I have finished editing my movie.

But I still have to do voice over’s for the last three minutes, but before I do that I wanted to find a song that I want in my video, even if you don’t hear all of it when I actually edit it in I thought it would be nice to have something besides my voice for ten minutes… so just to share the actual full length song heres a link!

YAY!

SO after my hard drive completely crashed last class I came back to my apartment and did some serious work. I’m halfway through the video now. And I think its starting to look really great and I’m truly pleased thus far. I think my video is going to be different from everyone else’s and I’m totally excited about that! Hopefully I’ll have all my video editing done by tonight and just some fine toning tonight along with recording my voice overs. I have to say that it completely threw me off guard when my external hard drive crashed and I’m sure I was 99.9% about to cry in class. But whatever, I’m getting through it and hopefully it will be set apart? We shall see!

I’m working on the final presentation currently and hitting a complete wall! I think that next class (tomorrow) we should maybe see some examples. I’m feeling completely lost and there is nothing on our moodle page that I can find helping me answer some questions. I’m not sure where this movie is supposed to go, what its supposed to say and why. I have so much footage that I’m struggling to piece it all together in a way that makes sense. Maybe, that conversation after it will help me, or maybe making a short clip about how I have felt completely lost all semester will be good? Anyone else having this problem?

I’m refusing to be part of the world today. This rain has brought my life down along with the return to school that the Burke kids seem to feel. I’m with them. The gross weather and the mind set of school isn’t with them or me. The Burke was on April vacation last week, (lucky them) but now they are back until summer vacation. Today is one of my last days here, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I still feel I haven’t learned much from being here. I think I’ve really struggled with talking/teaching the children here more than most. I’m not sure why either. I’m a very shy person when it comes to meeting new people but at the same time I’m really great at random small talk and all that fabulous stuff. So I’m not really understanding my extreme hesitance when it comes to teaching. My job in the real world is to sell clothing and I’m very good at it. I go up to people I don’t know, and I can talk and have a great conversation but when I’m in a classroom i freeze. I think its because I just keep having these thoughts of you could be making the biggest difference in this kids life, make it a good one. Why I have that thought, no clue but its there. Hopefully the Burke will be this experience I needed to feel shy, and realize I need to just break through it. But its presenting to be extremely hard, and I’m still not sure if I feel completely ready. I’ve been thinking maybe if they were younger kids, what if they were middle schoolers would I feel more comfortable then? Whats my problem!?

Today was one big ball of stress. Spilling hot coffee all over myself was just icing on the cake. Today was our group lessons with TAG and Urban Scholars, and it was nuts! We had no idea what the plan was and just had to go with it, but it was truly a learning experience and loads of fun!

My college aspirations were clear from day one, art school. I didn’t care what I did I just knew I was going to art school, someday some how it was going to happen. I toured liberal art’s colleges but nothing was like the tour I went on for MassArt. It was dirty, the hallways full of stuff, and art everywhere it was the place for me. The students I met today are completely different. From the few I spoke with they had no idea what they wanted to do, what they wanted to be and clearly felt more overwhelmed by the idea of having to know now. I completely agree, I felt the same way when declaring a major, why do I have to know now?! Whats the rush? I think some of them feel the pressure more than others, some were worried about the work load and not being prepared to handle it, when some were more concerned with paying for it. I personally believe that there is always a way to pay for education and to not worry about it and worry later but it is a true concern. It scares me that these students are so afraid of going to college just because of money, I feel college is such an important part of the educational process that you shouldn’t have to worry about paying for it. Many of the students were also very young I felt to be here today. One girl was speaking to me about how she didn’t know she needed to be thinking about all that comes with college yet but for some reason she was on this tour, she was 15. I agree!!! Grades are important to keep up, and tests scores just to going to college is such a struggle later, but she doesn’t need to think about which school is right, or paying for it or what major or the common app or supplements! I didn’t even start looking at colleges until the summer going into my senior year! She’s a freshman!!!!

I do want to say that although today was a great learning experience was was terribly annoyed with how it ended. My group, the one bringing the groups to gallery spaces really got the short end of the stick. We arrived at 10AM with everyone else and gathered back at 12:30pm just like everyone else and then sat with group A for the 1.5 hours they had with them. Then we took each group, first being TAG for our own lesson. We worked incredibly hard on creating this activity and planned for anything, yet no one form the other group joined us to watch as we did. Once we completed our first hour as went back to get the other group, Urban Scholars. Urban Scholars from no fault of their own were completely done with MassArt. They wanted to go home and it was 100% clear. At this point it was 3:45pm. We were asked to only bring them to one gallery and we did. They were not into our assignment and didn’t care if we knew it. Only Elaine came to watch out group teach and she even participated in our activity. Later Urban Scholars left and went home. No one from the other group besides Elaine came to watch. We did this for them, it just felt like everyone went home and enjoyed the fabulous weather. I wanted to do that as well but we were there for group A the entire time so why did no one come to show the same support? Not even Beth came which was also disappointing because we were hoping to get feed back. I just wish that this day had been planned better.

The Burke is still a happening place. I have continued doing my hours there and thus far it has been a painless process besides waking up so early! I take a much more observational approach to my visit. I’m just really more interested in how to students do their own thing. I have taken so many notes about Alisa’s students and their work. Although every time I walk into the Burke sign in and go upstairs and no one has idea who I am, I feel very welcomed. I think the Burke is a great place for me to do my hours its never the same the the kids clearly enjoy being in the art room! This past visit Alisa left me alone for a bit, it was terrifying. As any of you may no who also visited the Burke, kids kind of just wonder in and wonder out, some aren’t supposed to be there, some sneak in the back door and some just appear. Normally, Alisa will tell whomever is in the wrong location to leave but I had no idea who was supposed to be in her classroom or not. To make matters worse I didn’t have my glasses so whenever anyone knocked on the front door I had to squint to try and see the face then trust my gut as to wether or not they had her class that period or not. Regardless she came back and we had no problems. I was kind of shocked how afraid I was in those minutes she was gone. I was actually terrified of kids just coming in one by one and me just there having no idea what to do. Kind of funny if you think about it…

I still have two days left to go to the Burke, currently they are all on their April Vacation and shopping for prom dresses so I will getting them down next week! I’m rather excited to go again and hear all about everyones break! Even if I’m just in the corner with my notebook I still hear them and am filled with happiness to know that they truly love Ms. Rodney’s room!

Today we went into the South End of Boston, way more swanky than any other place we have gone thus far! First we went to the BCA, and had a gallery talk with some of the Art History grad students whom lead the show. It was wonderful. The works of William Cordova filled the space the Mill’s Gallery lives. When you first walk in you can’t help but be overwhelmed by the brightness of the Mills Gallery, or at least I couldn’t. Besides the brilliant natural lighting is the massive structure built literarily into the the gallery. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it was amazing to look at. I was most inspired by Williams work on the right side of the wall next to the built house layout. English is Broken is what the works on the wall were called. They were all on different paper surfaces, with different drawings on them, and different excerpts and words from something. The art history students told us that he was playing with the English language in theses pieces. I was just really into the doodlish feeling of the different pieces.

After the Mills Gallery we took a delightful walk over to a small street with a bunch of different little galleries and split up and wonder around on our own into different ones. I felt some of the galleries were unapproachable. I felt like they only wanted me there is I was going to either buy art or try and have them buy mine. As an art student whom would love for my work to have a show and potentially by it, I wouldn’t’ want the viewers to be greeted with such a manner that we were, if at all.  I did enjoy some of the works in the galleries but the people who sat in front were not the friendly type.

After grabbing lunch with Erica and Elaine, we walked to Linda Price’s studio. Walking there was amazing, it was trash day and South Boston has some good pickings. I got some really great books that I can’t wait to create something with. Once we got to Linda’s studio and everyone met up we walked upstairs and into her fantasy world. Linda’s work is unlike anything I have seen before, its bright, extremely overwhelming, busy and innovative. I personally did not relate to her work in anyway but I did enjoy looking at her work. She uses pipe cleaners in her work and other weird media. I felt her work although interesting to look at didn’t go much further, I was hoping for her to go into detail as to how a piece came to be instead of explaining they came from drawings. I however, felt it was extremely useful for me because of my own work and her hanging structures.

Overall I had a great day walking around in the amazing weather and getting to see some great art in the process!

Tufts visit was interesting. We viewed work from Nancy Holt, a graduate of Tufts University. I have to say, the photography was awesome! I think some students were a bit bored but I loved it. Her playing with light and just the overall capture of movement in time was remarkable. I enjoyed her use of circles and organic shapes as well. I did not enjoy our gallery talk however. “Tell me what you see,” can only be asked so many times. I felt terrible for the Tufts student who lead us, we were the worst class ever. When she asked us we didn’t say much and it was jut extremely awkward. I was also displeased with how rushed it was. Although we stood in front of two photographs for 20 minutes they felt timed and she constantly kept looking at her watch. I felt like the remarkably different works were also downstairs and in a corner I would have otherwise not known were part of the gallery show, so that was displeasing.

We also went to the MIT galleries. We visited one gallery, for far too long. I disliked this visit a lot. It was terrible. I have never felt so helpless in my life. The curator is to blame for this one. Let me tell you, it is possible to talk too much about art. IT IS! I didn’t think so before but it is. To tell a bunch of MassArt students that painting is a lost medium is just terrible. I felt he (the curator) over talked us for 45 minutes. It was painful. I felt he just talked, and talked, and talked. It was really a shame for the fact that I cannot remember the artists name or really many of the works besides the large amount of portraits of the artists landlords….which we painted. This was a terrible experience for us at MIT. I am however, glad I had it. If not, I worry I would one day talk, talk and talk like this curator did. So I took a great learning experience from this extremely negative gallery talk.

Pre- Research:

Nancy Holt: I just looked up a couple of her works, and I’m really excited to see them in person!!! I have some questions just about how she creates her structures and where she finds to put them. Can’t wait!!!

Chttp://www.google.com/imgres?q=Cheyney+Thompson&um=1&hl=en&client=safari&sa=N&rls=en&biw=1383&bih=878&tbm=isch&tbnid=PLqKWdvDbkYCZM:&imgrefurl=http://www.artnet.com/artwork/426079562/114594/cheyney-thompson-chronochrome-viii.html&docid=6Tc6TBEDHcPeuM&imgurl=http://www.artnet.com/artwork_images_114594_611165_cheyney-thompson.jpg&w=625&h=480&ei=_tiNT4TAIMnq0gHWo7SwDw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=610&vpy=352&dur=759&hovh=197&hovw=256&tx=66&ty=55&sig=103868113217696825947&page=1&tbnh=153&tbnw=199&start=0&ndsp=26&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:113

Cheyney Thompson: I really like the stuff I was able to find online from him! His use of pattern and all that is super cool but I don’t understand what his work is saying. Why is he creating these? What does this work mean to him?

Although I was completely freaking out as to how to get to the BU gallery I got there! YAY! I have to say after the curator discussion I was ready to look at the traveling show, 100 Years. It was exciting that this was the first time that the show was at a University from recently being at the MoMA. It was also exciting for me because this was my first experience of going out into the world to see a smaller show in a smaller unknown gallery space. I’m used to going to places like the MFA or the ICA.

Overall I enjoyed the art in the show. The look of the past 100 Years in performance art was very interesting and something I probably otherwise wouldn’t have looked at. I’m not much of a performance art girl, so I enjoyed the exposure. I filled up my little book with notes, and I took a bunch of photo’s of work. I was actually most responsive to one of the the most recent works. Joan Jonas’s work, Mirrors was very interesting to me and I really enjoyed watching it. I did notice however, that there was an extreme lack of information for such a large show. I found myself wishing I had more information, and looking it up on my phone. I don’t like that. I do understand that maybe it was to get me thinking, but sometimes information just needs to be given. I also disliked how everything was a print out. Things were printed out on really poor quality paper. As an artist I would be truly upset if I found my work being presented this way. So I thought this was a little lame of BU, but the 100 Years exhibit is traveling by the fact that it is passed with the use of an USB drive. But overall it was a really great exhibit!

Brian Knep’s work was what I worked with on the first day of Seminar 1. I was super excited to have the chance to visit an artist in their space. I have only ever since MassArt students in their studio spaces, so seeing Brian’s space was really exciting. I had only seen his healing work and had questions as to how it was even created. Learning that he is a programer was pretty cool and made me upset that I can’t go home and do what he does. Never the less, he seemed so excited and thrilled by his work it was infectious. I love that! Its great to see an artist get truly excited about their own work and be able to express/share that with a group. His works also really interested me. His works with frogs was really awesome. I wish/hope we get to have more intimate visits like this!