Semester Reflections

Semester 4

This portfolio will tell you a lot about me as a person, and me as a scholar. The scholars program has provided me a lot in the way of friendships and worthwhile experiences. One of my more telling experiences is teaching. I planned, curated, and taught for an entire semester for my capstone for the program. I am way more capable of planning, of creating lesson plans and administrative documents. I have been teaching for an entire semester. I have greatly increased my ability to speak as a teacher, to be able to relate to others and help my students with all they did. My capacity for artistic communication is expanded, and I find that beneficial as it speaks to my communication and team working abilities (Point 1). 

With regard to my perception of art, I find myself continually influenced by our field trip to the Baltimore Museum of Art, with the beaded sculpture work of Raúl de Nieves inspiring me in eclectic portrayals of monsters and what monstrous may look like to some. Those works redefined a lot of what I’ve been doing in my own fiber art work regarding abstraction and shape. They also tie into a course I took my first year, LGBTQ+ Literatures & Media (which was also one of my supporting courses), which focused on gothic monstrosity and the queer, and the interconnection between alterations of the body, which has fed so much of my creative work since I took the course. Additionally, tied into that horror and surrealist theme, one of my triathlon events was seeing Iron Lung, a movie that recently came out and was very interesting in its creativity, commitment to stunt work, and capability to tell stories dark and deep and important, questioning of the morality of humankind, as a lot of monster media tends to. I find myself drawn to horror and monsters as a method of considering the odd or extreme, and what bends until breaking and how we portray that in the media. Since seeing Iron Lung, I have included a lot of similar themes in my writing, especially regarding the body horror elements of the film and the abstraction of a lot of my fiber work (Point 2). 

Through my years within the program, I have learned the requirements for determining growth in students, and the way by which to teach them to those requirements as determined by the university. CPSA260 taught me how to teach to these standards, and to develop my oral teaching skills and ability to plan and thoroughly execute something like a lesson. Through my workshop last year, Raiders of the Lost Art, I developed my basis for my own workshop, in the ways it was laid out and how to effectively mimic that in my own capstone project. That workshop inspired me to pursue a workshop for my capstone, if only to teach what I am passionate about and want to convey to others. From that workshop, I also pulled its historical element into my own workshop, as a historical foundation was always important to me with protest artwork and the passion exhibited by my workshop leads shaped how I framed that history as a basis for the art. I cannot recall any specific notions from colloquium that fed into my workshop (Point 3).

Through Art Scholars, I have continued to pursue the artistic mediums I love, with side-projects in fiber arts, writing (namely, scriptwriting), and blackout poetry that translated into my capstone and my workshop as a whole. I included elements and lessons within the workshop that covered these mediums as historically relevant means of protest, which helped me to expand my understanding of each of these mediums and teach others my preferred forms of artistic expression. Along the way, with the other protest mediums I covered, I expanded my love of those mediums as well, in addition to my understanding of their history. My creative abilities as a whole are greatly expanded, and my experience with certain art mediums has grown quite a bit with my capstone project (Point 4).

With regard to collaboration, one instance I recall is the debate we had my first year about whether pornography is art. I appreciated the other side’s perspective, but factually porn is created within artistic mediums and is therefore art. It doesn’t matter whether you don’t like it, it only matters that its classification is, in fact, art. This argument was controversial to some, which I respected and explained my side as best I could, and I believe I changed some minds. I am not going to force my perspective on others, but I do think that we live in a sheltered society that fears sexual freedom, making it difficult to fully conceptualize something like pornography as art. A good spirited debate relies on the collaboration of all parties involved, and the ability of everyone to respect everyone else (Point 5).

My scholar's experience most definitely informs my future, especially with my capstone project. In times such as these, an information science major needs to be creative, and able to convey that creativity to future employers. I think there is value in having that tangibility to my creativity, and a proven experience in teaching and planning to this extent. Academically, I have drawn from these experiences. Professionally, I have put my capstone on my resume and have used it to obtain positions. I think I have expanded personally and professionally, truly (Point 6).