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• Students will create their own visual & written representations of the meaning of home as an idea shaped by personal and social forces. • Students will discuss the meaning of home with family and friends • Students will write and illustrate a creative work about what makes a home based on the responses they collect from friends and family.
Art:21 Web Site • Home Visits – Pepón Osorio interview & clip • Seoul Home/L.A. Home – Do-Ho Suh interview & clip • Pocket Property – Andrea Zittel interview & clip • 1995 Travel Trailer Units – Andrea Zittel art work • Many Mansions – Kerry James Marshall interview & clip • Our Town – Kerry James Marshall art work Additional Web Sites • http://www.bridgestohome.org/poems.html Bridges to Home, Seven Poems about Home and Travel • http://www.poets.org The Academy of American Poets, Searchable database Classroom Materials • writing journals
• What are different meanings the word home can have? • How do we describe home, personally, culturally, socially? • What are the different roles a home can serve? • What are the different objects, emotions, or individuals that create the feeling of home? • What are the things that are necessary in a home and to a home?
An Individual Response To initiate the project begin a discussion about the meaning of home. After talking as a group, ask students to write a list of answers responding to the question, “What is a home to you?” Ask them to make a poem from the list. For example, home is…my mother’s arms, the place I go to rest, the soft bounce of my pillow as I crash into bed. (Time: One 45 minute session) Group Sharing Have students share several of their individual responses. Are there ideas that more than one or many students have identified? Are there ideas that are unique? From these responses, start to create categories of the different ways students think about home. Categories might include physical places, states of mind, objects, people, sensory perceptions, etc. Do-Ho Suh and Seoul Home/L.A. Home As he travels between Korea and the United States, the artist Do-Ho Suh moves between different ideas of home, both his childhood memories of the house where he grew up as well as the new home he has made in New York City. Have students view the Season Two Art:21 video segment on Suh and read his transcript that describes the process of making Seoul Home/L.A. Home. Ask students to consider what the word home means to Suh. Ask students to write a second poem that describes both the physical qualities and the emotive or ephemeral qualities of the work Seoul Home/L.A. Home. Have students compare and contrast their original poem and the poem about Seoul Home/L.A. Home. (Time: Two to three 45 minute sessions) Pepón Osorio and Home Visits Have students view the segment on Pepón Osorio and read the transcript on the Web site as he describes the project Home Visits and Tina’s House. Ask students how Osorio represents home in the sculptures he creates. Why does he exhibit the artwork in people’s homes instead of in a gallery or museum, or even an outdoor public space? How is viewing art in a home setting different from viewing art in a museum or gallery? What does this suggest about how Osorio thinks about homes as he turns them into places for looking at art? Ask students to consider if they were making a ‘memory house’ that narrated a particular story about a house, whether it is their own or someone else's, what objects, people, and memories they would include? Ask them to make a concept map or web that shows all of the elements they would include and how they are related to one another. (Time: One 45 minute session) Andrea Zittel and Pocket Property Zittel’s 44-ton floating Pocket Property off the coast of Denmark contrasts the extremes of a creative escape with the isolation that occurs when a person is removed from society. Zittel says, “Things that you think are liberating can actually become extremely confining or restrictive and oppressive, and things that you think are controlling can actually give you a greater sense of security and liberation in the end.” Have students watch the Zittel segment and read her interview, Pocket Property. In what ways does Zittel’s living environment reflect her philosophies? Ask students to provide some examples of the kinds of “things” Zittel refers to in her quote above and if they agree or disagree with her statement. How does this relate to Zittel’s work and her idea of home? Ask students to write about all of the confining or restrictive elements of the place they live as well as the liberating aspects. Are these ever the same things? (Time: Half a 45 minute session) Kerry James Marshall Paints Our Town In the paintings Our Town and the Souvenir Series, Kerry James Marshall presents domestic exteriors and interiors in a stylized vision of American life and identity. Have students view the Kerry James Marshall segment and view the images Our Town and Souvenir IV. Ask students to consider how these domestic images present home in similar or distinct ways from the others artists they have seen. How do the ideas in a work of art change if they are rendered in painting versus sculpture? How are Marshall’s images both idyllic and ironic? Picturesque and disjointed? How would students describe Marshall's thoughts about the word home? (Time: Half a 45 minute session) Follow-Up Questions Having seen and heard many interpretations of home, how have these representations changed the way students understand or think about the idea of home? Ask students to refine their individual poem about what home means to them into a philosophy that they could describe in a few words. Ask whether students think their friends and family would have a similar point of view or opinion. How can they find out? Have students create a placard that presents their philosophy and illustrates it accordingly. Reference traditional kitchen decorations or if possible, have students merge their own concept map for a memory house with that of a family member or friend to tell a shared story about home. (Time: One 45 minute session) Interviews and Presentations Have students conduct informal interviews with friends and family about their definitions, ideas and memories about home. Have students take note based on their responses and do one or more of the following activities: • Create a 'memory house' based on an anecdote told by a family or friend. • Create an installation or diorama of a house as described by one or several of the people interviewed. Write a monologue for a tour guide to take visitors through the home. • Make a visual poem out of all the responses they collect and use the text to create an image or illustration of a home. • Create an oral history by recording, transcribing, and editing the interviews. (Time: Three 45 minute sessions to long-term project)
• Have students articulated specific ideas and elements that define the word home to them? • Have students articulated an understanding of the range of interpretations of the idea of home? • Have students solicited descriptions of home from friends and family through informal interviews? • Have students creatively presented their findings? Find out how this lesson plan correlates to your state's education standards! On PBS TeacherSource do a search for "Art in the 21st Century" and click on the Standards Match icon.
Consider what it means to be “at home.” Can one live in a specific place and not feel at home in it? What does it mean to have lost one’s home? Is it true that you can’t go home again? Consider the meaning and importance of a homeland and how it affects individuals’ identities. Discuss struggles over homeland, such as the current conflict between Israel and Palestine; the clash between Hindus and Muslims in India after independence, and the subsequent creation of Pakistan; or the westward expansion of the United States versus the land claims of Native American tribes. This lesson can also be extended to form a longer unit plan with other lessons such as: Migrating Ideas Model Homes Landscape and Place Ode to a View Did you use this lesson or generate your own activities based on ideas inspired by the lesson? Submit student art work, new lesson plans, and your comments to Art:21 and have them posted on the site. Help the Online Lesson Library grow!
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