This tour aims to support participants in:
*Honing observation skills
*Gaining insight into how artists think and work
*Utilizing art to inquire and to explore multiple perspectives
*Developing new avenues of expression through work in a range of artistic media
*Increasing mindfulness through looking closely and connecting to the natural world
Tour Overview and Background
Participants will explore the galleries and the Japanese garden as they make art and investigate the work of other artists. A few guiding premises provide a through-line for the diverse activities that make up this tour.
This tour seeks to introduce participants to an artistic approach to the world that encourages a connection to nature, builds mindfulness, and bolsters flexibility in thinking and expression. Let’s take a look at each of these guiding premises.
Artistic Approach
On this tour, artistry is presented as a way of approaching the world. Here are a few aspects that will be emphasized:
As much as creating something, artmaking is about how you see the world, your unique vision, and it is an opportunity to communicate that vision to others
The artist is audience to their own work, and can learn about themselves through what they make
Artists experiment with different media and through this process find their voice
Connection to nature
In the galleries and in the garden, this tour will crisscross the ways in which artmaking strengthens a connection to nature, and how time in nature cultivates the aesthetic sensibilities upon which artmaking depends.
Mindfulness
Brown, Ryan and Creswell (2007) define mindfulness as a state of “open or receptive attention to and awareness of ongoing events and experience;” Kabat-Zin (1994) describes it as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgementally;” and the contemporary Buddhist scholar, Gethin (2015), defines mindfulness as “a kind of lucid sustaining attention on the object of awareness, in which the mind is both aware of the object and, in some sense, aware that it is aware . . .”
Throughout this tour, participants will use artmaking as a way to heighten their awareness of the present moment, and to find new “windows” of perspective, looking both inward and outward.
Flexibility in thinking and expression
There is no single, correct interpretation of a work of art. One of the exciting aspects in talking about art is discovering the ways that other viewers connect with and respond to a work. Even for the work we make ourselves, the meaning may change over time, or we may discover multiple meanings in our art. Our ideas may also take on distinct forms depending on the medium we are using. On this tour, participants will engage in open-ended discussions about artwork in the galleries, and they will have the chance to experiment with a variety of media.
Tour is limited to 30 participants. Priority will be given to JABSOM medical students. Please RSVP to jill.omori@hawaii.edu