Pretty Pictures, Deeper Meanings: Youth Art Education and Transformative Encounters with Expression

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 7:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Affect, Embodiment, and Art in Education

Abstract

This article explores a transformative moment in a middle school art workshop where a student, Elizabeth, redefined her understanding of art. Engaging with the work of Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star, Elizabeth shifted from seeing art as “pretty pictures” to recognizing its deeper cultural, historical, and personal meanings. Her reflection—“it changed me”—marks an onto-epistemological rupture, where art becomes a relational, critical practice. Grounded in feminist and posthuman theory, this arts-based study highlights how adolescent women’s encounters with counter-hegemonic artists foster identity exploration and critical consciousness. Elizabeth’s moment reveals the pedagogical potential of visual culture to unsettle inherited assumptions and cultivate new ways of seeing, feeling, and becoming.

Author

• Jennifer Jervis, California State University East Bay