God loves me so much. Remember my amazing art books I received a few months back from my library’s book sale? This week I had another straight-from-heaven book find. The last few months at the book sale have been a complete wash, so I was starting to think I just got lucky the first time. But this week I walked in and saw this adorable edition of the New York Botanical Garden’s The Trees of North America by Michaux and Redouté.
I already own the tiny folio of the Audubon’s Birds of America, which I treasure! And I have a set of postcards of the New York Botanical Garden’s roses by Redouté. I wasn’t familiar with The Trees of North America, but as I picked up the book and read about it, I was surprised I hadn’t come across it before, because it’s right down my alley.
Why? Why do I have this strange obsession with botanical prints? I find it ironic that I go to the library and find books about art, when truly I think of myself more as a lover of literature than art! I have cultivated this art interest in myself, however. I have worked to find the pieces that bring peace and joy into my life. As I feel it is a practice that is valuable for developing personal taste in both adults and children, I will share my thoughts.
In high school, I was given an English writing assignment. I was to find a piece of art and write a poem about it. I pulled out my family’s Encyclopedia Britannica (which my mother sold copies of for an entire summer to earn credits for our family to receive our own) and looked up ‘art.’ I came across Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. I liked it. I was sharing a room with my sister at the time and we stayed up way too late that night, laughing and facetiously creating a story of a dramatic love triangle.
As the night deepened, and I began applying myself to the experience, my mood sobered and I began a more serious study of the heartbroken element of the piece. I ended up with a poem my teacher loved and shared with subsequent classes as an example of this type of assignment. More importantly, it was a piece of writing that I loved. As I search my memories for when my study of art appreciation as a discipline began, I think it can be tied to this experience.
Since then, I have been developing my eye, determining which pieces of art resonate with the ways I want to feel, and surrounding myself as much as I can with those pieces that visually support the peace and harmony I seek intellectually and spiritually. I do this when I attend art museums, design my home, and find books to bring into our home. We also study art as a family.
In our home, we have an art box. It’s a glass, velvet-lined box, large enough for two stacks of postcards, side by side. It contains pieces of art we have used for our family’s art study. We select a piece we like and look at it in silence for a minute for two. Then we share what we like. It’s as simple as that! When my college daughters have taken humanities courses that studied great art pieces, they share that they are already familiar with many of the art pieces studied in class, thanks to family art study.
Writing about these great works, as I did with my English writing assignment, is a great next step. According to Dr. M. David Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction, if we really want to learn something well, we want to find a way to integrate it into our lives. In our families or personal learning ventures, we can provide an opportunity to reflect on, defend, or share what we have learned. This could also be done by creating our own art pieces or telling a friend about what we’ve learned, depending on our goals.
This is the main purpose for this website: to give our family a chance to reflect on, defend, and share what we’ve learned! So thank you for reading. How are you finding ways to share your learning? I’d love to be your learning buddy. Message me!
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