32 democracy & education, vol 17, no - 3 I t’s a public high school classroom in California, 1974. My teacher announces a class visitor, and then the visitor enters the room—a towering satin and velvet vulva, ruby, magenta, and violet, at least seven feet top to bottom, and four feet wide—stun- ning. Te visitor talked with us about…some- thing forgotten. Gone, too, is the subject of the class. But I won’t ever forget how our guest’s face was framed by shiny pink labia that futtered as she gestured. I don’t have a picture, but I don’t need one; you must see her, as I do now. She paced the front of the room, fanning her fabric folds, and cracked my classroom open. Tat encounter catapulted me into a world of art and politics, laced thick with feminism and perfor- mance as protest. Today, as a teacher of art teachers, I value and promote an education through the arts that loves freedom, an education through art connected to powerful social ideas and move- ments, connected to social justice. Tis isn’t a kind of education common today in public schools, but it has a rich lineage. Maxine Greene has written eloquently and ofen about the relationship of the arts to social transformation: “Te arts,” she says, “stimulate the ‘wide-awakeness’ so essential to critical awareness, most particularly when they involve a move to the imaginary—away from the mun- dane” (as cited in Paley, 1995, p. 7). Greene links the power of the arts to the possibility of social change, claiming that, “to call for imaginative capacity is to work for the ability to see things as if they could be otherwise” (as cited in Quinn & Kahne, 2001, p. 28). Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1925/1971) viewed the arts as a stimulus to cognitive development, and claimed that it is precisely because the arts “incite, excite, and irritate” (p. 252) that they can instigate change in people and events. He suggests that in the act of creating or viewing art, a “reply” is initiated—a transformation of the viewer or creator’s initial reaction to the work, and in their understand- ing of limits. For example, a child is presented with a photograph of her neighborhood, and invited to design a new streetscape by flling in empty lots and vacant storefronts with anything she chooses. She flls the spaces with carnival rides, a purple school with a swimming pool, a café with rainbow umbrellas. Her “act of envisioning opens up new possibilities…for further envisioning” (Holloway & LeCompte, 2001, p.395). Her design can continue to incite and excite its maker—it represents change, another way to view the world, and her ability to both dream and act. THERESE QUINN is an associate professor of art education at the School of theArt Institute of Chicago. She writes about social justice, gender and sexual identity and oppression, and the militarization of public schools. Her blog can be found at http://therese-othereye.blogspot.com. Velvet Vulvas at School Te Catalyzing Power of the Arts in Education Terese Quinn