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Abstract
This research is an exploration into the nature of caring. It began as an inquiry into art education and what the outcome of art education might be. It is a combination of scholarly writing, narrative storytelling, photographic journaling, student work, and the process and product of fabric arts to tell the story of how the practitioner and middle school aged students begin to develop an arts of living. An arts of living is defined as perceiving the quality and qualities of things, developing practices or habits that help shift ones perspective in order to deepen our understanding of others and encourage empathy. In short, it is a work of a/r/tographic research which tries to open up, trouble, and de/reconstruct the nature of caring in and outside the art classroom.One goal of arts-based educational research (ABER) is to revision the fabrics of our own lives in order to begin to re/imagine others. Works of arts-based educational research explore the spaces between what is real and imagined, experienced and remembered, told and excluded, felt and forgotten. Yet the standard at which we judge a work of ABER is how well it contributes to the quality of education students receive, to make a difference in the lives of students (Eisner, 2008). Specifically, this work attempts to 1) model wholeness-in-process through reflective texts, wherein images and journal entries (as photographs or written reflections) are offered not as illustrations of the text, but rather as a part of a/r/tographic renderings, which guide our construction of meaning; 2) be a record of praxis in art education; 3) transverse the liminal space of pedagogy and curriculum; and 4) invite the reader to linger and trouble the nature of caring by engaging with the text.