The College Art Association

Joanna Jedrzejczyk

The CAA (College Art Association) can be found at www.collegeart.org.

This association aims to promote excellence in teaching art. It also facilitates the exchange of ideas between artists and those interested in art history. The CAA speaks out on issues affecting the visual arts and humanities and publishes several academic journals including Art Journal and The Art Bulletin that focus on artists and art practices in the fields of art, art history, and architecture. Its 14,000 individual members and 2000 organization members are all dedicated to the practice of art, teaching, and research in the visual arts. At the moment, their five year strategic plan (2010-2015) is to focus on artists and designers, developing students and emerging scholars while continuing to server its members involved in the visual arts, scholarship, and education. They work with numerous other organizations (extensive list can be found on their website) and receive their funding from donations to the organization as well as publications and membership fees. This organization is relevant to art teachers as it actively promotes art giving it importance within the community and helping establish art as an important societal component. They also have journals where artists can submit articles, and these articles can be used within the curriculum and make art more relevant and applicable to students. These journals, more specifically the Art Bulletin and Art Journal, can show students not only what artists are capable of accomplishing but also what they are currently participating in and the social topics they tackle in their artwork. They are also a great tool in introducing educators and students to new artists, new forms of artistic expression, and examples of artwork pertaining to certain topics or techniques. Art constantly changes and evolves and so must art education, teachers need to be familiar with emerging artists and art practices which they can teach and apply in their classroom. The CAA also continuously strives for professionalism and innovative art education, something all teachers can strive for in their practice.

The Art Journal features articles written to reflect current artists, artist’s practices, and topics related to art and art education. One such series of articles from 2005 began with an article entitled “Eco-Tistical Art: An Experimental Initiative at the 2005 CAA Conference” and highlights the 2005 Atlanta Conference which tackled the topic of environmental issues in art. This set of articles noted that the major challenge art educators face is being aware and able to share their awareness of the ecological consequences of selecting different art mediums and techniques. The goal is to acknowledge the “correspondence between art making and ecosystems whereby every action is a cause that ripples as an effect that then becomes another cause” (Weintraub, 81). The immediate goals of the conference were to inspire teachers to introduce ecological practices into their classroom. This conference did in fact try to provide teachers the tools they needed to make this happen however, the article did not go into details regarding what exactly teachers could do. The CAA’s ultimate goal is to encourage the next generation of artists to be aware and a part of determining Earths ecological destiny. This series of articles then went on to discuss how the concept of Eco-Tistical art was formulated and examined several eco inspired artists and their work. It was noted that these artists have adopted ecological sound artistic practices and are working to raise awareness of ecology through their work.

In reading this series of articles I was motivated to further explore ecologically sound art and art practices and incorporate them into my classroom. The questions I would like to answer in my classroom are: “How can I educate my students on ecological art? and How can I promote ecologically sound practices in my classroom?” Using these articles as my basis for discussion I could breach the idea of ecological practices in the classroom and brainstorm ideas with my students as to how we could, as a class, be more ecological in our practices. Several ideas I came up with were using found, recycled, or old materials to create art, using recycled paper and making a conscious effort to recycle every time, reusing paints rather than throwing them away after every project, and researching companies that sell environmentally friendly art supplies. Having formulated our new ecologically friendly practices into a contract I could ask my students to sign the document promising to try their best to be environmentally friendly in the art classroom. These articles could also provoke a discussion on the ecologically conscious artists they explore. I could ask my students to work in groups, each group focusing on one of the artists(articles) and answer the who, what, where, how, and why of the article as well as how they could create an art piece promoting ecological practices that is also a piece of art work created using ecologically sound practices. This topic could also progress into a short study on found art and artists who use reused and recycled items to create their art work.