BONSAI TREES AND PRAYER VIGILS

DISPATCH ONE:

In Washington DC for the March For Our Lives tomorrow.  Over a million people are expected.  Groups of young people spent the day visiting their legislators and walking the mall, the city, the monuments.  I did a couple things that I needed to do to prepare:  visited ancient bonsai trees at the National Arboretum and attend a prayer vigil at the National Cathedral tonight.

The oldest tree in the collection was tended by the same family since 1625.  It survived the bombing in Hiroshima.  In 1976, it was given to the American people in honor of the bicentennial.  It is still thriving.  These little trees - so carefully tended - outlive the generations of those who care for them.  Like these ideals we struggle with - a world in which peace towards each other, rather than violence against one another - is the norm.

"We come here this evening to affirm that we are connected by an 'inescapable network of mutuality' and 'tied in a single garment of destiny.  And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly'   it does not matter how large the city or how small the town -- trauma and sorrow claim far too many of our citizens.  For too long the tears of frightened children, the cries of inconsolable parents and the weariness of long-suffering neighborhoods have been ignored.  We declare on this day that our nation must turn from this patth of fear and destruction. 

With all who join us - in cities and towns across this land - we here this night proclaim together in one voice:

From so many heartbreaks comes forth a united commitment to go into the streets of our cities and towns and promote a way of peace and well-being for all people.  With compassion sown from the threads of sadness and horror, we will mend a nation tattered by gun violence and weave a new cloth of hope and peace."

 

The bonsais are a reminder of the careful tending we need to commit too - generation after generation.  The prayer vigil reminds me that it only works when we come together. 

Good night.

Hope and Action

For a long time, I've thought that the purpose of activism and art, or at least of mine, is to make a world in which people are producers of meaning, not consumers, and writing this book I now see how this is connected to the politics of hope and to those revolutionary days that are the days of the creation of the world.  Decentralization and direct democracy could, in one definition, be this politic in which people are producers, possessed of power and vision, in an unfinished world.  

Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit

If there is anything that gives me hope it is teaching.  I've been thinking about what a gift it is these days.  Coming back into the classroom after a year away it is even more evident.  This term I am teaching a section of the courses called RPM's (or Research, Practice and Methods).

(From the course description) In these courses students investigate strategies for effective communication.  Each section emphasizes process and creative problem solving - appropriately using subject matter and a variety of media as a means of examining conceptual goals.  Students engage in critical inquiry and conduct in-depth research to promote the development of their own studio practice within a historical, cultural, and personal context. 

Students in the course recently turned in a project (a small book in an edition of ten, with a dos-a-dos binding) based on the writing and concerns of Kendrick Lamar and Lupe Fiasco.  The work was gritty and tough and the research was, in general, spot on.  It's not an easy class.  They are challenged each week with a new binding, a new writer, a new topic.  The turn around time is fast.  They have to work quickly without over-thinking decisions.  Practicing this is an important part of the course - again, not easy.

I have long been a fan of the writing of James Elkins.  His books, such as Why Art Cannot Be Taught and Art Critiques:  A Guide  are interesting, if only for the questions they raise.  They don't always come to definitive conclusions - but in their defense, how could they?  The topics are huge and the fact that he tackles them at all garners huge kudos from me.  I bring them up here because they have helped me formulate my own thinking about critiques - which is going to bring me back to the RPM students I'm working with in a minute....

In Art Critiques: A Guide, Elkins writes:

...an art critique is an entirely different sort of experience. Art classes maybe the only time in your life that people really focus on your work, and try to say all the things it might mean.  Meaning, interpretation, evaluation.  Ambiguity, complexity, difficulty.  Intensity, confusion, exhaustion.  Inspiration, doubt, revision.  These are the things that happen in critiques.

In your first semester of a dive into college, to study art and design - what you learn about critiques and how they are practiced has a great effect on the way you look at work - your own and others. More about the content of that critique in another post.

On the other end of the spectrum a group of seniors - working to craft a professional digital presence. What social media tools are best used, how to write strong content - how to pull it all together.  Over the summer - I sent out a survey asking former students and colleagues to talk to me about how they did this.  Many of them generously offered to speak to this group - and I try each week to invite one - in person or via Skype.

Full circle this past Monday for me. A student asked the speaker, "How do you annihilate your competition?"  He had a goofy smile on his face - but there was a part of him that was serious.
Our guest didn't miss a beat.  She said, "I don't, I try to become friends with them and ask them to teach me everything they know."

Now that, for me, is hope in the dark.

Teachers

I recently completed MOOC on Coursera  through Duke University that was spearheaded by Cathy Davidson called "The Future of (Mostly) Higher Education."  Reflecting back on the experience  - I am conflicted about MOOC's as a learning platform - like everything else they have pros and cons.  They are messy and often difficult to wade through - especially if you have a few thousand course-mates from all walks of life, education backgrounds and different skill sets with the language the course is being given in.  This is also what makes them incredibly interesting!!

The future of higher ed is wide open  - technology offering new ways of establishing connections and delivering information.  Although face to face learning and guiding students through feedback may still be in many minds (including mine) the most effective way of delivering educational content - it may very well be a luxury in the future for some.  As we continue to defund public education and the cost of obtaining a private education continue to rise - it is difficult to see clearly where this leads us - but it does not seem to bode well.

I recommend HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology and Collaboratory) to anyone
who is interested in these topics.  Educator, parent or citizen - there are a myriad of things there to ponder and be informed about.  This is THE place (in my opinion) where the dialogue is taking place about learning and technology - where ideas are being shared and debated.  If you are an educator, this is not the time (as you likely know by now unless you have been teaching under a rock) to run from re-tooling your skill set and deciding which of the new technologies work best for you and your students.  There are so many options -- and they change and morph so quickly -- that it is great to have a place to turn to to educate yourself about them and discuss their use with others.

The Wordle visualization at the top of this post was created with the first 15 hours of answers to "Who's Your Favorite Teacher and Why" which was one of the forum prompts for the aforementioned course.  There were HUNDREDS of responses, and comments on those responses  -- and comments on those comments. They were written and spoken.  The responses were thoughtful and for the most part heartfelt.  Encouragement, compassion, ability to maintain interest, facilitating learning, challenging, guiding, fairness were words used over and over again.  Certainly as I thought of my own response - those were the things that I thought of.

It has been a great gift throughout my life to have known and studied with many exceptional teachers - both formally and informally.  Still, I knew immediately who I would write about when I read the question.  Barbara Cervenka was my first art teacher in high school.  So much of the foundation of how I think, my studio practice and my outlook on the world have been shaped by knowing and working with her. Not only is she an exceptional artist.  She is an exceptional human being.  Below is an image from her series of galaxy paintings.  She writes;

"[these paintings..] are based on photographs brought by the Hubble Space Telescope.  We are the first generation to see these images, to be able to look back so far in time and space.  The universe revealed to us is beautiful - light storms exploding billions of years ago, millions of galaxies, the birth of stars.  These star maps show us nearly unbelievable depths of time and space, yet they coexist with the minute daily miracles of earth - the opening of flowers, the symmetry of plants, the perfect geometry of skeleton and shell, the fragile monuments hand-built on earth.  In the dark mirrors of these paintings we too are reflected.  I painted these pieces as a meditation, a contemporary form of "illumination" and a celebration of the light that has come to us these days as a gift" 

                                                          Starfield 11-Omega Centauri -2011 / watercolor on arches 24 x 36"

Most recently she has mounted a nationally touring exhibit, Bandits and Heroes / Poets and Saints, through her work with an organization that she founded with her friend and colleague, Mame Jackson:  ConVida.  The exhibit began in Detroit at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and is currently in Chicago at the DuSable Museum of African American History until August 17 of this year.  If you are in the Chicago area --- you should take a look.