A tale of three psyches : reflecting on art education as journey work in words and imagery

• Main Author: Major, Diane
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/8258

Art education has the potential to change the world. How art changed worlds — mine and those of the people in my art classes — unfolds here through text, fonts and images. These words and images try to touch upon "the intangible benefits" Wilson (1994) of art education. Art education that opens to the search for personal meaning through the wow of engaged experience, extends the content of traditional art education and operates with an awareness of the art as therapy is art as journey work. Journey work invites students to trust their unique vision of the world and in so doing moves towards social change by questioning dominant power-over structures through fostering power-from-within. Reflecting on the voices of the women i interviewed, on my personal journals and on discussions with my colleagues and friends, i interrogated my own art education practice. An interview-based methodology using memories and art work as key points for reflection, reflective research offers an intimate understanding of a classroom through stories and memories of three participants, two students and myself as teacher. Our participation in an on-going dialogue of friendship before and after interviews gives resonance and depth to our discussions. Weaving together my students' stories, my own life story, and theory brings the personal into the academic. The analysis section seeks relationships between these personal stories and the culture in which we are embedded, and concludes the personal is more than political, it is ecological: what we do to ourselves, we do to the web; what we do to the web, we do to ourselves.