As I contemplate and create my project proposal for my Arts and Media-Based Peacebuilding class I have been gathering data through interviews with people currently doing art as experience within a natural setting. I also stumbled across an article by Valerie J. Janesick, Art and Experience, from the recommended reading list for my research class. She discusses John Dewey’s views on art as experience stating “that to understand the nature of art requires expanding conceptions of art beyond that which hangs in museums.” This sparked my curiosity because John Dewey was infused in my under grad program at Northland College and now it has turned up serendipitously in course readings in my grad program. John Dewey, the grandfather of Experiential Education is talking about art! Really! So this lead me to read John Dewey’s, Art as Experience. “Art denotes a process of doing or making. This is as true of fine art as of technological art. Art involves molding of clay, chipping of marble, casting of bronze, laying on of pigments, construction of buildings, singing of songs, playing of instruments, enacting rôles on the stage, going through rhythmic movements in the dance. Every art does something with some physical material, the body or something outside the body, with or without the use of intervening tools, and with a view to production of something visible, audible, or tangible” (48).
Art is about looking and listening and also about doing.
Co-founder of Living Adventure, Gail Green, describes her own journey of opening pathways into nature and artistic experience.