Post 2 - More about the process...

Blogging my evolution as an artistic art educator - An art-based experiment...

Sorry I missed yesterday. The year is coming to a close, and it always feels like a symphony that builds and builds, coming to a crashing thunderous crescendo, right over my head... Paper and cardboard scraps, paint, trash, glue everywhere, students who need me (all at the same moment), last minute projects, grades, paperwork, planning for the next year, and so forth. Add no air conditioning to that mix and muggy weather for the past three weeks, and yes, I frequently have a headache and feel deflated at the day's end... Just recently, anyhow.

Consequently, I feel energized when I am working on this project. Excited to make some art, fail at it miserably at times, and succeed deliciously at others. Play with materials I have forgotten about, or have never used, all of which I will be chomping at the bit to share with my kids in August. Set goals for myself, push my creative comfort zone, and write everything down I learn, so I don't let my experience disappear into the the whirlwind of my life. I want to learn from it, teach with it, and pass it on.

At present I am finishing up my display for DAAPworks, which is the University of Cincinnati's DAAP school-wide art show featuring all of the disciplines throughout the art college. Art Education creates a space with displays that illustrate the focus of our individual culminating projects. Since my project and paper will not be complete until December, my display is from a work-in-progress perspective.

I am also actively working on building an audience for my blogging experiment, so I am leaving blog-cards for those visiting DAAPworks, and I am challenging the viewers of my display to participate in art-making and in the progress of my blog.

So, I have created a supply box and directions to entice viewers to be participants by making Artist Trading Cards (ATCs), and leaving it for me to scan and post on my blog. (I will return the ATCs by mail, once scanned.)

I am really pumped to see, if and how people go from being passive viewers at DAAPworks to active art-making blog-supporting participants... Will they be brave and jump in? Will I get work from kids? How will they manipulate the materials available? How will they make the base designs, I am supplying, into their own little masterpiece? Will they prove themselves inventive individuals?

Well... That brings me to my first task... I will be photographing the card base designs for you all to see, and posting them later this evening, because I want you all to know from where everyone started, as well as myself.

For my second task, I will be creating a set of 20 ATCs using limited supplies, as I am asking the participants to do. (I have to limit supplies at DAAPworks for cleanliness purposes, and for cost purposes, since I will not be able to be there to wrangle and oversee supply usage.)

As I get ATCs finished, I will post them here...

Safety, health, happiness, and peace... Pam