The Arts

Methods & Tools

Sean Coleman

2026-04-09

Goals

  • Understand Methods & Tools

Writing

  • If you have a sheet of lined paper with your name on it, raise your hand
  • If you don’t, get a piece of paper off the stack
  • Form pairs – one with each kind of paper

Poem procedure

  • You’ll need the back of your piece of paper later. Keep it blank!
  • Read the rules for writing the poem
  • Make decisions together and write down your poem
  • Decide how you will perform your poem

Questions

  1. What challenges did you encounter in writing the poem?

  2. What decisions did you have to make?

  3. Why did you decide to do the things you did?

  4. Those who voted 3 points for the winning group - what was good/valuable/meaningful about their poem - why did you give it 3 points?

Questions

  1. What are the similarities between writing a poem and constructing a building?

  2. Is artistic value random?

  3. If subjectivity means drawing upon features of yourself rather than features of the artwork - then what is the role of subjectivity in making judgments about the value or meaning of an artwork?

Understandings

  • the knowledge of the artist requires some ‘building’ techniques, just like the builder or the engineer
  • the audience’s judgment of artistic value is not random and involves (at least partially) some objective features of the artwork

On the Back of Your Paper

Draw a piece of art. Do it now or as homework before class tomorrow.

There are specific rules.

Rules

  1. The art should be meaningful to you and represent an idea.

  2. It can consist of only geometric shapes (triangle, square, rectangle, circle, semi-circle, Rhombus, Trapezium, and 3D versions of it). No, a line is not a geometric shape.

  3. You can use as many or as few colours as you want.

  4. You should give your artwork a title and write it down on the back side of the artwork so that it is hidden from the others.