Project MUSE®: Visual Arts Research - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Visual Arts Research.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 36, (Summer 2010) through current issueLatest Articles: Visual Arts ResearchTWOProject MUSE®Visual Arts Research2151-80090736-0770Latest articles in Visual Arts Research. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Embracing the Radical Potential of Art + Design Education
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975303
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We continue our exploration of radical publications by embracing the artful writing that pushes the boundaries of publication with the Winter 2025 special issue of Visual Arts Research. This issue (second of a two-part special issue) proceeds with unapologetic scholarship from authors who re-imagine ways that dialogue and storytelling frame the nature of their research. It is through their teaching, creating, and publishing that avant-garde narrative contributions to art + design education research have emerged.A significant innovation in this special issue is the visual elements that authors include in their articles. In traditional scholarly publishing, text is prioritized to reveal the research and findings.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallEmbracing the Radical Potential of Art + Design Education2025-11-21text/htmlen-USEmbracing the Radical Potential of Art + Design Education2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®70762026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Visually Reflective and Radically Meta: A Wordless Narrative About Doing Wordless Narrative Research
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975304
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Despite being a little over 30 years old, McCloud’s (1993) seminal textbook, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, is still considered one of the best resources for learning about comics (Hatfield, 2022). Unlike other publications on comics, McCloud’s book uses the form of the graphic novel to provide a comprehensive master class on comics, constituting as “a reflexive, self-analyzing work of art about its own form” (Hatfield, 2022, p. 268). It is likely that describing comics through its own expressive form allowed McCloud to understand the tacit and nuanced dimensions of reading, making, and thinking about comics—insights that may have eluded the author had he decided to write about comics instead. As an
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallVisually Reflective and Radically Meta: A Wordless Narrative About Doing Wordless Narrative Research2025-11-21text/htmlen-USVisually Reflective and Radically Meta: A Wordless Narrative About Doing Wordless Narrative Research2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®231762026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Undoing Through Doing: Researching Radical Creative Practice
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975305
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This article provides an outline of my PhD research project that explored the question of how artists can be understood separately from the artwork that they produce, and how we might reframe the ways that we value the artist by studying the “doing” of their artistic process and the ways that they order their lives to enable artistic practice. This doing necessitates an “undoing” or withdrawal from standard industrial measurements of value and productivity. Stemming from my own experience as an artist and art worker, the research used objects that I made during an artist residency at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden as elicitation devices in two open studio discussions (artist-led research interviews)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallUndoing Through Doing: Researching Radical Creative Practice2025-11-21text/htmlen-USUndoing Through Doing: Researching Radical Creative Practice2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®793982026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21A Walking Poem
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975306
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In this creative response, a shared path finds form in the emergence of a Walking Poem, embracing and practicing radical softness inspired by Lora Mathis’s dedication and contributions to feminist and queer art communities. Through walking and noticing, we orient ourselves toward themes of vulnerability, emotional expression, and the personal as political. On this path, we seek to carve and hold a place for feelings and emotional experiences to be validated and shared openly in pursuit of (re)constructing our teacher identities as artist-educators.A pedagogy of noticing is in conversation with practices and theories of conceptual art and artful pedagogy. The practice of a pedagogy of noticing is enduring and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallA Walking Poem2025-11-21text/htmlen-USA Walking Poem2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®76622026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21From the Outside/In, a Fangirl Grown Up
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975307
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Amongst her extensive writing on queer filmmaking, B. Ruby Rich employed the term cathexis (1999), defined as “the investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cathexis). She applied this word to illustrate the stakes for queer moviegoing audiences beyond that of a “typical” spectator. Going to queer movies for (most) queer people does not produce just catharsis, but cathexis. From my introduction to Rich as a graduate student, cathexis has been the term—the linguistic expression that best describes how I have engaged with movies about queer women for the past 25 years.However, I did not knowingly embrace the concept of cathexis from the [queer]
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallFrom the Outside/In, a Fangirl Grown Up2025-11-21text/htmlen-USFrom the Outside/In, a Fangirl Grown Up2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®549292026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Emotional Critique: A New Approach to Art Critique
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975308
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Based on my art education and my art teaching experiences in the United States, art critique is an essential aspect of art classes, used to evaluate students’ art works and to measure their art-making progress. As Armstrong and Doren (2023) mention, it sometimes “takes place at the end of an art and design assignment, marking the completion of a project” (p. 1). Traditional critique is often a series of moments when art students show their work and openly accept any constructive comments, suggestions, and thoughts from professors and peers. However, some critiques are not helpful because art students may receive vague information that depends on participants’ subjective attitudes and perceptions of the art works.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallEmotional Critique: A New Approach to Art Critique2025-11-21text/htmlen-USEmotional Critique: A New Approach to Art Critique2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®417802026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21“Distilling” in Art Education: Bridging American Southwest Landscapes Through “Qi” in Asian Art Praxis
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975309
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Through exploring the intersections of place, art, and pedagogy, I hope to challenge and expand traditional ways of understanding landscape art, subjectivity, and East Asian philosophy. This approach invites a wider range of interpretations and possibilities, fostering a more thoughtful engagement with how different environments and cultural philosophies shape both the creation and perception of art. It encourages a reconsideration of established views and opens space for more inclusive perspectives, especially those that are often overlooked in artistic discourse. By shifting focus from predominantly Eurocentric views to a broader, more global perspective, my workshop project seeks to recognize and appreciate
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmall“Distilling” in Art Education: Bridging American Southwest Landscapes Through “Qi” in Asian Art Praxis2025-11-21text/htmlen-US“Distilling” in Art Education: Bridging American Southwest Landscapes Through “Qi” in Asian Art Praxis2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®557462026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21The Embodied Practice for a Visual Plática as Testimonio
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975310
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A transcript of the images can be found here: https://files.press.uillinois.edu/journals/supplemental/var/51.2/sotomayor/As Latinas/Chicanas experiencing academia within different geographical locations, we creatively engage in framing and theorizing our lived experiences as extensions of pláticas. Pláticas1 are one-on-one conversations or group talks as a way to gather knowledge or share about lived experiences. In this context, text as an organic conversation between two friends, mujeres,2 is a shared space for our experiences through a creative act. Pláticas are an engagement in conversations where organically interests emerge and become reservoirs for knowledge building (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016).In our
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallThe Embodied Practice for a Visual Plática as Testimonio2025-11-21text/htmlen-USThe Embodied Practice for a Visual Plática as Testimonio2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®226242026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Bringing a Metaphor Into Focus: Repairing Cancer’s Narrative Wreckage Through Artistic Practice
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975311
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In June 2021, I was riding an academic high. After years of personal challenges and program setbacks during my doctoral studies, things had finally turned around. I’d conducted most of my research and attended a dissertation writing retreat—a huge chunk was now drafted. I’d landed a competitive university fellowship and an even more competitive external scholarship, which meant I’d be able to solely focus on academic work. I even applied to an 8-week long artist residency in France. Everything was planned: It was going to be “my easy year.”Then, because I was the right age, I scheduled my first mammogram. A routine screening to establish a baseline image. Just one more thing to do before settling into my final year
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallBringing a Metaphor Into Focus: Repairing Cancer’s Narrative Wreckage Through Artistic Practice2025-11-21text/htmlen-USBringing a Metaphor Into Focus: Repairing Cancer’s Narrative Wreckage Through Artistic Practice2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®865652026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Sketchy Confessions
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975312
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A transcript of this article can be found here: https://files.press.uillinois.edu/journals/supplemental/var/51.2/maken_ali/
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallSketchy Confessions2025-11-21text/htmlen-USSketchy Confessions2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®54062026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Word & Image: Radical Collaboration in the Book Arts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975314
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This student book (Figure 1) is a response to a brief assignment that imagines the book form as a catalogue of anything from the concrete to the intangible. This example illustrates the myriad of possible avenues of interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the Book Arts. As the title suggests, the book’s collection of seemingly random shapes (placed in stacked horizontal lines) creates “the medium is the message” commentary about written language. It elegantly uses “text as imagery” and diminishes the distance between the common understanding of “word” and “image.” This student book launches our discussion of how we came to develop and teach the class Word & Image.Verdel Grohman, Shapes.In 1994, I took my first
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallWord & Image: Radical Collaboration in the Book Arts2025-11-21text/htmlen-USWord & Image: Radical Collaboration in the Book Arts2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®289592026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Possibilities for an Anti-Authoritarian Syllabus
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975315
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In its best form, teaching is a relational act of sharing ideas and collective knowledge building. Who is in my class and who I am within that class shifts and changes what is emphasized and what we collectively learn. I relish these relationships within my teaching and the ways that my students (and my students’ students) and I get to know each other through “genuine, interhuman encounters” (Aspelin, 2021, p. 595). I love posing questions and getting new answers that shift conversations and produce new ideas; the inherent mess of creation of lessons as I put together new and old; and the possibilities that spill out from living in a complex world. I enjoy how the semester(s) and years shift students as they grow
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallPossibilities for an Anti-Authoritarian Syllabus2025-11-21text/htmlen-USPossibilities for an Anti-Authoritarian Syllabus2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®595972026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Re-Imagining Dissertation as Contemporary Art
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975317
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When committees lack experience with arts-based research, securing approval for a creative dissertation can be challenging. Currere as Contemporary Art: Creative Research Tools for Teacher Self-Reflection (D’Adamo, 2024) offers a working example (Sweller & Cooper, 1985) of dissertation as contemporary art, contributing to the growing discourse on creative research. Through an auto-ethnographic inquiry into how my schooling history informs my teaching, I integrated currere (Pinar, 1975; Pinar & Grumet, 1997) with arts-practice as research (Sullivan, 2010), conceptual art permissions (Lucero, 2023), studio dispositions (Hetland, 2013), and creative strategies (Gude, 2004; Marshall & D’Adamo, 2011) to cultivate a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallRe-Imagining Dissertation as Contemporary Art2025-11-21text/htmlen-USRe-Imagining Dissertation as Contemporary Art2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®328552026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Artist’s Book as Autoethnography: Bringing Memories to the Surface
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975320
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The work discussed in this paper is the artist’s book Summer of 95. When I began working on this project nearly a decade ago, I had no intention of conducting an autoethnographic inquiry; in fact, I had no idea what autoethnography was or entailed. My initial motivation stemmed purely from a desire to create, without any inkling that the book would eventually become a medium for revisiting my most challenging childhood memories. However, the process of working on this book allowed me to confront my emotions, access deeply painful, repressed memories from my childhood, and represent them—memories I had never shared or discussed with anyone due to the pain and societal taboos surrounding mental illness.The process of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallArtist’s Book as Autoethnography: Bringing Memories to the Surface2025-11-21text/htmlen-USArtist’s Book as Autoethnography: Bringing Memories to the Surface2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®152822026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21Thinking-(queerly)-with the Crocus: An a-r-tographic Inquiry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975321
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A flash of purple beckons to me as I walk down the Seawall: crocus buds on a bright and early February morning in Vancouver. Bending down to take a photo on my 35mm point-and-shoot camera, I find another clump of crocuses a few steps ahead. Suddenly, I am following little crowds of crocuses like a breadcrumb trail off the walking path, careful not to step on any wayward buds, until I, with my urban eyes accustomed to a gray urban landscape, am led to a lush field of purple. Enamored by this small meadow of crocuses, I almost ignore the large undulating structure that cordons it off—the Vancouver AIDS Memorial, reminding me of why I am here: to walk with public art.Sunset Beach, just a couple blocks off Davie
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallThinking-(queerly)-with the Crocus: An a-r-tographic Inquiry2025-11-21text/htmlen-USThinking-(queerly)-with the Crocus: An a-r-tographic Inquiry2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®690402026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21We Play Art: A Radical Art-Teaching Resource
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975323
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The authors propose this radical art teaching resource as a testament to the multiple ways children intuitively invent characters and games while playing through their own aesthetic perspectives. By using the term “radical,” the authors refer to playing art as a sense of freedom that removes boundaries that are ordinarily imposed on art making in educational contexts, such as a focus on developmental stages and desired outcomes predetermined by the authoritative adult. Inspiration is taken from the children in the authors’ lives, honoring their imaginative ways of playful art making and recognizing them as full collaborators in designing the learning experiences. Creating art curricula highlighting playing art is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallWe Play Art: A Radical Art-Teaching Resource2025-11-21text/htmlen-USWe Play Art: A Radical Art-Teaching Resource2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®299492026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21To Gather Is a Gift: Reimagining Cohort
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975325
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To Gather Is a Gift: Reimagining Cohort is a collaborative multimedia vessel exploring how we can re-imagine and authentically embody1 an academic cohort. The three of us are art education graduate students at a Southwestern university: two are PhD students and one is an MA student. We each come from different educational, racial, and cultural backgrounds and have formed relationships beyond the confines of the professional and the academic institution. We believe that it was the relationships characterized by generosity and transparency that have held us against the pressures of academia and Western society, which are fueled by competition, isolation, and over-productivity. Sarah Scott Shields and students of a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481/image/coversmallTo Gather Is a Gift: Reimagining Cohort2025-11-21text/htmlen-USTo Gather Is a Gift: Reimagining Cohort2025-11-212025TWOProject MUSE®126512026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-21