Have some burning secrets? All middle-school students do. Box them up and burn the secrets. Everyone feels better. But, is this art? Conceptual art isn’t drawing pretty pictures or experimenting with clay. It’s representing ideas and feelings in visual form. And middle-school students have a lot of ideas and feelings. By expressing their personal secrets in words, enclosing them in individualized origami boxes, and eventually burning them, students have an opportunity to personalize a form of art that many of their parents and some of their teachers do not understand.

The “Burning secrets” project was designed collaboratively by Joe Ostraff and myself, both university art professors, middle-school art teacher Elicia Gray, and student-teacher Jethro Gillespie, who actually taught the unit.

Mona Lisa with a mustache? Not particularly realistic, but someone stated an idea and some feelings. For the conceptual artist, the object portrayed is not important. Conceptual art has included an erased drawing and even an exhibit of invisible paintings-an empty room. What is significant to a conceptualist is his or her own thoughts, feelings and mental state-a mindset with which young adolescents can easily relate.

The students developed an understanding of conceptual art by studying examples of modern and contemporary artists who focused on art as concept. Examples included Joseph Kosuth, Jenny Holzer, Marcel Duchamp and Barbara Kruger. A discussion portion of the lesson allowed the students to decide whether or not these examples could really be considered art. Not all students were sure: “If a toilet hanging on the wall can be art, anything is!”

They recorded their reactions (and discomfort) in their journals, choosing three of the works they had seen to describe, analyze and judge. This brief exercise enabled them to become personally involved with the examples, and thus with intents and applications of conceptual art. One can’t merely dismiss with a snicker a piece that one needs to discuss in writing.

The “unimportant” art objects were to be origami boxes, simple to make and seemingly insignificant. The objects, however, did have to represent the individual’s personality, interests, values, feelings- plus anything else that can be represented with paper. Scrapbooking stores, hobby stores, gift-wrap counters, parents’ nostalgic memory boxes-individualized paper can come from a variety of places with a variety of meanings. Skulls, hibiscus, targets, stripes, 1960s florals, acorns, fish and a few completely original designs the students drew themselves-these box-makers were limited only by what they could find or imagine. In addition, the students further expressed their individuality by selecting a wide range of sizes and shapes for their origami boxes.

To get the students involved and enthusiastic, the teacher, Jethro Gillespie, made several sample boxes. He posted a chart with instructions and pictures to follow, so students could work freely and independently. (Illustrated instructions for origami boxes can be found at www.kid-at-art.com/htdoc/lessonl6.htmt). After a short demonstration, the students took on “box expression” with enthusiasm. They made five to 10 boxes each.

Most of the students wouldn’t have thought of boxes or secrets as subjects for artwork, but all admitted they had secrets, and each felt his or her secrets were personal and unique. Perhaps they wouldn’t have believed that when conceptual artist Douglas Huebler asked museum visitors to share in writing an “authentic secret,” he found himself with 1,800 very similar secrets, which he compiled into a very repetitive book.

Unhampered by that particular fact from art history, these middle- school students were excited about turning their secrets into art objects and their school into an informal gallery.

Writing the secrets made the conceptualization deeply personal. Some of the students were a little uneasy at first “I was afraid someone would accidentally grab my box and read the secret inside,” or “It didn’t feel right, since it’s a part of me, and because I’m a loner, it wouldn’t make sense.”

Their fellow classmates quickly reassured them: “When we burn them, we can’t see the secrets.”

Besides, the secrets were anonymous: “If people’s secrets got out, no one would know whose was whose,” and “It would be kind of like knowing someone else’s secret without really knowing it.”

With a good deal of typical middle school giggling, they wrote out their secrets, put them in the boxes, and taped the lids tight With their personalities boxing in their secrets, they were representing themselves as multifaceted young people, which pleased them.

The campus became a gallery of conceptually artistic secrets. Boxes were everywhere. Stairwells, benches and windowsills became scenes for colorful displays. Handrails were intertwined, sidewalks were lined with rows and decorated with formations, trees were covered. Even fellow students became shelving, with one student being entirely buried under an assortment of creative boxes with secrets hidden safely inside. Photogenic outsides were recorded with a digital camera.

Finally it was time to burn the baggage. The school administration had approved a safe enclosure where the conceptual artworks and students’ most dreaded secrets could be cremated and forgotten.

So, is this art? Students expressed their understanding of conceptual art, along with their personal reactions to the experience, in their journals. One student summed up our feelings well: “It felt like we all had one big secret. “

© 2008 YellowBrix, Inc.