things, people, artists I like
The Great John White
A must-read must-see from Scott Strazzante. The Great John White.
It’s Summer y’all!
…and time to embrace mixed color casts 🙂
Daybreak in Alabama
by Langston Hughes
When I get to be a composer
I’m gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I’m gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
I’m gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I’m gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
Relief. Other cultural producers share the same conflicted space of extreme sadness & genuine marvel
Kyle Whitmire of Second Front, has written a wonderful piece “When a monster came to Alabama.”
“We knew the threat was real when little pieces of Tuscaloosa began to drop on Birmingham. For such a violent storm, there was very little rain. Instead, paper receipts from businesses 50 miles away and strangers’ family photos flitted through the air.”
Continue reading here.
Dear art professors, Tim Gunn or Simon Cowell?
Last week I was invited to sit on a panel about critiques in the classroom at the Center for Teaching Excellence. Three other faculty and myself did presentations on our student critique philosophy and then had a health discussion with the attendees. I went over what I did in the classroom but also wanted to share a little bit of research on an area of interest to me.
A couple years ago I went to visit my brother Ben and sister-in-law Angela in NYC. They introduced me to Project Runway. Like so many it became a border-line obsession for me. Imagine a reality competition show where contestants are actually judged on talent! Anyway, what struck me was how Tim Gunn critiqued contestants. How suave he was in guiding designers through their creative process.
Then a freshman student in my Foundations of Photography class started to make full use of the “Make it Work” tagline in his feedback to other students. Over, and over, and over. Is there something to this in our teaching? Or even more so do students enter college with the expectation they will be critiqued in Tim Gunn or Simon Cowell fashion?
I found a lovely paper titled “From Simon Cowell to Tim Gunn: What Reality Television Can Teach Us About How to Critique Our Students’ Work Effectively.” It was written by Michael J. Higdon, a lawyer professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Read it!