Warwick collage artist delivers keynote address at Texas art conference

Jonathan Talbot says students can learn to think critically through art Warwick - Warwick artist Jonathan Talbot was a keynote speaker at the 2006 Texas Art Education Association conference held on Nov. 16-19 at the Fort Worth Convention Center in Fort Worth. Addressing an audience of Texas art teachers and educators, Talbot discussed alternative methods for the acquisition of visual language skills. During his presentation Talbot also created a collage, called “Fort Worth Patrin,” which graphically depicted the influence of the No Child Left Behind Act on arts education and suggested how art teachers might respond to Federal mandates. Works by Talbot, a leading artist in the collage field, have been exhibited at the National Academy and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, have represented the U.S. overseas in exhibits sponsored by the State Department and the Smithsonian Institution, and are included in museum collections in the U.S. and Europe. He is the author of “Collage: A New Approach” and, in collaboration with Warwick resident Geoffrey Howard, of “The Artist’s Marketing and Action Plan Workbook.” At the conference in Texas, Talbot started his collage with a background listing all the many of the things that art provides to students. But, he noted, qualities like imagination, inspiration, composition and originality cannot be measured by multiple choice tests. To demonstrate the point, Talbot obliterated most of the background with black paint representing the No Child Left Behind Act. Then, “to make the best of a bad situation,” as he noted, the artist added formal shapes representing the structure of the school system, pieces of money representing the necessary financing of education, splashes and strokes representing the good intentions of both teachers and students, and finally, small colored fragments representing the students themselves. In his final remarks Talbot pointed out that the focus on standardized testing mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act has almost completely eliminated opportunities for students to make choices. “For each problem in the math room, there is one right answer and an infinite number of wrong ones,” Talbot said. “In English classes there is, for each word, one correct spelling and an infinite number of wrong ones. In Social Studies there is, for each event, one right date and an almost infinite number of wrong ones. “But in art class there are an infinite number of right ways to do things and almost no wrong ones,” Talbot said. “As a result, in art class students must learn to choose between more than one “right way” of doing things. “And this makes the art room the one room in the school where students can still learn critical thinking skills.” Talbot’s online studio can be found on the Web at www.talbot1.com.