Project – Personal Collecting:

Procedure:

1. Review the Personal Collecting column from the original Brainstorming Web in Lesson 1 of this unit.

2. Discuss the following:

• What do you collect?
• Does your personal collection(s) reflect your personality? Why or why not?
• Does your personal collection reflect American culture today?
• How did you decide what to collect?
• How do you go about collecting? (i.e. shopping for things in stores, collecting music on-line, obtaining things from friends, etc.)

3. Create a collection over a week’s time. Collections can be actual objects or they can be data and experiences collected through different media, such as writing, photography, sound recording, and video.

Teacher note: If students are collecting on their own time, then they can work on another lesson during class. Appropriate lessons during this time should include design principles that apply student knowledge of grid compositions such as repetition, movement, balance, scale, and unity.

4. Project Proposal: write a project proposal describing how you will utilize the artistic practice of collecting to communicate an aspect of your personality.  Use the Project Prompts to aid this process. Handout: Personal Collecting Project Prompts

Sample project ideas:

• Create a sculpture using the objects collected.
• Create a drawing or painting of objects collected.
• Collect your thoughts or experiences for a week and make a two-dimensional artwork using text.
• Record everything your parent or a friend says to you and make a two- or three-dimensional artwork using the text.
• Collect your doodles from phone conversations with your friends over an extended period of time. Transform these doodles into an artwork.

5. Create a work of art based on this personal collection.

6. Critique the work with your peers. Review the written proposals from Step 4 in this lesson to aid evaluation.

• What worked?
• What did not?
• Does the work convey something unintended?
• Is the new idea better than your original idea? Why or why not?
• What would you change or how would take this project even further?

School Adaptations:
CAPA
Pleasant Hills Locker Project
Steel Valley Teacher Boxes
South Fayette: Correspondence Collection: Cross Cultural Letter Exchange

Back to Top

---

Project – Professional Collecting:

Procedure:

1. Review Brainstorming Webs from Step 1 and review Other Professionals Who Collect.

2. Choose a profession to research. Examples:

• Political Scientist: someone who studies government and politics, often investigating and collecting data concerning voting, political parties, public opinion, the nature of states, and the functions of local, state level, and national governments.
• Sociologist: someone who studies human social behavior. Sociologists study broad issues such as bureaucracy, community, family, and social changes, as well as specific problems like crime, divorce, and substance abuse. They try to identify the natural laws that regulate human behavior in social contexts.
• Other examples include: Demographer, Meteorologist, Epidemiologist, Lawyer, and Biographer.

3. Research the chosen profession and its collecting practice. Determine the following:

• What: specifically what type of information or objects are collected
• How: the method by which this information is collected
• Why: the purpose of collecting this information
• How is the material compiled and displayed

4. Choose an issue:
Pick an issue or subject you are interested in. This issue should fall under the research of your chosen profession.

5. Outline your ideas:  how will you collect around this idea, what will you collect, and what kind of artwork could you create out of this collection?
Examples:

• As a political scientist, a student might want to take issue with the media representation of a political candidate. He/she might propose to collect newspaper headlines for one to two weeks dealing with the political campaign and then use the collection to create a visual work from material that represents the student’s point of view.
• As a sociologist, a student might choose the issue of appearance and beauty in teen culture. He/she might collect, in writing or audio recording, statements from their peers about beauty. The final project could be a sound piece or a written teen philosophy about beauty edited by the student.

6. Create your collection of data, objects, experiences, for one to two weeks.

Teacher note: students should work on other projects during the collecting segment of the project, for example a lesson on rhythm and balance.

7. Create artwork

8. Critique

School Examples:
CAPA
Steel Valley: Rainbow Project
Pleasant Hills: Greatest Generation Community Night
Wesley Highland: Oral Interview Project

Clothing Labels Packaging from Software, computer Games, CDs, etc. Technology Accessories

News clippings Photographs Food wrappers Correspondence Books

2. Brainstorm
In small groups, brainstorm four different methods of display, determining how you will exhibit the collection in order to perform these functions:

• To educate the public about youth culture.
• To create awe or shock or a sense of “wow” about the youth generation.
• To show a narrow point of view about the generation.
• To show mundane or non-extraordinary items to tell the story.

Students should consider the following in their displays:

• What is included and excluded from the collection?
• How are items labeled?
• Actual display: cabinet, hung on wall, put in a case by itself, displayed in a box with a bunch of other things, etc.?

3. Present Ideas
Each small group presents ideas to the class. The class should vote on one idea for each method of display (educational, the wow factor, the narrow point of view factor, and the mundane narrative).

4. Create Display

• Working together, create the displays using the objects, photographs, or both.
• Place displays in a visible location within the school.

5. Collect Response Data
After the course of a week poll other peers/classes to analyze the public interpretation of the display.

School Examples:
Schenley High School
Highlands High School
Arsenal Middle School
Wesley Highland School

Back to Top