• The Art of Comprehension by Trevor Bryan (affiliate link)
• The Access Lenses Chart
• The Creative Brain on Netflix
• Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix
• Sunday Sketches by Christoph Niemann / Abstract Sunday on Instagram
• Lake George from Trevor’s art story
• Trevor’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Website, Blog

Here is the 5th grade student’s response to Lake George that was mentioned in the episode:

Cindy Ingram:

Hello and welcome to the Art Class Curator podcast. I am Cindy Ingram, your host and the founder of Art Class Curator and the Curated Connections Library. We’re here to talk about teaching art with purpose and inspiration, from the daily delights of creativity to the messy mishaps that come with being a teacher. Whether you’re driving home from school or cleaning up your classroom for the 15th time today, take a second, take deep breath, relax those shoulders, and let’s get started.

Today on the podcast, I am welcoming Trevor Bryan, and he has written the book The Art of Comprehension. All of the links to his book as well as resources that we talk about on today’s episode will be on our show notes at artclasscurator.com/41. And I really enjoyed this interview with Trevor. We have a lot in common in terms of our mission of art connection in this world, so I hope you enjoy this interview, and let’s welcome Trevor.

I am so excited to welcome Trevor Bryan to the Art Class Curator podcast. Welcome, Trevor.

Trevor Bryan:

Thank you.

Cindy Ingram:

So I am excited to talk to you today because we have very similar interests when it comes to how you teach art, and you have written a book called The Art of Comprehension, which we’re going to talk about today. But before we get started, can you tell us a little bit more about you and your background and experiences, as well as how The Art of Comprehension came to be?

Trevor Bryan:

Sure. So I entered teaching about a little bit over 20 years ago and I actually at the time thought I was going to be a classroom teacher. And my goal kind of going into the classroom was that I was going to be delivering the arts into the general education classroom. And so I actually did all of my student teaching to become a regular ed teacher and I quickly realized that there’s no way I was going to be able to bring the arts into the classroom. There was just too much stuff for a classroom teacher to do. And I also realized I just missed the art space. I missed the art room. And so I went back to become an art teacher and once I … I still had the goal of trying to bring the academics into, or bring art into the academics.

Trevor Bryan:

And so that was kind of my mission going into education and I quickly realized once I became an art teacher and I was trying to bring art into the academics that I didn’t have a good way of talking about art, and that became a real barrier for me, especially with novice viewers, with my students and with other colleagues. And so my next mission really became trying to figure out a good way of talking about art with people who don’t really have an arts background. And so eventually those two worlds collided around 10 years ago when I started really doing the work around The Art of Comprehension where I was able to bring the arts into the academic arena. But I was also really able to figure out how to talk about art with what I think of as novice viewers.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, I love that, because that’s one of the things that I come across as well is when I tell people what I do, they don’t really understand because to them, art class is one way. Art class is, you’re making these things and you hang them up and that’s it. So I have to come up with other ways to describe it, so that’s interesting.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so that was really the start. And so around 2011-ish is really when I really … I was doing some stuff around 2006 around this work, but it really started to gain some traction where I felt like I was onto something around 2012, right around there. And so for a few years, we just kind of, I was able to work with some ELA teachers and we just kind of tried stuff out and slowly started to figure out an approach that made a lot of sense for them academically, from a traditional academic standpoint, and also as making sense in terms of having rich, meaningful conversations around artworks.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), that’s awesome. So you’re teaching in the classroom now as an art teacher?

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, I’m a K-5 teacher, art teacher.

Cindy Ingram:

Okay. And so you work pretty closely with the classroom teachers on your campus?

Trevor Bryan:

I used to. The teachers that I developed the program with have left the building, and so anytime … So I’m a little bit outside of the regular curriculum. It’s a different approach. There’s some people enjoy having me in their classroom and like when you’re trying to get any idea off the ground. There’s other people that don’t understand what you’re doing or perhaps don’t want to take the time to think about it or are overwhelmed with what they feel like they have to do. And so I work closely with some teachers. The teachers that I developed this with, I was in their classrooms constantly and it was a really, really wonderful, creative experience. They’re out of the buildings now. They’re in different districts or just in different buildings, and I miss that terribly.

Cindy Ingram:

Well, yeah. Well, being an art teacher can be so isolating, so it’s nice that you had that opportunity to work with some other teachers.

Trevor Bryan:

Yep, yeah.

Cindy Ingram:

So before we dig into your methodology, we definitely want to hear a lot more about that, but let’s talk about the bigger picture, and why do you think looking at art with students is so important, and why is discussing art so important?

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so I really believe that the arts basically exist in a lot of ways to help us understand our human experience. And so I think all the arts do that. I think whether we’re reading stories which are works of art, whether we’re watching a play, whether we’re watching a movie, a TV show, looking at what would be thought of as fine art, the arts are really there to hep us comprehend our human existence, right? They help us to think about what it’s like to be human, they help us to think about past experiences we’ve had or past experiences that other people have had, and it helps us to kind of think about what’s possible for our futures, what we can do, what types of things we can do.

Trevor Bryan:

And so I think engaging with the arts, regardless of the art form, is a really valuable part of developing who you are and who you could become and where you’ve been and where other people have been and getting a greater understanding of, right, the general human experience, what we’ve been doing on this earth for thousands of years. And I think art is a direct pathway into that.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that’s exactly what I think too, that it’s like, I believe in the human spirit, what connects us, and you can’t have anything … I mean, you can’t connect any better way than experiencing what someone else has made. It’s a-

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, yeah, and the arts, I mean, the arts generally foster joy and connection, even when and especially when times or topics are difficult. People turns to the arts. We turn to song, we turn to ceremony, we turn to symbolism, giving flowers, right, dressing in black. These are all human expressions, and the way that we communicate, the way that we express our humanness is going to be through an art form. And visual arts is obviously one of the ways that we can communicate.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), I love that. So you’ve said that art should be thought of as academic. What does that mean to you and why do you think that is a distinction that should be made?

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so I think traditionally, the arts have sort of been thought of outside the academic realm, and I think … So number one, I think, right, we put reading and writing in the academic realm, and a good writer is an artist, and books are works of art, and writing is an art form. And so, right there, there’s not a lot of reason to separate the two. I think reading and writing should be thought of as part of arts education. The other thing though is that when we ask why do we learn to read? What’s it for? It’s not so that we can pass a test. It’s not so we can just read a half hour before we go to bed. It’s not to increase your reading level. It’s really to talk about what we were just kind of saying. It’s to understand our human experience, right?

Trevor Bryan:

The arts and learning to read helps us to create a better life for ourself. It helps us to grow our understanding of others, of ourselves, of what’s possible. And so when we think of it that way, I think the arts play into that, right? The arts help us to understand what it means to be human, they help us to grow, they help us to think, they help us to communicate. If someone is starting a business, they have to communicate effectively and the way that they’re going to communicate effectively is through some of the art forms. Most likely it’s going to be a combination of art forms. But, right, we can … So we tend not to think about art as communication. A lot of times, I think it’s thought of as self-expression, and those aren’t necessarily … I don’t think that’s that accurate. I think for some artists that is, but I think a lot of it, it’s communication. And if we think about it in terms of comprehension and communication, then there’s no reason to say that’s not an academic pursuit.

Trevor Bryan:

The other thing, the other example that I always give is this idea that in English class, you can read a play and get tested on a play and that is seen as an academic endeavor, but if the drama club, it takes three months to do a close read of that play to figure out who the characters are and the symbolism in the play and how they’re going to create the sets and how they’re going to play the parts and present the play, that’s somehow non-academic. That just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Cindy Ingram:

I have never thought about that in terms of why they read books, and that’s considered an academic, but then … No, I have never ever thought of it that way. That’s fascinating.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, and I mean, I was just talking to somebody who, they were kind of putting down … They didn’t want their smarter kids to be pulled out for an art enrichment. And, but if your kid, if the same kid went to a museum, the teacher wouldn’t say, “Oh, that’s such a waste of time,” right? There’s a weird thing that people do. I don’t know, it’s in their heads, how they perceive things that drawing in school is non-academic, not that important, extracurricular, whatever you want, but going to a museum or going to a Broadway play is seen as enriching, right? And-

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, wow, that’s-

Trevor Bryan:

There’s a weird … I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s so odd, right?

Cindy Ingram:

It is weird, because right now, in my kids’ life, my daughter is in 5th grade, and she is in an intermediate school for the first time. And next year, she is going to get to choose her electives. And so all the moms this year have been like, well, this kid wants to take this, and this kid wants to take that. But all the ones where the kids want to take art, the parents are not happy about it. And they’re talking to me, knowing what my job is. It’s what I do for a living. I’m like, why? I really need to know, why? And it’s, oh, well band teaches them discipline, and choir teaches them this and that. But I was like, does art not do those things too? They just see it as a blow-off-

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, it’s a strange thing, right? And if you just put it in terms of communication, I mean, I think for a lot of people, right, most people aren’t going to grow up to be singers, and most people aren’t going to grow up to be actors. But having a good understanding of how those art forms are used to communicate effectively is really valuable information. If you’re trying to put a business plan together and you need a spokesperson and you need a logo and you need the interior design of whatever you’re proposing, having an understanding of how these things work in order to communicate is really helpful for you to kind of get the vision that you want, the story that you’re going to tell, to get it to be put into place for other people to understand it.

Trevor Bryan:

And if you don’t have an understanding, you’re going to be relying on other people to tell that story. And I think there’s a lot of room then for that story to be told incorrectly or not as effectively. And so just having that general knowledge and really being able to think about it, not necessarily be able to do it per se, but to be able to think about it I think is very valuable.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and I like what you said too about how art is viewed as self-expression but that you don’t really think that that’s true in most cases. I think you’re exactly right about that. I like thinking about it in terms of communication. And I’m wondering if the self-expression thing is sort of an elitist thing that came out of-

Trevor Bryan:

I think so. I mean, I think the artists that … So I know a decent amount of working artists, professional artists, and they’re not, they’re trying out ideas. They’re not necessarily waking up and saying, “Oh, I feel depressed this morning. I’d better make a picture of my depression,” right? It’s not … It’s kind of a caricature of what an artist does. I think they try to make things that are interesting, they try to explore different ideas. Some of them might be more tangible ideas, right? Sunlight hitting a beach or whatever it is, or the peacefulness of when sunlight hits a beach, that might be, right? And other artists are going to work more abstractly where they’re just kind of playing around with these things.

Trevor Bryan:

But I think it’s just a lot of work. I think creativity is just creative work, or what we think of as creativity, is really a byproduct of just doing lots of work and putting stuff out there and kind of seeing what resonates, both with you as an artist, but also with your audience. So I think the self expression is a little bit overstated. Not that it can’t be that, but I think when you’re writing a novel and it takes you a year to write it, there’s a lot of editing and revision and you have to get the thing to work. It’s not all about just every day, I’m going to just sit down at my keyboard and express myself.

Cindy Ingram:

You’re going to feel into these words today.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, right? It doesn’t really work that way. It’s just kind of, you’re exploring this idea and hopefully it resonates with other people and hopefully you are engaged with it enough to hold your interest, because in order to be a professional creator, you really have to be dedicated to making stuff.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And that too reminds me, I just watched … Have you ever seen that documentary on Netflix about creativity?

Trevor Bryan:

Abstract? Is it the Netflix series Abstract?

Cindy Ingram:

No, I think it’s just called Creativity. But it was a guy who was writing a … No, he was a scientist studying creativity, and he was talking about how what creativity is is being exposed to a lot of different ideas from a lot of different places and putting them together in new ways. So as you were talking, I started to think about that.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, Steve Jobs has a quote that I, when I present, “Creativity is just connecting things,” right? And so it’s just taking two things that generally don’t go together and putting them together to create something new. I don’t think it has to be totally new in order to be creative, but just two different things that are put together. One of the best artists when I present that I show is the artist Christoph Niemann who was in the Abstract, the Netflix series Abstract, and he’s an illustrator. I think he has the most New York … not New York Times, The New Yorker covers. He’s had the most The New Yorker covers, but he has a great little Instagram account called Abstract Sunday where he just takes ordinary objects and turn them into something.

Trevor Bryan:

And it can take him hours to figure these things out, but he’ll turn an avocado into a baseball mitt or a sock into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And it’s just taking this one thing and connecting it to something else to create an image, and it’s a really good example of what creativity is and how it works. It takes him a long time. It doesn’t … They’re very simple, but it can take him a long time to come up with a connection that’s interesting.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, I love that. I’m going to look that up. I wrote it down. You said Christoph Niemann?

Trevor Bryan:

Christoph Niemann, yep. The Netflix, the Abstract … the first season is a, that episode … And he also does some great talks, but he’s a great person to listen to, because he’s someone who is a very successful creator, but he’s also very good at talking about what creativity is and how he thinks about it.

Cindy Ingram:

Cool. Well, I’ll put that link too in the show notes, so if anybody-

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, awesome.

Cindy Ingram:

I think this will be artclasscurator.com/41, episode 41. Okay, so now that we’ve kind of covered the basics on why you think this is important, or why we both think this is important, let’s dive into your methodology, into The Art of Comprehension. Can you give us a brief overview of what that is?

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so, I mean, so as we’ve kind of said, The Art of Comprehension is really an approach to get people talking and thinking about artworks, whether they’re visual pieces or stories or plays. And that’s really all that it is, although it’s sort of … My book came out through a publishing company that normally does ELA work, English language arts work, and it’s kind of billed as a way of teaching comprehension, which largely is associated with reading comprehension. It’s really, we use comprehension skills constantly to make sense of everything around us. Your listeners, you right now are using comprehension skills to comprehend what I’m saying.

Trevor Bryan:

And so although it’s kind of geared towards the ELA community a little bit, it’s really a way of getting people to talk about art, and again, books are works of art. So when we’re talking about books, when we’re talking about … When we’re reading great writers, we’re reading the works of artists. And so the approach in The Art of Comprehension can be applied to a book, it can be applied to a video, it can be applied to an artwork, it can be applied to a play, a TV show, anything that’s an art form, especially if it has any kind of narrative in it, it’s going to be very easily applied.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), okay. So most of our listeners probably are art teachers, and so can you give us a little more comprehensive definition of what comprehension is? I think we’re all kind of bright enough to get a good idea, but from an English language arts teacher standpoint, what is comprehension?

Trevor Bryan:

So there’s basically, there’s comprehension strategies, which is what most people think in the ELA community, and I’m an art teacher, so I’m … but I did write a book, so I’m talking-

Cindy Ingram:

Straddling two-

Trevor Bryan:

Talking out of turn, I’m sort of not talking out of turn, right? But there’s comprehension strategies, and when I was developing The Art of Comprehension, I was really looking at the comprehension strategies that are used to teach kids to read well as a way of getting into art works with the theory that they’re both works of art, and so, and we use comprehension skills all the time so that we could generate better conversations around artworks for somebody who doesn’t have the art history background that’s often needed in order to talk about art work the way it’s been done traditionally, or for the last 100 years or so, 200 years, whatever it is. And so comprehension is finding key details, is one comprehension skill. Synthesizing information, which we just talked about, taking the key details and assigning meaning to them, thinking about symbols, making connections, which is a really, for me, that became a really important one. Again, it ties back to this idea of creativity so that when we actually are getting people to make connections to artwork in books, we’re actually teaching them to be more creative.

Trevor Bryan:

And so that’s kind of how I think about comprehension a little bit is the comprehension skills that they use in ELA, but making meaning of something, and I really believe in that idea of making connections, because I think when viewers or readers make a connection, especially what I call a strong link connection, that’s where it becomes personally relevant to them. And so when I have people looking at artwork, I want that artwork, whether they like the artwork or not, I want them to be able to make a connection because I think then that artwork has a chance of being personally relevant to them.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that’s actually my number one goal in my job, and I just did a podcast episode about it a few weeks ago where I decided to stop using the term art appreciation and started to call it art connection instead, because I think appreciation is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is actually possible.

Trevor Bryan:

Right, and so the ability to get people to make a connection is really what I’m after. And that’s kind of the whole thing, and it sounds kind of simple, and it sounds very non-academic, but if you want people to kind of take ownership of a work of art, if you want it to impact their life in some way, then they have to make a connection to it. And if they don’t, if you don’t set them up to make a connection, a lot of people aren’t going to make connections, especially if the artwork is not immediately something that resonates with them.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So what would you say is … How do you set them up to make a connection?

Trevor Bryan:

So in the book, there’s six steps, and they sort of happened organically over the years when I was leading these conversations in classrooms. I was, to kind of lead them to that point, I realized that I was asking a lot of the same questions, not necessarily exactly the same way every time, but there was certain things that we did to kind of lead them. And so the way that I basically do that is trying to get them to hone in on the mood, or to hone in on the mood, right? The way that we connect as human beings is through moods. So you can tell if someone walks in the room whether they’re sad, excited, or angry. When someone you love is sad, you feel sad. When someone you love is excited, you feel excited, right? The way that we connect as human beings is through how we feel. It’s the emotional connection. It’s the reaction to what’s happening around us. When our community goes through a tragic event, we all go through the tragic event, and that’s how we connect.

Trevor Bryan:

And so really getting kids to focus on the moods both in stories from an ELA perspective and the moods of the artwork and thinking about how those moods are crafted is really the first step of getting them to understand or get them to connect to that. And so once we identify a mood and we can look at how the mood was crafted, which helps them then turn around and craft their own artwork and think about their own work that they’re doing, we also get into symbolism and theme very quickly. And so ways of connecting to artworks are through the mood, through the symbolism, through the theme, and we can then connect those to our own lives, to instances in our own lives where we might’ve felt the same way, we have a symbol of our own that represents frustration or sadness or hope or support, or that theme resonates with our life somehow.

Trevor Bryan:

And so once you set people up into that position, then it’s very easy to make a connection. And then the artwork becomes representative of something other than the brushstrokes or just, his use of color was different than someone else’s use of color. But we can assign more meaning to that artwork. And it doesn’t always mean that they’re going to love it, but at least they’re going to be able to say … They will be able to make a connection to it, and then they, once they make a connection, they can decide if they like the way that the artist represented this theme or created this mood, or perhaps they enjoy a different representation of that mood. Because there’s only so many moods we experience as humans.

Trevor Bryan:

And so, just like songs, right? There’s a joke, it’s like, there’s falling in love songs and there’s breakup songs, right? Art’s kind of the same way. There’s hopeful paintings and kind of sad paintings and maybe some paintings have moods in between. But it’s really getting them to recognize the moods is a really easy way in to talking about any form of art, and that’s what artwork is about, I think.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, agreed. So I was … My podcast listeners are probably really tired of me using this example, because it just blew my mind. Last month, I was listening to Brene Brown, and she was talking about emotional literacy, because her whole new path is getting this into schools and teaching people the right emotions. And she said in her research that most people on average know only three emotions, sad, mad, and happy. But that to be an emotionally literate person, you have to know 30 different emotions. I’m wondering, have you seen that play out at all in your lessons about mood, and have you seen the emotional literacy, the vocabulary surrounding mood get more advanced in your students as they’ve done this more?

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so, I mean, generally … so the way that I … I use a lot of picture books, because I teach elementary school. But even when I work with adults or when I work with high school kids, I use picture books because they’re just very accessible. And so we, by using things that are kind of made for the age group that I’m working with, by using things that are accessible, I set them up for success. And in the beginning, we basically just kind of separate things as happy or sad, right? And there’s a lot of very simple pictures, and we can differentiate them based on happy or sad.

Trevor Bryan:

But then, right, as we go along this and they become more confident and they can identify that it’s a negative image, right, sad can become lonely, right, or bored, or upset. And so we can expand that vocabulary and we can expand that thinking, and then we can talk about, okay, what word do you think is the exact word for this, especially if you’re putting it into a context of a narrative where you have a little bit more information about why the character is feeling the way that they’re feeling. And so yeah, we definitely see a broader conversation around the emotions, and that’s why this also works pretty well for the SEL, social emotional learning, the SEL learning, because you’re having conversations. And then when you ask them to make a connection, when have you felt this way? When have you seen someone else that way, right? So a way of developing empathy. That’s where you’re using that artwork as a jumping off point to talk about our own lives.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, I think that’s so very important. I’m just thinking about my own evolution as a person. I wish I would have had this social learning stuff when I was a child. I was a very good student, but otherwise, I was a bit of a mess, so.

Trevor Bryan:

We all kind of are.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that’s true. That is very true. So I think that’s really awesome. So what are some … Do you have any tools or can you point to some specific resources or tools from your book or from somewhere else that you can point teachers to if they want to get engrossed in this?

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so the main tool of The Art of Comprehension is called the access lenses, and it was illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds, who most of your listeners probably know. I do a lot … In the book, I use The Dot and Ish as examples, and Peter’s been super supportive of the work. He actually, I was lucky enough for him to do my cover for me. He stuck Ramon from Ish on the cover, which I was thrilled about. But he illustrated the access lenses, and what the access lenses are are basically the way that humans show emotion. And so, you’re going to see that when someone acts. You’re going to see them do these things. You’re going to see them in illustrations, you’re going to see them in paintings, you’re going to see them when they’re dancing, you’re going to see these access lenses show up when you read a book. If someone looks sad, the way that that’s presented or written about is going to basically be the same way.

Trevor Bryan:

And so the access lenses is really the heart of AoC. There’s a … You can get the access lenses for free through the Stenhouse web site, which is my publisher. So if you did a search of Trevor Bryan The Art of Comprehension under resources, there’s a way to print out the access lenses for free.

Cindy Ingram:

We’ll put that in the show notes too.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, that’s really the … And you can put an image in the show notes too. But that’s really the heart of AoC, and what it is, it’s a way for kids to identify key details, and then those key details are going to synthesize into the mood that’s their text evidence, which they need for testing, but it’s also the information that you’re synthesizing into meaning.

Cindy Ingram:

Can you share with us two or three of examples of the access lenses?

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so the top three on that are the easiest. It’s facial expressions, body language, and action or color. And it’s, even in writing, you’re going to see the color lens. So one of the things when I was kind of researching my book, I would just sort of read the beginning of books and then they would start off all rainy, from the beginning of chapters, and then in the end, they would be all sunny, right? And if you go to a Broadway play, during the sad scenes it’s rainy and you’ll hear thunder in the background. And then the big number, the lights are on, the birds are chirping, right? It happens all the time. So color is used constantly in storytelling. Even the villains are in dark colors and the superheroes are in bright colors. It’s a very simple way, but it happens all the time because we only have so many ways of showing emotion, right? And that’s how we tell stories.

Trevor Bryan:

And so body language and action, whether a character is flopping on the bed or sitting in the corner or standing still or running to the front door or sprinting to the front door. So their facial expression, eyebrows when you look at illustrations are a great place to look to figure out emotions of characters, and you can track their eyebrow across most picture books when the mood changes. And so there’s sounds and silence. Even in the book Ish is a great example, where Peter uses the sound, the access lens a lot where when Leon makes fun of Ramon. Ramon couldn’t even answer, right? That silence, that shows how Ramon’s feeling. And then when he bursts into Marisol’s room, right, he was about to yell but fell silent. That, again, shows his reaction to that event. That’s the emotion, right, that shows his mood, that he was surprised. And so there are just little things that kids can look for.

Trevor Bryan:

And kids, it’s great, because preschool kids can look for these things, kindergarten kids. And then it not only helps them to pull out key details from pictures and from books that they’re reading, but these are the types of things that they need to put into their pictures and their stories when they’re crafting, or even if they’re making a little film, right? Thinking about how they’re going to act this part, how they’re going to show it. These are the types of things that actors do, that writers do, and that illustrators and painters do.

Cindy Ingram:

I love that. While you were talking, I had this intense need to go watch Hamilton again with your access lenses handout, because I kept thinking of examples. I’m a Hamilton junkie, but.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I can’t wait for the-

Cindy Ingram:

Have you seen it?

Trevor Bryan:

No, I haven’t seen the musical. But that’s also … So Hamilton’s such a good example. Just to go back a little bit of, right, the idea of, so when Lin-Manuel wrote that, right, he was obsessed with rap. And when he was a kid and obsessed with rap, rap wasn’t even considered music, right? So I’m sure there was tons of people that were saying, “That is a waste of time. Why are you wasting your time with that nonsense,” right? And then when it became music, it was low brow music, right? And now it’s on Broadway, right? He used hip hop and rap to, right, write a historical musical based on, right, our history. And who would make the argument that that was non-academic work, that he-

Cindy Ingram:

Exactly. Well, I am of the mind that Hamilton is the greatest work of art ever made.

Trevor Bryan:

It very well could be, right?

Cindy Ingram:

If you think about it. You absolutely should go see it. You live in New Jersey. You have no excuse not to. But there’s a scene when Aaron Burr at the end, he gets madder and madder as you go, as the musical goes on, and then he has this number near the end where he gets so, so mad. And you’ve got the facial expressions, but then there’s this swirling red around him. I mean, it’s got the color, everything you were saying, and the silence. It’s all in there.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, it’s all there, and you’re going to see these things over and over again. And you can understand them as a five year-old or however old you are. All stories kind of work the same way. And then the other thing that when I work with ELA teachers is mood structures. Every story’s going to have a change of mood. And so tracking that is really what the story is about. The story is about an event happens and the character responds to it, and why are they responding to that that way? That’s what the story is. It’s not the event, it’s how the character respond, and the way that they’re going to respond is going to be somehow emotionally. They’re either going to be angry about it, sad about it, scared about it, nervous, right, worried, excited, whatever it is. That’s the story.

Trevor Bryan:

And so when we look at art and we look at these very simple pictures and get kids to identify that, they’re practicing, right, their comprehension skills in order to make meaning, and the more accustomed they get to using these lenses and applying them to different forms of text, not only are they going to be better at comprehending stories, they’re going to be better at crafting stories.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, better at everything. I mean, just the whole our world today being so visually focused-

Trevor Bryan:

Absolutely, yeah.

Cindy Ingram:

So they absolutely need these skills in the world.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, and one of the things that’s nice about The Art of Comprehension is that it can be applied so widely to different mediums. And so there’s no reason why when kids are watching TV shows, even, right, the really dumb ones that kids like to watch, right, that aren’t certainly fine art or beautifully crafted, they’re generally solidly told stories, because if they weren’t good stories, no one would watch them at all. So they’re crafted in stories, but kids should be using comprehension skills all the time, because there’s a story there and they have to make meaning of it. And the more they can identify how this was crafted, again, not only is that going to help the comprehension, right, but it’s also going to help them to craft their own stories and share their voices.

Cindy Ingram:

Love it. So before I ask you my next question, I do need to nerd out. That is so cool that Peter Reynolds did your book.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, it’s awesome.

Cindy Ingram:

How did that happen? Did you just ask him I guess?

Trevor Bryan:

Sort of. We met on Twitter, so for everyone who kind of hems and haws about going on social media, I sent he and his brother a tweet, I don’t know, around 2014 or whatever, and they both got back to me right away. And so we just always sort of had this little connection that he appreciated the work that I was doing. I’m not really sure how it happened. And then we kind of went back and forth and we were sort of … He appreciated the work around visual texts that I was doing and trying to bring it to the academic arena, and we kind of talked about trying to collaborate somehow. We had no idea what that would look like, and it never worked out. And so I think, my book got postponed thankfully, and Peter had written The Art of Comprehension in his very distinct handwriting at one point. And so I asked him if I could maybe put it in my book somehow, and he said, “Yeah, sure.” And then he said, “What else does your cover need?”

[crosstalk 00:38:49]

Trevor Bryan:

And so I was texting the people I was developing this with and I was like, “I think Peter just offered to do the cover,” but I was so afraid that I misinterpreted the sentence, because he’s super busy, especially the last few years. He’s been unbelievably busy. I mean, I think he had four books last year or something, three or four books. He has a couple others coming out. But yeah, it was a thrill. I mean, it was really a thrill to just kind of have the opportunity to collaborate with him on some level. And then I asked him if he would do the access lenses, because that was the other really important visual, and he said he would do that too. And so that was super fun, super grateful, super surreal all at the same time. Because I hadn’t even met him at at that point in person. We had met at the NAEA convention up in, was it in Boston the … Where was it?

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, this last one was in Boston.

Trevor Bryan:

Was it Boston? Yeah, so I met him for the first time up in Boston after he did all the work for me, so.

Cindy Ingram:

Oh, that’s cool.

Trevor Bryan:

But yeah, he’s been great. He’s a great guy. Obviously his books are wonderful. I’ve been using The Dot for years. I still, when I work with groups and kids, I still get people saying different things about how they’re thinking about those images. But yeah, so he’s been great to me, so I really appreciate his support, and it’s been super fun.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that is super cool.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah.

Cindy Ingram:

Well, and I love about what you just said too, I love how you can teach the same artwork hundreds of times with classrooms of students and you always hear something you never heard before, and-

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, I’ve literally talked about the book The Dot, I mean, probably almost 200 times, going through the same images with the same groups, and I almost every time, not every time, but almost every time, I would say more often than not, someone says something that I just, “Oh, that’s a really interesting way to think about it,” or, “That’s a great word to use.” And it always happens. And I mean, I think it’s great, and I think it’s … I think there’s something really valuable to revisiting, especially for me, revisiting these works that do mean so much to me and are so interesting.

Cindy Ingram:

I think that’s a testament, too, to a lot of teachers who are kind of new to talking about it with their students, are afraid that they’re going to get crickets, that the students aren’t going to have anything to say or they’re going to be bored. I have never found hat to be true.

Trevor Bryan:

No. I think the other thing by revisiting artworks, I think for your kids who are a little bit less confident, by giving them another experience with it, they already kind of know some of the thinking. And so you’re slowly trying to get them to feel a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more confident. So by having that repeated experience, it gives them something to maybe hang on to or maybe they can even raise their hands and share, because they sort of know what to expect around this work of art, and I think that’s a really important aspect of revisiting artworks.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, definitely. And then it just becomes a part of who they are and it becomes-

Trevor Bryan:

Absolutely, yep.

Cindy Ingram:

It’s like a friend they carry with them.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, and I mean, the other thing for the work that I do, the other thing is that when they really can take ownership of a very simple image, and that’s one of the reasons why I started using Peter’s work so much, when they can own that simple image, then they can apply that to more complex images. So the more confident they are, the more grounded that image is, and his images you can use almost all the access lenses. So they become much more confident using the lenses, they have a very clear mental model of what that looks like, of that that sounds like, of how they can apply these different lenses to a handful of pictures that they can recall very easily. And so then that makes it much easier for them to apply to more complicated works or just new works.

Cindy Ingram:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), awesome. So I know you said you’ve used a lot of picture books for this process. What are your favorite artworks to use outside of picture books?

Trevor Bryan:

So the artworks that I use the most, but I do use picture books most of the time, and I think they’re in a lot of elementary school art rooms, they’re totally underutilized, because they really are fantastic artists. And they’re making artworks for kids on their level, so they’re very accessible to the kids. But I do some work with the Princeton University Art Museum, so a lot of the artworks that I use are from that collection, their permanent collection. And I’m fortunate enough to be able to take my 5th graders to that museum every year. And so they have wonderful shows. It’s a great museum. It’s a very small museum, but I use a lot of their collection. Winslow Homer, they have some Monets, they have some early American paintings that I use a lot. There’s a great Kensett painting that I use all the time. And then, but we used Ad Reinhardt, we used lots of different sculptures, whatever … You can really apply it to almost any artwork, because every artwork, whether intended or not, is going to be able to be assigned a mood.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah. Well, and that’s … I went to your NEA session in Boston. I was sitting on the floor. I was going to talk to you afterwards, but there was a lot of people who also wanted to talk to you afterwards, and so I was like, oh okay, I’ll just, I’ll leave. So I went to your session, and that’s one of the things I went away with was noticing that the artwork that you chose wouldn’t have been ones that I would have naturally chosen for mood, but that you were still able to find the mood in them.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, I think … So when I think about choosing artwork, it’s interesting that you say that you wouldn’t have found them for mood, because I usually try and pick very accessible things. So that’s one of the things that I, when I look at artworks, I want them to have a clear mood. And maybe it’s just a clear mood that I have and then I can kind of lead people, I can guide people there through the process. But I really do try and pick, especially when I’m introducing this and working with new people, I try and pick artworks that are highly accessible so that there will be a high level of success. Or things that maybe the mood’s not as clear, but once we identify mood, it’s something that everyone’s going to be able to relate to. So again, to try and get them to have a really rich, strong personal connection to it.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, because we all, we did find the mood. You had us talk to our neighbor, and yeah, we did find the mood, but it wasn’t ones that I immediately know exactly what it was. But I think that was what made it interesting is we got to really think about it and talk about it.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, so at the art museum when I do stuff there, we sometimes, we pair really odd artworks together, but we pair them through moods. So a lot of times, they’re either the same mood or they’re kind of opposite moods. But a lot of times, they’re ones that you wouldn’t necessarily immediately pair together. And it’s really wonderful. The kids do a wonderful job, and then we have them compare those to characters in books or to the moments in their own lives or places. We get them to make connections that way. And that’s, I mean, it’s really fun to try and find artworks that maybe, like the Ad Reinhardt paintings, which are all black, right? Getting kids to think about that both in terms of a negative mood, which they automatically gravitate to because it’s black, so it’s depressing, sad.

Trevor Bryan:

But then also thinking about, when is that darkness a good thing, or when do we feel comfortable in the darkness? And so we’ve talked about kids laying in bed before you go to sleep or playing hide and go seek, or just being outside in the summer at night where it’s dark and you hear just these noises. And so the kids were really starting to think about that in terms of going into your inner world, right, and that quietness that we, when we can find that quietness inside ourselves. So it was a really interesting conversation around an Ad Reinhardt painting for a 10 year-old kid to have, an 11 year-old kid.

Cindy Ingram:

That’s really awesome. I love that.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah.

Cindy Ingram:

Excellent. Okay, so I think it’s about time to wrap up. But before we do, one, how can teachers connect with you online?

Trevor Bryan:

Sure. Through Twitter, trevorabryan is my handle. Through the Stenhouse website. If you do Trevor Bryan The Art of Comprehension Stenhouse. 4 O’Clock Faculty is the blog that I write with my good friend Rich Czyz, who wrote The Four O’Clock Faculty. Some of you might know that book. That came out through the Dave Burgess Company. And I’m on Facebook. There’s an Art of Comprehension Facebook page. I’m on Facebook. There’s a YouTube channel that has some videos of me talking about implementing The Art of Comprehension and applying it to different pictures and some different texts. I think that’s Trevor Bryan, I think is my YouTube channel. I think those are basically-

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, let’s get-

Trevor Bryan:

I’m on Instagram, trevorabryan.

Cindy Ingram:

You’re all over the place. Okay, we’ll have a link to those on the show notes.

Trevor Bryan:

Sure.

Cindy Ingram:

In addition, so the last question that I ask all of my guests is, which artwork changed your life?

Trevor Bryan:

So the artwork that I would have to say, I don’t know if it changed my life in the traditional sense of, right, me walking around the corner and seeing it and then I was so floored that I fell in love with art. But there’s a painting at the Princeton Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum I guess, it’s a John Kensett painting. It’s called Lake George, and it’s a painting that has lived with me for about 20 years. And when I was painting, I used to paint plein air a lot, and it was a painting that I loved when I was kind of trying to paint plein air paintings all the time. And then, that painting became really paramount for me when I was doing The Art of Comprehension.

Trevor Bryan:

And so I had an opportunity to present at Princeton using this, and when I went to go meet with the person who is interested in me coming, she wanted to talk to me a little bit about what I was doing. And so we talked about that painting as a symbol of hope, but also as a symbol of struggle, and I think that conversation around that painting is, she kind of locked into it and got it. And then that painting was also the first painting where a 10 year-old kid wrote a response to, and I was like, that is the way that I want kids talking about art, and that’s the experience I want to give kids. That’s the joy that I want to share around the artworks. And so that painting has stuck with me. There’s also that painting … So that boy in 5th grade wrote the response, and I can share that with you so you can post it on the show notes if you want.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, I would love that.

Trevor Bryan:

One of the goals around The Art of Comprehension was that I believe that people carried around poems and scripture and songs with them and that they would in times of need or struggle, they would recall these. And I’m getting a little choked up here.

Cindy Ingram:

It’s my favorite when people get choked up talking about this kind of stuff.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, right? So I wanted people to carry around paintings with them, and I didn’t think that a lot of people who were not art students carried around paintings with them. And so that painting, I had a friend whose mother-in-law got sick. And he was not an art student. He was one of the guys that I worked with a lot, and when he was asked how he felt in front of a painting, he would just say, “I feel stupid. I don’t know what I’m looking at,” right? That was his response. And when he found out that his mother-in-law got sick, he left me a voicemail and just said, “Trev, I went right to the Kensett painting. I was trying to find the hope.” So that painting is probably the painting that’s sort of been with me the longest. It’s a nice old friend to have around, and it’s just, it’s been, it’s probably for me, it’s that symbol that I can share the joy that the arts have brought to my life with people who maybe haven’t had a way into the arts before, so I’m going to say Lake George from Princeton University.

Cindy Ingram:

I think that definitely qualifies as a painting that’s changed your life.

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, alright, good. Maybe even in the traditional sense now, so.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, yeah. There is no traditional sense when it comes to that question. Every time I’ve asked that question, it’s been a completely different-

Trevor Bryan:

I am sure. I would love to listen to all those responses.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, it’s my favorite thing. So that was a beautiful answer, and it really is just a testament to this work is so important and that we should do it and, yes. So thank you so much for sharing about your experience today and your expertise and your heart, and-

Trevor Bryan:

Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I always love the opportunity to share what I do and try and get art in front of people in a meaningful way. So that’s the mission, so I appreciate that you are supporting the mission in your own way and by having people share their voices. I think it’s wonderful. So thank you.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, awesome. Alright, well, thank you so much.

Trevor Bryan:

Okay, awesome.

Cindy Ingram:

Thank you so much to Trevor Bryan for the amazing interview in today’s episode. And I was super moved by Trevor’s art story, and it is not the first time that someone has teared up when talking about the artwork that changed their life. I want to encourage you to share your artwork that changed your life with us. You can send us a voice memo or a voicemail. The voice memo you can send to support@artclasscurator.com. Or, you can send a voicemail to 202-996-7972. You can leave the voicemail. Make sure you say your name, where you’re from, tell us your art story, and you might hear yourself on a future episode of the Art Class Curator podcast. These stories change lives. These stories impact people in ways that you don’t even know. So please consider telling us which artwork changed your life. Alright, I will see you next time on the Art Class Curator podcast. Bye.

Cindy Ingram:

Thank you so much for listening to the Art Class Curator podcast. Help more art teachers find us by reviewing the podcast and recommending it to a friend. Get more inspiration for teaching art with purpose by subscribing to our newsletter, Your Weekly Art Break. Recent topics include the importance of seeing art in person, famous and should be famous women artists, and 21 days of art from around the world. Subscribe at artclasscurator.com/artbreak to receive six free art appreciation worksheets.

Cindy Ingram:

Today’s art quote is from Salvador Dalí, and he says, “A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.” Thanks so much for listening. Have a wonderful week.

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