The project was anchored in Wendy Ewald's fall semester class Collaborative Art: Theory and Practice of Working with a Community. Both the campus community collaboration project and the Practice of Collaborative Art Class culminated with the large-scale public works mounted across the Amherst College Community and an exhibition at the Mead Art Museum. The exhibition includes a catalogue being published in 2009 highlighting the complete semester long experience.
Community Portrait Project Enlivens Campus written by Amherst College student Terry Jarrett. Below are excerpts from the article. Click here for full article.
"Thanks to the Collaborative Art: Practice and Theory of Working With a Community seminar, six 12.5 by 30 feet triptychs with both photographs and oil pastel portraits have been put up across the campus, as well as in the Mead Art Museum. Each triptych has a portrait or photograph of a student, a professor and an Amherst staff member and includes a corresponding quotes."
"A lot of work went into turning these 18 faces into meaningful art. With the help of Artists-in-Residence Wendy Ewald and Brett Cook, the seminar students dedicated two weeks to interviewing their muses and creating the base work for the art. The seminar also met frequently over dinner in Valentine Hall to discuss the social and educational realities that they each faced, and wanted to represent through the art."
"On Sept. 28 the seminar helped coordinate a public celebration on the Valentine Quad. At this celebration all Amherst community members were invited to help color in the triptychs. There were also musical performers and local food in Valentine Dining Hall."
5/5/09
SnickerDOODLE- "to scribble frosting and sprinkles absentmindedly."
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4/30/09
Collaborative work with my 7th graders
Hi. So Thursdays I have a team of 10 7th graders that I work with. We are creating a project together and I find it hard to have them collaborate. Today, I even had them do a little team building exercise called the "Peanut Butter Pit (of Doom)" and I found two of my most vocal students wanted to be "leaders" though no leaders are required on the exercise. I had to say to them, "there is no 'I' in team" and I felt like a grandma saying that to them. Sure enough, Rezan and Myesha took the lead role in the exercise and I tried my best to moderate. It is kind of difficult to try and get the other students engaged when they allow Rezan and Myesha to take leader roles.
At one point I was asking the students their opinion on the design for our building ( a large mixed use building--a mall, gym, pool, rec center, skate park) and tried to ask them how we could divide the large building up into smaller buildings. As usual, the leader Rezan kept speaking up about how he thought it would be more convenient to keep it as one large building. I was getting a bit frustrated, because he kept talking and gave no one else a chance to speak up. So I said, "okay, so we know how Rezan feels about the building design. What are some other people's thoughts on what to do." I thought that would give some one else time to speak, but NO Rezan started to speak again. I was thinking...what? Are you kidding me? Sigh. It's hard to keep a project collaborative with equal participation all the time.
I ended up having the students sketch out their ideas on how to divide the buildings up in their sketch books privately for 15 minutes. That way they could work independently and not be influenced by others. When the time was up. We went around in a circle to show every one's drawings and then talk about each one for about 2-3 minutes. Afterwards we hung up the drawings on the wall and talked about the strengths of each ideas. we had a good discussion going and next week we are going to try and combine some of those ideas. So lets hope this collaboration works!
At one point I was asking the students their opinion on the design for our building ( a large mixed use building--a mall, gym, pool, rec center, skate park) and tried to ask them how we could divide the large building up into smaller buildings. As usual, the leader Rezan kept speaking up about how he thought it would be more convenient to keep it as one large building. I was getting a bit frustrated, because he kept talking and gave no one else a chance to speak up. So I said, "okay, so we know how Rezan feels about the building design. What are some other people's thoughts on what to do." I thought that would give some one else time to speak, but NO Rezan started to speak again. I was thinking...what? Are you kidding me? Sigh. It's hard to keep a project collaborative with equal participation all the time.
I ended up having the students sketch out their ideas on how to divide the buildings up in their sketch books privately for 15 minutes. That way they could work independently and not be influenced by others. When the time was up. We went around in a circle to show every one's drawings and then talk about each one for about 2-3 minutes. Afterwards we hung up the drawings on the wall and talked about the strengths of each ideas. we had a good discussion going and next week we are going to try and combine some of those ideas. So lets hope this collaboration works!
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