Websites:
www.beckyhendrick.com (art, paintings, installations; active sight)
www.beckyhendrickwriting.com (reviews, essays, books; active sight)
www.beckyhendrickartlife.ipage.com (art and writing and professional overview; inactive)

INTRODUCTION

copyright 2014 by Becky Hendrick

From 1990 until 2013, I taught college classes in Art Appreciation and in "Whole Arts," a holistic approach to creative learning and teaching (designed for education majors) incorporating visual art, dance, music and theater. In 1999 I self-published Getting It: A Guide to Understanding and Appreciating Art; this valuable little text was subsequently published by Houghton-Mifflin Company in 2001. When Houghton-Mifflin gave up its textbook company, I re-acquired the book's copyright and made Getting It available in its original form (though with a different format, unfortunately: glossy and without a spiral binding). It is available as an ebook through Lulu.com; the paperback version, though lovely, is --- to me, and beyond my control --- prohibitively expensive, but the ebook is only a few dollars. Yes, the book need updating since, in the digital world, what qualifies as Art continues to evolve, but I will leave this edition "as is," because it takes care of a large subject in very few pages.
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During the decades of teaching general courses about appreciating art, there were many times that the lectures were best reinforced by hands-on activities and written assignments, and the projects illustrated on this website are among those I used to supplement the lessons. They will eventually appear in a workbook titled "Hands On," illustrated above. Please note that while all the ideas are free for anyone to use, the words and images (reproduced on these pages with written permission of the students) are copyrighted by me.

Since I used these activities with university students who were not art majors, grades for these hands-on assignments were based on successful completion of the goals of the assignments rather than on aesthetics. With students who are new to the vast subject of art and who may not have the requisite background in art elements and design, I emphasized and stressed that these projects are not "Art." No matter what their formal or aesthetic success, hands-on creative activities can benefit students in many ways as they illustrate and reinforce facts, concepts and lessons.

The page titles in FREE IDEAS correspond to those in Getting It, so that readers of the book can enhance their learning and teaching through activities that help make the book's ideas and examples come to life. Page numbers of relevant reading in Getting It are included when activities correspond to the text. Of course any of the following projects and assignments can be incorporated into a number of teaching/learning environments separate from art appreciation and separate from the lectures that inspired these projects. 

Whether you are a person interested in art, a parent interested in developing your child's critical thinking, or a teacher/student of any age and in any liberal art curriculum, the projects on this website will give you ideas and resources that you can adapt to the appropriate level of your student, child, or self. Doing the activities can help each individual, no matter what his/her expertise or area of study, to develop the potential for critical thinking and higher creativity, skills that the future demands of us all.