Survey of my work for Olympic College application.
Student Work Samples
2-D Design - Notice What You Notice
I use this project as an opportunity to get to know my students’ interests and more about their starting point as artists. Students are asked to collect photographs on a walk and throughout their daily life for a week of things that catch their attention or matter to them. They then try to identify a “theme” or conceptual thread and select 8-10 images that convey that theme. Once they select images, they work on composition and use those images to create drawings using only shape and value or line.
2-D Design - Self Portrait Project
Drawing inspiration from museum engagement on social media during the pandemic, students were tasked with creating a self-portrait that mimicked a masterwork of art. Students had full choice of the artist and image to mimic. The objective was to match the values as accurately as possible. Students first worked to dress up, pose and photograph their self-portrait and then used that image to create a piece in acrylic paint on paper. Through this project we work on matching values, understanding how color translates to grey scale, setting up a physical composition to photograph, and paint mixing and application.
2-D Design - One image 3 ways
In this project, students were asked to explore how color alters the reading of an image by producing one image in three different color palettes: monochromatic, complimentary, and a triad of their choosing. Students worked off of their own imagery, subject matter and compositional choices.
2-D Design - Final Series Project
In the final project of my 2-D design class, students are asked to put everything they learned into practice. They create a 10-image series that demonstrates their comprehensive understanding of the elements of design. The series can be narrative or have a conceptual/thematic framework. Students are also required to write a reflection that discusses their design choices with regard to composition, layout, choice of medium, and color.
Art, Design and Visual Culture - Monument Project
ARC 15 is a general education course offered in an asynchronous online format. Recognizing the fatigue of students interacting with screens, I designed small projects for this course that enabled students to make hands-on work that incorporated course learning.
The monument assignment asks students to think about the role arts play in public discourse. They are asked to design a monument that represents something or someone of importance to them. Students can choose to make a visual example through any means available to them - drawing, digital mockups, collage, play-doh, dioramas, etc. They are not graded on their artistic skill, but rather their written reflection that articulates their idea on how their monument relates to issues of power we discuss. In addition, students are asked to consider how their own identity influences what they deem as “important” in terms of a public monument, and asked to consider how someone from a different perspective may read or interpret their monument.
Women in The Arts - Femmage Project
Women in the Arts is an arts criticism course that examines the absence of women in Western art history and looks at how that impacts the role and position of women artists today. Students in this course are fulfilling a general education requirement. Many have never taken an art course before.
This assignment is a femmage in the style coined by Miriam Schapiro. Students create a piece that pays tribute to a female artist of their choice using materials that speak to the life and career of that artist. The pieces are accompanied by a written reflection that demonstrates the research students conducted on the life of the artist.
