Jelena Berenc, Artist and Professor at City Colleges of Chicago
November 4, 2023
Asking questions is a fundamental trait of humans that helps us understand the world around and within us. There is only one physical world, and many useful ways of thinking about it, each of which captures an element of reality. Through Art processes, artists experience the questions to understand the answers; scientists build an experiment to confirm the answer. Both art and science bring new thoughts to the world and as such they are equally practical and necessary for the progression of humanity. Visual art pieces present information observed from Reality in order to understand it, and when it is in its purity materialized into visual information, detached from artist’s beliefs, then it is Information Realism. Contrary to the popular misconstrued understanding of Art as aesthetics, expressions, feelings, Craft, concepts with no practical use, Art is in fact Rational, Reason and Information based. Art requires critical thinking, problem solving skills, managing higher executive functioning, planning, decision making, finding open-ended situations, and judgments. Understanding Art as Information, Inquiry, and Reason based, and practicing Art as such, is critical for cognitive and psychological health as it increases the plasticity and cognitive reserves of the brain, builds self-esteem, self awareness, emotional resilience, and reduces distress. I will define Art as Information, Inquiry, and Reason based, and support it by the examples of professional Artworks. Once the definition is established the Art educational standards will be defined and examples of Art learning methods and projects that are inquiry and problem solving based are presented. And lastly, I will present practical benefits of understanding Art and Art practice. Participants are invited to bring existing in-class projects in order to have a discussion about integrating inquiry-based ideas into the curriculum.