Art Lessons: Using Text with Wayne White

I promise not to turn this blog into an Art teacher blog with lessons and worksheets. But... I will bring up some lesson ideas if they lead to a larger, more interesting conversation. If you are here just for the art lesson ideas, skip towards the bottom.

For the past year or so I have been really interested in using text and words in my work. It started while taking classes for my Masters degree. We were studying the idea of synectics, which is basically combining two things that wouldn't go together. You choose two random words and put them into a "mad lib" type sentence like 'What if ____ were made of ___?" Using two random words you could get "What if elephants were made of hammers?" or something like that. Then you try to illustrate this idea. Its just kind of a fun project, but it got me thinking about words and how to use them in my work.

I had my best friend Steve send me some quotes or writings that I could work with. We have collaborated a lot in the past. He sent me some great stuff and I did my best to incorporate the text into the work. You can see the results below.

These were done with pen and watercolor. Around this same time I stumbled upon Wayne White. His work can be seen in many places, but he is most known for his work on the set of Pee Wee's Playhouse. As of late, he has been working with found paintings from thrift stores and painting words and text onto them, creating very interesting juxtapositions of text, meaning, and context. Below is just one example.

The title of this painting shares a name with the documentary about him called Beauty is Embarrassing. After seeing his work, I started to experiment with my own work. I was inspired by Cy Twombly's abstract lines and shapes and Ed Rusha's work (another artist that uses text and words in his work). Below are a few examples from this series. Each one was about a set of memories like road trips with friends or competitions from my past.

I plan to continue trying out the use of words and imagery. I am not done with the idea and it needs more exploring. 

Art Lesson:
As my interest in text in art grew, it began seeping into my classroom. I now fully embrace the idea and teach it as a lesson. My 8th graders start the year learning how to do graffiti and graffiti design. Its a nice opening lesson. We then move into clay, where they need to use a word or short phrase to inspire their work and must use it somehow in the work. They use slabs and other sculptural techniques to create a scene or diorama based on their ideas. This year, in order to really fire home the message that words have great meaning and weight, we did a short lesson on Wayne White. We looked at his work and then each student was given one example. They then not only came up with what it could mean, but had to come up with a response to the work by creating their own. We used magazines for backgrounds and drew our lettering and words on tagboard. We then cut the words out and glued them down to the background to create the response. Here is the example I made: The first image is by Wayne White. the second is the quick example I made in response. 

This isn't a life changing lesson, but its an interesting one for the for the students. Learning about loaded words, juxtaposition, and responding to another artist's work makes for a great 2-3 day lesson. What's best about this lesson is that I am interested in it. If I am able to teach what I like and what I find valuable and interesting in combination with all the mandated stuff (let's not go there), the lessons will be richer, better, and more interesting for the students.