Art and emotion flow by the river.

Early morning drivers pull up and prepare their clients to start their day at Community Connections, which is located right near the Taunton River. Observing the general manner of the employees puts one at ease when you see the clients’ reactions with friendly smiles and high fives. Community Connections is a day habilitation program for adults with intellectual and/or physical challenges. When you enter the building, big, glass, double doors automatically open. There’s wall to wall art crafted by the clients, and vaulted ceilings as you walk down the hall. The art represents togetherness and friendship shared by the clients and the employees. On either side the hallway there are a series of rooms. The top half of the walls are painted teal and there are shiny, wood floors. Large exposed beams cross from one side of the hallway to the other, making the highest peak of the ceiling easy to see. Depending where you are the flooring changes.  The kitchen has raised rubbery skid proof flooring, and the music and game room have almost foamy floor covering to reduce injury from possible falls. In every room you walk in there’s corresponding visual themes. Such as the man on the moon in the space room offsetting the planets and the treadmill that walks you towards Mars. In the music room there are instruments hanging from the beams mobile style. Brick walls surround the room and shelves keep the laptops and tablets secure but accessible. A desktop computer is surrounding by shelves holding several music CD’s, hand held electronic toys and hand held instruments. I saw maracas, tambourines, electronic drums, and eggs that make noise when you shake them. The game room has a bright orange floor, bean bag chairs and low tables so everyone can sit around and play board games.

My sister loved the bunny, Lois not so much.

The reason I go to Community Connections is because my sister goes there. One time I visited and it was pet therapy day. The pet that day was a cute, little brown bunny named Missy. My sister’s name is Roni. She held the bunny close to her face, kept giving her little kisses and saying “I love you sooo much!” Another client named Lois had a different reaction to the bunny. She wouldn’t stop crying and kept screaming “Get it away from me!” The staff suggested she leave the room a couple of times but she didn’t want to leave. She kept crying and complaining about the rabbit. The reactions of others were mixed, most of the clients ignored her completely. The others either laughed or told her to “shut up!” Mostly it didn’t seem to matter that she was screaming. Everyone went on to say how cute Roni and the rabbit were together. Most clients were engaged and amused but not everyone chose to hold the rabbit. There is a huge diversity in that group in terms of age, ethnicity and medical conditions.

What if this were reality TV? Would people see hand flapping, screaming, seemingly inappropriate crying and physical impairments as common forms of expression? Detailed murals and arts projects created by the clients symbolize togetherness aesthetically as ever different hand adds a piece of that vision and produces a perfect piece? The murals are an homage in every color of a perfect peace.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/da-vinci-exotropia

In the article A Wonky Eye Was the Key to Leonardo da Vinci’s Genius, Caroline Redmond states that an eye condition Leonardo Da Vinci had was the reason why he was such a genius. She goes on to talk about a new study published in the JAMA Opthalmology, which focuses on the eye condition Da Vinci had, called intermittent exotropia, which Redmond claims was the driving force behind Da Vinci’s genius; He had stellar depiction of three dimensional figures which usually had a lot depth behind them. Intermittent exotropia is the inability of eyes to maintain proper alignment; The eyes shift outward in the location of the pupils and that affected his perception, as it allowed him to have a stronger understanding for three dimensional objects. The article then talks about how Christopher Tyler, the study’s author, got the idea of studying Da Vinci’s eyes after noticing a certain pattern in his paintings. Tyler then studied the alignment in six of Da Vinci’s pieces.

What I found interesting about the article was mainly the eye condition Leonardo Da Vinci had itself, as I had never heard of until reading this article, due to intermittent exotropia, especially the type Da Vinci had affected one percent of the population. I was also interested on how intermittent exotropia had made such a huge impact on him in his career. What shocked me was that Da Vinci wasn’t the only person to have an misalignment in the eyes, other artists such as Pablo Picasso and Edgar Degas had conditions that affected their eyes and perspectives as well.  One quote that interested me in the article was, “Perhaps beauty truly is in the — albeit wonky— eyes of the beholder.” that’s located at the end of the article. It interested me because it gave me a new perspective in art itself, as well as learning something new about one of the most famous artists.

Thanks to this article, I am now convinced that intermittent exotropia was the reason why Da Vinci was such a genius and had such a successful career.

http://www.dailyartmagazine.com/respectable-women-from-art-history-short-comment-to-burkini/

In Respectable Women from Art History, the author Magda Michalska explains her view on burkini, and whether it enslaves women or the contrary. A burkini, created by Aheda Zanetti, is a type of swimwear for women that covers the whole body except for the face, hands, and feet. It was made to respect Islamic traditions, but whether its truly acceptable is debatable. The article focuses on what makes a respectable woman in the 16th through the 18th century, and the contrary, what makes a unrespectable woman.

What I found ironic while reading the article was how women weren’t allowed to even show their ankles, but yet there were paintings among paintings of naked women and how male painters excused all of this by saying they admired the “symbolistic meanings” behind their work instead of just admitting they were interested in painting naked women because it fulfilled their lustful desires. What I find interesting in the article was learning about what made a respectable woman in the 16th & 18th centuries; it made me imagine being a woman in the 16th & 18th century and being in their shoes.

I also learned while reading this article that I would hate being a woman in the 16th & 18th century, mainly because of the amount of sexism women faced back then and the utter hypocrisy of men back in the 16th and 18th century and I’m just glad it’s not like that today.

In Museums Can Change–Will They? by Michael O’ Hare, it discusses how museums have cheated people out of seeing and connecting with actual art by using duplicates or minor pieces for financial gain, and that if they wanted to, they could stop, but they chose not to.

Michael O’Hare is an art teacher who tells his students one day that,

“arts policy is the most important policy arena. Seriously? Well, most people think health policy is right up there—but why live longer if life isn’t worth living? And if you don’t think government has a lot to do with whether and how you can engage with art, you just don’t understand the situation.” (O’Hare,1)

He then goes on to discuss, in his point of view, a world where art, such as paintings and sculptures, are being locked in basements and warehouses instead of being on full display where they should be. A world in which you would have to travel far away to dozens of cities to see such art, and didn’t rush through a museum because you paid tons of money to get in, and a world in which you weren’t afraid of making a personal connection with the art. That world is in reach, but we don’t make the effort to go there because we’ve placed so much trust in the hands of museums that they practically “nailed our feet to the floor so we couldn’t move towards it,” and the government approves of it all.

Museums, for a long period of time, have refused to believe that the duplicates and minor pieces they have on full display are a way of deceiving people of not only their money, but a chance for people to make a connection with the actual art they keep hidden. It’s basically a ritual that requires conscious effort to realize things could be different.

O’Hare then discusses how he and his students take trips to museums once a week, to be more specific, during business hours or on weekends. They start the trip by walking past a wall of names that doesn’t give credit to the artists themselves but donors, for again, financial gain. But how exactly does that all work, you might be wondering?  The art is usually sold, ranging from a third to ninety percent of millions of US dollars. The money is taxed money, and not private funds. Museums are expensive to get into as different prices are listed for different people.

They then take a tour of the museum, in which the art  displayed is sorted by place, medium, and date of origin. They decode symbols found in the artwork that they’re either anxious or relieved to have uncovered, and with that, then, they start to see things that don’t seem quite right. They have a chat among themselves about the art they see; the things being discussed are about how certain pieces of art wouldn’t be art if they weren’t placed in a museum.

Finally, O’Hare talks about how an art museum is quote, “A business, often a big one, but a special kind. In the United States, almost all of them are tax-exempt, educational nonprofits, with unique privileges given in return for certain kinds of social value.” (O’Hare,3.) and how one of the main points of this article was to address how museums could be better, as he lists a bunch of ways they could be better, but instead we force ourselves to pay attention to knockoff pieces of art.  Another point was to address how museums are “deep and ingrained,” and realizing this might finally answer the question of whether they’re really using the priceless resources given to them or not.

I never knew that until I read this article, although, some things seem bias; a few examples being he suggests that all museums use fake art,  they don’t give credit to the original artists, and buy fake/minor art using government tax money. I do agree with the ways he points out on how museums could be better. On the contrary, I learned stuff about museums that I haven’t learned before and was very interested throughout.

 

Work cited:

O’Hare, Michael. “Museums Can Change–Will They?”. The Democracy Journal. The Democracy Journal. Spring 2015. https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/museums-can-changewill-they/ .

 

Work cited:

O’Hare, Michael. “Museums Can Change–Will They?”. The Democracy Journal. The Democracy Journal. Spring 2015. https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/museums-can-changewill-they/ .

Viktoria Kordas
Holly Pappas
English 101
Ocotber 7, 2018

 

Not only do I love reading and writing, I also love drawing and wanted to be artist incase psychology doesn’t work out.  Like writing, drawing has been something that allows me to express creativity and have confidence. Ever since elementary school,  drawing has been one of my hobbies; as art class was my ultimate favorite subject, along with English. I would receive so many stacks of paper for Christmas because I loved drawing so much, and my family supported it. My favorite things to draw were cartoons.

The pleasures of drawing for me is being in a creative headspace, like music. It zones reality out for a certain amount of time and into the realm of drawing. Another good thing about drawing for me is other than getting compliments on it, is the constructive criticism. I like hearing the feedback on what I did wrong so I could improve on it later on.

Here are some that I’ve been working on.

As you can see, I’ve mainly drawn eyes. The reason for that is because eyes are my favorite thing to draw; they fascinate me and I become such a perfectionist when drawing them; I’m like that with all my drawing, but eyes especially since they’re hard to draw. But, practice makes perfect, right?

The main reason I gave up drawing was no particular reason other than I had just lost interest. It became boring for me and I wanted to do other things, like writing. But now that I’m into drawing again, I’m starting to figure out what career options would be best in the arts field.

Unlike writing though, I had unfortunately turned my back on drawing as it just didn’t interest me anymore. That was until this year when my mom convinced me to get back into drawing. We were talking in the car one day getting home from school, I was in high school and in my freshmen year, in our grey, 2014 hyundai on a sunny day and she said to me out of the blue, “You should get back into drawing, we used to love your drawings and you were such a good artist!” I didn’t know how to react other than to respond with a ‘maybe’. I didn’t want to get started on it right away incase other opportunities came my way.

A couple of months went by, and I eventually took my mom’s word on that as I began sketching tattoo designs; they ranged from flowers to quotes to names of my family for my first tattoo as I am turning eighteen in November. I showed my mom my drawings and, I am not kidding you, her mouth fell to the floor in amazement at how well she thought I drew. No words spoken. This event actually took place around third week of school. I didn’t think I  drew that well because it’s been such a long time since I started drawing again, I thought it was quite messy.

As I was drawing again, I regained some of the confidence I once had drawing and remembered how much I loved drawing. I also have a sketchbook on me to catch up on drawing after giving it up so many years ago.

After the first semester at BCC ends, I might, just might, take up art classes; both drawing and painting, along with classes in the Liberal Arts and Humanities study to further pursue a career in Psychology, as I’m not sure on which career path I should stick to.

In The Maker’s Eye by Donald Murray,  it starts off by comparing amateur and professional writers. When amateur writers finish their first draft, they usually read through it and look out for grammar/typographical mistakes. Professional writers on the other hand, use their rough drafts as a guideline for their new draft, in which I was surprised to read about. The article also encourages you to be your own critic when reading your work; it’s often difficult for amateur writers to re read their own writing and correct what needs to be corrected, more difficult than as if you were reading and correcting someone else’s work. There are things to look out for when reviewing your writing or writing in general; is the subject clear? what’s the genre? does it pertain to a certain audience? is your writing built on a solid framework, or is the argument strong? is your writing well developed? and will the reader be prepared for the next part?

It’s important to keep in mind when you’re writing, you want your writing to be interesting, formatted, and well developed. You must also be sure of your dimensions in writing; what that basically means is that your writing should be more than just structure and development, there should be elements that make the writing interesting. Writers should also be aware of their tone, it’s one thing that holds a writing piece together. The reader should be able to identify the tone of your writing and want to read more. One top for writers is read your writing out loud and fix whatever sounds off.

The author gave very good advice that I will keep in mind when writing my essays. Reading this article made me realize how difficult it is for writers to spot mistakes in their writing, as their mistakes are not usually very easy to spot and end up ignoring them, and gives tips to overcome that. The article also did a good job with giving a step by step analysis on how to improve / correct your writing.

How The Maker’s Eye made a connection to my first essay was for me, identifying my mistakes, which I haven’t mastered yet, but have managed to correct what mistakes I’ve made and have taken any advice given to improve my writing; a couple examples being not having enough development of specific scenes, repetitive usage of certain words and issues with grammar. Another thing I haven’t thought about until I read this article was reading my writing out loud; I haven’t done this before because I used to think it was unnecessary and felt uncomfortable reading my writing out loud, but now I read my writing to myself and fix whatever sounds off.

 

When Landscape Painting Was Protest Art

The article “When Landscape Painting Was Protest Art” starts off with the introduction of Thomas Cole, who is known as the father of the Hudson School and a landscape painter whose ideas were different from those who celebrated Manifest Destiny. He shows this by creating a series of paintings called The Course of Empire, in which  civilization emerges from the wilderness into a pastoral community and a city, only for it to fall into complete chaos. The series reflected his anxiety over America’s progress in the nineteenth-century. He also points out how the Industrial Revolution influences his intuition about the United States and how studying art in Europe gave him a new and worldly perspective on urbanization and nature.

This article was interesting to me because for me, it opened a broader perspective in art and I learned about an artist and his series of painting that I haven’t heard of until I read this article.

For the most part, I thought your rough draft was well written. I learned more about you as a person and what you’re passionate about, and I thought that was really cool.  In the second and third paragraphs, when you transitioned from talking about how you got interested in photography to how different processes of photography worked flowed well. To be honest, I didn’t really think photography was hard, until you described how darkroom photography worked and how strenuous it was, it made me stressed out just thinking about. It must’ve been really hard, but practice makes perfect. For some reason, I could envision going through each process of photography because that’s how detailed it was. I can tell that you’re really passionate about photography, however, you could elaborate more on your interest in music, because I feel like that didn’t get enough recognition in the rough draft. Maybe you should talk about if you’re ever tried writing any songs, tried auditioning for American Idol,  if there were any songs that got stuck in your head because you loved them that much, anything of that sort.