Here are some photographs of the lovely Sophia who is one of my students at Huafan University. In these photos we experimented with make-up. We started out with very little and then added more color as the series progressed.

Very little make-up, a natural look

A more pink/bronze look.

Eyes-closed

With black eye make-up and red lipstick

In black and white

Here are photos from the temple in Tainan.

Here is a note that was previously updated on my Facebook page:

1. My career is my passion and I feel thrilled to work in the fine arts/art education. There is a saying when you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life. Research, learning, teaching, and art-making are extremely fulfilling activities to engage in.

2. However, there are negative elements to my love of work. I can work too hard for a variety of reasons and use the medium of “work” to avoid dealing with my personal life. My love of work can be all consuming. The film “Click” touched a nerve.

3. I love challenges and constantly seek out new avenues of professional development/self expression. Not everything I try works out but it is a great feeling to accomplish something you previously thought of as difficult or impossible.

4. Is there something strange in the water in North America as suddenly all of my old friends have children. What is going on? How did this happen? Is this going to happen to me? My mother certainly hopes so but probably later than sooner.

5. I like to live in different cities. When you move to a new city you take on a new professional/personal identity. When I moved to Ottawa at age 18 I went from being a gawky teenager to young woman that suddenly could get a boyfriend. Moving to Taipei regenerated my career which was stagnating in Montreal. There is a great energy and power in this. Often I’ve remembered friends who have been in personal or professional funks and thought just leave! Move! Go out and find other people/opportunities elsewhere.

6. I would like to settle down and establish roots in an institution/community. When will this happen? Hopefully the process can begin after my next leap in 2010.

7. Keeping a healthy budget is important and I live below my means. That’s not to say that I don’t like to splurge or shop- but within reason. When I lived in Canada I carried around a huge wallet with all these credit cards that were a symbol of debt. Now I carry a small change purse and pay for everything in cash.

8. Domesticity is not a strong point. Um… Yep it is an area that I can improve on. My apartment frequently looks like a bomb hit it. I cooked for my husband once and then he told me not to bother doing it again. Sashimi, salmon, salads, nuts, and sandwiches are my “home cooked” specialties.

9. Moving to Taiwan was one of the best decisions that I ever made with my life. Before moving to Asia in 2006 I had a good job, a new condo, and was very bored/uninspired/unfulfill

That last installment of this series. please click here, here, and here to view the series in its entirety.

These images are intended to be viewed together as a series and should be considered as such.  As my artists statement indicates this series concerns the depiction of the body in wet-drapery and the modern action of shaving.

In Western society women are expected to shave their skin in order to be desirable to the opposite sex.  Western men prefer a woman with freshly shaved legs, armpits, and a groomed vagina.  While this may seem shocking in Eastern culture it is a common grooming practice in the West.  Beauty salons offer the Brazilian bikini wax to remove all hair from a woman’s private area while drug stores sell shaving cream, razors, and hair removal cream.  However, I have always found something edgy and dark in shaving the most intimate parts of your skin in order to be sexually desirable.

From creating these images two things have become clear.  Firstly, that the role of women has greatly evolved from classical times in which they wore wet drapery and secondly that the act of shaving is a very sensuous activity that is intended to physically attract.  Hence there are many contradictions present in these photographs.

Over the past few days I have been questioning why we shave our bodies.  To fit in with the culture of grooming in our society?  To attract attention to out skin?  To signify or encourage the need for physical affection.  It is a very complex grooming process.

These images were created as part of my PhD course work at National Taiwan Normal University.  They will be exhibited in a group show at the end of June.

To see the previouse parts of this series please click here and here.

Here is the second installment of the series concerning shaving and female grooming.

This week much time has been spent getting back into the swing of my frantically paced life in Taipei after the transformative experience of NAEA. Last week our class reflected on Alex de Cosson’s article The Hermeneutic Dialogue which fused the processes of research and personal reflection.

While I have respect for the concept of de Cosson’s work and appreciate the use of his own artwork to inform his research I find his article to be too self absorbed. His writing is awash in “I” statements, (15 uses in a seven sentence paragraph). This over personalization of inquiry can diminish its impact and make the final product seem like unfinished field notes.

At the NAEA conference I ran into Liora Bresler and asked about the submissions she receives at the International Journal of Education & the Arts. She told me that many articles are rejected for being “bad personal reflections”.

The nature of arts-based research is personal reflection in conjunction to the research study involving engagement with the visual arts. Canadian scholars such as Rita Irwin, Harold Pearse, Patti Pente, and Fiona Blaikie have demonstrated the validity of arts-based research through their contributions to the field which combine personal insights alongside theoretical analyses and qualitative methodologies. However, some scholars take the liberty of arts-based research too far. Their process is less about the research at hand and instead focuses too much on personal experiences in regards to inquiry, pedagogy, and biography . “All about me”. God help me is all I have to say.

NAEA Auditorium

Paul Duncum

Terry Barrett

Mary Ann Stankiewicz

John Howell White

Karen Keifer-Boyd

Karen Keifer-Boyd with Jan Jagodzinski

Michael Emme and Jan Jagodzinski

Liora Bresler

Elliot Eisner

Miriam Cooley

Elizabeth Delacruz

Debbie Smith-Shank

Karen Keifer-Boyd at Women’s Caucus meeting

Enid Zimmerman

Christine Ballengee-Morris, Patricia Stuhr, and Enid Zimmerman at the Women’s Caucus meeting

Wanda Knight

Marjorie Manifold with Pat Stuhr in the background at the Women’s Caucus meeting

Christine Ballengee-Morris

Jan Jagodzinski and Tang-Ling Kuo

Debbie Smith-Shank performing Wrinkles in Visual Culture and Gender

Karen Keifer-Boyd performing Wrinkles in Visual Culture and Gender

Sharon Gray and Ann Kuo

Kevin Tavin

Flavia Bastos receiving her award

Anna Kindler and Rita Irwin

Alice Arnold

Charles Garoian performing Drawing Blinds: Art Practice as Prosthetic Visuality

Charles Garoian

Tang-Ling Kuo

Women’s Caucus General Business Meeting

Here are two old photographs of me at age 24 in 2001.  The first was taken at Atomic nightclub which depicts my photographer identity at the time.  The second photograph, (and let’s all have a laugh at the terrible blue fuzzy fur coat), was the official graduation photo from my Bachelor of Education Degree from the University of Ottawa.
Last week’s class was my favorite of the semester so far.  It was a pleasure to investigate Nicole Porter’s Article Exploring the Making of Wonder: The A/r/tography Model in a Secondary Art Classroom.  Porter’s article raised many questions on the idea of space, human space versus professional or teaching space.  Moreover, she confronted the outrageous notion that art teachers should not teach in their own classrooms.

An image from Atomic nightclub, 2001.
Yoyo did a fantastic job analyzing Porter’s work and her reflection contained the following questions: “What are the similarities and differences between artists and art teachers?  Consider the terms artists, art teacher, artists-teacher, and teaching artists?”

Another image from Atomic.
This caused our class to question the tension of power and ranking between the art teacher and art specialist.  Moreover, we considered the educational training of the art specialist who is more respected as an authentic artist but less involved invested in the institution.  What’s more Yoyo questioned why so many art teachers don’t make art?  As we concluded this can be due to self-limitation, and fear that art making may not be accepted by the institution.
This triggered a memory of a 25 year old version of myself who was ostracized at the alternative high school where I worked for taking nightlife photographs for a local newspaper.  My colleagues were biased again the subject matter and did not respect my art even if it was accepted by the local media.

At age 26 I left my job teaching Secondary art to start an M.A. in Culture and Values education at McGill University.  At the time it  seemed deeply wrong that art teachers were not encouraged to create art.  In Secondary education the notion of  “team work” is often prized over “individuality”.  This outlook can prohibit professional and personal progress in favor of appeasing the political dynamics of a provincially minded staff .

However, Porter’s article gives the message that art teachers can be authentic artists as we should be.