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WWW www.habermas.org

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 27 2006
Latest Update: October 31, 2006
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Topic of the Week:

The Creative Commons License

We offer our work under a Creative Commons License, that in building upon each others' ideas, all of us may benefit from a caring sustainably creative world

Our semester exhibit offers creative work that we and our students have done, with the hope that your students and all their friends and families will be inspired to join them in creating art that stimulates community-wide discussion of the social, economic, and political issues our communities face today. The Dear Habermas site offers (free to all) information gathered and posted by two faculty in two state universities a couple of thousand miles apart. That's not perfect because we maintain both the site and our Yahoo discussion group on these issues open and free to all on our "discretionary time," left over after teaching, but the site is a pretty good start to understanding many of the dilemmas we face in good citizenship and good governance.

Please take freely from our work, for your students, for your neighbors, for those in your community who may wish to use it or build on it. Feel free to make copies for those who do not have computer access, and to use the art on the site for making your own stimuli to issue dialogs in your own communities.

As stated in the Creative Commons License, we do not permit the sale of our work or the use of our work for sale without special written permission. jeanne and Susan

References:

• On the Shoulders of Giants. Robert K. Merton.

Catalog for Fall 2006 Naked Space Exhibit:

• Catalog Cover for Believe It. Own It. Series 1. Fall 2006.
• Section 1: Our Flag and Its Meaning to This Nation-State
• Section 2: Using Unit Shapes for Image Creation
• Section 3: Models and Instructions

  Art Works, one by one, for posting at exhibit:

• Flag by Alejandro
• Fish by Juliette
• Fish Model by jeanne
• OOPS! by Patricia; Printer's Proof.
• OOPS! by Patricia; Printer's Proof, in dark, strong shades of watercolor.
• OOPS! by Patricia; Printer's Proof, in lighter, softer shades of watercolor.
• OOPS! by Patricia; Collage and Drawing. She threw a curse and wounded me.
• The Witch Called "Know It All" Slung a Curse that Wounded Me A Collaborative Project with triangles in which the story grows from the image.. Pat and jeanne.

• Flag by Alejandro
• Fish by Juliette
• Fish Model by jeanne
• I'm Mostly Triangle . . .
• Superman Holding Up the Flag. YES. By Naoko Takeuchi, CSUDH
• Violence in Conflict with Love and Caring. By Yvonne Ramirez, CSUDH
• Life in the U.S. Today: Our Flag, Our Values. By Jason Herrera, CSUDH
• Just Let's Start and See What Happens. By Onelia, CSUDH.
• Onelia's Triangles with Black Background
• Onelia's Triangles without Black Background.
• Fine art example: Manuel Hernández Acevedo of Puerto Rico.
• Depicting the Aggressive Onslaught of Technology
• Jason's Motorcycle: Life goes fast.
• Jason's Motorcycle by jason Herrera
• Creatures on Jason's Motorcycle
• The "Hello, Neighbor" Doll. By Micaela Adams, CSUDH
• A Knight of the 12th Century By jason Herrera, CSUDH
• The Knight Untied to Revel a String of Knights.
• The Peace of the Christian Icon or the Bomb-Protected Dash from Fear of the Other?
• Portraits in Real History (Nietzsche and foucault) by jeanne
• Discrimination: Triangles by jeanne

  Collaborative work: UWP and CSUDH

• OOPS! by Patricia; Printer's Proof.
• OOPS! by Patricia; Printer's Proof, in dark, strong shades of watercolor.
• OOPS! by Patricia; Printer's Proof, in lighter, softer shades of watercolor.
• OOPS! by Patricia; Collage and Drawing. She threw a curse and wounded me.
• The Witch Called "Know It All" Slung a Curse that Wounded Me A Collaborative Project with triangles in which the story grows from the image.. Pat and jeanne.

  UWP Special

• 

• 

  When you do a collaborative work like this the important thing is to tie it all together. Strong colors, when repeated can do that, unless you have a program that will give you lots of pastels. Mine won't. Repetition is important. Rpeat unit piece, like circles or spirals of squares. Notice that I repeated a series of multiple dots, often crossed out or with a forbidden icon. In California gangs are forbiddent to gather in public. Add a halo to the police car's light to simulate movement. Again, many tricks.

• 

  Now, why on earth would I add a green triangle? Can you imagine a story where that would be important. Clue: Look carefully at the apex of the triangle. Could you add more lines to create triangles that might be interpreted as current tensions pulling at the criminal justice system?

  Stories

  • When Stories Emerge from Art Making

    

    A story emerged as I played with Pat's triangle piece on how words will never hurt you. We didn't have a full range of materials in class the day she started that piece, and I wanted to add a little color, then a little texture. The words she had placed in the triangles and stones provided good texture, but they would have been hard to read went mounted in the exhibit space. So I tried printing them. That lost some texture, but gained some clarity.

    Then, when all the house was quiet, and even Mr. Tail had gone off to sleep, I recalled the story in our criminal procedure book in which we debated whether flinging a curse that killed someone constituted murder, since a curse is not a physical object in our world. But the witch who threw it clearly had the intent to do great bodily injury.

    So I added a witch in the lower right-hand corner. But how would I show the flinging of the curse, and its physical consequences? In desperation at my limping old software, I switched to Paint, and drew straight lines from the witch's hand to a stone from which it bounced off to hit the old lady in green sneakers, wound her (little red heart) and bounce to the floor. I was going to make those lines a little darker and make them into dashes. I thought that would give the impression of greater and faster movement. But it was very late, and I was very tired, and there was a warm bed waiting with Mr.Tail and Arnold snoring peacefully. So I quit and joined them.

    Maybe you and your friends or family could figure out how all that happen and write a story for us, hmmm?

    By the way, those of you in criminal justice should think about whether the witch should reasonably have foreseen that even though she was horribly incompetent at aiming projectiles, the curse could ricochet through the image and accomplish her dastardly intent.

  • Stories about People: Portraits

    Because we have cameras, all of us can have portraits now; we can even send them to each other over the Internet and our cell phones. But there are memories, fondness, funny little traits that cameras don't catch. For me, that's the beauty of painted protraits. Now don't misunderstand, and don't go out and buy a huge set of oils and canvas and easel. Portraits are fun. Portraits are memories. But leave the museums to the professional artists. Stick to ART MAKING for fun.

    I was playing one evening with Paint. I was drawing my husband, using just a few lines and the spray paint icon.

    

    Arnold, my favorite model, drawn in Paint with simple tools. Try. The software helps you. And there is great and important satisfaction to making even a small piece of art yourself. So many of us give up our childhood delights, believing those serious people who tell us that we are not talented and must not make art. Compare that to the extreme concern being expressed over the professionalization of sports that leaves most of us ineligible and out of luck for just playing for fun and health.

    This is especially important if you're computer sophisticated. You may have Adobe or Corel or Director. But your children, your parents, your neighbors probably don't have that kind of access. But they may have an old computer around the house. Chances are it has Paint, the PC free graphics program, or the Mac free program on it. Take a few minutes and show them how to take the images we offer them freely, change colors, change shapes, add their own perceptions and MAKE ART. Making art is fun and healthy. We have been amazed at our students' perceptions that we introduced the making of art to relieve their stress. We introduced it as a stimulus to developing discourse skills we need as a community. But don't forget the palliative benefits of MAKING ART. They matter, too!

    Not like any photo of Arnold you'll ever see. But it's him. I can't wait to get it on canvas and frame it. What does it tell you about him? Can you make up a story about why I married him? Can you create a portrait about someone you know? One that will tell a story about that person?

  • Creating Stories from Images That Aren't There Yet

    Notes to all of us: I'm imagining a drawing including creative license, the pre-emptive behavior of profit in late capitalism, the story of Carnegie's concept that it was his mission to take from the poor miners that he may collect gigantic profits which he already knew we would use for the benefit of all. Notice the arrogance of knowingness here. Merton's concepts of means-ends and how that is presently distorted by corporate ability to move freely to any labor market it chooses. Do you think if we all work on it we could coax this whole amazing story of late capitalism to grow from our images?. Pat and I found a story growing from this week's image: The Witch Called "Know It All" Flung a Curse that Wounded Me As you work on images, think about tiny cards or stickers or magnets we could make to leave with the friends and neighbors we talk to in our community-building.

  Visual Sociology

  • Serendipity

    

    "I'm Mostly Triangle, but My Mother Was a Rectangle"
    One of jeanne's Conceptual Drawings of Good and Evil and How We're All Caught Up In It

    Somewhere on the site I put up a drawing of triangles that related to the pain of being the only one, the different one, the one who stands out in a crowd. But I couldn't find it. And I didn't have time to hunt. So I took another triangle drawing from one of my notebooks. The story line I was trying to illustrate was "I'm mostly triangle, but my mother was a rectangle." I had a triangle drawing with a rectangle, a flag, so I decided to use that. It was sitting under another drawing I had started of triangles and the bad man planted as a black rose bush. He had been planted for a while in my patio, with my mother, who is a green rose, and I guess he picked up the green roses that way.

    Actually, I think when I started the bad man was probably still a black rose bush, but no roses were drawn on him yet, and when I began this drawing, the roses turned green. Rehabilitatiion? If you're planted next to a good rose bush long enough, you take on some of the good rose bush's characteristics? Or maybe he's a wolf in sheep's clothing? I prefer to think of him as rehabilitated. Could the green roses be a metaphor for hope, hope we need to get us through the drawing below it? My, what an interesting array of possibilities.

    I haven't had time to think through the rest of the story yet. I'm wondering about the poor creature flat upon the ground. Might be dead, you know. And the larger violet creature standing over him or her. Don't miss the clown stuck in there somewhere, in orange, with yellow spots.

    And I don't know what the red white and blue triangles represent, but it's got to be a good story. How do you suppose the top and bottom scenarios will link together? Will the focus still be on discrimination against Others? Or does the story get more complicated?

  A Range of Sources on Global Info

  Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times - The National Review
  Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Sierra Club - The Guardian
  Wall Street Journal - The Weekly Standard - The Nation - The Cato Institute (Libertarian)
  BBC NEWS | Americas - truthout - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
  Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - La Opinion - The Washington Post
  Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor - Palestine Report
  

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  Individual copyrights by other authors may apply.