Reflection on the first UAYSFA session

I was really looking forward to the first day of UAYSFA. I had been thinking a lot about it the prior week, trying to envision how the day would go. In our post class discussion, others had mentioned their surprise at the age range of the students. I was defiantly expecting that the students interested in the program would be older high school students who probably had some idea or expectation of what they wanted to do in our program. There are a lot more younger-aged students than I had thought there would be, and their expectations seemed to be much more social driven. I don't think that this will have any affect on how our projects develop, I was just unexpectedly surprised.

I was concerned about how much would need to be prepared for the first day. I was most concerned about finishing my example project and making it look really polished and a desirable project to make. I knew the artist trading cards would be an easy project for the students to work on, but I was concerned that there would be a lot of extra time. I’m not sure if we were unorganized, but I think the time the students had to talk and meet the other students was really positive. I think that in future SFA programs that providing students with this extra time on the first session would be very beneficial.

My developing concerns regard the timing of building our structures. I really hope that our group can finalize our concept and imagery early so that we begin designing our boxes and masonite cutouts. The sooner we can assemble our structures, the more time we’ll have to thoroughly explore our concept and make a really cohesive final piece.

Key Drawing Components

I really liked the project components that Ken Vieth covers in the third chapter of From Ordinary to Extraordinary. Drawing is probably the most important artistic skill taught in high schools, and students learn critical concepts from drawing like composition, value, visual weight, contrast, etc. that also apply to other media outside of “drawing”. As boring as having students do still-lifes may seem, it’s the best way to start learning these skills. I think focusing on making work that successfully demonstrates the student’s knowledge of basic skills, is going to produce more successful work. As nice as a photo-realistic image might be, understanding the visual elements of drawing that image is a more important than a good rendering. If as an educator you are always stressing these concepts, and persistently discussing the visual elements of all work produced in the art room, then students will really take those important skills to heart. To successful artists, skills like composition are second nature, and students should be developing that second nature so that they can draw quickly from those skills when making art later.

I really love the work of Zak Smith. His drawings hold a lot of energy and tension, and the emotion given from the textures of his lines really emphasize the atmosphere. A lot of his work wouldn’t be appropriate for students, but his ambition is extrodinary. If you’re familiar with Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow, then you probably understand how notoriously complex the text is. In one project, Smith created 760 separate illustrations that represented each page of the text. It’s such a beautiful and deep project that I really appreciate. But what I appreciate more is that Smith has nearly all of these pages on his website. (FYI, lots of NSFW material throughout his site)

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/zak_smith/page%20index.htm