Alabama Art Education Association

With the merging of cultures that is so predominant in our society today I feel that it behoves up to be briefly knowledgeable with the Art HIstory of the Asia World.

We who are teachers in Alabama are seeing more and more Asian students in our classrooms and we are feeding them what we know best which is our art, culture, and biases. We never think of the rich cultural bases of the Eastern World. This was brought home to me when I was teaching Art Appreciation this summer and 3/4 of my class was Asian. I was emabarassed that I was feeding them only my culture when I am majorly aware of the very strong culture that they were also bring to the table. ( I want to say at this point I have always been troubled by this having grown up in many locations that have a very Asian rich society.) I have tried for a number of years to find colleges or universities in the south that might be able to help with this situation but alas there have been none. Skip ahead to today and my classroom...I decided...got a wild hare...to see what I might be able to do. and 14 hrs. later I finished the PowerPoint that is in the Member Only section of this website.

It is almost unnecessary to say that the Asian students in the class were very pleased and proud that I took it upon myself to do this for them. (I also had the opportunity to ask them if I had gotten all my facts dates and explaination correct. They said it was letter perfect except for the fact that I only had a small fraction of the artwork that is considered to be the "Chinese Mona Lisa". When I found out how large it really is, I was indeed impressed and the students who have actually seen this image were pleased and proud to share with me and the class what the actual viewing experience. It was one of those...teachable moments. That is why I actually left the partical image in the power point.

I also uploaded two videos my students made that are excellent examples of  traditional Chinese painting and Contemporary Chinese Graphic Design. The later, will very much be a terrific spring board for a discussion about Modern Art and its use of propaganda, socialism, emotionalism, satire, and re-actionary imagery.

Enjoy the fruits of my hard labor.