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Assemblage the DBAE Way (part one)

© Colleen Madonna Williams

Using a master artist's work as a reference, is a must when teaching DBAE. Choose your assemblage artist, and the piece that you are going to focus on for your lesson. I suggest using Rauschenberg's "Odalisk." Nevelson's works would be appropriate, also.

Look at the sensory properties of the piece. Ask your students to identify specific characteristics in line, shape, color, texture, light, and dark. Ask questions such as; What types of lines do you see? What colors did the artist use? What shapes are present? Are they geometric or freeform shapes? What would this piece feel like? How would you describe its texture? Are there more light or dark areas? What colors are in the light areas? What colors are in the dark areas?

Look at the piece's formal properties. How did the artist organize and unify the piece? Do all of the parts of the composition work together to create a mood, a feeling, or an idea? Did the artist use repetition? Balance? What is dominant in this work? Is there a rhythym to this piece? How did the artist create it?

Analyze the technical aspects of the work. How was this work created? What medium did the artist use? Is it a mixed media piece? What types of tools did the artist use to create this piece?

Have your students tell you about the artwork's expressive qualities. Is it high or low energy? What does the art tell us about a big idea or a feeling? Is it expressing an ideal? What is the mood invoked by this piece?

Now that you have done an aesthetic scanning with your students share some of the artist's history with them. Familiarize them with the life and times of the master you have chosen.

Practice these questions with the image that I have provided.

This is a photograph of an assemblage that I created using wood,glass, and photographs. It's entitled, "Shattered, A Child's Vision of Divorce," by Colleen Madonna Flood Williams. Look at the list of questions above, once more. Using my image, practice an aesthetic scanning. Look at the image closely. Start with the sensory questions. Move slowly into the formal properties of this work. Analyze the technical aspects of it. Move forward to its expressive qualities. After you go through all of the questions, see if you look at my work any differently than you did before you aesthetically scanned it. Do you like it more, or less? Why?