Photographs from March and April

Well it’s been some time since I’ve updated my blog. The spring was a very busy time as I had to write my PhD qualifying exam which was a very challenging. Here are some photographs from Champaign-Urbana, IL and Chicago, IL.

March 2012 in Urbana, IL

My street in the Historic East Urbana neighborhood.

A student draws at the UIUC Saturday Art School.

Artwork from the Saturday Art School student exhibit.

Dr. Kevin Tavin lectures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Images from Dr. Tavin’s presentation.

Jarling’s Custard Cup, Champaign IL

With Eugene at Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria, Chicago, IL.

 

Writing With Video Reflection

Over the past several days I have been reflecting on my progress in Joseph Squier’s Writing with Video course. The class is one of my favorites at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as it promotes daily engagement with creativity alongside the video-making research process.

This semester re-engaging with photography and art/video-making has been a transformative pleasure. By taking a closer look at my daily life through photography I feel more aware of both research and personal processes/happenings.

For our next project I would like to examine the context of the artist-teacher at UIUC by interviewing art education Professor Jorge Lucero and PhD student Jeff Horwat. This project was inspired by my previous video of PhD candidate and artist-teacher Susan Livingston. This time around I would like to focus more on developing technical finesse with sound and learn to loop sound over images. I will also be more careful about the environment subjects are interviewed in, as the art education graduate student office is not the most aesthetically desirable environment for video. (Ha!)

Here’s an idea. How about allowing art education graduate students to take studio classes for credit? Aren’t we supposed to be artists after all? I feel like we are just scratching the creative surface with the Writing with Video course and more time/curriculum is needed.

Transformation charcoal drawing series

In this activity students at the University of Illinois Saturday Art School, metamorphosed two objects in charcoal over a series of four drawings.

Transformation iMovie activity

In this lesson students at the University of Illinois Saturday Art School created an iMovie by using photographs of a series of charcoal drawings.

Recent images from spring break

Eugene took me to Washington DC for spring break. Afterwards we went to Millennium Park in Chicago

Musings on the conception of home

The notion of home is very important to me. For the past year and a half my life has been in transition between the move to Illinois, start of my Phd, subsequent divorce, and home renovations. More than anything else I want a home to share and call my own. The house is slowly getting there….

iMovie of artist/teacher Susan Livingston

In class writing discussion:

 

Can you identify one strength that you have discovered over the past five weeks?

-This class has reignited my love of photographing objects from my daily life. It is now something I do daily and passionately. It is a pleasure to interact and share with the instagram video community. I’ve discovered that how I see trees are central to my work as an individual and artist. Their stark trunks punctuate our landscape, culture, and communities.

 

Weakness or obstacle would be experimental time. I often find myself asking Eugene for inspiration and help with technology and wish he was taking this course with me. He helps me to formulate my ideas and projects. To address this difficulty I should try and spend more time getting to know the imovie program and planning out my projects.

Film for Module 3- Writing with Video

For our Writing with Video module 3 I would like to do an extension of my first film and question the relationship between art-making and art education. Within the field practitioners are often encouraged to promote art educational research over art-making practice. This dichotomy is unfortunately aligned with the expression “those that can’t do teach”. Is this happening true in art education? Are art educators inefficient artists? 

 

For this project I would like to interview PhD candidates in art education and question their art making practices alongside research within the field. I would like to make connections between the art we make and the curriculum we teach.

 

As a photographer art-making is central to my identity and teaching pedagogy. I would like to narrate the film and connect my own values/curriculum/art-making practices to other PhD candidates or faculty in art education.

 

The film will include participant interviews alongside inserted images of artwork.

 

Potentially the film will also reference new media, social networking, and the internet as that is where my research interests lie.

 

Looking forward to it!

 

JoRees

February 28

Photographs of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign’s iconic sculpture the Alma Mater and an image of the exterior of Wesley United Church.