Documentation
For the past few hours I’ve been scrounging through my apartment, pulling my art from the walls, the dishwasher, the bookshelves, and anywhere else it has walked off too. I’ve removed it from its natural habitat, placed it on an 18″x24″ piece of drawing paper and photographed it. After returning all the art pieces to …
My Best Art Piece
As an artist who is also a young professional and a graduate student, I’m used to hearing both others and myself commiserate about trying to find the time and space to do art. Eight foot tall oil paintings just aren’t plausible in a small, rented apartment on the outskirts of Boston when you work two …
My First Studio
When I was in college and debating between being a psychology major and minor, one of the areas of study that interested me was the effect surroundings have on creativity, emotion, and learning. There are places that are inherently creative, ones where our minds can’t help but wander, and ones that immediately make us feel …
Basement Music
When I was young(er), I used to see the videos of 20-something year olds fervently playing music in their livings rooms and basements late at nights, getting off day long shifts to come home just to make music. I always found it a little funny, these people who played late at night not to get …
My Stunt as a Storyteller
At this very moment I am absolutely elated, sky-high on performance energy that hasn’t gone away even though I finished telling stories over an hour ago. That’s right, my performance wasn’t some theatrical debut it was my debut as a true storyteller. In my recent class on storytelling I’d been exposed to what was about to happen …
Dancing in the… Museum?
Last Thursday I took a group of children to the MFA for a late night visit. By 6 o’clock, which is only the time that we get there, the children are typically already hungry and antsy after having been at school all day and then at the club for three hours. Despite this, they normally …
Originality in the 21st Century
When I began to work as an artist I wanted to be completely original, wholly singular. I housed a strong disdain for art history; I didn’t want to learn from others or to be influenced by anything. To be influenced at all negated my idea of originality. I wanted to believe that I created in …
The Term Itself
As I began my foray into the actual theory and thought of the existing community art world, I encountered a discrepancy at the very entrance: no one knows exactly what to call this field. Arlene Goldbard sticks with Community Cultural Development while Tom Borrup chooses Creative Community Building. These are just two examples of the rampant terms that exist …
Step One: Wikipedia
Although perhaps not the greatest end in and of itself, I find Wikipedia a perfect means. Where better to start looking for something than on a massive, free, internet data-base? Especially if you consider that what I am researching is about community involvement, and Wikipedia is based on community involvement. Yet I found the Wikipedia article on …