The 2nd Motivation for Innovation and Creativity of Youth (MICY)  international colloquium held in Ljubljana, Slovenia was truly outstanding.  It was an absolute pleasure to walk the scenic streets of Ljubljana as take in the historic pastel architecture, alpine surroundings, and rich culture which is mostly unaffected by tourists.  However, the best part of the trip was the people I connected with from Europe and around the world.  Miss you all so much,

JoRees

Ljubljana airport

Dr. Ann Kuo

Ann and Peter Ciuha

Dr. Debbie Smith-Shank

Sophie Metcalf and Debbie Smith-Shank

With Marjan Prevodnik, (center) at the MICY colloquium

Ljubljana architecture

The studio bathroom of Peter Ciuha’s studio

Peter Ciuha’s studio at work

Senka, Ann, Peter

Dr. Rita L. Irwin

Tatiana Soteropoulos

Glen Coutts

Dr. Emil Gaul

Su Jin Jie

Dr. Georgina Kakourou Chroni

Dr. John Steers

Dr. Jeung-Hee Kim

Dr. Hai-Kyung Kim

Kaohsiung County, Taiwan

This is just something that I’ve been thinking about today.  If you go through a very negative experience are you supposed to label it as positive to please others?  Surprisingly yes.  Many just don’t want to know about the bad times and prefer  just to hear about the good.  In fact, saying anything else could be considered detrimental.  That is not to say that I am a negative person.  In fact, my outlook is very optimistic and positive.  However, I do like to tell it as it is and that includes my own faults.

Images from American child artists

Alice Arnold and Joanna Rees are in the process of initiating a book based on global child art. The project would continue a dialogue with middle school and high school child artists who participated in an international art exhibit at the 2^nd World Creativity Summit (WCS), in June 2008 in Taipei, Taiwan, based on the research questions: Who am I? and Who art you?

Images from Macau child artists

Arnold and Rees have invited child artists from the six InSEA regions which include Africa and the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, South East Asia and Pacific to participate in this project where the children create new art based on the research questions. The child artists would create two works of art to answer each question in painting, drawing, or mix-media mediums. The research questions are significant as they encourage child artists to consider their identity in conjunction to our transnational and intercultural society.

Images from Philippine child artists

With regards to the book’s format, Arnold and Rees envision a color, large-scale layout with a 14”X17” page size. The children’s art will be the central focus of the book and printed in color. Below each artwork would be the child’s own writing about his or her motivation in creating the art based on the questions: Who am I? Who Art you? The child’s response would make up a short paragraph of about 5 sentences, and would include their explanation of what they were depicting, or goals of artistic production. The images could be featured side by side in the book, showing each child’s two artworks together.

Images from European child artists

We are hoping to represent about 8-12 works from each of the 6 regions of InSEA or 36-60 works total. This would give the reader a “slice of child art from around the world today”.

At the moment, Arnold is in possession of child artwork from 2 sites in North America – Farmville, NC Middle School and New Palestine High School, in New Palestine, IN. Arnold is in the process of talking with teachers and negotiating the process with children in America. Rees has photographs of many of the pieces of child art from the WCS exhibit and is communicating with InSEA world councilors and teachers/colleagues who collected the child art to “reconstruct” the children’s reflections and collect new responses to the research questions. When collecting our data we will not use a tape recorder, but instead ask the children to write their thoughts in their own language. We will ask for a release form/permission from each child to reproduce their artwork and comments.

Child art from left Thailand and right the Philippines

The children’s reflections will be translated into English. Both the native language and the English reflections will appear at the bottom of each artwork. There will be an introductory preface explaining the context of the WCS written by Arnold and Ann Kuo and a commentary on the importance of children’s art in an a transnational context at the book’s end by Rees.

For more information please contact Alice Arnold at arnoldm@ecu.edu or Joanna Rees at reesjoanna@hotmail.com

Child art from left Thailand and right Europe

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.