W5 Two Face

 W5 Two Face

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During this project, I explored and used at least 12 tools; the edge tool for lightening areas and creating deeper contrast, the brush tool for adding shadows, color, and highlights, the spot healing brush tool for melding the skin to the mask, the blur tool to soothe the face to the mask, the history brush tool for restoring hair, the eyedropper tool for mimicking certain pigments, the darken tool under the brush tool to create shadows, the small brush hardness tool for eyebrow and hair details, the pan tool for moving the photo, the opacity toggle under brush tool to highlight and shadow areas gently, the eraser tool for highlighting and the crop tool for cropping. 

W5 Fear of Failure

 W5 Fear of Failure

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1. What are the similarities between the artists interviewed in this article? What are the differences?

One thing I noticed about the artists in this article was that they’re artists of many different walks of life, mediums, backgrounds and experiences - yet they all share a similar fear: one of failure. They talk about it in many ways. Some similar and some not, sometimes failure is a bad concert performance, other times a bad novel review. Either way, these artists all share this common fear. 

1. Is there anything discussed in this article that you can relate to?

I relate to something Toni Morrison said. And I respect it. She said “to me, failure is information.” Id never heard it put this way before. I love that concept and I agree with it. Failure IS informations. It’s just there to learn from - data to teach us. Failures happens for a reason. Failure is a teacher. 

1. Do you believe that taking risks and pushing boundaries is important to the creative process? Why or why not?

I do believe it’s important to take risks and push boundaries in art making. It may not create the desired product, but artists can learn from their experimentation in any medium. 

1. Do you experience fear of failure? When? How do you think it has impacted you positively or negatively? 

Of course I experience fear of failure- but mostly in areas I am inexperienced in. Once I know a medium or method, a setting or a practice, I am confident. And I know that if I mess up I can repair it. But in places where I am unfamiliar, like with student teaching, I am scared! Once I start and learn, though, it’ll be okay. 

1. How do you think you can support your students as their teacher when they encounter the "fear of failure"?

I can tell my students to get comfortable with experimentation and trying new things, then talking about their processes. It should help them learn a new way to make. A way to create! Without fear. 

W4 Mark Prensky

 W4 Marc Prensky

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In Prensky's videos, I learned what a digital native, a person who has grown up in only the timeline of the internet, and a digital immigrant, a person who has grown up with two timelines- one being in the time of the internet, and one timeline coming before that, one with corded phones and letters. In my opinion, Prensky has done a good job of generalizing the different sides of the 'digital divide.' I feel I belong to the digital natives group - though I may not know as much as other kids my age - I definitely grew up around Tech. The digital divide's impacting education because we have digital immigrant educators and parents who try to restrict technology as a learning tool, and students and children who have grown up using it as a foundation for their learning, communications, and ways of life. We need to embrace these young learners and their interests for learning. Prensky brought up many interesting points; one being that we need to let students show us how they want to be taught using technology, another being that we greatly under estimate what students and young people are capable of. Tech is important in the art room, it allows us to understand, experience, and utilize new forms of creativity. Also, it gives us the chance, as educators, to teach kids how to navigate tech and how to evaluate what forms of it are good sources and tools to use. I will use these methods in my own classroom, as well as find inspiration from new media artists, teaching my kids safe software to use, and make new kids of art. 

"A Better Way to Home-Educate your Kids during this Time," 

( https://thriveglobal.com/stories/for-all-parents-a-better-way-to-home-educate-your-kids-during-coronavirus-time/ )

Prensky delivers points about a new perspective for both parents and educators as well as students nd children - discussing how this is a time of great stress for both parties and its crucial to allow children to explore their newly discovered paths of interests, ones blocked before by school itself, in order for them to learn independently and decrease their stress. This method has a classroom impact by making way for a new kind of learning that most kids have not experienced or had access to before, it will change how we teach kids both at home and in the classroom. I chose this article because education during covid, especially for young learners has been increasingly difficult. I have seen it drive wedges between families, lead to tears of teachers, and cause young people to suffer and isolate. This is an extremely pressing issue, especially right now. 

"What the World Needs from Education,"

( https://marcprensky.medium.com/what-the-world-needs-from-education-b7cef2f69b2e )

Over the past few decades, especially recently, kids' capabilities and forms of communication are expanding exponentially with no end in sight. Instead of looking at this as a form of addiction or restricting these kids from their devices and technology, we need to start embracing the idea of NEW as parents and teachers, and connecting the idea of these digital native kids as people who are the first to be a part of symbiosis with technology. They are the first generation to be doing this, and as their adult guides, we need to keep up by not only learning aside them but also taking these kids in educational directions that they want to go in. I chose to read this article above the others due to the title. Knowing Marc Prensky as an respected educator in technology, I wanted to know what he though education needs before I start teaching next year, so I may implement these ideas in my own room. 

W4 Peer Prezi Reviews

 W4 Peer Prezi Reviews

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I found that the second prezi presentation I watched was the most impactful (Cassidy's). This is because she had a theme that flowed well and moved through the information in a way that made sense, also because she used videos which to me are more simulating - and even defined a unfamiliar term. All these things made her prezi great. 

I like the peer review process because this system of "comment on the name above and below you" really includes everyone, and makes sure that everyone gets unbiased opinions. 

There are many pros to prezi. I think its a much more intriguing and impressive format for presentations than PWP or google slides. And it's free! Its also easy to use once you figure it out. Cons would be that it's a little confusing to initially learn, and also you eventually have to pay to use it.

W3 Visual Culture

 W3 Visual Culture Lecture

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The three most interesting facts displayed in the lecture to me were the following; visual culture can show how personalities formed within people and societies in the past and in the present. The speaker goes on to talk about how visual culture can illuminate and illustrate what personalities looked like during times in the past due to the nature and interpretations of older images. Another interesting fact the speaker spoke about was that visual culture is just as much about envisioning an image and it’s meaning as it is about seeing an image. It’s important to consider what it means, how we may see other people and how others see images. Also how we see ourselves. And thirdly, the speaker talks about perception and how it is formed through experience. He makes an emphasis on the idea that everyone is different and that perceptions all vary from person to person due to their upbringing, experiences, and culture.

Art educators play an important role in visual culture. As art educators, we have the privilege of helping to teach the youth how to see art, how to interpret it from their own perceptions and supporting their ideas for what an image may mean or means to them. 

This goes into the next idea of what I can take from this lecture and use in my own future classroom. One important aspect the speaker references is that it’s crucial to not expect students to have the same interpretations of a piece of imagery as you do, that it is crucial to honor how different students all interpret the same piece.

W2 Prezi

W2 Prezi

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The artist I chose to focus on in my Prezi project was Pendleton Ward, a.k.a Pen Ward. I picked him because he has created some of my absolute favorite art! I am in love with the show Adventure Time, and I grew up admiring the art it was. I still watch it today! I also loved Bee and PuppyCat growing up, another work of his as animation editor, and now that I'm a little bit older, I'm a huge fan of his recent work: The Midnight Gospel.

When working on this project, I ran into a few challenges getting stated. I watched some of the first video tutorial to help myself figure it out, as I like to work independently. I did have to ask how to save an image on a mac, however, because those apple mice don't have a right clicker! (Hold down Control and Click, by the way!)

I really loved the graphic aspect of this project. Growing up, I was really good at sprucing up PowerPoints (Google Slides) and making them more fun, spending time adding gifs, selecting theme-fitting palates and fonts, as well as transitions. I love the way Prezi moves throughout the information - smooth and easily. I guess what I least enjoyed was getting started, only because I didn't know yet what I was doing. That's always the most difficult thing, isn't it? 

I am ABSOLUTELY using Prezi in the art room. I actually look forward to impressing my classroom kids with it. I am hoping to give this Pen Ward presentation to my beau later today! I love this tool and I'm proud of what I made. It makes learning more visually stimulating, and isn't that what art's all about? 

W2 Visual Arts

 W2 Visual Arts

Highlights from the 1995 interview with June K. McFee include not only her biographical context in her own life, but also the discussions mentioned centering women’s roles in art education - how without their pioneering ways of thinking, education today would not yet have seen the deep importance that Visual arts hold in society, not for the arts alone but also for anthropology, women’s rights, the pedagogy of diverse groups of children, sociology and psychology. McFee felt that, “…learning is a behavioral adjustment, and the education that society needed was guided change in behavior.“ and this is still a message and ideal we follow in education today. 

I know of zines, independent artists I follow on social media have used them to illustrate life changes and emotional growth, to share personal journeys with the outside world. 

I love the idea of the zine library. I wish it was the kind of place you could find accessibility, not just in the northwest, and people could be compensated for their hard work there - that it could be a legitimate job. It makes sense though that it isn’t, because zines aren’t legitimate published. I like the idea of breaking free of the consumer and producer molds in art - too often in mass media we find art that’s pretty and without substance, that pleases the masses while remaining impersonal. Zines eliminate this and get vulnerable one on one with the reader. I would love to create a zine in my classroom, it’s definitely appropriate under the right prompts. 

I feel like the information in this last video that pertains best to the classroom is the information that reaches the kids: parodies. Kids today (and even in the age that this video presentation was created) find ‘memes’ ans other parodies of visual culture extremely attainable. They flood social media, and make up a lot of the younger generations’ communication. I’d say items 1-4 are valid ideals, mostly because there’s so many items that make up a “culture,” and many different ways to describe it, depending on the context and setting of the word’s usage. I could use these defining items in the classroom by showing my students the variety of explanations that go into culture, illustrating that culture is diverse and for different people it’s made up of many different things. 

W2 Banksy

W2 - Banksy 

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        Prior to this lesson, I did know of Banksy as an artist. I knew him as an anonymous artist, one both elusive and well-loved by the art world, focusing on political works and often using painting, both street and traditional, for his messages. My opinion on his work, in a word: instrumentalist. 

        Discussing the “Balloon Girl / Love is in the Bin” incident reminds those of us within the fine art world that a sense of humor is needed when analyzing a work and living among the arts. I personally found the ‘incident' both clever and humorous. Banksy certainly shocked the global art market that day, and left his mark in the international chapters of art history. It’s beautiful how an act of possibly defiance and destruction can heighten the value of a piece, both memorably and financially. 

        It was not surprising to see independent artists and capitalistic companies mooching off of the shredding bandwagon that Banksy had created. Between sellers on Etsy creating cheaply cut t-shirts displaying the girl with balloon, and McDonalds using the event to advertise their GMO French fries, there was more than enough meme to go around. Banksy’s work had not only left an impression in the art world, but created a tidal wave in the world of visual culture. It further goes to show that the visual arts are a second language, one that can communicate both defiant and humorous messages. 

        Within the art classroom, there are many places for Banksy to fit in. When creating lessons, educators can select Banksy with ease as they form units around street art, politically charged art, and the effects of visual culture on a society. As an anonymous artist, it allows each and every child within the classroom, from all walks of life, to be able to invision themselves in the place of the great creator - which is an extremely important ideal to teach within itself: anyone can create art, even ground-breaking, news-making art. And they don’t even need a name. 

 W1 Blog Post

Response on Visual Culture

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For each of the three videos, discuss what you learned.

What is something new that you learned? What did you find interesting?

What do the videos have in common?

How do you interact day to day with visual imagery, advertising, memes?

1. Each of the three videos on Visual Culture we watched together had something interesting within them. In the first video, I was intrigued by the use of digital imagery, and how there can be a code hidden in them. Even in a highly censored country, people can use a non-written language, the visual arts, to communicate with each other. For example, people posting black and white selfies while wearing sunglasses to social media: from the outside this looks like a simple trend, but to the people participating and aware, it is a political standpoint, showing their support to a recently arrested journalist who was known for his word and wearing his sunglasses. Even on a censored platform, people can communicate visually, reaffirming the idea that art is a second language. In the second video, it was made extremely clear that advertisements are everywhere, and sometimes used against the general population for the benefit of the capitalistic world. They are meant to keep the consumer dissatisfied, and make sure they, the consumers,  always feel insecure about something so they keep spending, hoping to fill the self-conscious void created by the same ads. Materialism, this way, is born. And, in the third video, we are reminded that social media removes the person from the present. As someone who struggles to remain present and mindful throughout the day, and has turned to habits like yoga and meditation to help undo the type of overthinking that social media creates, I can safely say this is true. Social media makes it hard to think in the present, take it day by day and stay in the current moment - which is important to do. Breaks and limits from social media help us, in a mental and social way. I like to remember in times of distress, you are where your feet are. 

2. Something new I learned was the occurrence and use of visual imagery in coded ways. Specifically, the example coming from China, and the selfies used to show support and political stance. I found it incredibly smart!

3. In common, all of the videos watched have a similar theme: visual culture is real, and it is a tool used by human beings to communicate - whether its to make money, make a political standpoint, or speak with each other, it is a real form of communication. 

4. Daily, we interact with so much visual imagery. I once read a study that made a point to say that in today's day and age we are made to see more imagery than ever before in human history - between social media, ads on the road, on TV, on YouTube, in schools, at work - we are bombarded. And it takes a toll on us. I know it takes toll on me. I try to limit screen time, as a way to help with that.