Final Project

Arielle McMahon

Dr. Shannon Carter

English 102

Literacy as an Art 

Upon hearing the word literacy, many people automatically think of the ability to read and write. For example, Lauren B. Resnick describes literacy as being “any situation in which people engage with written texts.” I’m not sure I completely agree with her conclusion, however, at least not without elaboration of other situations. Yes, literacy is the skill of writing an essay, reading a newspaper, and understanding texts, but literacy incorporates more than written text; it is practiced in any situation of which there is knowledge about a specific subject or field. People might acquire computer literacy, or even the literacy of their own bodies while exercising. This essay will explore the functions of literacy in visual art, specifically in the gallery within the Art Building on the Texas A&M University-Commerce campus. 

The Art Building is a very vibrant space; entering the building is like walking into a haven of imagination and creativity, where people are free to think out-of-the-box. There are posters everywhere describing workshops, gallery openings, and other campus events. These demonstrate the mixed literacies, of text and art, found in this building.  A collection of colorful paintings line the walls of the halls, filling the building with life, describing this society’s environment sans text, other than painted words in the pieces.

I chose the gallery as my fieldsite, wanting to understand and explore why I felt so fascinated by the artwork, and hoping others felt the same way, and I was really excited to start my ethnography project. I could hardly wait to sit in the gallery for hours at a time to observe relationships between viewers and pieces of art. As I continued hanging out in the gallery and studying, I noticed an unfortunate theme to my studies: the gallery is not often visited. This concerned me, both because I had no idea how to pursue my research without a community to observe and because, as an art major, I felt that the visual literacy presented through the gallery should be acknowledged. Whereas first my research question asked how visual literacy functions in the gallery, I now pose a new question: Why is the visual literacy in the gallery overlooked by Commerce community members – including students and non-students – and how can this be changed?

In order to address this question, I started to focus on how many people attended the gallery and its events, who signed the registry sheet, and how many advertisements there were for the gallery. I obtained permission to conduct my research within the gallery and the Art Building from Joseph Daun, the head of the Art Department, and the two secretaries of the main office, who open and close the gallery. I sat in the gallery and in the hallway of the Art Building for an hour at a time observing my surroundings and any passers-by, trying to estimate the daily amount of traffic, and I attended events held in the gallery. I conducted two lengthy interviews with artists who understand the difficulty the gallery is having and who both offered an insider’s perspective on why this is and how it can change. I also attended different sessions on campus that helped contribute to my knowledge on what visual literacy is defined as. In order to play a role in scholarly conversation, and relate my studies to articles my English class has read on literacy, I felt that learning as much as I can about visual literacy would be an important contribution.

Many people have different interpretations of what literacy is – as I have learned from the articles we have read – so I wanted to see what I could find out about visual literacy. Is its definition as controversial? Apparently it is. I held two major interviews during my studies, and I asked each participant what his views on visual literacy were, including its definition and how it works in a piece of art. Mr. Michael Odom, a former art director and professor of Texas A&M -Commerce, defined it as two ideas. One idea is the form of an artwork, the ways in which it portrays the elements and principles of design through color, line, shape, unity, balance, and composition. These contribute to the overall presentation of a piece and the more creatively they are used, the more the piece attracts viewers. The second idea is within the content of the piece, what it symbolizes, or what concept it is conveying. Maybe it shows contrast between two ideas, such as good and evil, or maybe it presents a certain atmosphere which adds an emotional aspect to viewers looking at the piece. Professor Gerard Huber, a working artist and current art professor at A&M-Commerce, points out that in order to understand a piece, one needs knowledge of art history. It is important to acknowledge what has come before a work of art, and what could have influenced the artist. Mr. Huber also mentions that being able to interpret concepts within a work of art is an important part of visual literacy, but the field of art requires a visual literacy that may be innate or may have to be learned. The way he sees it, if a person does not understand the different elements and principles of design, which were mentioned before by Mr. Odom, then they might not have the ability to fully understand or appreciate a work of art.

Throughout this semester, my English class has read multiple articles discussing literacy in different contexts, and I found that two of these articles are directly related to my topic. First of all, there is “Literacy in School and Out” by Lauren B. Resnick, and she writes about many different types of literacy, grouping them into categories of useful, informational, and pleasurable. Pleasurable literacy is the type of literacy that I feel is prominent in the gallery; the art is there for people to experience, interpret, and enjoy. The pleasure that I experience in the art gallery is the reason why I wanted to study it, and it is the reason why I argue that people should go visit and see the artwork. The second article is “A Social Theory of Literacy Practices and Events” by David Barton and Mary Hamilton, and I depended on this article to prove to myself that there is such a thing as visual literacy. Most of my classmates’ projects revolved around textual literacy, and after I read this article all of my doubts on any other type of literacy disappeared. Barton and Hamilton define literacy as a social practice and explain that there are literacies other than textual literacy.

My understanding of visual literacy came full circle during the Commerce Week on Writing sessions that I attended. I went to a session on poetry reading and a session on art. The poetry session consisted of students from the creative writing class reading their poems and short story excerpts in front of the very small audience of people. As I was taking notes over each presentation, I began to notice a trend: students who spoke clearly and with character received more attention and applause than the students who seemed more insecure in presenting their work. This brought me to realize that visual literacy is also dependent on the presentation of the art on display. If all of the art pieces were strewn together without spacing or alignment, a sense of structure and importance would be lost, and the visual interpretation of the actual piece would not even matter anymore because of the distraction of the mess. Also, within individual pieces, presentation is basically what the piece is; presentations are visual depictions of a concept or idea, otherwise known as art. The art session was not what I expected because it was essentially an art professor showing his portfolio of works done during the summer of 2009. It was a bit superfluous after a while, until he came to one piece that caught my attention. I had been tossing around the idea of visuals changing the meaning of text, and this piece proved my idea to be worthwhile. It had a background that repeated the phrase “I’m painting the town red,” but in the foreground, there was a hand grenade, which changed the meaning of the phrase to something much more foreboding than it may have seemed before.

Mr. Huber is my art professor, and I was first interested in the gallery because every time there was a new exhibition, my class would be one of the first to see it. He would lead us all down to the gallery and we would stay there for about an hour, walking from piece to piece and free-writing about the works on display. With each exhibition came a paper to write, one about a favorite piece and one to compare and contrast two pieces. These not only helped us improve our textual literacy, of which Mr. Huber is an advocate of as well as visual literacy, but they helped us learn to look closely at each piece of art and spend time with them instead of just passing by. This is another theme I found upon reviewing my research, and I have come to name this phenomenon the “Scan and Stare.” No matter when I took my fieldnotes in the gallery, whether it was a regular day, an exhibition, or an event, I have come to notice a trend in the way people view art. Without fail, people will walk around the room, scanning each piece of art, and upon finding one that interests them, they stare at it for a while longer than the rest, soaking it in. Even I and other artists fall victim to the “Stop and Stare,” so I asked Mr. Huber about his thoughts on it, and he gave me reasonable insight. He explains that viewers tend to stop and look at pieces that they are comfortable with, that fit their notion of what art is. It may depend on the style of the art, the subject matter, or anything that would signify what they believe to be “good art.” Everyone has a gut level reaction to a piece of art, and instantly decide whether they do or do not like it, which defines when they stop and stare, or when they move on. He told me he has noticed that these people who skip past pieces are merely playing an identification game, going through what the subject matter of what a piece is rather than interpreting the concept.

And so, as I was continually learning about visual literacy and habits of the gallery, I had ample time to stay in the gallery to take fieldnotes by killing two birds with one stone and doing it as I was monitoring the gallery for extra credit in my art classes. Monitors are in the gallery to make sure no one gets too close to a piece of art or, sadly, to make sure no one steps on a sculpture. I have already expressed my concerns with the most common theme to my research – that the gallery is not often visited – and I often resorted to observing the types of work on display. There was so much variety, with sculptures lining the floor and paintings, collages, sketches, and pastel works on the walls.

My first day of taking fieldnotes, only one person came into the gallery during the hour I spent there, and even then it was only for a few minutes. She got caught up in talking with the secretary, and their laughter filled the empty room. I was a bit frustrated with this, not only because she was the only person to visit while I was there, but because the loudness of the laughing broke an unspoken rule in the gallery. There is a unique culture among the artistic community, with customs and ways of communication that are distinctly different from other buildings on campus, and the gallery holds a few of its own customs. Upon entering the gallery, it is almost instinctive to be as silent as possible, maybe even quieter than in the library, and to stand a fair distance away from the pieces, maybe a yard or two. I have come across these unspoken rules through my own past experiences in various galleries and as I watched my classmates walking through the gallery as we visited with Mr. Huber. Hearing the loud laughter echoing through the gallery was unnerving, and it was one of the negative experiences as I studied the gallery.

Each time I took fieldnotes within the gallery, I became more and more discouraged about the lack of people visiting, so I took my fieldnotes outside in the hallway of the Art Building. Here, at least, I could observe the people who are insiders to the artistic culture. Alas, the results were the same as they were inside the gallery. I sat on a bench for about forty-five minutes; only two people walked down the hallway. One was an assistant in the main office.

Once I made the most of the unfortunate events and figured out my new research question, the first thing I focused my attention on was the amount of access the gallery offered to community members on and off-campus. It is open from one to five in the afternoon on weekdays, which I found to be limited but understandable, because keeping the gallery open all day would be inconvenient for employees of the Art Building, especially for the secretaries. At the time, I thought the availability of the gallery was satisfactory, so why were people not coming? I found part of my answer as I collected artifacts. Artifacts are a required portion of the research portfolio due at the end of the semester, and they include anything from flyers and pamphlets to a note found on the ground. Most of my artifacts consist of flyers and postcards announcing events of the gallery, including advertisements for exhibitions, Mane Event activities, and the annual Holiday Art Sale. All of these were piled neatly in little stacks on a table in the hallway outside of the gallery. How convenient! It was only later in my studies that I realized that these were the only advertisements that the gallery had, there in the Art Building itself. Those little stacks on that narrow table controlled the amount of people going to view the pieces in the gallery, who were few and far between. As soon as I saw this, I began paying attention to the flyers and stand-up posters around campus, trying to find any sign of external advertisements for the gallery’s upcoming events. I proved my doubts week after week; there was no sign of the gallery’s existence outside of its domain in the Art Building. One day, I actually stumbled upon a stand-up poster promoting the annual Holiday Art Sale, and I was relatively more excited than I should have been as I took multiple pictures of this small miracle. In Mr. Huber’s words, the gallery “is primarily a facility for the art students.” He jokes that “we [as artists] do our best to keep it hidden, and what I mean by that is there’s no identifying marker, or tag, or anything outside the building that would let anybody know that there’s a gallery in this building.” Having the postcards anywhere else but in the Art Building, he argued, would most likely have no effect on students, because whenever they pass a bulletin board with events posted, they rarely take the time to actually read what is going on on-campus.

I learned after talking to both Mr. Odom and Mr. Huber that advertisements are not everything when it comes to getting people to visit the gallery; people should want to visit. They should have an interest in art. It is hard for people to get interested in art nowadays, as Mr. Odom told me. They may find art to be too confusing, or even intimidating. As artists, we do not understand what could be so intimidating about it because we have not really been unable to create. There is hardly a remedy to this, though, and Mr. Odom just concluded, “Well, I dunno, people are missing an opportunity.”

Although the gallery is primarily empty and unvisited, it sees busy days a few times per semester during opening nights for each exhibition. There are no tangible advertisements for these events, only e-mails to faculty and staff, but even so, a good crowd of fifty to one hundred people attend throughout the night. Usually, the people who attend are middle-aged to older community members, unless there are students attending for a class assignment. When talking of opening nights, Mr. Odom pointed out that people who go to opening nights usually go “to be seen rather than to see” the art. Yes, the art on display is of interest to the people who go, but it may be a bit hard to get around the small space in order to see the art. Opening nights get a reasonable amount of attention, but the busiest I have seen the gallery yet has been during the annual two day Holiday Art Sale. This sale has been a tradition of the gallery’s for a number of years, faculty and students submit pieces of art, from sketches and paintings to ceramics and sculptures, and the community members of Commerce are always keeping a weather eye out for it during the first week of December. I went to this event both days it was open, one to volunteer my time and act as a cashier and one to take more fieldnotes over it. It was very productive, and I really enjoyed seeing the gallery as busy as it was; many of the pieces sold, especially the ceramics. As I was there helping wrap up fragile ceramics, my concerns about advertisements for the gallery were confirmed when one woman proclaimed that she would not have known about the sale if one of her colleagues had not told her about it. She said there were no flyers about the sale posted in the Science Building, where I assumed she worked. This proved to me that the Art Building is the only place where the goings-on in the gallery are posted.

This sale brought another element of the gallery to my attention: the registry book. Right inside the gallery’s entrance, there is a narrow table – similar to the one in the hallway with the postcards – that houses the registry book, which people sign with their names and dates as they come to visit. Mr. Huber told our drawing class earlier this semester during our first visit to the gallery that this registry book not only shows how many people come to the gallery, but it proves the importance of keeping the gallery up and running. The more names that are accounted for as people visit the gallery, the more the gallery is funded and considered as worthwhile. During the Holiday Art Sale, however, I did a quick head count of around thirty-five to forty people in the room, but only three people had taken the time to sign the registry. Four, including myself.

What could be done to show the community of Commerce the importance of having a gallery? Having a gallery opens up a new world of culture to Commerce, embracing visual literacy, but if no one knows of its existence, then its purpose is lost. One solution is the reason I was set up to talk with Mr. Odom in the first place; he has been working to convince the university to sponsor a gallery on the town square of Commerce. There is a space for lease which used to be a martial arts studio that he has been working to accommodate for the gallery-to-be. Mr. Odom has already written and submitted a two-page proposal for the university to take the space, and he has even gotten some committees together in support of his proposal, including professors from the university and business owners on the town square. The owner of the space for lease has even given Mr. Odom permission to hang art in the display windows in order to promote his idea and show the community what art could have to offer them.

We actually met for the interview on the town square, right across from the space for lease, so I got to experience the busy atmosphere that would surround the space, compared to the emptiness of the Art Building. The life that is within the town square could be enough reason on its own to have a gallery there, but there are also other reasons of which Mr. Odom explained with enthusiasm. If there was a gallery in town, people from surrounding areas would have another reason to want to come to Commerce, and as a result, other businesses in town would profit from the extra company. He explains that other businesses need “a reason for people to come to this place that is beyond what [they have] to offer.” This gallery would not only benefit the businesses in town, but the whole community of Commerce. It would provide an outlet of knowledge about visual literacy of which people would not have access to otherwise. “Hey look! That’s one way of being beautiful that you might not have considered yet!” Having a gallery in a more central location in Commerce rather than in the campus of the university could provide better access to visual literacy and could improve the quality of life for community members

However remarkable this new gallery could be, solutions to making the gallery’s existence known on-campus does not have to venture beyond the university. The lack of advertisements, for example, could be a simpler fix. Instead of limiting the audience of the gallery to people who are in the Art Building – primarily art students and professors – the postcards and flyers on that lone narrow table could be posted throughout the whole campus, allowing students of any major knowledge of the goings-on in the gallery. I mean, we are artists! Bulletin boards could look more interesting as long as the advertisements about the gallery capture people’s attention. E-mails could reach out to students as well as faculty and staff. Stand-up posters could expand from just the anticipated Holiday Art Sale to any upcoming exhibition. People could be interested in this culture of people, and in visual literacy, if they are presented with the chance to embrace it.

After researching the gallery in the Art Building of Texas A&M University-Commerce, I have come to conclude that members of the community – both students and non-students –overlook it because they either have no idea when the events and exhibitions take place or that the gallery even exists in the first place. Advertisements seem to only have the purpose of serving the interests of people who are most likely to attend the events – art majors – instead of attracting people from the whole community of Commerce, allowing them to share in the cultural life it has to offer. This lack of communication from the gallery to the community is the real reason behind its inactivity.