Arts in Education

By NIU STEAM Instructor, Becky Griffith

Art doesn’t always turn out the way we want the first time. Those challenges help the learning happen.

When making art, oftentimes the natural urge is to replicate exactly what we see. While copying art seems counterintuitive to the creative mindset expected from an artist, art imitation has been around as long as art itself. In art education, young artists often learn and explore art principles and techniques by imitating experts.

But this can also be a stressful place for young artists because people are people, not photocopiers! Often, if their art doesn’t look exactly like their subject, students feel like they’ve failed. At NIU STEAM, we approach art through an iterative process we refer to as our engineering-design cycle. The cycle promotes creativity, discovery, critical thinking and a growth mindset that encourages learning through productive struggle leading to solutions that overcome failures.

National Arts in Education Week is celebrated each year beginning the second Sunday in September. According to the website National Day Calendar, National Arts in Education Week celebrates transformative powers of creative skills and recognizes the impact of arts education and how it equips young people to succeed in all areas of life.

This week will also mark the first week of the 2023-24 school year for our Barb City STEAM Team after school program for middle school students attending DeKalb School District 428. Students meet daily after school on the campus of Northern Illinois University to explore STEAM concepts such as maker activities, art and digital media, science, engineering and robotics.

Art education is one of the many ways our Barb City students practice communication and exploration. Students regularly experiment with their own creativity and gain mastery of art skills and techniques, even when on the first attempt their artwork doesn’t turn out exactly how they imagined.

Last year, Barb City students in painting class learned the skills of persisting through their discomfort and reframing their expectations by creating a non-representational, abstract painting. After looking at some abstract expressionist artists, students were challenged to make their own painting, without using a brush. Using only pallet knives, they focused on how acrylic paint applied, mixed, and bent on canvas.

They experimented with principles and techniques such as color theory, mark-making, hand pressure, paint consistency, and applying and removing paints. And they learned to struggle with the hardest question of all: Is my painting done? In the end, our Barb City friends gained an amazing sense of ownership of their painting and a newfound confidence in themselves as artists.

NIU STEAM is now accepting applications for the Barb City After School Program for students attending DeKalb School District 428 middle schools. To learn more, visit go.niu.edu/BarbCitySTEAMTeam

Try It at Home

To make your own abstract art, you’ll need the following materials: