4/3: Photography and Art Education

Digital Photography has many uses. It can be used to document places and people for memories, to make art pictures, or to draft initial  a painting/drawing/or sculpture. Therefore, It can be really beneficial for students in the art classroom to use digital photography. 

3 Lesson Plans involving digital Photography

1) portrait partner project  

partners will take turns taking pictures of each other. Then , they will upload three of there favorites onto photoshop and transform there images. Then, there will be a class critique. The students will print their favorite photo and hang it onto the wall. 

2) Photographing and painting light

Students will photograph interesting light/lighting situations for homework. They will share there favorite images with the class. Then, they will go on to paint their pictures. 

this project is directed towards middle school students.

3)Learn more about your school through photography 

Students will explore their school with their cameras ( like what we did  in our own class). They will look at their school from new angles, and learn more things about it. They will discover art is all around them.

4/2: Impact25work

Madison and I want to ask 25 ( or more ) Creatives to send us a link of something on youtube that inspired their artistic practice. They can send us anything, from a video,  song, interview, etc.  We are still figuring out the exact wording that we want to ask of our contributors. Then, we will create a website , and each entry will have a link to the artist's website and their inspiring video. We are thinking of potentially having a screening of the videos.

4/1: Creative Photo Assignment

                           Original Photo

Two Ideas:

1) explore texture and interesting shapes in everyday places through digital photography and photoshop manipulation

2) respond to the noises a machine makes in an audio sound art piece

I asked for my boyfriend, Dan's advice on my two ideas. He suggested I go with the first idea because he loves my eye for shape and texture. So I decided to do my first idea ! Below are some of my results...

Since my original image captured interesting shapes in common places. So i decided to pursue this idea by going for a walk in the park and capturing the interesting shapes I saw.

I played around with this image more and defined they interesting shapes further on Photoshop.I pushed the image even further into abstraction to break it up into all shapes. I figured out the quick selection tool, and then deleted space to make it content aware. Then, I went to filter --> Stylize ---> Solarize. 

3/2: Reading Takeaways

There are lots of great technology that I want to incorporate into my future art classroom ! I am really interested in playing with squishy circuits, edible conductive and non-conductive play dough. Children learn about electricity and circuits while sculpting ! My future students will get the opportunity to create figures that light up.

                                                          https://squishycircuits.com/

I also learned about the concept of maker faires/ fab labs/ thingspaces. These are spaces where students get the opportunity to create anything that they want with new technology. They can be equipped with 3d printers, cutting machines, milling and routing machines, joining machines, and traditional art materials. I like that they give students the opportunity to explore and make what they want. Below, is a picture of the Macy Think Space at Teachers College.

3/1: Photoshop Landscape

I am a beginner on  Photoshop Paint. I decided a good way to start learning  would be to copy a photograph. At the time, I was listening to "Stay the Same" by Bonobo, so I decided to copy the album art below:

It was fun to match colors and discover all the different texture brushes photoshop had. I especially enjoyed the leaf print ones. However, after this experience I continue to prefer to paint with paint because I love the materiality of it.  I will start using photoshop paint to sketch paintings before actually painting them.

2/3: Some art I made at Basilica Hudson

This drawing is titled " Death Canon to Lightening Bolt." I made it while listening to the scariest band that I have ever heard; there name is Prurient. Below is one of their songs. Go to 1:09 , that's where the song begins to sound like giant needles on chalk boards...

On a less scary note...Shell Necklaces! I strung shells onto shoelaces in the Bassilica Soundscapes " Chill truck", which was equipped with comfy chair and art supplies. I made some shell necklaces for my friends as well !

I imprinted x's, o's, and &'s on this dog tag necklace. I did do by hitting a large rock on letter stencils onto the tag. It was a funny and cathartic experience.  While I was doing this, a four year old boy walked in and looked at me very oddly. A woman hitting things with a rock is certainly a  funny thing to come across.

2/2: Bassilica Soundscape

I left my phone off this past weekend, but still I found myself extremely immersed in a diverse range of technology regardless. I spent the weekend at Bassilica Soundscape, a festival offering an eclectic mix of doomsday metal bands( examplesof each), ecofemnist poems, witchy pop music,  critical consumerist dancing, and more. When I wasn't at the festival, I was camping at a golf course. I figured this would be the perfect time to turn my phone off for the weekend. 

                                   Bassilca Hudson, Image from Brooklyn Vegan 

At Bassilica Soundscape, I was overwhelmed by technology(In a good way, for the most part.) In the concert area, the music was amplified so loudly that I felt it inside my body. Some sets also had intense, colorful lighting. 

There was also a  "chill truck." Inside of it, were materials such as shoelaces, shells, dog tags, rocks, markers, and paper. I was happy to take advantage of the art supplies ! In the picture below, I am slamming a rock to imprint letters on a dog tag necklace.... a very old school technology ( more pictures in the next post :) )

 In the "art dj lounge room", there was more  advance technologies. In fact, a complete wall was projected with the activity of the dance room. As I watched, I saw people interacting with the technology so they could watch their own reflections. I decided to interact with the projected art as well. Below, you can see my shadow taking a selfie ( I did that on my friend's phone for the sake of this blogpost). Surprisingly, moments later i saw myself moving on the wall ! The technology worked in a way that it recorded people and then played them back moments later. 

 With all this technology, it's not too surprising that there was a old telephone booth with a statue of Buddha inside. It was a good place to pause and take a deep breath.

2/1: Control or be controlled

"A quick phone call can circumvent the need for a frustrating and interminable email exchange"

I agree. Emails stress me out.  Though, I know a lot of people who get stressed out talking on the phone, and would actually prefer to email. 

"Copy and paste  people's names to avoid misspelling them" 

I do this, but I still feel the compulsion to check I spelt the recipient's name correctly another five times.

"WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS IS THE ONLINE EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING AND IS DIFFICULT TO READ"

True, please avoid this unless you do mean to shout at someone.

1/4 Douglas Rushkoff Reading Response

Richard Linder, "Boy with Machine," 1954

Rushkoff writes about time. He believes that  time was more immediate when someone answered a phone, and that the invention of  email allowed people to take the time to respond to someone when they felt like it. I disagreed with this idea right away; I believe that people are connected all the time because I always have my technology present and I can tell from it when other people are also online.  Rushkoff eventually got to my idea, and he called this phenomenon the "false goal of immediacy."  I like this term. Everyone is connected , so people believe they are obligated  to  respond immediately.

Rushkoff also believes that humans are sending their memories onto machines. He claims that this causes our brains to remember less. I do agree with this; Machines  help externalize our memories, so we don't need all the information in our head.  

1/3: Spring Break Art Show

SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an annual curatorial based  art show. All artworks are displayed online, which adds a virtual component to the tactile exhibition. Each year there is a different unifying  curatorial theme; In 2018, the theme was " A stranger comes to Town." 

 There is a diverse range of media showcased during SPRING/BREAK Art Show. Evan Yee's "The Museum From the Future" is structured as archeological ruins of today's technology. When I attended this show, i felt like I was stuck  inside a giant iPhone. There were batteries and other objects coated in resin, sculptures of hands holding iPhones, and the giant spinning circle reminiscent of a computer loading symbol.

Evan Yee, The Museum From the Future, at SPRING/BREAK Art Show.

Jane LaFarge Hamil's "Rigidbody" was an amazing thing to experience. I entered a room with a giant impasto painting, and then the artist invited me to put on virtual reality glasses. Suddently, the painting in front of my began to fall apart into globs of paint moving throughout space. I was able to interact with the paint blobs; as the blobs were flying towards me, I had the ability to push them away. 

Jane Lafarge Hamil, Rigidbody, at SPRING/BREAK Art Show.

1/2: Allison Schulnik

Eager 20148:30min Traditional clay-mation and stop-motion animated film. Film by Allison Schulnik Cinematography by Helder K. Sun Music by Aaron M. Olson


Alison Schulnik is an artist well known for her ephemeral, dark, and grotesque claymation that confront themes of nature, death, life, rituals,and decay.  She sculpts bizzare anamorphic creatures  with clay, such as zombie horses and dancing  flowers. She also paints,draws, and sculpts; she says that her animations are often inspired from a figure in her paintings that she really wants to see move and breath, so she will sculpt it out of clay. I wondered how long it takes to animate such detail oriented videos. In an interview in LA Weekly, Schulnik spoke about the technicalities that went into her claymations. I learned that an animation is 24 frames a second. Schulnik says she works relatively fast ; when animating, she work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a good 9 week straight.. just for the animation part. She animates in a dark room for hours and hours creating a mini world. She says " It's complete escapism. I love it. And when you see the result, it's magic." 

1/1: About Me

Sarah  (b. 1995, New York, NY) is a New York based artist and educator. Confronting themes of love, power, nature, language, history, time, and trauma, Sarah depicts a world of paradoxical tension—one that is surreal in its reconciliation of the beautiful and the abject. She integrates symbolic elements with fragmented body parts onto playful textures and landscapes. In her paintings, she employs impasto oil paint embedded with materials such as flowers, leaves, broken mirror, sparkling beads, candles, and wire onto canvas. She also works in markers, charcoal, watercolor, and sumie-ink. 

She has a B.A. from Wesleyan University in history and studio art. She is currently pursuing her M.A.T. in Art and Art Education. She has taught art and art history at the Museum of Food and Drink, The Bowne House Historic Society, and Prattsville Art Center and Residency.

She dabbles in some new media, such as digital photography, graphic design ( InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator), and Scanning. She looks forward to learning more, especially 3d printing, laser cutting, virtual reality, and animation.