My lettering is not great, but I am trying. I thought pangrams would be good practice. There is a certain amount of this that is clearly working out things I stared at in Rome. More to come.
Saturday, September 08, 2018
Practice, practice, practice
My lettering is not great, but I am trying. I thought pangrams would be good practice. There is a certain amount of this that is clearly working out things I stared at in Rome. More to come.
Monday, September 03, 2018
Course evaluations
As a department chair, I read more than 1,000 pages of student feedback forms every semester on more than 40 classes offered in my department. As a teacher, I know how infuriating these forms can be.
Here is a list of things that drive me nuts on student feedback forms:
Complaints that the readings or projects 'were all pretty much the same"
Whenever I read this, I want to show the student a picture of a gothic cathedral and ask which of the dozens of pillars or buttresses should be removed. There must be something about this era in which we can watch anything at any time, this age which some argue is defined by the iPod shuffle, that confuses people. Not all repetition is redundant, some is reenforcing. When you're trying to teach something new and unfamiliar, you often need to put it to them a number of different ways before they realize that the differences between the readings or projects are superficial and you're trying to communicate something about the structure. A course that flits from one topic to the another, completely different topic too easily allows students to hold their breath through unfamiliar and uncomfortable new information or experiences.
"I didn't learn anything"
Yeah, well, I didn't earn anything from the enormous expansion of wealth created by the stock market's climb over 17,000. And that's for the same reason you didn't learn anything in class - because I didn't invest in it. If you think a class is supposed to deliver technical skills and information like a hamburger at a fast food restaurant then you're not ready for college.
Ad hominem statements
You would think that weeks, months, semesters and even years of critiques in which the conversation is directed toward the work and away from the maker would provide the tools necessary to evaluate course content and the means of instruction, but you would frequently be wrong. To many students, course evaluations are places to offer judgment about the people who teach the course. These comments most often betray the most casual sexism, age-ism, and, yes, racism, you are likely to encounter.
Here is a list of things that drive me nuts on student feedback forms:
Complaints that the readings or projects 'were all pretty much the same"
Whenever I read this, I want to show the student a picture of a gothic cathedral and ask which of the dozens of pillars or buttresses should be removed. There must be something about this era in which we can watch anything at any time, this age which some argue is defined by the iPod shuffle, that confuses people. Not all repetition is redundant, some is reenforcing. When you're trying to teach something new and unfamiliar, you often need to put it to them a number of different ways before they realize that the differences between the readings or projects are superficial and you're trying to communicate something about the structure. A course that flits from one topic to the another, completely different topic too easily allows students to hold their breath through unfamiliar and uncomfortable new information or experiences.
"I didn't learn anything"
Yeah, well, I didn't earn anything from the enormous expansion of wealth created by the stock market's climb over 17,000. And that's for the same reason you didn't learn anything in class - because I didn't invest in it. If you think a class is supposed to deliver technical skills and information like a hamburger at a fast food restaurant then you're not ready for college.
Ad hominem statements
You would think that weeks, months, semesters and even years of critiques in which the conversation is directed toward the work and away from the maker would provide the tools necessary to evaluate course content and the means of instruction, but you would frequently be wrong. To many students, course evaluations are places to offer judgment about the people who teach the course. These comments most often betray the most casual sexism, age-ism, and, yes, racism, you are likely to encounter.
From the studio table
I am pleased to be showing two works in the Benefit for the Friends of the Rail Park at the invitation of Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Here are some (not great, but passable) photos...
Each panel is available for a $500 donation to the Friends of the Rail Park. There is an opening reception on Friday, September 7, and the show continues until October 5. There are more than 200 works in the fundraising exhibit. You can shop online here...
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| Quite Useless (A code of signals for all nations), 2018, acrylic on panel, 10 x 10 in. |
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| Require an interpreter (A code of signals for all nations), 2018, acrylic on panel, 10 x 10 in. |
Saturday, September 01, 2018
New Label - NEWS ITEMS
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| Francis Luis Mora, Evening News - Subway Riders, 1914 |
Sometimes sharing a link was enough; sometimes there was more to say. So I am adding a new label to the cloud on the right side of the screen that will classify 'news items.'
Most of them are things that I'm just putting out there, but all of them will be things I think are interesting and I invite you to get in touch by email or text or whatever if there's one you want to talk about. And there's always the comments...
The first one is a story by Daniel Hernandez about the deportation of Oxacacan muralists (painters Dario Canul and Cosijoesa Cernas, who work under the name the Tlacolulokos) whose work was on view in the LA Central Library (link to story). Hernandez points out that the practice of artists and DJs and others int he cultural community working while traveling on a tourist visa is common, and its hard not to see the deportation of these artists as the capricious enforcement of a rule that is often overlooked. The work is amazing. You can see more about it in this story from last year in the LATimes.
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| a photo by Al Seib used in a story by Deborah Vankin in the LA Times 20 Sept. 2017. |
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