Image vs. Words: Can’t we all just get along?
By: Katy Johnson — November 2014
Think of the first word that comes to your mind when I say a word. Ready?
Pig.
Computer.
Rain forest.
Donuts.
If you are one of the lucky ones, that was easy for you – mud, email, monkeys, sprinkles – the list goes on and on. But for some of us, those seemingly simple tasks of linking the visual and lingual parts of our cognitive process is not so easy. The first thing to come to mind might be a blend of images that does not have a specific name, or it might be the image of the word itself. For me, its splotches of color I link to the term.
How do you put that into words?
For many people and students, visual culture is an integral part of their cognitive process. I am that student. My mind was (is) always moving a million miles per hour. I had about 537 trains of thought all racing down the track and it was a challenge to stay on just one. Writing for me was a struggle – my ideas would dip into one side of my brain, roll across the middle and then propel out of the other. Same for reading. I could not keep up with the words – somehow my mind was only flowing in pictures or colors. I struggled with how to communicate my thoughts when they were only just images. It wasn’t until I started embracing those images that my reading and writing started to make sense. I began to look at art and writing as things that could be infused to make my thinking process and cognitive skills bearable.
My notes turned into diagrams, colors of words were ingrained in my memory, and ideas for drawings transcended beyond just a sketch. Critical thinking skills like analyzing, comparing, predicting, interpreting, and revision (just to name a few) helped me bridge the gap between my own images, thoughts and words. By embracing visual culture and my own reading and writing processes, my understanding of literacy and views of my own thought process was enriched and widened.
Hopefully, it is no surprise to anyone reading this that art is an integral part of successful human development. Despite overwhelming evidence that art education enriches and improves students learning experience, in 2012, only 81% of schools in the United States had an “adequate” art program. It was 100% in 1999. Author Elliot W. Eisner contributes the decline in art education resources to “a massive misunderstanding of the role of the arts in human development and education,” (1992).
In his article discussing that role, he dispels a few myths that many people believe about the part it plays involving problem solving and use of logic. He argues that the arts have an important – and dare I say it – ESSENTIAL role in how we develop has humans and students by providing multiple ways of thinking critically and creating as a part of cognitive development. As Eisner so aptly put it, “Time represents value, because it indicates what is considered to be significant,” (1992). What does the time we allot to the arts in our schools have to say about how it is valued?
Luckily for us, art is a natural at reaching across curriculum. With only a little more brain power, we can turn our classrooms into places where all students go beyond the traditional scope of “literacy” to communicate and connect by using more than just their words.
The writing process and the creative process are a lot alike in the sense that they are profusely different. No two people experience the same thought process when starting to write or starting to draw. Ideas and connections link in ways different for everyone depending on their experiences and prior knowledge.
By sticking to our traditional and narrow view of the formula for successful writing, we’re selling ourselves short. Eisner says that “purposeful flexibility rather than rigid adherence to prior plans is more likely to yield something of value,” (1992). All great artists, whether they are sculpting a 6 foot tall plate of spaghetti or writing the next Odyssey, would agree that their art is the final destination of a purposefully unplanned journey. Bob Ross calls them, “happy accidents”. Chuck Close so eloquently verbalized how the process starts for some artists.
It is this similarity in the personal interactions with the process of creating gives us a platform we can build our arts infused literacy curriculum on.
So yeah. They connect. But how do they intertwine?
In a classroom that sees the value in art and literacy integration, visual artifact journals are often the glue that holds the two components together. They provide a place for students to record their thoughts, no matter how they look. Students are encouraged to provide pictures, stickers, cut-outs, paintings, or any other variety of visual object a long with words in their journal. Think of it as a journal-sketchbook hybrid.
The elimination of light blue horizontal lines enables students to put lists, poems or narratives alongside drawings or comic strips. It gives students a bridge to walk back and forth from words to images, enhancing their visualization skills and vocabulary. Author Lynn Sanders-Bustle of the article Visual Artifact Journals as Creative and Critical Springboards for Making Meaning claims that “by writing, [students] appropriate meaning to the objects and communicate [their] ideas, making important links between art, history, and [their] world,” (2008).
Words give students a chance to make meaning of their images, and the visual journal gives them a place to do it. Personally, my visual journal serves as a form of therapy. When I am stressed, I write it out. When I am happy and want to shout to the world! I write it out. When I am brainstorming a new idea for a painting or a paper, I write it out. Visual artifact journals give students the ability to fully document their thought process and journey through creation using words and images, giving them a tangible pool of ideas they can tap into any time they please.
Students who struggle with brainstorming may find themselves successful storytellers through investigation in their visual journals. Sanders-Bustle states that visual artifact journals “provide students with opportunities to craft entries rich in descriptive language, poetic representations, and relevant narratives,” (2008). Entries many range in genre from pictures to poems, paragraphs to paintings, but all still maintain support for readers and writers on their journey to create their best work.
The links between reading, writing, and art are easy to see if only one takes the time. The process, the thinking involved, the artifacts utilized and the final product can all run parallels. Students benefit in a myriad of ways in an art friendly literacy environment. The evidence is all ready to go. The connections do not want to be late. A new and inclusive way of thinking about “literacy” is knocking at your door – are you going to let it in?
References
Eisner, W. (1992). The Misunderstood Role of the Arts in Human Development. Phi Delta Kappa, 78(8). Retrieved from https://resources.oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/group/FA12-BL-EDUC-M130-17124/Articles/Eisner.pdf
Green, G. (2006). In Their Own Words: Critical Thinking in Artists’ Diaries and Interviews. Art Education, 59(4). Retrieved from https://resources.oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/group/FA12-BL-EDUC-M130-17124/Articles/Critical Thinking in artists diaries and interviews.pdf
Sanders-Bustle, L. (2008). Visual Artifact Journals as Creative and Critical Springboards for Meaning Making. Art Education, 61(3). Retrieved from https://resources.oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/group/FA12-BL-EDUC-M130-17124/Articles/Visual Artiact Journals as Creative and Critical Springboards.pdf
Genre Pieces
Visual Artifact Journal — I created and added onto my own visual artifact journal. I decided to tap into some of the critical thinking skills used when going through the creative process and decided to make a list of 100 interesting things. It was interesting to see how my mind moved and from one idea to the other. When I look through my list, I can follow my thought process clearly and remember how those words or concepts connect. By putting this in my visual journal, it serves as a reminder of what the unplanned creative process can produce and also provides a resource of inspiration when I need something to spark my brain. I can come back to my thoughts any time because I wrote them down and have some documentation of my writing and thinking process.
