Tag Archives: Art

You Cannot Fail

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Earlier this week I received an email from Ms. Lorna Walker, our Head of Drama, asking me to stop by and observe her class, which was being taught by a group called Polyglot- A devising and performance company from Australia, as part of our Artists in Residence programme. The group was on campus all week, working with MS and HS Drama classes and casts of production groups.

It was a busy day, and I had planned to pop-in for a few minutes, make an appearance, maybe get a few photos and get on with my day. But from the moment I entered The Black Box Theater, I was transfixed. The students were doing a warm-up icebreaker activity when I walked in and the energy in the room was palpable. It is always so fascinating to watch different groups of kids interact and this mentor group was really enjoying the freedom to loosen up.

Shortly afterwards, the students were broken up into pairs and given several sheets of butcher paper and told to crunch the paper up, in whatever way they felt comfortable. A few dutiful UWCSEA students grumbled about the sustainability of this task, but they were quickly absorbed in their work.

It was fascinating to watch how each child began lose themselves in this task. How each child slowly began to unravel in their focus and lose connection with whatever was going on outside their immediate experience. Then the instructor asked them to crunch faster, slower, louder, quieter. He told the to start ripping the paper in whatever way felt natural.

Some students began to show anger and rage and tear the paper to bits, others slowly, methodically tore the paper into perfect strips. All the while the instructor was saying this like, “Don’t have ideas, just explore.” “Just notice. Be Curious.” “Allow the experience to be a surprise.” “You cannot fail.”

I cannot lie. I wanted to be involved so badly. Every student in that theatre was lost in engagement. Focused on their paper and their small space in the world. It was a magical thing to witness.

I couldn’t help but think about how important and powerful these moments of engaging with art and drama, and the freedom and creativity they give to our kids, are to their lives.

Next they were told to tape the pieces together in whatever manner they wanted. The diversity of creations was spellbinding. Finally, at the end of this process,  they looked at each others creations and were asked to explain what each creation might be. A few were very literal to which the instructor said, “Let’s go for metaphor. What you said is a fact.” Then the audience shared their thinking about each creation.

I cannot unpack or explain the multiple levels of learning that happened in the short time I observed this lesson, but I can say that my experience has left me thinking all week.

How many times a day do our kids engage with material and ideas that leave them floored? How many times a day do they have their world rocked in a way that leaves a lasting impression? It made me think about my own teaching and my classroom- when do I cause a shift in perception and consciousness for these kids?

It’s heavy stuff I know.

We cannot succumb to the cynicism of school being business as usual. We cannot allow our kids to fall victim to the grind of busyness and stress.

It is our duty to awaken within them the joy and wonder of the world around them, and last Tuesday, in the Blackbox Theater, 23 kids were woke

A big thank you to Lorna Walker and the Drama department for inspiring us all.

No Budget

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Hello friends and strangers and readers of all sorts. it has been a while, so I feel a more gentle start is in order. It’s Sunday night and the sky just went from cotton candy, to dolphin belly,  to slate. I am feeling….how about a full stop. I am feeling. Weeks have passed since I allowed myself the luxury of tussling with words, and so tonight, feeling at best a tinge of flirtation, but really a more lingering weariness and fatigue, I have decided to take a break and carve a chunk of time from the ongoing present and future to speak to (with) you.

I had a strange morning. One of those days when the randomness of sharing and the thrill of living open and honest online collide, leaving tasty treats in their wake. Fun nuggets of camaraderie and inspiration- reassurance that when we share our thoughts and lives and passions with the world, the world will often talk back, returning our ideas and work back in a myriad of songs and echoes.

It started with this email:

Hi Jabiz,

My name is Adriana and I’m an artist.  I long time ago I found in one of your blogs this picture I loved.
and it spired me to make a series of paintings in my Pop Surrealism Style. here’s a link to my website so you can see the pictures I have of it.
The other paintings aren’t up yet.. too much work to do still but I wanted to share it with you and if you want I could link it to the page where the picture is.

That’s it for the moment and thank you for sharing all those beautiful pic!

Does this exchange mean anything? Is it important? I don’t know. Who am I to say, but it does feel right. Something about looking to the world to find inspiration, to make those human artistic connections resonates with me. More importantly, giving of my life in a way that might connect to other passions matters to me.

So many people are terrified of posting and sharing and over doing it, but time after time- for me at least- cool things happen. You can check out Adriana’s website here and the picture from above here. I am looking forward to exploring more of her work and hopefully getting to know her a bit more online. I have already asked if I can buy that print.

The second story, which also happened this morning, which is not usual is as follows:

Hello,

I just came across your image of the Azadi Freedom stencil on FB and would like permission to use it in a book I am finishing up on street art.


My name is KET and I am an author and graffiti writer. I have been writing books on graffiti, street art, and tattoos and publishing magazines for over 15 years. My books include: Graffiti Planet, Rocking It Suckers, Street Art, Graffiti Tattoo, New York City Blackbook Masters and many more (link here)

I appreciate what you did and would like to include the image and a quote in the book.

Please let me know if you are interested. There is no budget just my desire to share the image to the world thru the book.

There is no budget, just my desire to share. I love it. You can read more about that photo here. It is great to see that project move onto its next incarnation and live in a book. After years of living online and sharing my life with the Internet, I am more often than not pleasantly surprised by what comes back to me. There were but just two examples from this morning.

What do you think? Do things like this happened to you? Am I too naive? Too trusting? Or is this the karmic state of global art we should be striving for?

yugen

6 Replies

Friday night. Been a long week: a good week. Getting to know new students. Learning names. Exploring personalities, understanding needs, finding doors. Already talking familiar ideas in class: writing, music, art, identity, expression. Sharing. Finding our groove. Re-framing pedagogies, conscious to include words like inspire and empower. Trying new things, thanks to my new colleague and old friend Paula G. Hands down! Speak, share, inquire, discuss. Write. Create. The goals this year are simple:

  • Connect on some level with every student all 100+
  • Enlighten student thought through lens of  Yugen, and if possible capture snippets of yugen through all we create.

 

Giddy Enthusiasm

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Sometimes things are happening in your class that keep you excited at all hours of the day. You see kids fully engaged during class time, and BIG AND- they are participating in an ongoing month long project outside of class as well. You watch as pieces of this project come trickling in at all ours of the night, on weekends, during other classes. You know you are not meddling and teaching too much; you can feel your scaffold strengthening as the students produce content that exceeds what you thought they were capable of.

I am engulfed in such a unit! It is wonderful. It has little to do with tech really, but the tech knowledge, skills and tools we have in place are making everything run smoothly. When people ask me how I use technology in my classroom, I am always a bit stumped. I use it the same way I do in my everyday life- to gather, create, share, capture life around me with a community of people.

In grades six, seven and ten we are in the middle of a viewing text unit. Grade six is watching How To Train Your Dragon, grade seven is watching E.T. and grade ten is watching The Wall. We began by discussing the idea of reading a film.  After deconstructing each respective film, we looked at various types of shots. Last week we moved onto looking at scenes as shots and students have begun to create their own 8-12 minute films.

It was at this point when I realized that we needed a quick detour into photography. I wanted the kids to realize the similarities between basic photography concepts and film making. After a quick lesson on how to take Great Shots, we began our Daily Shoot! This experience is what has me so excited. Over the weekend I was in Hong Kong for a conference, but I was thrilled to see at least 80% of my students participating in the exercise. They would go to this page, find the prompt, take their pic and post (with tags and titles) to their appropriate page.

Some highlights:

I am hoping that they will see that shots like these will make great openings to their video scenes. We have already discussed music and camera movement to heighten suspense and creating mood.

The Posterous gallery has been great as it teaches them how to sort and tag their pics, and it allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing.

Giddy is the best word to describe how I feel about this unit so far. Giddy and proud and excited and …..well seems like there are many words. But, what does the tech look like? How can I teach other teachers to do this? Not sure. We are using iMovie, Keynote, Posterous, cameras, blogs. We are filming, shootings, tagging, writing, drawing. It is hard to know where the tech starts or stops. It is hard to know if this is Art, English, or Film. We are simply caught up in a storm of creating. Unaware of where we will end up, we use whatever tools we need, we learn skills as they become necessary and hopefully we will have some pretty amazing films to share, but if not…if the films are only mediocre, we already know we have learned so much. And that is all that really counts.

Stain What You Find

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Last time I did this, some amazing things occurred. It was January 31st, 2011 and I had just finished my first 31 days of a 365 Daily Shoot- an exercise where you try to take a photograph everyday for a year.  I was following “assignments” from The Daily Shoot (a now defunct website) and was quite pleased with my pics. I shared a quick post on my blog about the fact that I had finished my first month.

A few days later, Zac Chase told me that he had shared my pics with one of his English classes. The next week resulted in a somersault of poetry and music across continents. You can read about the events here and here. If you didn’t read about this story last year, I recommend you take a few minutes and read through the posts and comments.  It was a truly inspirational week of cool free flowing organic events.

Which brings me to this post. January 31st! Last time I only made it 94 days and lost the thread. I was working with a DSLR l and now I am almost strictly working on my iPhone. I have sworn that this year will be different. I will do my best to make it all 365…sorry 366 days of 2012.

Take a look at the shots and meet me on the other side for a little reflection on the process of daily photography in general and this batch in particular.

Is it obvious that is has been raining here in Jakarta. The images do not lie. It has been grey and wet this January. But as you can see the days are highlighted with color and light as well. Once more, I am in love with this batch of photos. I wish I had time to take a few of the photos and expand them into a more auditory experience. I invite you to take these photos and add your meaning and experience to them, as Zac’s class did last year. Let’s see if anything comes of them this time around.

The Process:

We do not tell stories through images. The images tell our stories on their own. When collected and batched and examined,  we can see patterns and narratives of our lives which we usually pass us by when we are busy with the act of actually living.  By documenting at least one photograph everyday, we can look back and notice the thread of who we were by what we saw and what we chose to capture.

In addition to the dissection of our lives after the fact, taking a daily photograph has helped me look more closely at my life as I am living it. Take today for example. It was nearly 3:00 pm and I realized that I hadn’t looked closely enough at my day as it was passing me by. I took a break from rubric writing and forced myself out into our campus. I strolled about simply looking. Examining and looking for something interesting, something beautiful to capture. Here is what I found:

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Intrepid Flame

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Intrepid Flame

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Intrepid Flame

I was thinking about starting some kind of daily photo assignment with my students. I think they will find value in being able to document their lives in Flickr sets. They will appreciate the downtime to wander around campus learning how to “look” at the world. Need to think more about this. Any ideas? What to do something collaborative?

If you are not trying a dailyshoot I highly recommend giving it a try. I thought that not having the structure of The Daily Shoot would prove challenging, but I am enjoying he freedom to snap at will and sort through what I have for the pic at the end of the day. In other news, I have been trying to keep an eye on The Daily Create over at DS106.

Creativity is not some romantic magical muse that only a few people can access. Creativity is the ability to fully immerse yourself in the essence of life and stain what you find with pieces of your self. The only thing you need to do to be creative is to be alive. Open yourself up to experimentation and see what happens. It may feel silly or not important, but only when you say yes can to every shot will you find the spark you need.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Intrepid Flame