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Artobiographies

Arts Connected iPad Challenge #3 Support your substitute

What is an artobiography and how is it different than an autobiography?

First, an autobiography is a story all about you! You decide what you want to share, after all it is your story.

An artobiography is like an autobiography except it uses art artifacts to symbolize events in your life. They are chosen by you, the author, to represent important life events. Each artifact contains visual content that somehow intersects with a life experience or evokes emotions that resonates with an event.

Lets explore the history of storytelling and the unique ways cultures have used art to tell stories in the past. Then we'll make our own artistic digital stories all about ourselves, artobiographies!

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Suitcase

Different cultures found way to incorporate stories in their artwork, even in everyday items. Read about the Plains Indians unique way of portraying stories below. Look closely at the next several slides to learn about this unique artwork.

Beaded pictographs produced by Plains Indian women in the late 19th and early 20th century were an extension of pictographs that had been drawn by men for many generations. Men's pictographs usually recorded stories of battle, visionary experiences, hunting, and courting. Women mostly beaded geometric designs, but the rare object with pictographs usually depicted domestic scenes and courting. The very few beaded suitcases/satchels in existence were produced by the Lakota, from either Cheyenne River or Standing Rock Reservation. The beaded signature suggests the artist's name is Ida Claymore. She drew on conventions of painted and drawn works to illustrate the story depicted on the suitcase. On one side, a suitor brings many horses, which are shown by multiple heads, to his potential mate as a gift. The horse that is fully illustrated is given to the woman, shown by her holding its reins. Furthermore, the camp scene, featuring a tipi, and a rack that holds multiple decorated hides, implies that this event took place in a traditional camp setting. The other side of the suitcase features two cowboys roping domestic cattle.

Village Story Blanket

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Artist: Ka Zoua Lee , born Laos
Date: c. 1980
Medium: Textiles, Textile-Surface Ornamentation
Size: 110 x 94 in. (279.4 x 238.76 cm)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 84.7.1

Village Story Blanket Reading

Read about the Hmong tradition of depicting stories in cloth with this Arts Connected link to the Object in Focus feature.

Vietnam War weaving

Artist: Artist Unknown (North Laos)
Date: 20th century
Medium: Textiles, Textile-Woven Fabric

Can you see a story woven into this cloth? What do you think is happening here?

Queen Trisala on Her Couch

Artist: Artist Unknown (India)
Date: c. 1500
Medium: Paintings, Painting

What might be happening in this artifact? Look closely for details. You are going to have to zoom in on this one. Use the slide controller in the left upper corner. Discuss with a peer what you believe to be happening.

Now lets look at how storytelling evolved from the oral tradition to the digital world we are a part of today.

World Myths and Legends in Art

Artist: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Date: 2003
Medium: Web
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
URL: http://artsmia.org/world-myths/

The oral tradition of passing down legends and myths from generation to generation was instrumental in saving them from being lost in history. Sometimes graphics supplemented the spoken word. Explore to find out more!

Cave Painting

The earliest recorded art is that of paintings telling a story found in caves. This is a photograph of a reproduction from the San Diego Museum of Man, San Diego, California.

Scroll with case

Scrolls predated books as a way to tell and archive stories.

Book

The printing press made books the first way to quickly mass produce stories for a wider populace.

"Sparton" radio

The technological revolution allowed stories to be transmitted "wirelessly" for the first time.

TELEVISION AND FILM

Film and television allowed for mass media storytelling including audio and video.

Life is Life

Stories are published digitally on the web for public consumption. We are coming close but still the public is the consumer of stories not the creators.

Web 2.0 and Arts Connected

The advent of web 2.0 applications like Arts Connected allow us all to publish stories digitally. Now it is your turn to create a story with art.

Tell us about you!

Now it is your turn. Tell us about you!

*Start with an introduction slide to tell us about your art collectors set.

*Include at least 10 slides in your story. Each slide should have an artifact that symbolizes an event or evokes an emotion in your life.

*Add a descriptive caption to each slide to describe its significance to your life. Sequence them to tell us a story about you.

Search Select Sequence

Look for artifacts using Art Finder that reflect events in your life.

Search
Select
Sequence

Simple!

Birth Symbols

Bud or birth bank?

You may find multiple artifacts that could represent an event in your life. In this case you will have to make decisions as to which is more relevant to the idea you are trying to express or create a juxtaposition slide. For instance which one best represents birth? Why? Or is another artifact the ultimate representation? For each artifact you select explain your thinking with a descriptive caption detailing why and how this artifact represents an artistic reflection of your life.

Gallery Walk

Once we have created our artobiographies we will have a gallery walk.

Half the class will walk around the lab visiting those displaying their artobiographies. Time will be allowed for presenting, questions and answer time.

Then we will reverse the process and the walkers will sit down to display their artobiographies to the other half of the class.

Student Resources

Artist: Wing Young Huie
Date: 1996
Medium: Photographs
Institution: Walker Art Center

For those who have yet to build an art collectors set click on this link.

Here is the help page for building an art collectors set.

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Attachments:
For the substitute (pdf)

Pedagogical considerations (pdf)

Artobiographies rubric (pdf)

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