Wipe that whiteboard

Reflecting on the talented child who could wipe an entire whiteboard clean behind his teacher’s back – I recalled the below stop motion animation I came across in my 2D animation course last winter semester. Its simultaneous simplicity and complexity is intriguing. It also reminded me of the student work in the latest ArtExpress that was completed in biro. Despite these materials not being traditional ‘fine art’ materials, I hope to encourage my students to see any and all materials as potential artmaking media.

Whiteboard stop motion by Swedish animator kristoferstrom

The debate surrounding what constitutes fine art and the shift in contemporary thinking from the categorisation of art, craft and design to an increasingly interdisciplinary approach is reflected in the rethinking of media accessible for use in artmaking. An artist’s familiarity with a particular medium, and their experimentation with that medium, coupled with the freedom to switch between media to best serve their artistic vision is an approach I think students in schools should be encouraged to follow. This is probably a helpful approach given the often stretched resources in school art rooms and the more students are encouraged to be flexible in their approach to artmaking materials the more beneficial it will be to their Visual Arts experience.