facilitating workshops, I had the distinct feeling that we were pushing at the norms of galleries and typical workshop environments. It felt different. I became interested in how the artwork and the exhibit influence the nature and experience of the workshops, but more on this in an upcoming post.
Over 200 people in total have walked away after making their own accordion books using our little zine handout — both tentative and excited to see how they can use this practice for themselves and with the groups they work with. At the next Saturday Studios, art-ed student, Hart Rippe, will try out accordion books with her students. We are looking forward to hearing about her’s and others’ experience, and hope there will be sharing that can further inform the work of the community rapidly growing around this mode of reflective practice and creative inquiry.
For anyone who would like to share, this blog is a space for sharing accordion book practice and strategies that you discover and develop. Let us know at arzu.mistry@gmail.com or toddelkin@gmail.com if you are interested in being a featured artist to share your methods and strategies for reflective practice and creative inquiry.
