Josh shares some takeaways from our Nov. 20th meeting.
I have a few thematic investigation ideas. A few are "Home", "Coming Home", "Neighborhoods", and "My Chicago".
As far as takeaways, I'm starting to think about how the chalk-talk approach to coming up with ideas for themes relates to TAB and how it fits into other artists' approaches to art-making, including my own. I'm also becoming curious about how the activity relates to motivation in art-making and how a sense of community is activated through conversation and idea development.
When I conducted the chalk-talk approach to theme brainstorming, the students I teach brought violence and gangs into the conversation. Both topics are serious issues for artists to explore legitimately, but it's not safe in a school setting to explore both issues because it's dangerous due to gang relations among the student body.
This is interesting, Josh. I can easily see how violence and gangs came into the conversation with your students and can understand the difficulty and sensitivity of trying to explore either.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what you or your students were thinking around “Coming Home.” I often wonder what it means to say I’m “going home.” I’m originally from Minnesota and when I make a trip back there, I say I am going home. But, once I am there, I refer to my trip back to Chicago as “going home.” I’m not sure if this is a rich thematic investigation or not, but I have been thinking about the concept of “going home” a lot lately. I’m not really sure what it means.
Matt, I too have the same experience when I travel to Fort Wayne for the holidays. I suppose it comes down to how we define home in relation to where we are away from it. When I think of of the word "home" I think both of my personal and private space I live in and where I was raised. Additionally, I don't think I would refer to Fort Wayne as home if my family didn't live there, so the aspect of defining home as a connection to family is an interesting one, as well.
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