Although I’ve been really overwhelmed with HREB stuff and getting all of my paper work done for my field trip I still really enjoyed doing this first layer. It was really time consuming, but totally worth it. I was checking out all of the different pine cones on our property and thought that making a large cropped version of one would be a little different than the landscapes that I had been doing. This is done entirely with ball point pens. One and a half of them to be exact.
Mentions the colors in their art work as a positive 1111111
Mentions their content as a positive 11111111111
Mentions drawing as a positive11111
Mentions the washes or painting as a negative 1111111111
Mentions everything as a negative 1
Mentions drawing as a positive11
Mentions fixing certain components 11111111111
The tallying above is from a written assignment that I asked my students to work on this week. This is right after we started to get into our Julie Mehretu inspired art works. Students were asked to pick a place, and abstract that place with layered drawings, light washed of acrylic paint and finally adding details back in. I asked student to write about five sentences for the following prompts 1) Write about all the positives that you have been seeing in this work, what have you enjoyed or liked about your work this far. 2) Write about all of the negatives that you have been experiencing within this work. Once I had all of the students work that were in class that day, I started to read through them. I took notes of the commonalities that I was seeing and after I made the categories that are above. I found that students listed about fixing things also, which was not asked from them.
For my corresponding visualization, I tried to make it more concrete than last time. I decided to use objects that looked like air molecules. I thought about how we are all breathing and moving constantly and that the only thing that is similar to all of the students places that they picked, was air. We all need to breath. I made the molecules larger if there were more tally’s that were in connection to that idea. I then, colored all of the positive molecules bright colors, and all of the negative colors dark. This way I could, and the viewer could, make connections to what was the most popular theme for both and whether or not it was a negative or positive response. All of the red circles are freshman responses and all of the blue circles are sophomore response. Unfortunately my senior has been out for about a week and hasn’t been back. On the paper I also placed all the positive responses on the bottom and all the negative on the top. I tried not to leave anything up to chance so it congruent to the data I collected.
This project is also in connection with my literature topics that I have been exploring this entire time. I am looking at visual culture impacts on students and their responses to these ideas. Although it is not present in this data set, it is present in the artwork that students are completing in class. Community and place is a large portion of everything that I have been doing and is present in the research that I have been collections and the literature review in which I have gathered all my information to help aid this project.
I fell in love with her illustrations after a co-worker showed me her new and first graphic novel “My Favorite Thing is Monsters”. She uses all ballpoint pen and her work is dynamic, rich with contrast and color. One of my favorite things about this is that all of the pages are scanned from a spiral notebook where she drew all of them out. As if she was documenting all of this in real town as she was in Chicago. As I have been working on slowing down my work and adding more layers I decided to try ball point and I’m really enjoying it. 
So I’ve started to explore the possibilities of using ball-point pen in my work. I was inspired by Emil Ferris, who is also my second mentor artist. A little out of the ordinary, in fine art, but I love how the pen layers with the inks. 
This guy is amazing, he talked a lot about AI and it’s impact on the future development of the world. Definitely worth watching!
I wish to have added more to these, but last week got away from me before I was in the City for the entirety of the NAEA 17′ Convetion. I started to think about small graphic patterns that are reminiscent of all the long layed over grass that covers the property. My next hope is to spend more time this week making thin atmospheric layers over the graphite and white paint patterns. 
For the latest push in my research I just sent out my first set of emails to some local businesses so we’ll see what happens. I have been working with my students on cropping information to create abstractions that also might tell us about a certain place.
This research has raised some questions about our current state of education that I didn’t realize it would. I introduced this project and the fact that we are going to go on some feild trips and some of my students became hesitant. Which I never would have expected. They felt that they couldn’t miss a day of school because than they would have to miss the work that was given in class. I never had this type of pressure before and I was so surprised that this had happened. I never remember not wanting to go on a feild trip.
This week, I am going to hand out my pre-assessment form asking the students perspectives on their community and I’m both nervous and excited to see the results.
Another thing that I think will aid my research is all of the amazing lectures that I had seen this past week at the NAEA 2017 convention. I will be posting links soon!
Because of the weirdly, and uncomfortably warm weather my fiancé and I have been able to go up to our property more often. This week I have been reflecting on my notes that people had left for me and one suggestion was to draw and create sites from Kingston. I just can’t. When I paint my property and photograph my property I’m excited, it’s enjoyable to me. When thinking about painting my school environment it literally makes me sick to my stomach. 
I finished this first small series and I am planning on creating another small series for the month of Feb. I really enjoyed slowing down and adding layers of ink and small details to each one of these works. As I move forwards I am going to try maybe one or two of them to see how that layers and ties in with the work. I am going to try and use more numbers from the property and other meaningful things to me. 
This week has been distracting and packed with School related things, I had a pre-observation, my observation, and about five other meetings and a constant round of TBA’ing. However, I am really enjoying these small works of art and adding small white details to the pre existing ink that I had. I did about one-two per night and this upcoming week I am going to add another layer of ink and try using pastel over it to out a dusty color for some of the work.
