Today's students need visual literacy skills and knowledge that enable them to encode concepts as well as decode the meaning of society's images, ideas, and media of the past as well as the increasingly complex visual world. In this article, the author discusses how art teachers can help students understand the increasingly visual/material culture, comprehend the prevalence of extreme "makeovers" of bodies and living spaces, and discern repetitive images of all kinds--whether they are shocking prison atrocities, twisted political ads, or the increasing plethora of colorful artifacts designed for continual material acquisition. Art teachers are responsible for teaching art as a qualitative language that, like poetry, explores how, in contrast to what something is, through creative expression and critical response. This process is both informative and transformative. Through the informative process of critical response, students perceive, interpret, and finally judge ideas connected to visual imagery and structures, past and present. Through the transformative process of creative expression, students generate artistic ideas that they elaborate, refine and finally shape into meaningful visual imagery and structures. (Contains 1 figure.)