Storytelling Through Art Making: An International Student’s Button Analogy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 57
  In Roundtable Session: Making Meaning Together: Unraveling the Research Value of Thinking Through Art Making

Abstract

Trying to translate the experience of being an international student and educator into words, I felt that the task could best be done by combining the visual art work along with the writing. Thus my paper is accompanied by a triptych, a three-piece painting, which tells the story through ceramic buttons, string and spray paint; my visual story as I go through a transfer from one country to another, from one culture to another, from one language to another, from one program to another, from one home to another - being sewn from one landscape to another just like a button is taken from one garment onto another but maintaining its identity, form, and function as a button. The mentioned analogy came to mind, took a more fortified shape, and made better sense to me after realising that some a/r/tographers, such as Norman (in Springgay, Irwin, Leggo, and Gouzouasis, 2008, p. 33), have indeed dealt with the mundane. For instance, the aforementioned a/r/tographer looked into the element of noise in her household with three children and the daily rituals which shape up to be significantly mundane (Norman, 2008, p. 42).

Author

• Sarah Meli, The University of British Columbia