dots on my desk drawer at work. my desk drawer is probably older than me.
15-0 is a shutout score in volleyball, not sure if that’s what it refers to. scratches. sometimes, art teachers need to just scratch the shit out of something. other times, there isn’t a cutting mat nearby, so you just cut with your craft knife right on the desk.
not sure. but it’s a pretty symbol.
peace.
found images are interesting. drawn. painted. scratched. spray painted. etched. rubbed. scribbled. doodled. burned. carved. sometimes they’re conscious. sometimes sub-conscious. sometimes unconscious. they can be thoughtful or thoughtless. sensible or senseless. on tables. paper. walls. trees. bathroom doors. skin. most always they’re simple doodles that are done to pass the time because the person was bored or perhaps it was a way to help them concentrate. sometimes they’re meant to inform. to offend. to annoy. to inspire. to educate. to assert existence. or to insert resistance. they can be for play during work. they can be art or vandalism. they can be intricate or simple. they can be racist. sexist. whatever-ist. in fact, most of the time, they are.
being a teacher, i see many around the school. being an image maker, i’m constantly aware.
if you see some somewhere, share them with me and i will post them here.
here’s a few that i found in a classroom where i teach…
there’s something about that little triangle that i found interesting. why would somebody draw a triangle? was it a conscious thought?
ready 2 party.
that’s a beautiful eye. the detail and care given to the drawing during class says a lot. but what? i don’t know.
peace.
Owen (Mike Kinsella) – Good Friends, Bad Habits
directed by Joe Wigdahl.
here are the lyrics to the song…
i’ve good friends with bad habits,
what am I to do?
they’re literary romantics,
they fuck like wilde,
and indulge like hemingway.
i’ve good friends with bad habits
and a tendency towards negligence.
just petty thieves and addicts,
that don’t hurt anyone
but they’ll burn anyway.
well sometimes,
like every time
a train passes,
i get jealous of the long nights,
and blurred lights,
the red eyes,
the bar fights.
where in the hell am i?
and how did i get here?
and which way to the nearest train?
well sometimes,
like every time she breathes,
i embrace my routine.
i’ve good friends with bad habits.
what am i to do?
they’re literary romantics,
they’ll fuck like wilde,
and die like hemingway.
i like the song, not just because it’s my friend’s creation, but because it does make me think about my own life as well as my friends and where i’m at in life. anyway, hope you enjoy it.
peace.
despite some crappy weather, this vacation was a pretty good one. it was my second winter break during my second year of teaching. i do have to say that i wasn’t expecting the two feet of snow in flagstaff…nor the rain in the desert outside of phoenix in the superstition mountains…nor the cold temps in vegas…it was just nice to be out of chicago. here are some images from the trip below…and here’s the link to my flickr site
ok. so it was done about 2 weeks ago. but hey, i’m lazy and have been catching up on sleep. ok. not really, i also started teaching summer school.
some things that i learned over the school year…
1. i need to be better about making my lessons less daunting in terms of concepts and meaning-making, or at least making it so that students are able to find what they want to say because they want to say it, and not because i want them to make it. because so much of my personal work is about personal reflection, i think i have a tendency to want my students to achieve the same amount of meaning in their work. i have to remember that most of my students aren’t going to be artists and that i should allow for that, but also be able to give them a valuable art-making experience.
2. i have to stay on top of working with students who have learning disabilities and be able to direct those students in a more welcoming and understanding manner. not that i was mean or anything, but i recognize that many of these students will need a little more direction and support than students who may not need help.
3. students who are lazy and unwilling to participate need to be identified and more efficiently managed. whether its by removing them from the class or if they need to be held more accountable with appropriate consequences, i need to be more conscious and better equipped mentally. i had too many students that i feel i allowed to remain in the class when it was clear that they had no intention of participating appropriately in my class which led to a lot of wasted time and effort for me, as well as to other students who were more deserving of my attention.
4. the zine project needs to be seriously evaluated, if not removed from my curriculum. i really liked the concepts and ideas, and i hope that my students learned how to use Adobe Photoshop, but in the end, i think that it was way too much and too frustrating, both technically and conceptually. i need to either break it down and make it a project that has smaller blocks of time spent on it over the year, or just make it a group project where each student provides a page to the zine.
5. more technique needs to be taught. i need to focus more on the how-to, but also need to be better at the why?
k. here are some photos of some of my students work.
papercutting was a lesson based on the work of Peter Callesen, Jen Stark, and Patrick Gannon. Students were asked to recreate/re-tell a story or myth.
“diaristic” or emotion based drawing using pastels. for this work, we looked at the work Edgar “Heap of Birds” Hachivi.
peace.
i’m currently working with students on a zine project. the topic is based on challenging current assumptions on gender.
i had students read about zines by reading excerpts from Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? and showing them the movie A Hundred Dollars and a T-Shirt. then we had a discussion about various topics on gender stereotypes and how they influence how we see the world and we see ourselves. here’s a list of the questions that i posed to them:
their zine itself is open to any topic on any gender that they want to focus on. I’ve been on the unit for about a week now. so far i think its been pretty good. i hope that having the discussion and posing these questions to my students will help them. but we’ll see i suppose. i’ve given them an outline for their zine, such as criteria for text and images, layout, where they can get their images, and even how they will bind their zines. we’ll see how it goes. if anyone wants to see the actual lesson plan, let me know, i can email it out.
peace.
just watched Planet B-Boy last night. it was pretty awesome. it was more awesome that it was a documentary made by an Asian-American, Benson Lee. For those of you who haven’t heard of the movie, its a movie about the dance component of the hip-hop culture. like many other “big event” type of movies that focus on the road to the culminating event of its corresponding activity, Planet B-Boy focuses on five different teams members and their journey to the Battle of the Year.
I really liked it because not only was it directed by an Asian American, but also because three of the five teams that were showcased were from Asian countries: Japan and two from Korea. the Chinese and Taiwanese teams apparently weren’t as good so they weren’t deemed important enough to focus on.
the movie wasn’t just about the art of break-dancing, and the other stories that were told in the movie were really quite touching and poignant.
anyway, if you’re in Chicago, you should check it out, its playing at the landmark theater in the Century Mall in boy’s town. the last day to see it is thursday, so make sure you get to it if you can make it.
peace.
i’ve been thinking about this image a lot lately. even though i was only 11 years old at the time, i remember trying to record this moment on a crappy tape.
i don’t really remember what i was thinking at the time. its a bit presumptuous to think that i actually thought anything grand…i mean, i also remember trying to record an audio tape of a match between Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage on tv.
maybe what i was thinking was how impacting the images on the screen were. how do you, as a lone person stand up fearlessly against a tank? against a nation’s army and government? i consider myself a bit of a deviant, and a bit of a rebel (well, at least an angry person), who hates much of what the U.S. has come to represent, but i would definitely question whether i would have the courage and strength to stand up to a barrel of a gun, let alone a tank.
i remember seeing this person on tv. it was a pretty wide shot. i remember having fear for this person, and a bit of pride. he had the strength i wanted. he believed in something strong enough that he would be willing to stand down a group of tanks. he was Chinese. and yet just like many of the asians in the U.S. now, he is unknown. someone whose conviction forced him to stand up to an army, and we don’t even know his name. just like so many asians in the U.S. that have accomplished, suffered, realized, survived, activized, fought, won, lost, succeeded, marginalized, silenced, expressed, soared, represented, and loved, are unknown to most of us. even us who live within those communities.
because of all that’s been happening in China with Tibet, and even thinking now with how the U.S. is being run, represented, and dictated, i wonder at what point will the people who aren’t disillusioned or bought-in will start to stand up in empowerment against those who would have been abusing privilege and power in this country for so long.
in actuality, the more i think about it, i know people who are already doing that type of stuff, its a matter of making bigger statements. making statements that will resonate in people as has the “unknown rebel” image has.
peace.
my first post…well, first post on my own personal blog. personal in that i’m not going through a blog service. it’ll be interesting.
some things that i’m thinking about as i continue on in this new little venture…
peace.
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