accueil site > Paysage et patrimoine > 01. Teaching materials > 04. High School > Language Articulation in a medicinal plant garden
To extrapolate the human field from :
a scientific approach
observation to personal implication by developing an original verbal and artistic vocabulary
OBJECTIVES
To understand the expressionism and symbolism notions
SKILLS
To build up the different stages of a personal research
MATERIALS
Outside : sketch book, camera, camcorder
Inside : all the material answering the objectives chosen by the pupil
REFERENCES
The Medicinal Plant Garden : information given by the medicinal plant garden director, each pupil makes an enrichment file (texts, photos, paintings, artistic creations…) that allows the dialogue during the personal research
PROCEDURES
1) Visit of the medicinal plant garden.Meet the director, professor of biology at the UCL :
historical explanation
scientific and didactic goal
plant description
2) Walk and analyse in the garden :
integration in the environment
architectural structure of space and greenhouse
feel, touch, observe the plants
sketches, photos, video…
3) Inside/workshop :
Realise the immediate link between plant and human :
“I can’t work on a subject without searching myself medicinal plants, seeing what they cure, observing and drawing them. I must also taste them and try to use them to cure myself. I begin with this first idea then I try to draw an artistic work from my experimentation. But more than anything else I must see, smell, taste, search and find them.?
4) Search special objectives :
expressing in volume a symbolic language to represent the body, disease and cure
searching a space associating two languages : figurative and abstract
Figurative : reality of the plant in space, work on the shape
Abstract : plant effect, work on the colour
building up an initiatory route (in relation to the Cuelho’s Alchemist)
deepening the theme
5) Search artistic means suitable to the objectives :
Expressionism : shape deformation, colour amplification : pain
Symbolism : from personal to universal experience
6) Search technical means in relation to the artistic means.
FOLLOW-ON-ACTIVITIES
Display the works, work with space : dialogue with other pupils
See the film “Trees (“Arbres) directed by a botanist
TRANSPOSITION
With the older children : study ad for a parallel medicine or an herbalist.
ASSESSMENT
Realise that :
from a scientific approach, an expressive and personal work can be developed
the artistic vocabulary allows a universal communication.
Anne Dejaifve .Lycée Martin V École d’Application U.C.L Option Art Louvain-la-Neuve Belgique