Artistic Reflection

Understanding the components and role of an Art Portfolio.

What is an
Art Portfolio?

Art portfolios are a person's collection of works that represents a reflection of their skills and knowledge over time. In addition, these reflection and achievements are organized that expresses those sentiments with spectators. Identifying the artistic growth and knowing how to communicate it is what makes up a good portfolio. Another point in art portfolios is how it should be goal oriented. Knowing the purpose or trajectory of what the artist is striving for in the future helps transform the portfolio towards a more active approach in practicing the arts. This process can be found in education or learning systems. One example of this is called the Art Propel, a project funded by Rockefeller Foundation, focused on three processes: Production, Perception, and Reflection.

Art Propel Model

Production - Going through the process of creating and making art.

Perception - Being aware of the context which could be: cultural, self and peers, or visual.

Reflection - Understanding their own process and efforts to get to this point. With that knowledge, what sort of changes can they do now.

Originality

This is the one topic that is regularly recommended when applying for school and other upper programs. Despite that, it is difficult to understand if they define originality to be inventive and one of a kind or more of a transformative approach to art. Although the inventive approach is easy to imagine at first, the vast majority of art would not be applicable to that standard. An art piece is connected to what the artist's has experienced or learned throughout their life, they would have relied on many conventions within the medium in order to communicate what they desire.

Originality is based off of previous work that has been transformed to be indistinguishable from the other.

Versatility

Having variety within your art portfolio is great to express your journey branching out and exploring the medium. However, keeping in mind of portfolios being goal oriented, exploring too much could distract you from focusing on the main core of what you want to accomplish. Especially in work-related portfolios, depending on the medium, having a strong foundation on a few things can help show employers the skills you wanted to share. Expressing variety can be shown through their use of the Elements of Art and Principles of Design.

A balance of variety can communicate being open-minded. Stretch that too much and it could express being lost.

Artistic Journey

Artistic journey is based on identifying changes within art over a period of time. This can be shown through long-term or short-term depending on the methods artists use to organize their collection. Long-term can be expressed chronologically, but reflection needs to be an ongoing process of analyzing. Short-term on the other hand can be sharing the process of creating a work like showing the progress from sketch to final draft. Projects organized to be shown in a business lens tend to rely on short-term which gives them a quick look at the artist's knowledge and thought process.

Sharing the process and reflecting on it can lead to a better understanding of habits and work ethics that could be changed and improved towards the desire goal in art.

Survey

A small survey from 2023 creative media students was conducted to see the current climate on art portfolios for people pursuing an ACM career. The adjacent graph show how the majority of students have not created their portfolio, but for those who have made one, most of their reasons were aligned with work purposes rather than personal. This shows a glimpse of how the foundations around art portfolios is established to revolve with work and employment. The amount of students who have not made one can also show how the pathways available does not enforce having a dedicated catalogue. In the eyes of upcoming artists, creating a portfolio is to communicate their strengths with employers.

This graph was to see if these components were important to students when creating an art portfolio. The majority of students answered that showcasing Art fundamentals, Visual Appeal, and Versatility played a crucial role in what makes a strong portfolio. Despite that, a huge chunk of the polls selected all of the prompts when answering this question. This does show a glimpse how difficult it can be creating a solution that could tackle everyone's need and expectations on an art portfolio. Depending on the career or aspect that they wanted to record, the tone of the portfolio would never be the same for each artist.

Conclusion

The direction of what an art portfolio takes is based on what the owner wants from the collection. Portfolios being integral to an artist's preparation for external situations when entering the career is a result of the current climate. Online resources that has art portfolios as its' topic revolves around what aspects students could do to improve their collection to be appealing towards employers. This emphasis on external factors undermines what portfolios can do for the self. Being a resource that also shows the artist's full scope of their creative process and current direction within the medium has missing potential as a tool for improvement and changes for upcoming works.

Source:

Gardner, Howard. “Zero-Based Arts Education: An Introduction to ARTS PROPEL.” Studies in Art Education, vol. 30, no. 2, 1989, pp. 71–83. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1320774. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.