Art and the Environment
Curriculum Plan: Our World and the Bees

As part of the Wexner Center course on Art and the Environment I created a curriculum plan focused bees for teaching a typical Saturday Art Session of 5 two hour lessons with and final exhibition.  The lessons use the online platform of Haiku and integrate video, readings, research and art making assignments.  Students focus on the overarching theme of interdependence understood through the particular situation of bees and Colony Collapse Disorder.  This focus, experienced through the research and art making assignments, will provide a framework of limitations within which students will be able to build and explore personal connections with nature, food systems, and human interventions.  The curriculum includes video and presentations highlighting contemporary artists whose work addresses environmental concerns so students can begin to make connections between the natural world and how their art may represent their personal vision.  The rich subject will provide fertile ground for the development of artistic works, both material and experiential.  Art making will occur both individually and collectively, allowing students opportunities to experience the risks and rewards of working collaboratively.   
Student Learning Outcomes based on  National Visual Arts Standards

•  Creating: Students will choose from a range of materials and methods of traditional and contemporary artistic practices, following or breaking established conventions, to plan the making of multiple works of art and design based on a theme, idea, or concept
  
• Responding: Students will analyze how one’s understanding of the world is affected by experiencing visual imagery.
• Connecting: Students will utilize inquiry methods of observation, research and experimentation to explore unfamiliar subjects through art making.