Teaching Reflections and Tips from Texas A&M - Tianna Uchacz

Tianna Uchacz served as Postdoctoral Scholar of the Making and Knowing Project 2016-2020, co-instructing M&K courses, developing hands-on activities, and fostering collaborations between diverse scholars, students, and practitioners. Since 2020, Tianna Uchacz is Assistant Professor of Art History at Texas A&M University. She has adapted existing courses to incorporate hands-on work and developed new classes with a dedicated focus on materials and the exploration of artistic proccess. Her notes and reflections are below, including ideas and logistics for scaling up activities and new instructional materials.

Art/Craft: Hands-on Global Histories of Materials, Techniques, and Skilled Making (VIZA 689)

Spring 2023, School of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts, Texas A&M University
Graduate Special Topics Seminar
Dr. Tianna Helena Uchacz, Assistant Professor of Art History

Art/Craft Syllabus

Course description: This course investigates the materials, techniques, and meanings of craft through hands-on engagement with historical making practices. Classes combine seminar-style discussion of primary sources and contemporary scholarship with site visits and laboratory exercises in making skills, research skills, and writing skills. The course encourages students to consider relationships between making and thinking, nature and artifice, and art/craft and science by exploring issues related to textual, oral, and tacit knowledge, the significance of skill, and global histories of materials, tools, and practice. In Spring 2023, the Art/Craft seminar will focus on fibers and textiles as case-study materials.

Course Development (Tianna Uchacz)

My aim was to bring the “aha-moments” of M&K’s hands-on history of science into an art history seminar. Each class would feature a 40-min discussion of assigned reading followed by a 1-hr hands-on lab. The first decision was to organize the course around a case-study material, and I chose fibers and textiles for the first iteration of this course. I applied for departmental funding to commission workshops from experts in the local Brazos Spinners and Weavers Guild to demo table and floor loom weaving (Kay McWilliams), and to instruct in backstrap loom weaving (Toni Wilson), drop-spindle spinning in wool (Debbie Gau) and cotton (Laurie Schlitter), and wet and needle felting (Helen Dewolf).

I sought college-level funding to bring M&K’s Naomi Rosenkranz to Texas A&M to co-lead workshops on dyeing with cochineal and painting with bioluminescent bacteria (discussed below on this page) in collaboration with a colleague in microbiology, Dr. Donna Janes. Support for this activity, both financial from my own department and in-kind support (lab-space and equipment access) from the Department of Biology, was made possible by opening the activity to faculty and students from across A&M. I then tapped into a variety of A&M’s on-campus resources, arranging visits to the University Art Collections to examine Central American textiles, to the S.M. Tracy Herbarium to examine samples of vegetal dyestuffs and fibers, to the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives to examine early modern herbals and books on sericulture, to the Wright Gallery to visit an exhibition on tignon head wraps by artist Chelsea Antoinette, and to the Libraries Preservation Lab, where my co-instructor Jeanne Goodman led students in activities on rag paper making and mending.

Using M&K’s skill-building protocols, my students grew verdigris and then followed medieval Persian recipes to dye paper with verdigris. Drawing on a student reconstruction and essay from M&K’s Spring 2017 “Craft and Science” class on silkworm cultivation, I sourced silkworm eggs from silkwormshop.com, and students grew silkworms so that we could process cocoons to unravel and reel silk. My colleague Caleb Kicklighter and his student Ryan Applebee gave presentations on approaches to yarn and weave patterns in digital animation. Dr. Sophie Pitman gave excellent suggestions for the reading list and directed me to HELLO! LOOM, where I sourced small frame looms for student excercises. Backstrap looms were sourced from Kakaw Designs.

In sum: A hands-on seminar such as this takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort to coordinate finding funds, expert sourcing, materials sourcing, logistics, and communication. Although I led the discussion of the readings and oversaw the students’ work and evaluation, the lab work was led almost entirely by collaborators. I had limited knowledge of fibers and textiles beforehand, but in organizing and leading this course, I learned as much if not more than the students did. It was an efficient way to deep-dive into materials-based hands-on learning for instructors and students. I have every intention to run future versions of this course that focus on other case-study materials, such as metal, wood, and earth.

Global Art History Survey II (Renaissance to Modern) (ARTS 150)

Texas A&M University
Dr. Tianna Helena Uchacz, Assistant Professor of Art History

Course description: A large lecture survey of architecture, painting, sculpture and the minor arts around the world from the 14th century to the end of the 20th century. ARTS 150 counts toward a Core Curriculum Creative Arts requirement and toward Intercultural Diversity course requirements.

Honors Section: Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2024

In these semesters, students enrolled in the Honors section of Uchacz’s ARTS 150 (2–7 students per semester) were invited to complete hands-on activities in the history of artisanal making alongside the regular ARTS 150 coursework (lectures, textbook readings). The honors program encourages high-impact practices that deepen student engagement with course themes and material. Accordingly, Uchacz’s students participated in at least three of the following activities, which built on several M&K skill-building activities:

Scaling Up: Full Class Hands-on Art History, Spring 2024

With support from a Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Award, I tested the scalability of M&K’s skill-building activities in making lake pigments and making and testing paints with a class of 60 students in the Renaissance-to-Modern art history survey (75 min class time, Tue & Thu). I divided the class into 2 groups of 30 students, sending half to visit an on-campus art exhibition for an analysis assignment and the other half to the lab.

  • Lab 1: Making Lake Pigments
    • Canvas page for the day’s activities
    • 15 stations of students working in pairs across 5 different pigment recipes (cochineal, cochineal reversed, madder, weld, logwood)
    • limiting factor: need for 15 hot plates as well as table space and electrical capacity
    • limiting factor: 75 min can only cover the pigment making, not its rinsing and eventual removal of the filters for drying. Understand that this activity involves additional work for instructors
    • tip: assign students to pairs ahead of class and try to pair a sciences student with an arts student so that at least one person per pair is familiar with lab equipment, lab safety, etc.
    • tip: I used a kettle and two 1.75 L caraffes to pre-boil water in order to reduce activity time spent waiting for water to heat
    • tip: I used stackable cooling racks for baking to help the pigments dry
  • Lab 2: Making and Testing Paint
    • Canvas page for the day’s activities
    • 5 stations (tables) of 6 students, where each student has their own glass plate and muller. Each station works with one of five pigments made in the previous lab (cochineal, cochineal reversed, madder, weld, logwood), first mulling it in either egg white or egg yolk, and second in either walnut oil or linseed oil. I laid out each station-table according to these templates: first egg media, and then oil media.
    • limiting factor: need for 30 glass plates and 30 glass mullers as well as table space for this equipment
    • limiting factor: 75 min was barely enough for the seven general stages of this lab: 1) separating eggs and extracting the yolk from the sac, 2) mulling pigment with egg white/yolk, 3) walking around and filling out all 10 sample squares on their card for egg media, 4) washing equipment, 5) mulling pigment with walnut/linseed oil, 6) walking around and filling out all 10 sample squares on their card for oil media, 7) washing up.
    • tip: have students prepare their sample cards ahead of time. Here is the template I gave them.
    • tip: leave enough time for students to go around the stations to fill in samples of all colors in all media on their cards, but do hurry them along, as they can lose time here.
    • tip: have students take photos of their sample card when they finish, and have ziptop bags on hand into which students can (carefully) place their finished and still-wet sample cards to take home.
    • tip: use cheap paintbrushes (the aim is to create a sample card not a masterpiece), and start with egg media so that the paint brushes can be washed and used again for oil media. Dispose of the paintbrushes after using them with the oil paints.

After each lab, I assigned reflection assignments that asked them to consider contextual information, their experiences in the lab, and the relevance of their experiences for their understanding of art history:

  • Pigment-Making Lab Reflection Assignment [DOCX] [PDF]
  • Pigment-Making Lab Reflection Assignment Background Document [DOCX] [PDF]
  • Paint-Making Lab Reflection Assignment [DOCX] [PDF]

The results of the reflection assignments were encouraging: the students came to appreciate the material qualities, appearances, and behaviors of various paint media. They gained a better sense of the skill and labor involved in painting, and they had excellent and insightful follow-up questions after the assignment. Moreover, their course evaluations routinely mentioned how much they enjoyed the activity, not only for what they learned but for the opportunity it gave them to get to know their classmates in what is otherwise a sizeable lecture course.