Strange Things Done: Intergenerational Identity Exploration Through Collaborative Printmaking

Abstract

Collaboration is widely present in the arts and education. The acceptance of social constructivism in the classroom and with it the viability of collaborative meaning-making, has increased the conversations of what this might look like formally in art education practice. I argue for intergenerational collaborative art making as a viable process for identity exploration and a way of advancing current art education praxis. Mirroring the informality of the process, this thesis will utilize auto and trio-ethnographic approaches of reflection as I work through the art making process with my parents. With this, I will be in constant “conversation” with my deceased father, with whom I am collaborating through “artifacts” he has left behind. Additionally, I will also be in actual conversation with my living mother, with whom I will be collaborating with through her own artifacts that she deems “creative” (i.e. her favorite poetry). Within the interactive space between the three of our identities working together, I utilize the philosophical lens of hermeneutics as a way to hold space for the “play” that occurred between us conversing and the artwork produced from the play we enacted. The traditional is left behind as I consider the elements of the printmaking process that informs the visualization of this arts-based inquiry practice. These elements are essential to the formation of a new vision for arts education in which the informal occupies premier space in classroom pedagogy. The series of prints created through the printmaking techniques of intaglio and screenprinting, and the connections felt with the artifacts of my parent’s past and present, launched a series of inquiries related to my own perceived reality. We reflect, knowing that what once was, never truly ends. It is in these spaces of exchanges between people and artifacts that offers new insights into the nature of human-lived experiences.