5/26/2016 7 Comments Teachers and Sharing InformationThere is no contest that we are living in the golden age of teaching. We have so much at our disposal to enrich and engage our students; from current videos posted on Youtube, to free programs that allow students to create content, to lesson plan and idea banks for teachers, it's never been easier to be creative and look like a champ in the classroom. But this new age of information accessibility raises a series of important questions.
First, who should own the material created by a teacher to use in their classroom? Unfortunately, big corporations have set a precedent years ago that make it legal to take ownership of any ideas that were developed during the years a person worked at a certain company. Following suit, many school districts claim ownership to any material a teacher created during their work for the district. While this may seem legit, since other companies have been doing it for a long time, the reality is, this is not logical or right. Being involved with the high tech world in one of my past lives, I have heard of stories of engineers who had amazing ideas while working on a certain company, but had to bide their time and wait one or two years after leaving a company before following a certain idea they had, as their contract covered not only the ideas they had during the time they were in the company, but anything after a year or two after that time, as long as the idea was somehow related to the work they were doing -- which, being engineers working on technology, it most likely was. The inhumanity of these practices always baffles me. When companies (or school districts) hire us, they are hiring us because they see a set of traits and qualities which will benefit their company somehow. These are inner traits, ideas and point of view that were developed over a lifetime, and should belong to the worker and the worker alone; the money that is paid as a salary to this worker could never be enough to pay for the incredible wealth of gathered and collected data, insight and experiences this worker gathered throughout their lives. It should be impossible for someone to own my ideas while I work for them, during any particular time. It would be like owning a piece of my soul. The ideas I have right now while performing my function as a teacher are unique and sparked not only from my direct work, but from everything I have lived and seen and experienced throughout my lifetime, and no company should be able to own this ethereal part of me. But somehow, a long time ago, when people were seen only as bodies to be owned, this was acceptable, and we have yet to catch up and force the rules to change; we have yet to wake up and state, enough. Don't get me wrong. I am all for sharing my ideas, my lesson plans, the way I do things, with other teachers; I have several sites with how-to information and examples of work, going into detailed minutia and making it easier for anyone to do what I do. On the bottom of my sites, I state, "Take it, it's free" or something to that effect. I want kids to have great experiences everywhere, and if something works for me, I really want to share it free of charge. But it is my choice to share; it is my choice to make this material available for free. It should always be my choice. As an artist as well as a teacher, there are some things that I would rather share for a profit. Again, my ideas, my choice. For instance, I have made some posters for the Elements of Art which are really good; I intend on eventually making another set, with the Principles of Art. I also have developed cool posters for science, neat designs and games for education and other things that took me several full days to develop. Did I have to do this amount of work for my students? No; I do these things because it is my passion as an artist. In the end, if it turns out looking excellent, and if I want to sell these items, as an artist, I should be able to sell this in sites such as Teacher Pay Teachers. I had heard about this site before, and even have purchased a couple of fun things from it (couldn't help it!). The idea that my money was going towards another teacher made me happy. After reading through this blog post, and checking out the comments, I had to reevaluate my thinking regarding what a teacher is and does. Every person who loves his or her craft, and works hard to come up with unique ways of seeing a certain subject, is an artist. This includes teachers. As an artist, every teacher should have the choice to either give their art for free, or be paid for their art, and they should not be shamed for trying to be paid for their work simply because they should "do it for free if they love it". Musicians like playing music; would you ask a musician to come and play for free, simply because they love it so much? Even if they have a solid gig on a bar that pays for all their bills, would you resent him or her for charging for their CDs and having pride on the creative aspect of their work, and for wanting to be compensated? Would you ask an artist to give away paintings for free, because they have so many anyways? Would you call them greedy if they didn't? If we expand on this, every person who loves and enjoys her or his profession -- be it a doctor, a dentist or an engineer, or a teacher -- could be shamed into working for free. Many of these professions do work for free sometimes, but it's on their own terms -- by the same token, teachers should be able to distinguish what they want to share and what they want to profit from; what they want to copyleft and what they want to copyright. Their ideas and plans should belong to them, and not to the company that hired them. I currently copyleft, and share often, things that work for me; but one day, when I get my act together, I would love making some copyrighted things available for a profit. I would have fun selling my intellectual property to other people who may not have 22 years of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator experience in order to make things look a certain way; I would feel good about making money for it, and they would feel good about having these visual aides. What could be wrong about that?
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5/23/2016 6 Comments Hollowing my bustIt's a rainy Sunday outside, and I am back to the studio -- this time, I have my husband with me. I asked him to take the picture below because I had no idea if the sculpture would survive the day :) The video below is ten minutes long, but most of it is very accelerated to shrink about an hour of work into ten minutes. I only recorded the head and one of the shoulders being hollowed, but after the video was done, I went ahead and finished the other shoulder. I left the sculpture intentionally thicker than usual (about 3/4 of an inch to 1 inch thick) because I didn't want it to collapse; I'd rather have a slower drying, heavier sculpture than a deformed skull. I am amazed by how well the piece is holding off after all these days of working. Everything is still workable, even though it has become sturdier and solid. Now, I have to finish her hair and smooth her a little more. Really looking forward to completing this project! 5/23/2016 0 Comments Adding volume and hair Today is Friday, and I am again working at my bust. I am enjoying the process very much, and can't wait to work on her hair. I am worried about carving the volume out to make her hollow, but... one step at a time. I started by finishing her left eye. I always make my eyes by putting on the lower eyelid and then the upped eyelid, so there is a little overlap and the eye looks more natural; it is a different experience working at this scale! After adding the lids, I smooth them to blend to the skin. The first thing I realized when I looked at her today was how round her head was; this is because her head was built around a round ball of newspaper. My first step to correct this was adding more volume to her chin, nose and forehead. I made a large, flat flap of clay and cut off the shape of the eyes, so that it builds an eyebrow bone around her eye, accentuating the eye cavity. The forehead is starting to look better, but still a little flat; the chin addition was a huge improvement to her profile, however. I added even more to her forehead to make her a little more human, and looked for some photographs as sources in order to make her ear. Below, a picture of her with a very flat, rudimentary ear... ...and below, you can see how the ear starter was made: a small slice of a circle works to separate the ear from her head, just like in real humans! The ear is a tricky beast, so I figured I'd make step-by-step of how I made it right below. This also makes me think I should have smaller step-by-steps on building the nose, eyes and mouth; I'll do this in the end, when the bust is completed. First, I added the two starting lines: one for the upper lobe, and one near the ear canal. Then, I started carving the ear, switching between round carving tools and sharper ones, depending on how sharp I wanted the edges to look. After I carved the valleys of the ear, I also added the ridges and peaks back where needed. One thing I have been using is a wet paintbrush, which I touch on areas I need to stay moist so that they don't dry too quickly. Things that dry too quickly tend to separate and crack off! The horror. I started adding more rudimentary hair, but wanted to see how it would look like if I added a curl near the earlobe. This is what I have so far! I also noticed the back of her head was missing volume. It looked like her cranium was too short, which made her look unrealistic. I started adding clumps of clay to the back, as well as more hair. To add the hair, I made long, thick coils, and added them by pressing and twisting as I went, a lucky technique I came up with which ended up giving my sculpture a somewhat Rastafarian look. I am not sure how much of the original dreadlocks I will cover in the end! This is what I have in the end of the day. I feel this was a very productive day! 5/20/2016 2 Comments Working through mudSo, I received two boxes of fresh clay on Wednesday, and went on with my new attempt at constructing a bust out of clay. If you recall my last vlog, I was stuck between two valid suggestions: making the sculpture around newspaper to make it hollow; or, making the sculpture all solid, cutting in half later on and carving the guts out. I chose the first idea. I used a wooden stick glued to a board to make a skeleton type of structure in the centre of my bust; I proceeded to start squeezing newspaper around it. Below, a video of my first impression using the technique.
Things seemed to be going in the right direction; the problem I faced was, as soon as I placed a substantial clump of clay around the structure, it started to bend in a weird way, and I got extremely cold feet. So I decided to scrap the idea and go with a solid structure this time around. To avoid the same issue I faced last time, where the weight of the sculpture's head destroyed the sculpture, I decided to make the head itself hollow, building it around a large newspaper ball. The way I build this was, really, getting clump by clump and squishing it onto the piece until it got bigger and bigger, just like adding sand to a sand castle. Every new little clump was then smoothed out and air bubbles were squished out -- because as you may or may not know, air bubbles = kaboom in the kiln. The air expands and the whole thing breaks into a million pieces, just like Humpty Dumpty, and you just can't put it back together again. I was afraid still of the head being heavy on the neck, so I quickly ran down a long coil on her back coming from her head; this could translate as curls or a braid later on After I finally closed the ghastly face hole, I started to add more and more clumps and smooth it all together. I didn't score or use water, just worked fast enough to ensure the clay stayed moist and pliable. I had a moist sponge next to me, and kept running my hands over the sculpture; as soon as a certain area started to dry out, I would run the sponge over it to moisten it again. At this point, I added a shape for the nose and chin, and also pushed my fingers into the eye sockets to indicate the eyes. I started adding more and more volume on the cheeks and under the neck, as well as the skull. I added two shapes on the back to indicate shoulder blades. People came and looked at this point, and didn't know what to say. One girl called it Voldemort. I pointed out it did have a nose. While I added some of the future hair, I asked a student to take a photo of me. It gives an idea of the size of the bust so far. I'd say it is close to life-size. After spending a good long time smoothing her skin with my hands and adding more clay, I carved out the space above her clavicle and some areas on the neck, and added bits here and there. I made her a mouth -- which turned out too big but I didn't want to change it. I also added a large eyeball in each eye, which I always do before adding eyelids; this makes the eye much more realistic. However, this time around, I decided to make the eyes closed. Her nose turned out OK, but a little big. I think she is turning out really nice. I love her little smile. She has strong features... really not my intention. I was going for sweet Renaissance and ended up doing warrior princess... darn. :)
Looking forward to working with her again! 5/20/2016 0 Comments Bust or Bust! Vlog (May 10)To start off my final project blog, I made a little vlog. I feel a little guilty starting off with clay instead of app building because I already love clay so much, and it's just degrees of knowledge at this point... but I have a really good reason. I have been through some rough spots this past year, mainly because of my health not being the greatest. To top it off, I stress my body by overworking until I have nothing left to give; I have trouble saying "NO" which makes it hard to bring balance into my life. I always pretend like everything is hunky dory, and share very little of my personal life with others. I feel everyone has enough negativity in their lives, and I want to be a source of positive energy and feelings. I want to make people feel better, and not the other way around -- which you could probably analyse in a thousand different ways, none of which paint me in a very positive light, but that's pretty much where I am stuck at the moment. A couple of weeks ago, the stress that mounted on me became too much to bear, and I started doing small ceramics sculptures to relax in between classes. This brought such novel relief to my soul, like swimming through a cool pool of Jell-O; students asked me what I was working on, and then they asked me if it was a sample for a class -- and I felt such pride in answering that I was doing this just for my own enjoyment and pleasure. As I played with the soft, pliable matter, I realized that I had never actually built a human bust; in fact, I never have built a truly large sculpture before. All my sculptures are tiny, and even the drums I have made are not that big (and fairly simple to do). So, I decided to focus right now on something that will bring me immediate joy, and help me live through the last of this semester without completely burning out; something that I have always wanted to learn just for the simple pleasure of it. I want to make a large bust made of clay! Watch the vlog below to check out how things are turning out so far. I made this vlog last week, and I just got two boxes of clay delivered to the school today, so... more is coming soon! 5/18/2016 0 Comments The Birth of Modern CultureI have just watched a Ted Talk with Lawrence Lessig about the dangers of over-regulation in regards to creativity. The presentation was not only informative, but had me laughing out loud in several instances -- who would have thought Jesus had that much sass? All joking aside, this is something I happen to be very passionate about. I am an artist, and had the privilege of going to Art College twenty years ago at a progressive school in Portland, Oregon; they acknowledged the difference between using source material and blatantly copying a piece of artwork, and they taught us to see the difference. They drilled into us that since the beginning of time, nothing is a brand new idea, and no idea comes from nowhere; in fact, it is a matter of pride for artists to cite their influences, the masters they took ideas and inspiration from. We were taught how we could grab photos from magazines -- no matter if they were copyrighted or not -- and use it as source for our paintings, as long as we modified it and added something of our own. We didn't have online searches at that time, and relied heavily on high end magazines and periodicals, most of all National Geographic. I remember our professor giving us a simple example: she had been hired to illustrate a children's book about elephants. Thanks to pictures from National Geographic, she was able to make beautiful, unique watercolours of elephants, with proper anatomy and movement; who would ever consider this copyright infringement? Well, as it turns out, a lot has happened in the past 20 years, and not everything has been positive. As more and more creative content became available in the internet, the people controlling the flow of content became more and more possessive of this content. The message they sent youth for the past few years was, "you are doing something bad by sharing and using other's content" -- which, considering creativity and art, is a heavy blanket statement. As I started my first job as an art teacher last year, I was flabbergasted by the directive the art department held regarding copyright. The kids were supposed to use only their photos as source material to avoid copyright infringement; every material had to come from their own mind, and every idea was encouraged to be original, or it could fall under plagiarism. I was faced with a group of young artists who had no real concept of what an art movement really was; they knew the basic history of Renaissance, for instance, but never connected the dots to see that the reason everyone was painting a certain way during a certain period of time, in a certain region, was because they were **gasp** copying from each other. Almost every single student from our senior class wanted to find their own unique voice. Every student thought they could only use their own photo as source, and only if they couldn't find something, they could go into a creative commons site; some students thought that they should be able to draw everything from memory. That may sound fantastic and great to someone who is not passionate about art, but to me, it was incredibly troubling. The stress these kids were under, and the reluctance to even look at artwork from other people -- lest they be influenced by their brushstroke and start using their techniques subconsciously -- were initially a source of concern for me. While in their private lives, they copied and shared content from other people, and modified things to their heart's content, they wanted to present a much different facade to me, and wanted to ensure they were seen as "proper artists" according to what they had been led to believe. This clash of cultures was not pretty to see. One of the photos above used a source. Can you tell the difference? Luckily, I had changed the policy to define plagiarism as a slightly different animal, and gently drilled this new notion that looking at others' artwork and finding your voice -- as it fits within art history and its context -- was a process akin to self-discovery, in an artistic sense.
I posed to them a simple question: are you willing to visit every corner of the world, and take every single photo from every angle, of everything that you will ever need? If they had been my professor, how would they go about completing her project -- with canned photos from creative commons? With their imagination only? Students started to understand what I was saying, but I could sense their skepticism about "crazy pirate Mrs. J" and her ideas. As luck would have it, a new exhibit came to the Vancouver Art Gallery this year: Mash Up, the birth of Modern Culture. The four floors of the Gallery were transformed into a celebration of appropriation culture. Picasso's collages, Warhol's prints from photos, Duchamp's bicycle wheel-turned-art, and much, much more examples of changing or expanding upon an idea to make it your own, or simply putting an everyday thing under a different light. I took the opportunity to bring all three of my grade 11-12 classes to the exhibit, and every group asked me in the beginning how was that allowed, or some version of the same question. It took just a few minutes for them to understand that what they do hidden away from the artroom should be embraced; that their voices may already be there, just waiting between the waves of Instagram, Youtube and Pinterest, for an opportunity to pop out. This oppressive mentality regarding copyright is not sustainable in the long run; it is fear-based and not open, and sends the wrong message to our kids. I am looking forward to seeing the next twenty years, to see how the pendulum will swing; I have great hopes for the future of the art world, and can't wait to find out how our youth today will shape it. |
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