My SEA project: a summary

A Flower for Your Thoughts is a socially engaged art project that centers around informing people about the environment and exchanging prints for for their thoughts on what they appreciate about the earth.  Each person received a print of a blooming tree, poetry, and a quote.  In return, they wrote what they loved or appreciated about the earth on a flower cut out and took a picture with their flower.  I handed out the prints on evening at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando.  I gave my prints to whoever was willing to talk for a few moments and pose for the photograph.

When performing this project the best part was watching people stop what they wee doing and look around at the world they lived on.  We often get caught up in the hustle of getting things done and don’t stop to appreciate the things around us.  Overall, it was a really enjoyable experience. 

“Wild Things”: Artist Statement

I am fascinated with the way in which people assign human behaviors and characteristics to animals like wolves, rabbits, and other animals. We often associate ourselves with attributes like cleverness and laziness, and sometimes we apply animalistic characteristics to ourselves or our daily habits. For instance, some days I consider myself a “lone wolf.” Animals have their own set of behavioral patterns that are needed for survival.  It is comical that we anthropomorphize animal behavior in this way.

The colors are meant to be bright, making the pictures more cartoonish.  Each printed image is detailed and stylistically in the same genre.  They are also humorous,exaggerated and comical connecting with the ridiculous associations we apply to animals.  The blue paper used connects depth and stability in mind and body and how these prints indicate a lack of stability.  Our insecurities as people are imposed on animals that have natural behavioral pattern and norms.  Each print is cut into organic oval-like shapes that are reminiscent of medallions.  The view wears these characteristics around their necks as a badge showing that we, as people, are not stable.

I created color schemes that relate to the themes of each anthropomorphic animal.  The first print, Party Animal, pokes fun at the concept of wildness and how we associate it with the wolf although he is organized and intelligent. The print also juxtaposes the themes of innocence and wickedness,  which is why pink, blue, white, and black were used.  The pink, white, and blue are babyish colors associated with infancy, while the black covers it and adds detail that is aggressive. 

The second print, Primping like a Peacock, is connected to gendered norms and the juxtaposition of femininity and masculinity.   Although peacocks are male they are often associated with women, beauty, and high maintenance.  The peacock’s most significant colors are blue, green, and gold. The colors point to the bright vibrant color of the bird and its association with female beauty but the subject itself assumes a masculine persona.   

The Last Print, Hoarding Nuts, addresses neurosis and how a behavior that is crazy for a human, hoarding tons of belongings, is a survival tactic for the squirrel and a positive trait.  For humans, hoarding is a psychological imbalance cause by trauma but for a squirrel it is the difference between life and death. The squirrel’s promenade colors are orange and brown. The orange is bright and unstable while the brown is solid and heavy. The squirrel connects to brown, it is consistent and earthy, while the orange connects to man.  The need for things makes us frantic and panicked.  The orange connects with personal instability. 

A Flower For Your Thoughts

A Flower For Your Thoughts

My SEA project ended up being a real learning experience for me. At first I was really nervous about talking to a bunch of strangers about Future Bear and the environment but I actually really enjoyed myself. I ended up making adjustments to my project before I performed it.  Originally, I had planned to fold my screen printing cars into notes to hand out but I decided instead to leave them unfolded because the paper was pretty thick.  I also decided that instead of having them write a note that I would give back to someone else I would give them my note and them have them write theirs on a flower cutout which is were the title of my project some from.

Future Bear help me launch my conversations and gave me a frame on which to based the discussions that I had with my participants.  During my project I gave out two double sided screen printed images to each person. One print had a blooming tree and the other had a poem/quote and a fact about how we are hurting our environment.  There were 6 different poem, quote, and fact combinations that I handed out.  In addition, while the people were writing the notes I would talk to them about Future Bear and the environment.  After the conversation they gave me back a flower-shaped note saying what they loved, appreciated, or wished was different about the environment.

This project made me realize that I don’t just have to make art to please myself, but to also do something for the world I live on; without it I would not have resources to make any of these things.  One thing that I realized during my project is that people are always rushing around and it was initially difficult to get people to stop for a moment.  The interesting thing was that when they stopped to participate they would also look around at all of the beautiful nature at Lake Eola and really think about what they liked about it.  It was very satisfying to see and it made me feel like my art and what I was doing mattered.  As a result, i feel like it is something that I definitely would like to do again and the people I talk to were asking me if I did this all the time of if I had a Facebook page they could join, so I felt like it was well receive.

I feel like the strongest elements of my project were conversation and collaboration.  A lot of the performance was just talking to people and informing them while giving them something in exchange for listening and responding.  The collaboration potion of my project was the flowers.  By contributing their ideas to the project they became a part of the artwork.

If I did my project again there are three things I would do,  I would hand out different images so that everyone does not get the same one and print more.  I would also perform the project for more days.  It was fine this time because I handed out all of my prints, but next time I would like to visit other parks and outdoor areas to reach more people.

Out of all of the different things in the mission statement, I felt like my project help me embody social responsibility and environmental stewardship.  My project allowed me to acknowledge my responsibility as a citizen of the world, and it also gave me more awareness in regards to my own carbon footprint and how I effect the environment.

Gendered Performance and Rape Culture

The article talks about online representation and portrayal of women and how daily life and everyday encounters make up a the meat of the female portrayals on the internet.  Media is intertwined with our everyday lives and now the internet has become a big part of that representation. I can think of quite a few youtubers that take on gendered roles in order to make a social statement or prove a point.  The article also talks about masquerade and the role of the internet in gendered performance.  In particular, this video from Anna Akana addresses the subject of rape prevention an din it she put in a different mask.  In the video she shows what a hyper paranoid woman would do with the anti rape advice women receive everyday.

In the video she parodies all of the crazy things women could do to prevent themselves from being raped and then gives some real examples of the type of advice we receive on a daily basis. In it she juxtaposes the reality of womanhood and rape culture with the extremes, and as a a result she shows just how ridiculous it is that we have to do all of these things to protect ourselves.

Here Akana successfully separated two types of female gendered performance.  The woman that does everything she can to protect herself, and the woman who thinks parents should teach their children that rape is never ok.  They have become categories within one overall arc.

Is the “F” word Alienating Women From the Movement

In the article, “Post Feminist Radical” it is mentioned that there is a “hesitancy and at times outright hostility to ‘feminism’ on the part of both young men and young women (246).”  I would agree and disagree with this statement, and in particular it calls to mind in interview, Divergent star, Shailene Woodley did for Time Magazine.  In the interview, she tells Time contributor, Eliana Dockterman, after being asked if she is a feminist that she is not. Shailene says, “No because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. . . And also I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either. We have to have a fine balance.”  When I read her original statement my first reaction was “well, I’m pretty sure feminism doesn’t do any of those things” and “You kind have missed the whole point of feminism.”

I believe it is less to do with hostility and more to do with of a lack of understanding of what feminism is and particularly what it is today. Since then there have been many responses to Shailene’s comment ranging from “how can you be a woman today and not be a feminist” to “She doesn’t know what a feminist is.”  I believe that a lot of the hostility toward feminism today is a result of a lack of understanding of what feminism is. Shailene likely thinks that feminist are “bra burning men haters”, but what feminist really advocate is an end to sexual abuse, equal pay, and equal rights across the board.  So is there really a ton of hostility or are people just totally misinformed. People misinterpret this shift from the “F” word as the death of feminism but I don’t believe this is the case.  I just think that a lot of uninformed people don’t know what it means today.

Frith, Hannah. 2001. “Young Women, Feminism and the Future: Dialogues and Discoveries.” Feminism & Psychology , 11(2): 147–151.

Gournelos, Ted. “The Post-Feminist Radical: Jenna Marbles and the Digital Masquerade.”

SEA Check-in

Right now I’m playing around with the idea of a tree, a really old and twisted tree.  I want to do the line work for the tree myself and then do a spilt run of leaves as the canopy for the tree.  Right now I’m thinking blues, greens, and pinks but I’m still figuring that out. I wanted to use organic lines and shaped to fill the parts of the trunk that are supposed to be light. This image would go on the first page of the notes.  I also want to include a transparent flower on the first page, probably on the back an layer slashes of color on both side of the page.  I’m interested in creating an imaged that is bright and attractive so that people will keep the pages and, as a result, keep a reminder of how wonderful the earth is.

Love Notes to the Earth

For my project I will be writing and creating love notes to the earth.  From me with have a line of poetry and a fact about our environment either written or screen printed in them.  The other side will be a screen printed image and the notes will be folded as shown. So each not will include two pieces of paper.

For the performative aspect of my project I will have a hat box and a clipboard, and I will walk around asking people to write a not to the earth and exchange it with me.  In that way they will demonstrate how they have learned something about the environment they live in and they also gain something from the experience.

The images of the notes will be beach, floral, and forest scenes overlaid over each other. Each note will also have a slightly transparent image of future bear on it. I think that I want to be pretty flexible with the color schemes.

“Return of the King” and a Response to Black Cutlture

When I see season 1 episode 9 of the Boondocks I see a lot of allusion and an additional responsiveness to this episode that might not be present in other episodes.  Martin Luther King Jr. is often associated with social activism, but he was also a pastor and as a result I see him through a religious filter.

In this particular episode MLK is alive after waking up from a comma and he is trying to effect black culture.  In the episode, the Christian doctrine of loving your enemy and turning the other cheek is raised and the media reacts viscerally. It represents the first moment when the filter is removed and, in this case, the media says he loves Al-Qaeda. I associate MLK to these religious aspects of his doctrine and to see such an unfiltered reaction was surprising even in the context of the “Boondocks.”

Here we see a total breakdown and removal of censoring and filtering in order to address popular African American culture.  The episode connects and alludes to multiple texts but this speech and the scene after it make the episode responsive.  As a result, the episode becomes a commentary on modern a day black culture and its dismal climb.

Primpin’ Like a Peacock

We often associate animal characteristics and human characteristics.  Man sees elements of itself in those animals they contribute traits to.  Humans are limited by right and wrong, social expectations, and norms.  But animals escape this, relying on instinct and what they have always done to survive.  Humans are forced through the strainer that is society while animals run wild.

This piece is called “Primpin’ Like a Peacock”, and it is meant to humorously gesture at the fact that Peacocks are male yet we associate it with being feminine.  Feminine being a very human characteristic.  I juxtaposed this face by making the Peacock more “hip hop” which is associated with hyper masculinity, the antithesis of feminism.

Hip Hop and Postmodernism

In the past hip hop has been linked to postmodernism because of it’s structure and subject matter.  It is very much antiestablishment in the sense that it pulls away from, analyzes, and breaks down popular culture.  The music is all about anti-slavery, black empowerment or what it means to be black in this society. It pushes against the majority (whiteness) and towards the minority (blackness).  It also juxtaposes poverty and wealthy.  The same artist might talk about how he has nothing and everything in one song. Some of the songs are used to make commentaries about popular culture and stereotypes (a subject that the genre has also fed off of).  A good example of this social commentary is Kendrick Lamar’s “Blacker the Berry.”

The song calls into question race relations between white and blacks, but also calls into question the relationship between blacks and other blacks.  He is essentially saying that we condemn white people for killing us but we also kill us.

It is also the fragmented and rhythmic nature of hip hop that reminds some of postmodernism.  It is a style that pulled away from popular music aesthetics in order to carve out a sense of cultural relativism.  By being something different it said “I am good the way I am, I don’t have to be good for y’all.”  Hip Hop wasn’t trying to be popular or fit in with what “sounded good.”  it instead proposed that it sounded good as is. It went against the metanarrative of music and popular culture. Today, many hip hop artists are know for “pop” and less for “protest.”

Pope, Lavar. 2005. “Protest Into Pop: Hip-hop’s Devolution into Mainstream Pop Music and the Underground’s Resistance.” Lehigh Review 13: 80-98. http://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=cas-lehighreview-vol-13