Arts Scholar
Semester 3
1. The following questions have been part of the underlying themes of this semester's colloquiums and related activities. How has your experience this semester helped you to interpret and address each? Provide an example to support your conclusions for each.
How can art reshape or recontextualize an understanding of our (individual and societal) learned history, biases, and beliefs?
What are the theoretical models and practical strategies for initiating the creative process?
How can we effectively incorporate feedback to revise and refine our ideas with greater depth and clarity?
For this semester art took on various forms and purposes, where it could be used to unite through drumming or collaborative vines. Just as people have used art to entertain, people have also used it as part of activism throughout history; I think understanding art as a method of expression helped understand what lies between the lines.
Besides seeing more forms of expression and mediums, this semester has also introduced various tips and tricks for what goes behind the art as well. Helpful techniques such as mind maps or comparing two ideas to find overlaps don’t restrict the thinking process, and let potential new avenues appear by laying out the whole picture. But just as art is something that involves both yourself and others, a key part of improving is constructive feedback. With other people comes different perspectives and interpretations, revealing things you might not have seen or thought of yourself.
2. Provide an example of a news-related item that you encountered outside of the colloquium dealing specifically with art as a mechanism for expressing one’s values, beliefs or lived experience that has captured your attention during the last few months. Indicate how (or whether) your engagement in the Arts program helped you understand it better.
I think rather than a single specific event that has caught my attention, this whole year has felt challenging and surreal. Using art to cope with isolation, to express the need for action, or just to express everyone’s pent up feelings: what the Arts program has done is really granting more understanding of people through their art, whether it’s the collective stress or desperate plea for justice.
3. From your experience so far, what Arts supporting courses, and/or courses you are taking towards your major, show the most interesting, surprising, and revealing intellectual connections to what you have learned or experienced as an Arts Scholar? Cite at least one course and describe the synergies connecting the knowledge you acquired in that course with that acquired in Arts Scholars.
For one of my Arts supporting courses, ENGL272 felt a lot like one of many examples of how artists discuss and interact in order to improve their craft. Similar to the focus on critical feedback in Arts Scholars, a major part of the class was reading and sharing meaningful insight into the important parts of our writing pieces and what should be improved. The feedback was more on the technical side at times, but shared the same spirit that Arts Scholars encouraged.
4. Discuss how or whether your learning was improved by interacting (in or out of class) with fellow Arts Scholars. Please use particular examples of how being a part of this living-learning community (virtual and otherwise) aided in expanding your learning and conversely, where it fell short.
While being able to interact with fellow scholars was diminished due to this year’s circumstances, being able to keep in contact with people kept learning from becoming desensitized. What’s important about having such a community is the ability to have an open discussion on topics that everyone is involved in. Other scholars will understand the context behind an Arts Scholars-specific assignment and other shared difficulties, so the conversation is a little easier to have. It’s a good experience that is also, unfortunately, limited due to how quarantine has gone.
5. Scholars encourages active contribution by students, either in academic settings (e.g., colloquium discussions and projects; field trip activities; etc.) or as part of the larger Scholars community. In what manner have you contributed to the Arts program and community the semester? What opportunities do you wish you were able to leverage to contribute more or in alternative ways?
I think that with the Covid quarantine and online courses, there weren’t really as many opportunities to contribute as there would normally be. Without the in-person opportunities available, ability to participate becomes limited to what the average student can post or voice through a Zoom call. That said, I think we as students have participated to the best of our abilities, given all the different complications and issues that come with virtual learning.
6. Discuss whether being in Scholars brought you into contact with people or concepts that challenged your previous beliefs or opinions. What is the value of exploring perspectives that are different from, or challenge, your own? Please provide an example.
There were definitely a lot of perspectives and matters I never really noticed before, but rather than challenge my beliefs I would say that coming into contact with these new perspectives expanded my world and made it a lot more wider. Art doesn’t have to just be a painting you can see: singers, dancers, and writers all have their own colors that define their craft and chosen expression. And I believe that the difference in everyone’s capstone proposal alone is a testament to how these ideas and opinions can differ and contrast. By exploring other perspectives, things can be made clearer, and new ideas can be found.
Final Reflection
I’d say that being an Arts Scholar was the fun part of being in Arts Scholars, and as stressful as things got I don’t regret the things I learned and improved over these two years. With field trips and pentathlon meaning mandated trips to see different genres of art, and guest artists that range from known artists and musicians to places that might not even seem like art at first, it was basically a drastic increase in exposure to art, redefining what art was, and what art meant. The coursework that involved writing reflections on these events was admittedly tedious, especially when the shift to online made experiencing things in a “first-hand” kind of way harder, but forced me to look back at these experiences and really think about them as more than just a fun trip. Sometimes it really is just a simple and fun way to embrace creativity, like with DIY stamp art, and sometimes it’s a way to express and pass on stories of crossing the border. But as different as they are, these experiences are all just different ways of embracing art as a medium, capable of carrying any and every meaning in a way that crosses boundaries.
On a more personal level, the second year was where that new perception was taken and applied using our own skills and interests to create our own form of art. While just completing the scholars program results in a neat little addendum on my resume, a lot of the assignments helped with learning professional skills for the future. Take the contents of this ePortfolio website for example: building resumes and writing project proposals are skills usually needed for future career paths, with capstone presentations exercises in professional communication.
The Capstone project itself was very much an exercise in responsibility and accountability, where the person that kept you on track was none other than yourself. The project allowed me to incorporate my passion for writing and drawing into my work, but this also meant that I was responsible for every part of the process, whether it was learning effective time management skills to stay on track or learning website design to successfully curate an engaging exhibit for my final product. Learning from how professional artists went about producing their own work over the past two years helped with the technical side of things, but the exposure to the works themselves was what helped with expressing a meaning behind my capstone project and the work itself; as much as writing half of a novel had intrinsic value on its own, the other half of the project, explaining the behind the scenes work that went into making it, was just as important. And it wasn’t just important for my audience: doing the project was a way to integrate my different interests beyond just the arts-only aspects, combining them into new ways that expanded what I could do with my art. Adding visuals to my capstone exhibit to complement my mostly text-based work is one example of this, an idea that was given in previous peer feedback.
Speaking of peer feedback, working with peers and faculty to get advice on my work helped with providing fresh eyes, a process that worked both ways; I don’t really know much about other mediums like music-making or sewing, but I could at least give feedback on the design of a website, or suggest some things that could be included alongside a featured work.
Overall, it was the supportiveness of the community that made learning all these skills and presenting my own art possible: learning new techniques and ideas that I wouldn’t have thought to look for, building meaningful connections, and creating more and more art meaningful to both others and me; all the things that I’ll probably carry with me into the future.