Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Day 4 Norco Rehab Center

Oct 19
Have been waiting for official ok to use camera to document our "350" but we are just going to do it already. It gave us a chance to experience a contemporary development of performance. Many students had done theatre or spoken word but not 'performance art". We then compared and contrasted what performance has been and how it has changed over time for different purposes and how could we push performance to serve our need to communicate to the community the themes of our class including personal reflection, environmental concerns and transforming moments.
Working to get more examples of alternative artistic expressions so they have more info to spark their imagination.
NExt time thinking of doing a performance piece on the gaze and perception. A meditative exercise that they would write some reflective pieces after about how they felt about being looked at and looking at others. We could repeat the configuration with chairs as placeholders in the gallery with their reflections on the chairs. It would be about empathy and sitting in someone elses place and reading their thoughts. To allow the gallery audience to respond we may have a visual and or written way for them to comment over the duration of our gallery space and then take that back to Norco to give the class feedback from the community.

This need to communicate and have a voice is problematized by the potential censorship or lack of authorization for photo or video within the institution. Perhaps the lack of photo or video can be emphasized by documentation of our class work and discussions in drawings, flip books or sound recordings of our class. WE are still working on what we want our specific and general message to be.

Collaboration!

Took a cool art class Sunday and the teacher , an awesome Canadian, ay, couldn't take open paint products back across the border and she donated a bunch to our class. Learned some cool techniques- she wrote two books on how to use acrylics in innovative ways. We'll use them to break more rules........ she was excited about that.

Day 3 Norco Rehab Center

Day 3 Oct 16
Today we have a few more guys in class. Dont want too many but this class is voluntary so participants are especially interested. Plus extra people means the original group talked to other people and gave it a good review-- so far anyway : )
Asked class what specifically they were interested in learning apart from our painting project. Helps me get to know them better anyway. We have a wide range of artistic experience as well as a well integrated group in both age and race. Then we did speed course in art history and talked about how art has been and continues to be used for different purposes like poster art, propaganda, pageantry and power. etc. Then I had them list all materials that we can use to make art. That was awesome. we had a huge list with materials from the traditional painting to our bodies, rocks, trash, spoken word, music even 'Life as Art". They were very animated. Their homework was to think about what materials they would like to work with for our collaborative piece.

Day 2 Norco Rehab Center Art Class

Day 2 Oct 9, 2009
First day in the facility. Yea! First rule always make friends with the guards at the entrance. They can make or break the timeliness of entering. So far totally cool. Teddy picked me up in the "taxi/limo" which is a bare bones vehicle where I need to roll down the window to open the door. facility is hilly and used to be a hotel and later we walked up 5 flights of stairs in the sun to a different area and there was lots of breathless mumbling. First, met Violetta, the Arts in Criminal Justice teacher. She was very welcoming and was really cool to share her space with us. Found out there are also other programs like dance, music and theatre (the Usual Suspects). One of my students said there hasn't been an art class here for at least 10 years. Basically did an overview of who I am why I was there and the loose schedule of our first project. Then we talked about redefining art, breaking traditional forms of creative expression and looking at traditional art practices and how they have broken from convention in the past. This gave us some models for new ideas. My big hope to to have guest artists to talk about how they do their work and inspire more ideas in class projects. John Quigley gave an amazing presentation in class and we were hoping to have him come to do a one day visit and lead us in participating in the "350" activity. Unfortuntely, schedule conflicts and permission for photo documentation didnt happen but we will go ahead and do it anyway to introduce something new in creative practices. Class is really active and everyone asks questions so I think it will turn out well. Violetta gave me some good feedback an says everyone is really loving it so far.

Day 1 Norco Rehabilitation Center

DAY 1:
OCTOBER 2, NORCO Starbucks with Chaplain Teddy.
Met with my favorite chaplain to talk about out plans for the class at the Norco men's facility. Stumbled through defining our program - need to work that out- and figured out timelines. We had already emailed a few times in the past first when he was hinting if I would like to come to his new location and later again when I started OTIS and knew an opportunity might come up. Teddy has some specific goals for the class, including paintings that could be shown at the Norco facility and potentially sold for fundraising purposes. We can start with this and then bring in lots of options of to open up the idea of what art is, what can it be, how can we do it together and have it serve a common purpose like bringing awareness, informing the public, making a political statement and most importantly, having a voice and sharing it with the community. Exited about what it could all turn out to be .......