Semester Reflections

Semester 3

Semester 3 of Arts Scholars has been a welcome, thought-provoking continuation of the learning experience started just a year prior. The transition from viewing and experiencing capstones to just beginning the creation process that will go full steam ahead in the spring has been smooth and without many obstacles.

As I am still living in Bel Air Hall, I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities to collaborate with other Arts Scholars in our shared living space which has improved my learning process in class. The recent Maker Mixers have provided me with the new friendships and connections I have sought during this time of Scholars transition: some of my peers have even provided me with feedback on my questionnaire and subsequent proposal.

It’s also put me in touch with new figures with different interests and perspectives that are novel and unknown to me. Before I joined Arts Scholars, I lacked the collaborative, communal outlet that our special program provides. I learned ways to recycle fast fashion clothing items, the power of political poetry, zine creation techniques, and more, just through my wonderful Arts Scholars peers. I also challenged the beliefs of others: I believe that all art is political, and spent some time during lecture convincing peers of my viewpoint while I listened to their own viewpoints.

I recently learned about the musician Jane Ira Bloom, a saxophonist who infuses emotive instrument playing with adventurous recording techniques to express her thoughts and feelings. Her music may be difficult to parse and adjust to for a novice listener, however, thanks to Art Scholars’ brave-space techniques, I was able to push myself to explore her material and encourage my sense of creativity. Her music I can now fully appreciate on its own terms thanks to my curiosity and Arts Scholars’ techniques.

One of the courses I took to satiate my Arts Scholars credit requirements was ARTH200, or Art and Society in Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. I learned quite a lot of new material that dealt with how to parse art for historical significance in the class as well as expanding on top of previously built learned material. ARTH200 and Arts Scholars worked in tandem mainly when it boiled down to the art analysis portions of each course: in both classes, I learned different techniques for identifying and evaluating art. Arts Scholars mainly deals in how to parse the meaning from a work of art, such as "What was the artist thinking when they created the piece?" ARTH200, on the other hand, focuses on the historical contexts derived from the artworks, which are ascertained through questions such as "What resources were the artists working with at the time?" or "What kind of landscape was this piece designed to align with?"

The art evaluation techniques learned in ARTH200 have also helped me to parse other questions unrelated to the course but related to Arts Scholars, such as "How can art reshape or recontextualize an understanding of our (individual and societal) learned history, biases, and beliefs?" Much of art in the 21st century was heavily censored, and the uncovering of this material can help to shine a light on people and perspectives that were once buried under the oppressive feet of world (and domestic) governments. One example is the integration and removal of the Hays Code in Hollywood. Before the Hays Code, gay men could nearly openly participate in Hollywood productions outwardly and flamboyantly, but the integration of the Hays Code removed queer men from mainstream cinema. Taking a look at the forgotten films of the underground, however, tells a much different story: gay men were flourishing in filmmaking circles and did not fully disappear during the roughly 40 years of Hays Code rule over Hollywood cinema.

I initiate the creative process almost like a battle. Creation should be a natural, flowing process but more often than not it's very difficult and exhausting. To approach this battle, I like to plan ahead and work out what I'm going to do and when. By working through clocks and a schedule, I feel more impelled to work with fewer distractions to suck away at my precious time. I also cultivate my creative juices by consuming other art to search for inspiration. Sometimes a movie can just push me to make something  purely because of how much it touched me spiritually and creatively. For example, the movie One Battle After Another I saw three times in the theater and its sheer magnitude and greatness drove me to write a lengthy review regaling readers about how great it was and how everyone must see the film immediately. Sometimes I'll see clothes in a film and I'll be captivated by the new choice of fashion.

Feedback is absolutely essential to any project because two heads are always better than one. I feel that I'm a fairly observational person who can work out my own problems but sometimes there are blind spots to obstacles that I'm just incapable of seeing. For instance, I ran into a roadblock with the video editing software on my slow computer and was unable to finish my documentary short I was creating for a class. I spent so much time trying to get the program running and told my friend all about my troubles. He offered up a simple suggestion that was totally alien to me: reject the old program and just try another. I had not thought about trying a new program at all: I could not see past the field. Thanks to this contribution, I was able to successfully begin work on my short.

This semester I contributed to the Arts program mainly through attending Maker Mixers and collaborating with other students. I could expand my role in Arts Scholars next semester by hosting my own friend craft sessions in the lounge, or by encouraging others to participate in more Arts events taking place around Bel Air. I've also considered becoming a peer mentor.