2.) ART MAKING How: Artistic Medium

Molly

Once artists are inspired to create, they need to choose a medium through which to express their vision.  Cezanne used oil paints on canvases.  There is an enormous range of visual materials to use to create images.  This includes paper, watercolor, pen and ink, marker, clay, pastel, metal or stone, to list only a few.  Other artistic mediums too.  For instance, musicians use a enormous variety of instruments, the human voice, even computers to generate sounds.  Writers hone in on the poetic and vibrant use of language as their artistic medium.  Interestingly enough, dancers often use their own body or the bodies of other people to create their art.  We refer to a composed dance as a choreography, and a dancemaker as a choreographer.  This word can be broken into its etymological roots.  ‘Core’ is connected to corpus or chorus, and refers to the body, while ‘graphy’ means writing (as in calligraphy).  Thus choreography means literally ‘writing the body.’

Classroom activity:  Exploring the Human Body as an Artistic Medium
Have the students come back to their groups and discuss which artistic mediums they feel most connected to.  Ask them to talk about whether they think it would be hard or easy to work with human bodies as their medium of artistic creation.  Have them each free write on what theme they might choose if they were a choreographer responding to current events in the world today.