Inner Work, Public Acts: The Conocimiento of Art

I I've always known I was an artist. At least as soon as I paid attention to what I wanted. Before that Art was always part of my life, but never considered the primary focus. During high school and first year of college, I was determined to be a veterinarian. But in the first week of the second semester, while sitting in Organic Chemistry, I experienced an arrebato. I knew my choices had been based on what I thought I should do, not what I wanted to do. After a call to my parents, and several meetings with advisors and administrators on campus, I switched out of my math and science courses to drawing and art history. I even went out and bought some new clothes at a thrift store to go a long with what I thought it meant to dress like an artist. It was a performance of sorts, for me like turning on a switch. The following year, I transferred from the university to art school. Anzaldua's conocimiento feels familiar to me. I recognize myself in her words. Like coming home. I became an artist because I sought more. A job or interesting career wasn't enough. To be an artist is a way of life, a filter interpreting life as you live it. Art is about paying attention, problem solving, language acquisition (visual literacy), and a disciplined approach--all aspects at the core of creativity. The artist shifts "to the inner exploration of the meaning and purpose in life." (1) So for me, Art is conocimiento, conocimiento is Art: Conocimiento comes from opening all your senses, consciously inhabiting your body and decoding its systems--that persistent scalp itch, not caused by lice or dry skin, may be thought trying to snare your attention. ...Breaking out of your mental and emotional prison and deepening the range of perception enables you to link inner reflection and vision--the mental, emotional, instinctive, imaginal, spiritual, and subtle bodily awareness--with social, political action and lived experiences to generate subversive knowledge. These conocimientos challenge official and conventional ways of looking at the world, ways set up by those benefiting from such constructions. (2) II During a recent class discussion, students told me about a senior Art major in an advanced studio course who exclaimed, "I want to be a painter, so I don't go to museums. This way, I'll be original." The idea of the lone artist in his garret creating great works of art is an outmoded modernist notion. Cutting oneself off in order to really be able to see, in order to move toward something more authentic, doesn't function in this day and age. Because learning, growing and acquiring conocimiento does not occur in isolation. True engagement requires integration and synthesis. It means being open to the world around you. As an artist and professor, my goal is to develop and promote the inter-relatedness of information, with the connection between disciplines as the guiding principle. While Western life is rife with examples of the commodification of Art as the primary determinant of value, my teaching strives to develop a context for what motivates artists to be connected, because artists are active participants in cultural production. Rather than working within a discipline as distinct and separate from life, sanctioned for a privileged audience within the walls of a museum, contemporary art strives to be connected, to acknowledge that the most effective work is art that is engaged and engenders a dialogue about our lives, the institutions we move through, and the varied cultures we live within. The diversity committee's charge to review syllabi that incorporate diversity reveals an underlying assumption that effective teaching requires a student-centered, progressive pedagogy using models that frame education as relevant to the students' lives. By doing so, teaching becomes a subversive act--dismantling the notion that the only valid knowledge is discrete, disconnected and objective. …