Melee!
Another gallery showing? Dig! Check out Mr. Street’s advanced digital photography students’ rhetoric in room N-207 this Thursday, February 28, from 6:00-8:00 at CDO.
Linkjam!
With Chris Jordan’s photo series still stuck in my head, I thought it time to post the art links that have been backing up.
First, Peter Plagens asks in a Newsweek article if, with the advent of new technologies, “Is photography dead?”. Probably not, as publications such as National Geographic continue to celebrate the medium with its list of the top ten photos of 2007 (dig the cloud leopard of Borneo, third picture in). But then who needs photographic images if others can capture with paint and canvas what light imprints on treated film, such as these “9 artists who will blow your mind”.
It’s easy to be fooled by the photoreal images at the former link, but how difficult is it to fool discriminating art professionals? Apparently, not too difficult, at least not for Freddie Linsky who, according to a Daily Mail article, fooled “the art world into buying his tomato ketchup paintings”.
Perhaps art appreciation is a matter of perspective, but in the case of several sidewalk painters, perspective is everything as can be seen here: “New 3D Sidewalk Paintings”. And there’s plenty more unusual, and non-traditional art to be seen the world over; just witness these “33 Weird Statues and Sculptures Around The World”.
The sculptures at the former link may make some scratch their heads and wonder: “Do all we or others say is ‘art’ qualify as such?” Some creative graffiti (pay attention Danielle) might be argued to have artistic merit. Consider, for example, these “7 Unusually Geeky Approaches to Graffiti”.
Innovations in science, math, and technology offer other new opportunities for artistic expression. Dig these exploding nano-wires, these fractal art contest winners , and these symmetric energy pictures.
Enjoy the art, boys and girls.
Linkjam!
Last week I came across a series of photographs by Chris Jordan, Running the Numbers, in which he makes manifest the vast consumption habits of the American people. (His other series include another on American consumption, Intolerable Beauty, and one on the the devastation suffered in the Gulf Coast in 2005, In Katrina’s Wake.) Several APELCers asked me to post the link to the very remarkable images, and, certainly, they’re rhetorically rich and worth looking at in class.
I’ve collected a few links in the past couple of months about consumption, waste, and recycling. The first is a piece about Ari Derfel, who kept his trash for an entire year to see just what one person was capable of generating.
Another is an opinion from The Economist entitled “The truth about recycling”. This is particularly important when one considers the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, continent-sized patches of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean.
Perhaps you’re not aware of just what can be recycled, so you might check here: “21 Things You Didn’t Know You Can Recycle”. And get active and get more information from the National Recycling Coalition.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective: English 9 students analyzed literary concepts in a Shakespearean drama.
First and third period freshmen completed Act III of our drama, while four soldiered forth throgh Act IV. The study guide for the former act is due on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. We focused a lot on the characters: Romeo and and Juliet and their histrionics; Friar Laurence, the sneaky man of God; the fickle Lord and Lady Capulet.
Skyler asked about weddings during the time, and immediately Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding came to mind.
The piece has been subject of much debate, more than I comment on here. (It’s been many years since I studied it in Homer Petty’s HUM250b class in 1993.) But it’s worth a look and an examination of the scholarship.
English 9 Class Notes
Objectives: English 9 students 1) read independently for a sustained period of time and journaled critically, and 2) analyzed literary concepts in Shakespearean drama.
Period 1 and 3 freshmen, after reading today, we began reading and listening again to Romeo and Juliet beginning where we left off last time in Act I. You learned how to reference lines of of Shakespeare and you learned about the nature of iambic pentameter.
Check the class page for homework details, but before you do that, take another look at Frank Dicksee’s 1884 painting Romeo and Juliet
I’ll see you on Monday with your completed homework. (I’m really hoping that you’ll start this semester off the right way and arrive proudly with your assignment ready to turn in.)
Have a good weekend, boys and girls.
Sing, Sing, Sing!
The Choral District Festival, which brings together talent from Donaldson, Mesa Verde, Harelson, Cross, and, of course, Canyon del Oro, will be held in the Fine Arts Auditorium Thursday, November 8, at 6:30 in the evening.
Check it out―it’s free!
Think You’re Challenged?
Whenever I hear students wonder aloud why their lives must be filled so with untenable adversity, I try to offer something that might help them realize the advantages they enjoy, advantages they may daily take for granted. And I don’t just mean the manifold opportunities they have at school or the variety of choices they have living in free-market America. I mean something even more fundamental, something like the use of their hands. Thus this recent USA Today article on foot and mouth painters: “Disabled artists get broad stroke of resilience”.
I’ve mentioned foot and mouth painters to students many times before, almost every year with every new batch of kids that come through my door, and highlight what a man or woman can do if he or she is determined despite seemingly insurmountable odds:
Dig that.
Canyon Singers Take the Stage
The valley walls will reverberate with the melodies of the Canyon Singers the evening of Thursday, October 4, at 7:00. CDO’s songsters are extending an invitation to hear ”the music of master composers Schubert, Haydn and Mozart and contemporary composers Z. Randall Stroope, Celtic minimalist composer Rhona Clark [and] Spanish composer Javier Busto [who's] written a shimmering ‘Agnus Dei’, splitting into eleven different vocal parts in the final phrase.” The crooners ”conclude the program with ‘The Gershwin Songbook’”.
I can’t attend, but I hope you’ll be there to hear their musical argument.
Noble Street Gallery Art Show
What’re you doing this Friday evening? Why not check out Mr. Street’s advanced digital photography students’ rhetoric at the Noble Street Gallery Art Show this Friday, September 28, from 6:00-8:00 at CDO? I’m goin’. Be there, or be square.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) read independently for a sustained period and journaled critically, 2) created level 1 and 2 questions for a visual text, and 3) extended level questions to literary text.
Periods 1 and 3, after SSR today we spent the rest of the period analyzing Automat by Edward Hopper (below). I didn’t expect it to take the period, but the questions you developed were incisive and the discussion they engendered was great.
We reviewed how to generate level 1 and level 2 questions, and defined two words that’ll be terribly important to you as we progress throughout the year: schema and its plural, schemata. Loosely, your schemata are the model or plan of the world that lives in your own head, and we all possess multiple plans that we use to engage the world daily. More specifically, your schemata are your combined (conscious and unconscious) knowledge, ideas, experiences, memories, beliefs, dreams, et cetera, that are specific to you; your schemata are the lenses through which you view the world, the thought-processes through which you encounter the world and according to which you act in the world.
That seems like a lot, and it is. Thankfully we don’t have to think much minute by minute about who we are and what we are and where we are and how we know such things, but we use our schemata all the time, sometimes through our own effort, but more often automatically.
It’ll all become clearer as we progress as long as you have your thinking caps on at all times. (Never expect bottom-shelf from me.)
Remember to check your class page for homework.
The Creative Best?
The American Society of Magazine Editors has released its list of the forty greatest magazine covers from the past forty years, and Smashing Magazine, which promises to “smash you with the information that will make your life easier offers creativty sparks from masters of graphic design.
The covers serve a different purpose than the images, but they’re all visual text and speak to particular audiences. They all argue something, too; that is, their creators all intended some message to come across to their audiences. Some of the messages are obvious, others aren’t.
Care to comment on specific covers or images? The covers offer some valuable cultural insight (context). Perhaps you’d like to offer some quick observations on their rhetoricity? Maybe even analyze and evaluate the editors’ choices? Click the link above to let us know your thoughts.