Character.
Portrait, photomontage, studio, daguerreotype,
self-portrait, caricature, comic book.
Heroes.
Who?
Creates the image
Selects the context
Shapes the meaning
Gazes
Is subjected to the gaze.
By the gaze.
Essential science:
Innate characteristics.
Created by genes
Revealed in physiognomy.
Some are.
Some get to be.
We are text/context.
Ask the slave.
Daguerreotyped.
Subjected
Typecast
Narrated
Someone else’s story
Essential
Lowly
Difference.
Subjugated.
(And so it goes.)
Studioed.
Bourgeois
Enacting.
Difference.
Improvised.
Multipleselves.
Some *are*.
Some have the power to *become*.
The camera lies
Photomontaged
The Paris
Women
A-flame
Legs sprawling
Animal.
Petrolleur.
Depression.
The.
Showing – commenting – narrating…
Art
That slippery slope of meaning-making …
Carrie Mae Weems
Re-claimed (those slaves)
With blood and fire.
Homework: two weeks - to follow!
This week's:
Optional
Sketchbook Assignment 2 Follow Up
Regardless if you
did last week’s sketchbook assignment or not, or you are just joining us, I
encourage you to try this out. For our second critique we are building on the
prompt given in the first:
Visit the Sketchbook
Assignment 2: Mental Map forum and choose an assignment. Try to spread your attention between
assignments that have already received a lot of feedback and ones that haven’t.
Prioritize finding an undiscovered gem or two.
Look at the student’s submission. Don’t respond immediately. Give
yourself at least a few minutes to really look or study what the student has
submitted.
In your reply, describe, in words, exactly what you are seeing or
reading in the student’s assignment.
Then, select two of the following and add it to your comment: What is one thing about the
submission that immediately caught your attention? What is one thing about the
submission that took you a little longer to discover? What are three questions
you would ask this student about their submission? How does the medium/format
that the student has chosen (drawing, descriptive text, photography, collage,
etc. etc.) affect how you understand the meaning of the submission?
Repeat for another assignment. Try to comment on at least three assignments this round.
Optional Sketchbook Assignment 3: Characters Drawn from Life (and Death)
For this week’s
sketchbook assignment we are offering two options: one for Track A learners
(more visual-based), and one for Track B learners (a written response). Do one
or the other, or both! Please note there is a separate forum for each
track.
Track A
Look in a local newspaper or online source for death or marriage
notices. Find one that is interesting to you but don’t choose one that includes
a photograph.
Make a portrait of a person described in the notice (deceased man or
woman, bride or groom). Use any means and style that you like--drawing,
painting, photography, collage. Think about how much of the person you want to
show, how s/he is posed or framed, how much context is given through
background, accessories, etc. Whatever you choose to include in the portrait
should say something about the character you have chosen to depict.
Important: In respect of others'
privacy, do not include any names from notices, or link to them, or use images
without permission.
In this forum ("Characters
Drawn from Life (and Death) TRACK A"), start a new thread and post a scan
of your image. Give your post a title, and submit!
Track B
Find a public place. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. You might
be here for a while.
Watch the people.
Choose one person and invent a life for them. Think about who might be
in terms of occupation, relationships with family and friends, pets or lack of
them, personal possessions or lack of them, personality quirk
