Date of Graduation

8-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Art Education (MA)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Art

Advisor/Mentor

Valencia, Paulina C.

Committee Member

Brown, Kathy J.

Second Committee Member

Yoon-Ramirez, Injeong

Keywords

Art; Do it yourself; Loose parts; Mutual aid; New materialism; Pedagogy

Abstract

This project-based thesis catalogs the planning, building, and engagement with community resource libraries that made second-hand art materials available to the community for free. The micro-libraries hold materials that individuals, organizations, and companies have donated. Materials include single-use plastics, off-cast materials from commercial production, and second-hand or leftover art materials. Four material libraries for creative reuse are in four art education institutions in the greater Northwest Arkansas region. The project sews seeds of mutually supportive systems within regional public art institutions and promotes the creative reuse of materials often tossed into local landfills. As a teaching artist, I have long wished for a community with hearts set on creative liberation and care. I am perpetually interested in how materials, their limitations, and potential pilot the act of making. I came to this project to grapple with the roles that identities, individualism, exceptionalism, and competition for resources play in creative publics, what role authority plays in that struggle, and how to alleviate these by reclaiming and redistributing material and social resources amongst the creative community. Using theory, narrative, and photo montage, I engage in this dialogue on mutually reclaiming creative “authority" with an empty box, materials, and an invitation.

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